I’m stashing my phone back in my desk when there’s a knock at the door. I already know who it is. Alice and Jenna in their Hemden colours, beaming at me when I let them in.
‘Come on, we’re going.’ Jenna grabs my scarf from the hook on the wall and lassoes me around the neck with it. ‘Don’t argue. You’re going to have to see him sooner or later, better to do it from a distance at an event where you’re perfectly entitled to scream at the top of your lungs and call him a wanker should the mood strike.’
There’s no fighting logic like that.
‘Do I have time to pee?’ I ask.
‘No,’ Jenna replies. ‘You can wet yourself on the way. I don’t want shit seats.’
‘You’re coming then?’ Alice almost looks disappointed as I pull on my coat, loading the pockets with keys, lip balm and credit cards. ‘I thought you’d put up more of a fight, I had a whole speech planned.’
Jenna clucks her tongue at her best friend.
‘When don’t you?’
I’m grabbing a pair of gloves Jenna insists I don’t need when all our cell phones chime at the same time. Alice gets to hers first.
‘It’s Michael,’ she says, reading the message. ‘Wants to know if we’re coming to the game.’
‘As if we’d make him play without his good luck charm,’ Jenna grins. ‘Tell him no. Let’s see him sweat.’
Alice looks up and pulls a face at me.
‘He wants to know ifyou’recoming.’
Me? Why would Michael want to see me?
‘And can you come down to the changing rooms ASAP? He says it’s urgent.’
‘Tell him we’re on our way,’ Jenna says, gripping my wrist. ‘No way Michael would ask unless it really is.’
‘You don’t think …’ My heart is in my mouth as all the possibilities spin around in my mind, the wheel of misfortune. ‘You don’t think anything has happened to Ethan?’
Neither of them answer. Instead, Alice yanks me through the door leaving Jenna to close it behind us, a cloud of white powder filling the hallway as we run.
54
Ethan
From the way Clive is staring at me, I can’t tell if he’s about to tell me he loves me or send me directly to the gates of hell. Trying to read this man every single day must be exhausting for his hot wife. He sits behind his desk, fingers templed under his chin, permafrown on his face.
‘That’s all of it?’ he says after the longest wait in human history.
‘Yes, sir. Clive. Yes, Clive.’
With my hands behind my back, still in my warm-up gear, I stand in the middle of his office with my head held high. Whatever he decides, I’ll take it on the chin. If he pulls me from the game, if he tells Harchester or the head of the university and I’m back on a plane to South Carolina this time tomorrow, at least I’ll know he had all the information to make the decision.
‘You know you should’ve told me the first time you walked through my door?’ he says.
‘I do.’
‘And you know from here on in, if I get so much as an inkling of you fucking up again, I’ll be wearing your bollocks as a pair of earrings?’
I swear I feel them go back up inside me.
‘From what I can make out, you made some bad decisions then you thought you’d treat yourself by making a few more.’ Clive shakeshis head slowly with his eyes closed. When they open, they’re trained on me like a rifle sight. ‘I made you captain for a reason, Taylor, you’re a natural leader. Sometimes leaders have to take one for the team. What you need to work out now is knowing the difference between when to fall on your sword and when to let other people suffer the consequences of their own actions. I can see how you thought you were doing the right thing, so you’re getting a pass. Now get out of my sodding office and put your bloody kit on. Kick-off is in twenty minutes and if you’re not ready to play, you won’t start, which I can’t imagine would impress the Harchester scouts.’
I can’t believe it. He’s already tapping away at his computer as though I’d just strolled into his office and told him what I ate for my breakfast not the whole truth about me, Chris and the accident.
