‘Co-captain. With Baral.’
It’s been so long since I got some good news, I don’t know how to react.
‘Assad knows the team inside out, he can keep morale up, but they need motivation, someone to kick them up the arse.’
‘You can depend on me,’ I tell him, forcing a serious expression on my ecstatic face. ‘Thank you so much for this opportunity, I won’t let you down.’
‘I said kicker not kisser, climb out my rectum,’ he replies with a scowl. ‘The rest of the team don’t need to hear this, but you’re leagues ahead of them skill-wise and the way I see it, there’s two ways this year can go. You can sink to their level, or they can rise up to meet yours.’
He walks over to me, presses a clump of grass back into the ground with the toe of his sneaker, then lines up behind the ball. Without even looking up, he kicks it straight into the back of the net, a perfect strike.
‘Don’t get me wrong, we’re good. Best in the league.’ He fixes me with another steely stare. ‘But with you, we could be better. I’ve always believed iron sharpens iron, what do you think, son?’
‘I think I agree?’
‘What do you know? That’s the right answer.’ Clive lays a heavy hand on my shoulder and for one horrifying second, I feel like I’m going to cry. ‘In case no one else has told you this, it’s not the mistakes you make that define you in life. It’s what you do next that counts.’
No one has told me that. The only thing I’ve heard recently is what a fuck-up I am, how I’ve ruined my life, Chris’s life, cost my dad a fortune, broken my mom’s heart. Hemden has only been painted as a punishment. For the first time, it feels like a clean slate.
‘Now, if you haven’t got anywhere else to be, I want to see twenty more shots to the back of the net before you clock off.’ He claps me hard on the back, knocking the rising emotion right out of me. ‘That last one was pathetic. Every time you miss, you give me a lap of the pitch. Go on, get started, I’m not going anywhere until you’re done.’
Pulling up my shirt to wipe my face, I jog over to collect the ball then take position. As I take a three-step run-up, I focus on blocking out all the negative thoughts, my parents, forgetting my sheets, the scene in my room this morning, I manage to lock them all away. But one sneaks through, slipping under the net and grabbing my attention. Mia fucking Meyers.
The balls skews wide and rolls off into the trees.
‘That’s one lap,’ Clive calls. ‘Unless you’re looking to be knackered by teatime, I wouldn’t make a habit of missing.’
‘Yes, Clive,’ I say as I take off around the field.
He doesn’t need to worry. As far as I’m concerned, from this moment on, Mia Meyers doesn’t exist.
10
Mia
‘You signed me up to be a bartender?’
Alice bows her head as though she has done some kind of Mother Teresa-grade good deed.
‘It was bartender or barista, and I’m telling you, barista is no option for a sane person.’ She picks up two trays, hands one to me, then takes her place in the lunch line. ‘Barista shifts start at six thirtyin the morning. Inhumane.’
‘And bartender shifts run until when?’
‘Latest I’ve been there is two a.m. but even then you don’t start until six or seven in the evening. Much more civilized.’
It’s hard to know what to concentrate on, Alice’s helpful employment advice, my first ever visit to the refectory, our full-on formal dining hall, complete with long oak dining tables and matching panelled walls. Then there’s whatever it is that’s passing for food in the metal warming dishes up ahead. I am unexpectedly homesick for a Hardee’s sausage biscuit.
‘Spilling beer on yourself is also a lot less dangerous than chucking an extra-hot latte down your shirt, trust me on that.’
I screw up my face in concentration, trying to decide between what I believe is supposed to be a lasagne and something called a shepherd’s pie. Made with real shepherds? I reach for the lasagne, but Alice stops my hand and redirects it to the shepherd’s pie.
‘Lasagne famously bad here,’ she murmurs, eyes on the lunch lady staring at us from behind the counter. ‘There was a rumour last year that they used dog food instead of beef, which can’t possibly be true but if you’d tasted it, you’d have reason to believe.’
Shepherd’s pie it is.
‘They didn’t have anything else?’ I add a napkin, flatware and a tumbler to my tray and follow Alice down the centre of the ref, the long wooden tables on either side of us already crowded with students. ‘Nothing at all? Preferably not in the service industry?’
‘Most of the cushy jobs are spoken for before the term even starts.’ She throws one denim-clad leg over the bench, taking a seat as soon as we reach an unoccupied spot. ‘Campus bookshop, the little supermarket, anything in the student union office, gone before you arrived. All they had left was coffee shop, bar or library and you’d be bored out of your mind at the library. Imagine having to be quiet all day long. I would die.’
