Glory Of The Football Manager System

”Walsh.” Flat. Down to business before the line had even settled.

”Jess. It’s twenty past eight.”

”I know what time it is. The post is up, I take it. Two million by now.”

”Two million.”

”Good. That’s the version of you they keep.” Not a flicker of warmth you could point to and yet the whole sentence was warm, which is Jessica, the warmth always buried under the work. ”It’s a good photograph. She did right doing the hand and not the faces. Now get your head off your own ring for ninety seconds, because I have got something and you are not going to like the size of it.”

I knew that voice. That was not the voice of a woman ringing about a wedding.

”Go on.”

She does not breathe in before she talks. She just talks.

”Eleven o’clock last night I took a call. A man I will not name on a phone, for a federation I will not name on a phone, that is going to a World Cup in three weeks. Their manager walked on Friday. It is not out yet. Will not be out till Wednesday. And before it is out, before any other agent in Europe has it, they have come to me, for you, to take them through the tournament.”

I lay there.

Emma had gone still next to me in the way that means listening, not sleeping. The arm across my chest did not move.

”Say that again.”

”You heard me the first time.”

”Say it again, Jess. I have had four hours’ sleep and I think you just told me a country wants me at the World Cup.”

”A country wants you at the World Cup.” She let it sit there a second, which Jessica never does. ”That is what I said. Three weeks. You would fly out inside the fortnight.”

”I manage Crystal Palace.”

”I am aware. I negotiated the contract. I know every comma in it.”

”I got engaged twelve hours ago. You bought the ring, Jess.”

”I am aware of both those things more than you are, Daniel, I arranged one and witnessed the other off a phone screen at midnight. It changes nothing about the next part. Six weeks. You take them through the summer, you hand them back, you are home before pre-season and the lass has barely noticed you have gone. That is the shape of it. And before you say a word: no, I have not breathed it to a living soul, yes, it is real, and I have sat on it since eleven last night so you would hear it from me and not off Sky Sports News at half seven this morning like everybody else.”

”Why me.”

”Do not be thick, it does not suit a man in your position.” A short sound that was almost a laugh and was mostly maths.

”Two years ago you were running the under-eighteens, and a year ago they handed you a senior side five points off relegation with five games to play and you won all five and put them in Europe. This season you won three trophies, and the entire planet sat and watched you do it. Nobody in the game has a story like yours, Daniel... they want the one manager alive who has spent two years walking toward them.”

”Jess, I can’t even, ”

”You don’t have to. You do one thing this morning and it isn’t this. It’s Steve. You don’t breathe on this till the board’s had it straight, because you’re their man, in their summer, and if Parish reads it in a paper before he hears it off you, you’ve broken something. Give me the nod, I’ll take it to him soft and proper.”

”Take it to Steve. All of it. Tell him I’ve said nowt and won’t till he’s spoke. It’s his call as much as mine. I’m not putting that club second, Jess. Not them.”

”Good lad. Right answer.” A beat, and I heard the click of her switching tracks, the agent coming back over the friend.

”Now. You’re meant to be in Manchester today, your mother, half twelve. I’ve got you on the 10:05 out of City, lands you at eleven, car the other end, you’d be at her door with twenty minutes spare and you’d not have to drive a yard. Say the word, I’ll hold the seats.”

”No.”

”Daniel, you’ve had four hours’ sleep and a federation’s ringing my phone every twenty minutes. An hour in the air, you’d be fresh for, ”

”No, Jess. We’re taking the car.”

A pause down the line that was Jessica recalculating a man.

”It’s four hours.”

”It’s four hours with her. I’m not flying up to tell my mum I’m getting married and flying back. I’m driving Emma up the country in my own car with the doors locked and nobody able to get at us, and we’ll get there when we get there, and you’ll move anything that needs moving.”

”You’ll be knackered.”

”I’ll be happy. There’s a difference, you’ve just forgotten it because you never sleep.” Quiet. Then, because it was true, ”Cancel the seats, Jess. Some things you don’t do on a plane.”

Another pause. Then, drier than the Sahara, ”I’ll cancel the seats. God help the federation; they think they’re hiring a manager and they’re hiring a romantic. Tell your mother congratulations. Drive safe. Don’t look at your phone, I’ll handle Steve.” Gone. No goodbye. Off Jessica, always.

I put the phone down on my chest.

Emma was looking at the ceiling. She had heard all of it. She turned her head on the pillow, the hair going everywhere, one eye still doing the squint it does before it can take the light.

”Did a country,” she said, in the cracked voice of a woman with four hours’ sleep, ”just ask my fiancé to manage them at the World Cup, the morning after he proposed.”

”Aye.”

She looked at me a long second, then rolled in against my side and started to laugh into my shoulder, helpless, the engagement and the World Cup and the four hours’ sleep all going off at once, and I started and all, the pair of us shaking in a bed in Dulwich at twenty-five past eight on a Monday morning.

When she had got it out of her system she reached over, picked the phone up off my chest without asking, and scrolled through the wreckage of it for me, because she reads a phone faster than I do and always has.

”The lads are all over it. Pato’s put a heart, then” she scrolled, ”four hundred hearts. Konaté’s put finally. Wilf’s put she said yes to THAT with a photo of your face, charming. Olise has put MUM IS CRYING, in caps.” She kept going, her thumb slowing. Then it stopped. ”Oh. Your Paddy’s left a paragraph, Danny.”

”What’s it say?”

She read it. Her face did something it does not do often.

”Later,” she said, and put the phone face down, and did not give it me, which is how I knew I would not be able to read it driving. ”You read that one when you’re not behind a wheel.”

She got up before I did. I stayed where I was and watched her go, because she is the woman I am marrying and a country had just asked for me and the only thing I actually wanted was already up and padding across the bedroom on bare feet, hair a riot, scrubbing one eye with the heel of her hand and yanking the wardrobe open without breaking stride.

She moves the same first thing every morning, half asleep, like a woman who knows exactly where everything is and resents all of it equally.

She dressed for a long drive she was not getting glamorous for. The soft grey joggers gone thin across the back from a hundred washes.

A white T-shirt, no bra under it, because she does not do a bra for a day in a car. My grey hoodie pulled on over the top, the one she has quietly owned since November and stopped pretending was mine sometime yesterday.

She tugged it straight, shoved the sleeves up to her elbows, twisted the red of her hair up off her neck and pinned it with the new ring sat in the middle of the twist where she could see it if she crossed her eyes.

”You’re staring,” she said, not turning round.

”You’re worth a stare.”

”You’ll have to get less obvious about it now you’ve put a ring on me. It’s undignified.”

”I’ve got the rest of my life. I’m getting worse, not better.”

She threw a sock at me without looking and got me square in the face. She has a journalist’s aim and no shame about it.