Big and Clever (31 page)

Zoe leans forward, pulling my hand towards her, kissing my knuckles. It feels like she's letting me know I can stop struggling for answers. I'm just starting to relax when she tilts her head slightly to one side, narrowing her eyes, looking at the open collar of my pyjamas.

“Where's your necklace?” she asks.

For a split second I feel a jab of panic. It's another question I just can't answer. I remember being trapped in a headlock. I remember the chain cutting into my skin. I remember a horrible snapping sensation. But then I remember something else. The other bit of luck that Dr Konje told me about. The jingling sound one of the nurses heard as I was having my clothing cut away before my operation. The necklace and pendant, that had broken off and fallen down the front of my T-shirt, sliding onto the table next to me.

“It's in the top drawer of the cabinet,” I tell her.

Zoe shoots me a sideways glance. She pulls the drawer open a fraction. She nods to herself.

I allow myself a little grin. The crisis has passed.

She stays for about another fifteen minutes. It's nice to spend some time together. The ward is busy and we watch people coming and going. A nurse takes Zoe's flowers away and brings them back in a chunky glass vase. We finish off Raks's grapes. We crack jokes, talk about all sorts of silly things. But all the time, there's a kind of undercurrent. We both know there's still a lot of serious stuff to discuss. Maybe not here, maybe not today, but soon.

As the clock on the wall ticks towards twenty to three, Zoe straightens up in her chair.

“I'm going to have to go now,” she says. “Your poor dad has been waiting ages to see you.”

I nod.

“Right,” I say. “Well, thanks for coming. I really appreciate it.”

Zoe smiles. She stands up, leaning over and kissing me on the forehead.

My stomach churns. Now isn't the time for big deep discussions, but there's something I need to know.

“So are we still together?” I ask. I'm coming straight to the point. It seems like the only thing I can do.

She pushes hair out of her eyes. Her smile is fading. She strokes my arm. She takes a breath.

“We'll just have to see,” she says.

I feel deflated, but in truth, it's the best I could have hoped for.

Zoe kisses my forehead again, then heads for the doors.

A few seconds after she disappears from view, Dad comes into the ward. Even at this distance I can see there's something different about him. The nearer he gets, the more obvious it becomes. He's had a shave. He's washed his hair. He's in a pair of dark blue jeans and the lilac shirt I bought him for his last birthday.

He made an effort the night we went to Raks's party, but this is something else entirely. It's the smartest he's looked in years.

As he gets to my bedside, he smiles. A bit nervous, a bit self-conscious. He's got aftershave on, and this time it's not just to disguise the smell of Stella.

I shake my head.

“Bloody hell Dad,” I say, grinning. “Look at you. Are you on the way to meet a woman?”

“You cheeky sod,” he says.

We both laugh. It feels strange. I can't remember the last time we shared a joke.

Dad sits in the chair, dumping a carrier bag on the floor. He squeezes my arm.

“You OK?” he asks.

“Not bad.”

He runs a hand through his hair and reaches down into the carrier bag.

“I've brought you some stuff,” he says, lining things up on the side of the bed. A bottle of Lucozade. A big bag of Haribos. Today's
News Of The World
. Steven Gerrard's autobiography. My portable CD player and four discs.

“Nice one,” I say. I'm amazed. I've never known him so organized.

“Didn't want you getting bored,” he says. “Hope the CDs are OK. I just picked up whatever was next to your stereo.”

I nod, shuffling through the plastic cases. Oasis. Arctic Monkeys. Kasabian. And lurking at the bottom of the pile, Level 42.
The Ultimate Collection
.

I shake my head.

“This wasn't next to my stereo.”

He grins.

“Thought a few days in hospital was a good opportunity to further your musical education,” he says. “It's a 2-CD set. Keep you going for hours.”

I laugh. I might actually listen to it. Or there again, I might not.

Dad pulls open the bag of Haribos and helps himself to a green fizzy dinosaur. I get myself a cola bottle and a couple of jelly babies and we kick off with some general chit-chat. How I'm feeling. What the doctors and nurses have said. How the painkillers are working. It's basic stuff but it passes the time.

“How's things with Raks and Zoe?” Dad asks, when we've exhausted all the medical banter.

I shrug.

“It's all sorted with Raks. With Zoe…” I hold my hand flat in the air and wobble it from side to side.

Dad nods.

“You've got a lot of work to do if you're going to get her to trust you again,” he says.

“Yeah.” I rub my chin. “I've got a lot of work to do with a lot of people, haven't I?”

He shakes his head.

“It's not just you,” he says. “It's both of us. This whole episode has been like a wake-up call. Things haven't been right, have they?”

I raise my eyebrows. It's a bit of a rhetorical question.

Dad gets another sweet, then carries on.

“And I don't think we need a big inquest to work out where we've been going wrong. We both know, don't we?”

I nod.

“And we both know how we can sort things out,” I say.

He smiles, relieved, glad that I'm on the same wavelength. He reaches out to squeeze my arm again.

“You're a good lad,” he says.

Neither of us talks much after that, but there's no awkwardness in the silence. We've done all the talking we needed to do over the past couple of days. We've put all the bad feeling behind us. It's like we've wiped the slate clean and we're just waiting for the right moment to make a fresh start.

Three o'clock seems to come around very quickly. People begin to say their goodbyes, put their coats back on, get themselves ready to go home. Dad has a final rummage in the bag of Haribos.

“I'll be back in tomorrow, then,” he says. “Is there anything I can get you?”

I shake my head.

“I think I'm all sorted now, thanks. I just need to get myself well again.”

He nods.

“Yeah,” he says. “You do that.”

As Dad stands up, I can't help smiling. I've had time to get used to the transformation in the way he looks, but it's still hard to get my head round. It's not just that he's smarter than he's been in years. It's something more. It's that he looks the way he used to look. Back in the days when he was working, when Mum was alive, when he had a bit of faith in himself. When he was
Hollywood Tony
.

“See you then Dad,” I say.

He looks at me and winks.

“See you mate.”

A few seconds later, Dad's gone. I lever myself up against the back of the bed and pick up
The News Of The World
, reading the headline.
Soap Star's Gay Dungeon Shame
. I flick through to the middle pages and pull out
Score
, the football supplement. There's something that's started nagging away at me. Something I need to find out. I skim the Premier League and Championship pages then keep going, through League One and down into League Two. I still don't know what happened in the games yesterday afternoon. The games affecting Letchford.

It doesn't take me long to find what I'm looking for. The League Two classified results. Page 18. I scan down the list.
Grimsby 1 Torquay 2. Mitcham 1 Wrexham 0.
Wins for Mitcham and Torquay. I know what that means, and a look at the table confirms it. Letchford are rock bottom. Bottom of our division. Bottom of the entire Football League. 92nd out of 92. As the old joke goes, we must be the strongest team in the country, because we're propping the rest up. My heart sinks. I somehow didn't think it would still be that important to me. Not now, not after everything that's happened. But it is. It hurts.

Letchford's next four matches are in brackets next to our points tally. Three awaydays in a row. Accrington Stanley on the 23rd. Wrexham on Boxing Day. Bristol Rovers on the 30th. And then on New Years Day we're at home to Mitcham. It's an important game, against another of the strugglers. A must-win game.

I close the paper and push it across the bed. I ease myself down under the sheets, staring up at the ceiling tiles. An idea is starting to form in my mind. Monday January 1st. That's more than two weeks away. I'll be well and truly on the mend by then. On my feet, building up my strength again. And what better way to get a bit of exercise and fresh air than taking a trip down to Southlands? Letchford need all the support they can get. I can't abandon them. They're my team.

I get a little tingle in my stomach. I wonder how I'm going to break the news to people. To Raks. To Zoe. To Dad. They've probably all assumed I'm finished with Letchford Town. But I'm fairly sure I can swing it.

The last few people are leaving now. A pretty black nurse is holding one of the doors open, smiling, wishing everyone a safe journey home. As I watch, her expression changes and I see her shaking her head, talking to someone out in the corridor. The discussion's getting heated for a few seconds, but then the nurse is all smiles again. She pushes the door open and one final visitor enters The Devonshire Ward. I do a double-take. It's Ryan.

Everyone else who's visited this afternoon has been shocked to see the state I'm in. Not Ryan. As he gets closer to my bed, the grin on his face is growing wider and wider. It's almost unbelievable. He thinks this is funny.

Time has slowed to a crawl. I feel a bit woozy. I must have thought about everything under the sun since I woke up yesterday morning. Every aspect of my life, past, present and future. It's weird though. The one thing I hadn't thought about is how I'd feel when I next saw Ryan. Now I'm going to find out.

All sorts of emotions are swirling inside me. An image from the other night flickers into my brain. Me about to take a kicking. Ryan looking me in the eye, shaking his head and doing a runner. As the image fades, anger and resentment surge through my body. I'm sure the way I'm feeling must be registering on my face. But if it is, Ryan hasn't noticed. He's standing at the end of my bed now, chuckling quietly to himself, shaking his head.

And then something strange happens. It's like everything suddenly becomes clear. Ryan didn't betray me. It was just one of the things that can happen in the heat of battle. In all honesty, if our positions had been reversed, I'd have probably done the same thing to him. There's no problem between us. That's just the way it is. And in that instant, all my anger has gone. I break into a smile.

Ryan pulls out a chair and sits down.

“Alright, mate?” he says.