We’re in the Luton clubhouse and it stinks of alcohol from last night. I preferred it when people smoked in here, at least it hid the smell of sick and beer. The other side of the bar smells worse than this side, but it’s where most of the single players are, so I can see why Mich would be over there.
On this side it’s all coupley. I wave over at Suze as she waddles in wearing great multicoloured hot-pants and matching high-heeled shoes.
‘Wow!’ I say. ‘Are they Pucci?’
‘Yes,’ she answers, pulling out a cigarette and reaching for her lighter. She’s so heavily pregnant now that her stomach gets in the way when she bends down, so she has to sort of crouch with her legs open, allowing her enormous stomach to drop between her knees. It’s at this point that I’m reminded of an important lesson: never open your legs really wide while wearing hot-pants and being heavily pregnant if you have not had a bikini wax.
‘You shouldn’t be smoking that, should you?’ asks Mindy, striding in behind her. Mindy looks like a goddess. She’s wearing a tight satin basque and…well, that’s all she’s wearing, really. She’s done that thing that Sienna Miller did, and come out in her knickers. Luckily, Mindy—like Sienna—has the body for it.
‘I’ll smoke if I want to. Just because I’m pregnant doesn’t mean you can tell me what to do.’
‘No—I don’t mean because you’re up the duff, I mean because of the no-smoking laws. I know it’s fine to smoke when you’re pregnant. Christ—I’d take it up if I got pregnant, even though I don’t normally touch cigarettes—it keeps the baby small.’
Midday
‘Darling, darling, darling. It’s Angie here,’ says Mum. She’s talking into the answer-phone because I can’t face picking up. ‘I’ve heard the news…I’ve been trying to call all morning. I was going to pop round, but I’ve been in your house every day this week and I simply couldn’t bear to come round again. How’s Dean? Tell him to call me if he needs anything. Maybe I should bring him some of my tea made from mud taken from the claws of African spider monkeys. Or there are some tablets containing the resin from the Umbaka tree. It’s collected by tribesmen who keep it in their nose for ten days before it’s dried in the sun.’
Luton Town lost again. Dean was subbed off again. Two weeks, two defeats. No own goals for Dean yesterday, which obviously made a pleasant change, but he was, in the words of the fans that I followed out of the stadium, ‘fucking crap’.
I reach for the handset.‘I’m here, Mum,’I say, adding, ‘Dean will be fine’ with more conviction than I feel.
‘How many times do I have to say don’t call me “Mum”,’ she huffs. ‘Call me Angie.’
Dean is sure that she wants me to call her Angie instead of Mum because she is labouring under the misapprehension that if I do, no one will realise how old she is. I spent years thinking she didn’t want me to call her Mum because she didn’t like me very much and didn’t want to be associated with me. I suspect that the real reason is an unflattering mixture of the two.
‘That’s three matches in a row that he’s been subbed off. Darling, you have to do something,’ Mum implores. ‘You could try giving him vienow juice.’
‘What’s that?’ I ask, but I’m not sure I really want to know.
‘It comes from the berries of the vienow tree…’
‘Oh.’ How nice. A simple, straightforward answer.
‘…and they collect it by sucking the juice through large vine leaves that have been soaked in the Nile.’
‘Of course they do.’
‘Three matches. It’s looking like the end, darling.’
‘Well, it’s two actually, and what can I do? Run on there and kick the ball for him? Take out the goalkeeper when he’s about to score?’
‘Humour is entirely overrated as a communication tool,’ she says sniffily. ‘And I don’t think it should be used at all when you’re talking about something as serious as your husband’s career…your entire lifestyle depends on him playing kick-ball well. It’s really not a laughing matter. Now—is he eating properly? Does he take enough supplements? Wild yam cream? Maybe he should be taking human growth hormones. A lot of these athletes do.’
‘Yes, and then they are banned for life,’ I say.
‘Such negativity,’ she replies, spitting out the word ‘negativity’ at me. I know she’s rubbing her temples as she says it, and lifting her chin to the skies. ‘Breathe deeply, through the nostrils,’ she is saying. ‘Take three drops of mimosa flower extract every hour. Think happy thoughts…always.’
The trouble with Mum is that she lived in Los Angeles for ten years. Once I was old enough to look after myself, she headed for the bright lights, convinced that she could make it as a film star. The major movie career never materialised, but she returned with the face of a thirty-year-old, the breasts of a sixteen-year-old and a nauseatingly positive attitude. Now it’s the gym every morning, pilates every afternoon, and 257 different supplements in between. She’s painfully thin and looks permanently surprised. Her hair is the colour of corn and her eyes have gone from hazel to sapphire. She took some getting used to—especially the body shape, with the tiny, tiny waist and the enormous breasts. I kept thinking she was going to fall over. I’ve had my breasts done recently, but they’re nothing like as large, full or youthful as my fifty-three-year-old mother’s are.
‘Darling, I need to know the gossip while I’m on the phone—is that delectable Andre Howchenski going out with that dope Michaela? Did I hear that correctly?’
‘Well, I’m hoping so. She met him after the game yesterday and really likes him. I think they’d make a lovely couple.’
‘He’s too good for her,’ she says. ‘It won’t last.’
I don’t want to debate this with my mother because I want so much for it to work out for my lovely friend that I can’t bear to consider that it might not. I can hear bells ringing in the background on the phone. ‘Where are you, Mum?’
‘At church,’she replies in her singsong voice.‘Praying for Dean. Praying for both of you. Praying that this phase will pass and that I won’t be the mother of a woman who’s married to the bad player from Luton. I’m praying for you, too. Marrying a footballer’s the only decent thing you’ve ever done. Let’s hope it doesn’t end. You do understand how bad this is, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I reply, because I do know how bad it is. I’m no Bobby Charleston but I know that the captain’s supposed to stay on the pitch and, ideally, contribute to the match in some way other than scoring own goals.
Dean realises it too. ‘They’ll probably sell me,’ he said last night, as if he were an old car or an unwanted sofa. ‘Free transfer to some god-forsaken place.’ It had made me shudder. What if the new place was somewhere dreadful like Sunderland?
‘I don’t think prayers are what he needs right now,’ I say, slightly unkindly, but I hate the way she insists on making a huge drama out of everything. ‘Anyway, I didn’t know you were religious.’
‘I’m not, silly. I’m not here to pray, though I did light a candle for poor, poor Dean. No, I’m here because there’s a woman who comes to church who I want to befriend because she runs the best pilates classes in the area and is booked up for twelve months. I thought I would bump into her and become her best friend.’
‘What? You went to church to befriend some woman?’
‘Not