By the time we got back, Wimbledon had won and that meant we were champions. Normally at the end of a game in which you win a trophy, you can let some of the adrenalin out, on the pitch and back in the dressing room. That evening in 1997, though, we were sitting in Ben Thornley’s lounge. We broke the club curfew that night; the only time I ever did. We had a game against Newcastle coming up on the Thursday and so we should have been at home, getting an early night. I’m not a drinker or a clubber anyway, as a general rule. But that evening was different. We’d won the League, hadn’t we? It didn’t feel like an occasion to be sitting indoors, so the three of us went out on the town in Manchester and had a beer or two more than we should have done. I’m sure the gaffer knew – he knows everything about everybody – but we got away with it. And there was no harm done because we drew against Newcastle two evenings later.
I think the really big winner that season was probably my mobile phone company. I knew straight away I was crazy about Victoria. I found myself thinking about how and when I could be with her during most of every day we were apart. No sooner had we met, she’d had to jet off to America with the Spice Girls. We spent hour after hour talking and the bills got scarier and scarier. But they were the best investment I’ve ever made. The couple of times we’d actually been face to face, I’d felt so nervous it took my breath away. It’s strange how different it was on the phone. It seemed to be the most natural thing in the world to be telling this amazing woman all about my life – and my feelings – and listening to her do the same. By the time she got back to England, it felt like we really knew each other. We started to find out, as well, what we were going to mean to each other. Whatever the phone company had made out of it seemed like a bargain.
The florists didn’t do too badly out of me, either. I sent flowers to each new hotel Victoria booked into and a single red rose every day for the best part of a month. I couldn’t wait for her to come home. I think perhaps people have this idea that our life together must always have been about glamorous parties: stars, luxuries, photo opportunities. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Having the time together was all that mattered. The first date had been about driving around, getting thrown out of a Chinese, and sitting on a friend’s sofa. Our second evening out was just as low-key as the first. We arranged to meet up in another pub car park – that’s how stylish we were – this one called City Limits. A strange thing happened on the way there. I stopped at a petrol station and went in to buy some chewing gum. Just as I was pulling out of the forecourt, I saw Victoria arrive, jump out and do the same thing. Fresh breath, or something to steady the nerves? Both probably. I drove on to City Limits and parked.
When Victoria arrived, I jumped out, went over to her MG and got in beside her. For such a little car, I remember there was a big gap between the driver’s and front passenger’s seats. We didn’t go anywhere. We talked. And we kissed, for the first time. I had a cut on my finger from training. Victoria reached across me to the glove compartment and pulled out this sprig of a plant, Aloe Vera.
‘It’ll heal you.’
She rubbed it on the cut and then gave it to me. I must have told her about getting hurt on the phone and she’d brought it along. I remember, a week or two later, looking in my fridge and seeing this Aloe Vera plant, starting to decompose in a bag on the shelf. By then, whatever magic it contained had already done its job. At the end of that evening in the car park at City Limits, I felt like at least a year’s worth of dreams had come true.
I went mad the next day and had roses and a Prada handbag delivered to Victoria at her mum’s house. It’s amazing what you find out in a Smash Hits ‘Likes and Dislikes’ feature. I still try and send gifts like that now: it’s a natural thing to me. If you love someone, you want to treat them, surprise them, remind them how you feel, whether that means a weekend away somewhere, or a bowl of fruit in the morning laid out in the shape of a heart. I know Victoria thinks I’m romantic like that. Some people reading about it might call it soft. But that’s me. I get a good feeling now, when I see Brooklyn with his baby brother or with other children at school, looking after them, being gentle, making sure they’re okay. I think I know the parts of my character that I’ve inherited from my mum. Some of what a person grows up to be comes from what they see and learn. There are other things, deeper things, that are already with you and all you have to do is pass them on.
The next time Victoria and I met, we decided I would do the driving. Not that we had any better idea as to where we were going to go. Victoria’s mum and her brother, Christian, dropped her off at our favourite dodgy rendezvous, the City Limits car park. As she got out of her mum’s BMW, Christian leant over and whispered to his mum:
‘Well, at least he’s got a decent car.’
I read somewhere that Victoria liked Aston Martins, so I managed to borrow this brand new silver DB7 from a showroom, telling the salesman that I was thinking about buying one. Of course, if it was going to make a difference with Victoria, I would have done just that. After a minute or two of our ‘I don’t know, where do you want to go?’ routine, we settled on a run down to Southend: I’d gone to the seaside there so often with Mum and Dad and Lynne and Joanne when I was a kid. Who cared about the state of the beach or the sea back then? We’d always splashed straight in and loved every minute of it. Now, as we headed off round the North Circular, I suddenly realised this spanking new car didn’t have a map in it. Worse still, I couldn’t remember the way: Dad had always driven us down there and I’d probably been too busy messing about in the back with Joanne to take much notice of where we were going.
I couldn’t tell Victoria I was already lost before we’d even left London, could I? So I just drove: all the way to Cambridge, as it turned out. We stopped and had a pizza in a restaurant in the middle of town, never mind that one or two of the other people in there were turning round and having to take a second look. It felt to me like Victoria and I had the place to ourselves. We drove back to London and I dropped her home at her mum and dad’s. Not before time, it had been like a proper date: dinner for two, even if we had ended up about seventy miles north of where we’d been planning to go.
Next time out was lovely, too: the back row at the pictures down in Chelsea. We saw Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire, but all I cared about was whose hand I was holding. The big deal that evening was going back to Victoria’s parents’ house afterwards and meeting Tony and Jackie for the first time. We walked in and I was so embarrassed. I remember sitting down on the settee, a big brown leather thing, the material gathered and pinned down with those little buttons, worrying about what noise I might make if I moved on it to get comfortable.
Victoria’s mum came down and introduced herself. When you first meet Jackie, she can seem a little prickly. Or, at least, that’s what it felt like that evening. It was probably as much to do with me, jumping to a new boyfriend’s conclusion and imagining that the mother was being a bit sharp with me even though she wasn’t meaning to be:
‘You’re the footballer then, are you?’
Victoria’s mum and dad weren’t interested in football, but living in Goff’s Oak, an area where many footballers live too, meant they knew some older players socially. After the opener from Jackie, it was Tony’s turn:
‘What team do you play for?’
For whatever reason, I don’t think they liked the idea of their daughter going out with a footballer. Maybe I got stuck with someone else’s reputation at first, at least until we met and they could judge for themselves. I don’t know if they thought footballers were all loud and cocky but I just sat there on their sofa and was too nervous to say more than a couple of words. At least they didn’t kick me out of the house and, after a while, they said goodnight and disappeared upstairs. I’m sure every mum and dad feels that no boyfriend is ever good enough for their little girl. That, as well as me being a footballer,