Chapter 923 - 923: Her Wednesday I

Michael Cooke dropped me at the end of our road in Dulwich at 10 to 8. He said, "8 o'clock," and I said, "8 o'clock," and he drove off with his cap on.

I left my shoes in the hall.

Emma was in the kitchen with her back against the counter and her phone face down beside the kettle. There was a pan on the hob with the ring turned off under it and a lid on.

"Well?"

"He is ready. Cooke told him in front of his mother."

"Good." She looked at me properly. "And?"

I told her. The man who works for Florentino Pérez, and Dougie on the phone at 10 past 8 that morning, and the call I had not returned. Then the kitchen in Hampton, and the woman in the tabard, and the second question.

"She asked about the club," Emma said.

"Yes."

"And you said no."

"Yes."

She picked the lid up off the pan, looked in, and put it back.

"What are you going to do about her?"

"I am saying no to Dougie in the morning. Before anybody asks again."

"I heard that part." She turned the phone over and looked at it and turned it back. "I asked about her."

I had no answer for that, and she did not wait for one.

"Aisha rang," she said. "At 6. They are putting him on my Wednesday tomorrow. A trial. It is a quiet week with the internationals, and it is only this week. That is what she said."

"Emma."

"So I have got the day off." Her throat had gone red. "Nobody has ever taken me off a Wednesday before, and I did not ask for this 1, and I am not spending it in this flat listening to him."

"Then spend it with me."

"You have got a lad at 8."

"For an hour. Sarah runs the session. Then Dougie, and Jessica, and the letter."

"And then?"

"And then I have got nothing."

She thought about it with her arms folded.

"Then the morning is yours," she said, "and I come with you, and I sit with Ron. And the afternoon is mine. I pick where we go, and you do not look at your phone unless it is Sarah."

"Where are we going?"

"I will tell you when we get there," Emma said, and put the pan in the sink.

Fsshh.

I was awake at 7. I always am. Emma was not, and I took my tea into the front room, shut the door and rang Dougie Freedman at 5 past.

He answered on the second ring.

"You have been sat on that since yesterday," he said.

"I have. It is no."

"Madrid."

"Madrid. And when the man rings again, in January or whenever he rings, it is no, and you do not have to ask me first."

A pause. Dougie was somewhere with a kettle of his own.

"You are sure."

"I am sure."

"Right. I will ring him at 9. He will be polite, and he will say January, and I will say what you just said." I heard him put a mug down. "Danny."

"Go on."

"I am glad," Dougie said, and rang off.

Emma was in the doorway in my jumper with her hair in a knot on top of her head.

"Dougie?"

"Dougie."

"Then go and get dressed," she said. "You are the one with a lad at 8."

Ron had the barrier up before we reached it. He came out of the gatehouse with his flask in 1 hand and his cap in the other, and he did not look at me at all. He looked at the passenger seat.

"You will be Emma."

"And you will be Ron."

He held the cap against his chest.

"You wrote it down," he said. "What I said on the phone that day. He told me you wrote the lot down."

"On the back of an envelope. I have still got it."

Ron looked at her a moment longer. Then he turned to me.

"Leave her with me. Go on. There is a lad on pitch 3 who has been here since 20 past 7."

Clunk. I shut the car door. When I looked back from the corner of the building, Emma was in the gatehouse on the only chair, and Ron was pouring tea out of the flask into its own lid for her.

Dion was on pitch 3 in the same top as Thursday, with his name on the back. He had come on the train. Aaron was in the middle of the pitch with his arm held across his chest, and Rebecca was next to him with her card, reading it to him for the second time.

"No contact. Nothing on the shoulder. You go to ground once and I am taking you off this pitch, and you can watch the rest from my office."

"I am not going to go to ground."

"Then we will not have a problem," Rebecca said, and came off to the touchline.

Sarah had the session. 2 cones, 10 yards apart, a bag of balls, and the 4 other first team players left in the building on an international week. She had put the 4 on a rondo at the far end so nobody would stand and watch.

"How long do you want?" she said to me.

"The first 1."

"Then you will see the first 1."

Prrp.

Dion came at Aaron at a jog. 2 yards out he broke his stride.

Tk. Tk.

Aaron planted both feet. Dion dropped the shoulder and went, and he was gone without needing a second touch.

Aaron looked at the grass where he had planted.

"What was that?"

"That is what Inter are going to do to you." Dion came back with the ball under his foot. "You stopped your feet when I stopped mine. You cannot stop your feet."

"I stopped because you stopped."

"I know. That is why it works."

Aaron went back to his cone.

"Again," he said.

Prrp.

The second time he planted and went, and it was still too late. The third time he planted and started to go, and Dion needed a second touch to get round him. Sarah wrote something on her pad and did not show me.

"You are not needed," she said.

"I know."

"Go and have your day. Rebecca has him on 40 minutes. I will ring you tonight."

I stayed for 1 more. Aaron stayed on his feet through the stutter and went with the shoulder, late, but on the shoulder, and Dion laughed out loud and pointed at him.

"That. That 1."

"Again," Aaron said.

Emma was wearing Ron's cap when I got back to the barrier. She took it off before I reached the car and gave it back to him, and he put it on.

She was quiet until the South Circular.

"He showed me his list," she said. "The 40. He keeps it in the drawer under the kettle in a plastic wallet."

"I know the list."

"Number 33 has a tick next to it, and a date. The 10th of October." She was looking out of the window. "I asked him why that 1 had a date and the others did not. He said that was the day he rang the lad on pitch 3, and it was the only call out of the 40 where he put the phone down and went straight to see somebody."

I drove. I have driven past that gatehouse twice a day for years, and I have never once been inside it.

Jessica Finch works out of 2 rooms above a building society in Clapham. Emma had texted her from the car, and she had 3 mugs out when we came up the stairs.

"Dougie rang me at half 9," she said, before anybody sat down. "He has told Madrid. He told me that too."

"I should have rung you myself."

"You should." She is my agent and my manager. She runs my diary and my money and every contract I have signed, and she does not raise her voice. "Any approach for you comes to me. That is what you pay me for. I would rather hear it from you than from your sporting director on a Wednesday morning."

"It will not happen again."

"Good." She opened a drawer and put an envelope on the desk between us. White, heavy, the crest in red on the flap. "Then there is this. Manchester United, July. 4 months in that drawer, and I have not mentioned it once, because you asked me not to."

It was addressed to the club, for my attention. Inside was a letter asking Crystal Palace for permission to speak to me, 2 paragraphs, signed by a man I have never met, on paper with the crest at the top. My dad had that crest on a scarf. I had not opened it in July. I opened it now with my thumb, read it once and put it flat on the desk.

Emma stayed by the window with her mug and did not look at it.

"They wrote to the club," Jessica said. "So the club answers. That means Steve."

"Steve has been waiting 4 months for me to tell him what to say."

"Then tell him in writing." She took a sheet of paper out of the printer and put it in front of me with her pen. "Write what you want him to send. I will get it to him by lunchtime and he can put his name under yours."

I wrote it in 3 lines.

Thank you for your letter of July. I am the manager of Crystal Palace and I am staying the manager of Crystal Palace. I am sorry it took me 4 months to say so.

I signed it and looked at it for a while.

Emma came over from the window and took it off the desk. She folded it in 3 and put it in the envelope Jessica held out, without reading it, and pressed the flap down with the side of her hand.

"Lunchtime," Jessica said. "Steve will ring you."

"He will ring me for an hour."

"Then let him," Jessica said. "He has earned the hour."

On the stairs going down, Emma took my hand.

She drove the afternoon. I did not ask where until she parked and I saw the railings.

"Crystal Palace Park."

"I can say it here," Emma said. "It is a park."