Wings of a Sparrow

  ‘Who told you?’ was all she could say.

  Rob stared at his wife and struggled to work out what to say to her. When Joanne had told him that she’d heard two of the players laughing about Jane and how she’d been the victim of a cruel prank aimed not at her, but at him, he’d initially been furious. But then as he had driven home, his anger had turned to embarrassment. Not for himself, but for her. Part of him just wanted to ignore it, put it down to the drink which was inevitably the reason. That at least would have spared his wife the humiliation he was about to hand her. But he knew that wasn’t an option because this was a bombshell which was inevitably going to go off and he was the one in the direct line of fire. For that reason alone, she had to know that he knew.

  ‘Does it matter?’ were the only words he could form.

  Jane shook her head sadly and lowered her eyes to the floor.

  ‘Sorry. I don’t know what else to say.’

  ‘Who was it?’

  Jane looked up at him desperately.

  ‘Don’t Rob. Please-’

  ‘Who was it? I have to know.’

  ‘Pete MacDonald,’ she replied flatly.

  If anything, Rob’s heart sank even deeper.

  ‘For fuck’s sake Jane. How stupid could you be?’

  ‘I’m sorry Rob. I was pissed. It was just a kiss. I swear on Charlie’s life nothing else happened.’

  ‘Oh that’s OK then,’ he said sarcastically as all sense of sympathy suddenly evaporated. ‘You do know it was just a bet don’t you? First one to get their tongue down the chairman’s wife’s throat got a pound off the rest of the squad.’

  Jane’s face crumpled.

  ‘Oh that’s nothing,’ he continued angrily. ‘D’you want the full score card? It runs up to £100 if they’d fu-’

  ‘OK, I get it!’ shouted Jane as the tears began to roll down her cheek. ‘I get it, OK? I did a bloody stupid thing.’

  ‘No Jane, you don’t get it. You don’t get it at all. Don’t you understand? This is going to fuck up everything! The second this gets out, those scummer bastards are going to rip me to shreds.’

  ‘But why would it get out?’ Jane sobbed. ‘Surely you can do something?’

  Rob raised his eyes to the ceiling and threw his arms out in exasperation.

  ‘Bloody hell woman! Have you never listened to anything I’ve ever said? Football thrives on piss taking. Christ I’d have more chance convincing the country that Jimmy Savile was a great babysitter than I’d have keeping this quiet.’ Rob stopped his rant and took a deep breath. Let down and angry though he was, it was clear that there was nothing to be gained from continuing. More importantly, the clock on the wall was telling him that he was already running late.

  ‘So what will you do?’ she sniffed.

  ‘I haven’t got a fucking clue. But pound to a pinch of shit I’m going to find out tonight. Look, I’ve got to go. The poxy M1 is going to be a nightmare.’

  Jane watched as her husband grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and headed for the door. The fact he didn’t even look at her, let alone kiss her goodbye, tore her apart.

  ‘Rob?’

  He stopped in the doorway and turned to face her.

  ‘What about us?’ she asked softly.

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘I haven’t even had time to think about that Jane. And that’s the truth.’

  Within seconds, the front door closed and he was gone. Jane sat staring after him for a few seconds and then collapsed in floods of tears.

  Chapter Thirty Three

  For the first time that season, Rob sat in the directors’ box without his customary newspaper. Instead he spent the entire game watching the travelling City fans and listening to the vitriol which came from them as he continued to mull over the plight his wife had dumped him in.

  Ironically, Jane had barely figured in Rob’s thoughts since he’d left home. Not because he didn’t care, but because he dare not think of it. It was too personal and he knew better than anyone that if he’d turned his attention to her, it would break his heart. He couldn’t afford that kind of pain. Not yet. He needed to be focused on the task at hand. Everything else could wait.

  The one saving grace was that news of his wife’s exploits clearly hadn’t reached the public domain, because there hadn’t been a single reference to it from the crowd. That was a small mercy, but Rob knew it was only a temporary respite. Banter is fuelled by ammunition and this was ammo of cruise missile proportions which, given their dislike of him, someone within the club was bound to fire off at some point soon. After all, if the boot had been on the other foot he’d have been only too pleased to press the red button. He’d probably have done it already.

  The fact it hadn’t broken yet at least gave him some time to formulate a plan of action - and after mulling it over on the journey down, Rob knew exactly what that action was going to be. In truth, he had little choice, for he’d realised almost immediately that one thing he didn’t have was the option of walking away. If he did that then they’d win and he’d never be able to live with himself if he were to let that happen. Just as importantly, he’d never be allowed to forget it. This left him with three simple choices - try to put a lid on it, ride out the inevitable storm or go on the attack.

  The first two he’d dismissed out of hand, purely because there was no way he was grovelling to anyone at City and he certainly wasn’t going to go on the back foot. Therefore he was left with no choice but go on the offensive. It would be risky and would inevitably attract attention to Jane but he would have to live with that and so would she. On the plus side, it was almost certainly going to cause mayhem among the scummers. That, at least, was something to be thankful for.

  The sound of the final whistle bringing an end to a goalless draw dragged him from his thoughts and once he’d completed the usual formalities of small talk and hand shaking with the opposing board, Rob hurried past the waiting press and headed for his car.

  He was about to pull the door open when a voice called out to him and he turned to find a man heading toward him. Rob instantly pegged him as a journalist and with a sigh, pulled the door open and climbed into the Bentley. Fucking leeches he thought to himself.

  However, before he could start the car, something about the man’s demeanour made him hesitate and Rob pressed the button to lower the window.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘A quick comment if possible,’ gasped the reporter.

  ‘Lay off the lager and the fags,’ said Rob, ‘you sound fucked. There, that do you?’

  The reporter smiled in response before reaching into his pocket and pulling out a Dictaphone which he pointed in Rob’s direction.

  ‘Have you got anything to say about your wife and Pete MacDonald?’

  An hour or so later, Rob pulled into the car park of the Holiday Inn at Northampton and switched off the engine.

  He was still too rattled by the encounter with the journalist to think straight and having twice unwittingly found himself doing speeds in excess of 130 on the M1, he was clearly in no fit state to drive either. He needed to stop and get his head straight. He also needed food, but with the City fans also heading north he daren’t go into any of the service stations so was instead forced to liberate two bags of crisps, two Mars bars and a can of Coke from vending machines in the hotel lobby.

  Having wolfed down his food and showered, Rob settled down on the bed, texted Jane to tell her he was stopping in a hotel for the night, answered a desperate, tearful phone call from his wife, who wanted to make sure that he wasn’t stopping in a hotel because he was leaving her and then answered a second tearful phone call to remind him how sorry she was and how much she loved him. Only once he had placated her as best he could and promised to call her later was he finally able to adopt his customary position of staring at the TV, that being how and where he did all his best thinking. And he had an awful lot to think about.

  Thank God he’d stopped and spoken to the
journalist. He might have been a Cockney with a face which appeared to need copious applications of Domestos, let alone Clearasil, but at least he’d given him a heads up on the fact that his paper was going to print the next morning with the story of Jane and his club captain. And, more importantly, on the fact that someone had been taking photos of them necking and one was going on the front page. He’d even offered to show the picture to Rob, who had declined on the basis that he might well have lost his rag and done something stupid. There’d been enough of that.

  Rob suddenly wished he was at home. That way he would have been able to sit Jane down and tell her about the maelstrom which was going to hit in a few hours. Instead, he was going to have to form the words in his head and then tell her over the phone before leaving her to deal with it alone. He might still be furious with her and unsure of how he was feeling with regard to their marriage, but he was dreading doing that. Then there was the matter of Charlie. He was going to have to be told and fast. But by whom?

  Rob picked up his phone and began spinning it between his fingers as he readied to make his call. He was still unsure of what he was going to say but the one thing he was certain of was that MacDonald was toast. In fact he was actually looking forward to delivering that little nugget in the morning. Revenge was going to be swift and very sweet.

  Without taking his eyes from the television, Rob put the phone in his palm and hit the redial button. It was answered almost immediately.

  ‘Hi,’ he said blankly. ‘Listen love, you sitting down? Well you need to be.’

  Jane sat on the sofa and wept. She’d done some stupid things in her time but this topped the lot. The worst part was that she had no one but herself to blame. It had been quite flattering to find herself the centre of attention in a club full of young men, especially when they had been so obviously attentive. Now she knew why and she felt not simply foolish, but used. Thank God for Vicky. If she hadn’t dragged her away, God knows what she’d have done.

  Jane shook her head and curled herself into a ball. How the hell could she have been so stupid? How had she not recognised any of them as players? And why had she not realised that something was up when they’d all made a beeline for her instead of younger, better looking and far shapelier Vicky? The questions just kept coming, but they were just background noise to the one single thought which sat in neon lights at the forefront of her mind. How the hell was she going to square this with Rob and Charlie?

  She looked at her mobile sitting forlornly on the sofa behind her and considered ringing her son, but fought the impulse. Rob had said he was going to call and tell him, in spite of the late hour and she had no choice but to trust his judgement. But the result was that she was being forced to sit and wait for the response, whatever that might be.

  It was going to be a long and lonely night.

  Rob dropped his phone on the bed and rubbed his hands over his face. So that was that.

  As expected, the idea of his mum swapping saliva with anyone, let alone a scummer, had not been well received by his son - and it had been made worse by the news that a picture of it actually happening was going to be spread across the front of the tabloids in the morning. Rob could barely remember what it was like to be 14 years old, but he could remember the kind of piss taking that went on when he’d been at school and he suspected that it was even worse in these mad days of Facebook and Twitter.

  His phone suddenly burst into life and seeing the name on the screen, he answered it instantly.

  ‘Alright dad? Did he tell you?’

  Rob listened intently for a second and closed his eyes. Fuck! he thought.

  ‘OK. Well keep him off school and tell him I’ll be over in the afternoon. No, not the morning, I’ve got something I have to do first thing and it can’t wait. No dad, trust me, this really can’t wait.’

  Rob dropped the phone into his lap and sent an angry curse in the direction of his uncle. What kind of simpleton must he have been to put his own nephew in this kind of situation? Surely he would have known the problems it would bring? Or maybe that was all a part of his plan - to put temptation in their way, in the knowledge that it might easily shatter his family as some kind of warped revenge for being fucked off by his own brood. Either way, he was a bastard. A scummer bastard at that.

  And now Rob had one final call to make. Part of him was dreading it because he knew the impact it was going to have, but another part was relishing the prospect for exactly the same reason. Listening to Charlie ranting down the phone had begun to stir his own anger which up until that point had sat dormant in his emotional tank. Now he was almost looking forward to twisting the knife a little, although truth to tell Rob was still unsure of the long-term impact events were going to have on his relationship with his wife. No doubt that would unfold over the next few days but in the meantime he knew that he had to put Jane out of her misery sooner rather than later. He wasn’t so cruel as to leave her hanging on for longer than necessary.

  For a brief second Rob considered jumping in his car and completing his journey because he knew that would his being there would at least soften the blow he was about to deliver. But just as quickly he dismissed the idea. It was late and he needed sleep if he planned to be at the ground by 9am. Instead, he took a deep breath and dialled.

  Twenty minutes later, Jane wished her husband good night and lowered the phone from her ear. So that was that. Rob hadn’t said it in so many words, but it was clear that her son considered her officially a slag. She could almost hear her own heart breaking and while she knew that things were going to get a whole lot worse, Jane also knew that nothing would compare to the pain she was causing her son at that exact moment and there was not a single thing she could do to ease it.

  Not for the first time that day, she wept.

  Chapter Thirty Four

  After a sleepless night, Rob had finally given up and left the hotel shortly before 6 o'clock. It wasn’t just that he’d wanted an early start, it was because he’d been desperate to see the front page of The Sun. Somewhat bizarrely, it wasn’t as bad as he’d imagined it would be, but the sight of his wife in the arms of another man under the banner headline Score! was still gut-wrenchingly painful. Goodness knows what his poor son was going to make of it.

  He arrived at the ground shortly before 9am and having made his way to his office, made four calls. The first two had been to Jane and Charlie to make sure they were OK (they weren’t) and the remaining two had been to Gary Rogers and Keith Mayes informing them that he wanted to see them both immediately. That both had agreed without question, in spite of the fact that the day after a game was usually a day off left Rob in no doubt that they already knew what it was all about.

  Now he was just sitting and ignoring the incessant ringing of the phone as he waited for them to arrive. He was about to go to war - and he couldn’t wait.

  However, the first person to enter the outer office wasn’t either man but Joanne, who without even taking off her coat walked directly into his office. She looked sheepish, embarrassed even

  ‘I’m so sorry Rob,’ she said. ‘It must be horrible. How’s Jane?’

  Rob shrugged his shoulders in response. ‘Forget it Jo. You actually did me a massive favour. Forewarned is forearmed and all that.’

  Joanne nodded by way of thanks, but the fact Rob hadn’t responded to her question about Jane didn’t go unnoticed. However, she thought better of pressing the point.

  ‘So what are you going to do?’

  ‘Keith and Gary are on their way in. I’ll be tell-’

  Even as he was speaking, the outer door opened and the two men strode in. It was the first time Rob had ever seen Keith Mayes without a suit on and it came as something of a surprise. He actually looked quite normal.

  ‘I’ll get you some coffee,’ said Jo as the two men entered and sat down.

  ‘Don’t bother,’ said Rob flatly. ‘This won’t take long. Could you close the door please?’

  Joanne threw him a curious l
ook as she turned and pulled the door shut. She’d never seen him like this before and it made her extremely uneasy. At the same time, Keith and Gary glanced at each other anxiously. They were thinking exactly the same thing and their level of discomfort was rising by the second. The shit was clearly going to hit the fan - and the question was, how much of it was going to land on them?

  ‘I assume you’ve seen this?’ began Rob as he dropped a copy of The Sun on the desk in front of him.

  Gary and Keith barely looked at the paper. They didn’t need to, because they both knew all they needed to know. The only thing they were waiting for now were details of the inevitable consequences.

  Rob meanwhile, was feeling remarkably calm. The numerous hours the council had forced him to spend in what he’d previously considered to be bullshit management and communication courses were actually paying off and he’d spent the drive up from Northampton rehearsing, plotting and targeting as if his life depended on it. As a result he felt in control, totally professional.

  ‘I’m not going over the gory details,’ he continued. ‘But suffice to say that I’m disappointed that people at this club didn’t consider the consequences something like this would have.’

  Gary looked if anything, even more sheepish than before but Keith lowered his eyebrows, a classic sign of irritation and a gesture which Rob was quick to latch onto.

  ‘Yes Keith, consequences,’ said Rob before pausing, more for effect than anything. ‘MacDonald is history. I’m cancelling his contract with immediate effect and if he even sets so much as a foot in this ground again while I’m here, I’ll have him arrested for trespass and you two will be sacked on the spot for letting it happen.’

  Keith Mayes eyebrows went into overdrive. ‘You can’t do that,’ he said. ‘He’s the captain.’

  ‘Then he should have known better, shouldn’t he?’ replied Rob calmly. ‘A fact I’m sure his own wife will be reminding him of as we speak.’