Page 46 of Couple Goals

Helena pointedly holds up their wine glasses to toast. It’s one of the few times the two of them make eye contact. Maeve finds her mother’s light grey eyes a little uncanny. They’re so similar in colour to her own. It feels like one of the only things they share.

Helena asks after Adriana, and Maeve replies evasively. It’s not that she thinks her mother would particularly care about her longest-standing friendship, unless it would impact Maeve’s stats, but more that Maeve thinks she might cry if she were to start talking about her. The truth is that Maeve has been feeling more and more distant from her friend and the one good constant in her life, not understanding why this distance has crept in between them. The secret she’s keeping about Kira must be poisoning their relationship far more than she’d ever want it to.

‘Did you know couscous is pasta?’ says Helena. She picks at the vegetables, carefully scraping the dots of couscous off. ‘They market it like it’s a health food, a grain or something, but no, it’s just pasta in blobs.’

Maeve puts her fork down, sips her small glass of wine in silence.

Her mother has always been like this. Perfectionist, brittle, always needing to be right. It has clearly worked for her, in her career as a lawyer – though since Maeve moved to Manchester when she was a teenager, Helena became more of a freelance consultant, working with other legal firms to advise on how to cut costs and make redundancies. ‘Everyone is replaceable,’ was a common phrase Maeve would hear growing up. It had gained added bitterness when Maeve’s father had left for another woman. Helena forbid Maeve from staying in touch with him, though young Maeve had experienced this as her father not wanting to stay in touch with her anymore. Replaceable. Now she tries not to think of him at all, as if even remembering him would be betraying her mum, and herself. It’s hard though, especially as he was the person who introduced her to football.

It was her dad who first took her to a match. Sat on his shoulders, she had felt like she was flying on a cloud of cheers. She begged and begged to go back.

So then they used to watch the TV together when Helena was at work, Maeve cuddled up on her father’s lap, loving the way they could roar raucously with approval when a goal was scored, or that she would see him cry or shout when they lost. You were allowed to be emotional about football.

They would have kickabouts in their garden, and Maeve took to it. Her mother couldn’t understand why her daughter wanted to get dirty kicking a ball around like a boy.

When Maeve’s father left, Helena would probably have succeeded in squashing the football out of her too, if it hadn’t been for Maeve’s PE teachers. She had been spotted practicing keepie-uppies at break-time, the ball like a magnet to her foot, drawing the attention and wonder of her classmates, who otherwise treated Maeve like she was invisible. There wasn’t the option of football for girls at that school, but when it became obvious that Maeve was better than any of the boys her age, they’d made the team ‘mixed’ to help the school do better in local competitions. Helena had found it scandalous at first, but had been persuaded when she had been told that Maeve was the best in her year group, and could soon be playing competitively for the county. If she worked hard, she might be able to earn a sports scholarship to a top university. This captured Helena’s imagination, and soon football, which had been Maeve’s escape outlet, and way to remember her father, became her daily exam in which she constantly had to prove herself.

‘You must work harder, Maeve,’ Helena reminds her now, out of nowhere and Maeve tenses up. ‘I didn’t sacrifice everything in order for you to be half-hearted about your commitments. I hate to see you neglecting your potential.’

As if Maeve hadn’t been trying! As if Maeve had asked to be stripped of the captaincy in such humiliating fashion in front of her teammates right before a game. Maeve pushes her own bowl away. She has no appetite.

Helena takes this as a sign to clear the table, taking their bowls somewhat passive aggressively, and then scraping Maeve’s still-warm food into the bin.

Helena collects her coat and swings it round her shoulders. She clasps Maeve’s shoulders and kisses her on the forehead.

‘I have every faith in you, darling. You can do it. Make me proud.’

Chapter 15Adriana

The day after a game the team don’t usually have training, but Adriana wakes feeling blurry, flicking her phone screen, on and off, on and off again. No message from Jacob.

‘Urgh,’ she groans, burying her face under one of her many soft sofa cushions.

She sees that a few of the team have messaged and are going in to the ground today for some light recovery at the gym. Adriana normally wouldn’t, preferring to balance work with rest, but today she wants a distraction. She heads there with less pep in her step than she’d normally have the day after a win. Before getting to the dressing room, she checks her phone yet again.

She knows that if someone had messaged her, the screen would light up, but maybethistime it will somehow refresh it to the answer she wants? What answerdoesshe want?

Then, as she’s putting her things down, her phone lights up. She sprints over to it.

But it’s just an instagram notification. Elisa posting a picture of their gang celebrating after the game. Adriana hearts it, smiling genuinely back at their posing faces, Adriana with her tongue out in her classic photo face,Charlie caught comically off guard and Elisa doing a full blue steel – no wonder she was the one posting it, her jawline lookssharp.

Adriana looks back at the slice of pizza in her hand. It was nice of Jacob to order those in, right? Maybe she should have thanked him… Shit, she definitely should have thanked him. Is that a good reason to message again?No, she cannot double message, not when he’s blue double-ticked her.Urgh.

After a bit of stretching and gentle cardio with Charlie and Elisa, Adriana checks her phone again, and when she still has no answer from him, she starts to think – what if he gave her the wrong number? She shakes her head, then opens up her chat with Maeve, which has been so much quieter than usual. She considers yet again whether to tell Maeve everything. She wishes she was here today – Maeve is usually up for any opportunity to be practicing more, but she is probably even now having extra training with Kira. Maeve probably can’t stand the sight of Kira now she’s got the armband instead of her. Adriana feels suddenly selfish, missing her friend. It’s Maeve who had a more disappointing and surprising day yesterday, and, if she knows Helena at all, Maeve probably had to then deal with a drilling from her mum after the game.

In comparison, Adriana is getting on unexpectedly well under Coach Hoffman’s firm hand, thriving under the pressure and attention rather than hardening or petrified with it, like Maeve seems to be. Coach even singled her out after the game yesterday – and she should be glowing with the memory, but instead it just makes her feel a bit disloyal. She feels the team breaking apart. She wants to do something about it, but that’s what the whole Jacob message was about,and then here she is, back to the start of the spiral…

She sighs and rolls her ankles, tries to push everything out of her mind.

Her phone lights up again. She barely glances at it now, having exhausted herself with her spiralling.

It’s a text from‘Jacob NOT JAKE!! HOT!!’

Her stomach backflips, and instinctively, like a cat with a cucumber, she throws her phone into her locker and slams the door behind it.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Milo startles next to her. ‘What did that locker do to you?’

‘Sorry, sorry,’ says Adriana. ‘Thought I… saw a spider.’

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