Page 13 of One Last Try

He stabs three fat chips with his fork and shovels them into his mouth, groaning.

Of course my cock responds to his moan. I ignore it.

“How much do I owe you?” Mathias points towards the food with his knife. “For the pie and chips.”

“It’s on your tab,” I reply.

He’s already scooped nearly a quarter of the pie into his mouth so I can see his half-chewed food as he says, “But I’m not staying.”

The father in me should be annoyed at his table manners, but secretly I’m flattered. “Well, when you leave, you can pay up then.”

He considers me for a moment. Another quarter of his pie disappears between his lips. “Sure.”

“It could be weeks yet before you find a new place. What are you gonna do, get a Premier Inn until then?”

Mathias looks up from his food. Stops chewing. He says nothing, but the answer’s written in the set of his jaw, the line of his brow.

As professional sportsmen, we’ve all spent ungodly amounts of time living out of hotel rooms while we travelled back and forth between games, training, tournaments, et cetera. It’s fine, is what it is and all that, but it’s not the same as going home after a match.

When your muscles are screaming at you, when there’s mud in your ass crack, when you can’t shower properly because you’re busy doing post-game interviews and the rest of the team steals all the hot water, when you’ve been sitting in the same position on a coach for seven hours and even your pins and needles have pins and needles, there is nothing like the feeling of getting home. Where your bath tub lives. Where your favourite comfort foods lie in the fridge. Where your own bed is, with your own mattress, and your duvet whose covers you washed before you left so they’d be soft and clean and awaiting your homecoming.

Where your family is. Your friends, your neighbours, your local pub.

Hotel rooms don’t come anywhere near that.

But then, Mathias has none of those comforts here. All his family are no doubt back in Wales. He hasn’t even spent a single night in Mudford-upon-Hooke yet.

What if he hates his new mattress? What if he doesn’t like the way the sun blasts through the east-facing window in the master bedroom every morning? Or the noisy as fuck wood pigeon in the tree outside his new room? What if he wants furniture that hasn’t been half destroyed by my daughters?

Still neither of us says anything. Mathias’s gaze bounces around the tiny dining space, into the living room, to the door frame that had caused me more than one forehead egg. Perhaps he’s imagining waking up in a sterile, over air-conditioned, impersonal hotel suite. Maybe he’s already decided he’d prefer a Holiday Inn over this.

Over Fernbank Cottage. My family home.

Subtly, I move my forearm to hide theMOLLY STINKS, etched into the wood by a peeved Daisy with the pointy end of a school compass.

Mathias tracks the movement. “Who’s Molly?”

I remove my elbow. “Daisy’s older sister. My other daughter. She’s in Canterbury studying engineering. It’s her final year. She has her exams soon.”

He nods, his expression vacant of any emotion. “When did you move here?”

Okay, good, a bit of conversation is good. “Ooh, must’ve been . . .” I puff out a breath as I let my brain locate the info. “Summer of twenty twelve. It was just after my split with Kirsty. Molly was seven, almost eight, and Daisy was five . . . That’s right, I ordered a sofa but it took months to arrive, so we spent the entire school holidays sitting on bean bags watching the Olympics.”

That was the year Molly had decided she wanted to become a rower. In fact, the rowing club at the University of Canterbury was one of her main reasons for studying there. That was also the summer we raced sunflowers up the front wall of the cottage for the first time. Daisy’s always won. No idea how she managed it every year, but I suspect there was some degree of sabotage involved.

“When do you start training?” I ask Mathias, halting my mind before it ventured fully into nostalgia-land.

“Not till Monday,” he replies. “Thought I’d . . . settle in first.”

I don’t know why his words leave a hollow ache in my chest.

“If you decide you’d rather stay here, Thursday night is quiz night over at The Thatch. Not blowing my own trumpet or anything, but I’m a pretty fantastic quiz master.”

At this, he smiles. Well, I guess it could be described as a smile. One corner of his mouth ticks up and his eyes crinkle a little at the edges. Not enough to disrupt his infallible pissed-off expression, but I catch it nonetheless. It vanishes a second later.

“And Fridays are fish Fridays. There’s a guy that comes up from Newlyn—that’s in Cornwall—every week to supply the Michelin star restaurant in Hookborough. But he always stops by us too. We never know what we’re getting. Could be pollock, plaice, mackerel. Could be crabs. One time we had lobster. Do you like seafood?”

Mathiashmms,his way of saying,“Yes, I do, but I won’t be eating any of it at your pub.”

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