Page 94 of One Last Try

“I’m really sorry, Owen,” he says, and then without another word, he’s gone. Out the door.

I follow him, but he’s already jogging across the pitch, through the gap in the bleachers, and he’s gone.

Gonegone.

He didn’t turn to look at me. His stuff is still on the benches in the locker room.

I wait one minute . . . two . . . trying to convince myself he’s just messing around and he’ll be back any second, but he’s not coming back. Hundreds of eyes bore into my flesh. I look to Molly for guidance and she shrugs back.

“Want me to get Daze?” she asks.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.”

I feel so fucking lost, like I’m on a dinghy in the middle of the ocean and there’s a storm tracking straight towards me.

“He is coming back, right?”

“I don’t know, Mols. I don’t think he is.”

“Shit, shit, shit. This is all my fault.” Fat tears rush down her cheeks, and I decide if Molly’s crying, I can’t fall apart too. Even though I want to.

I want to chase him down through the gaps and figure out where he’s gone and demand to know why he ran away like that.

Why he left me.

Fuck it.

That’s what I’m gonna do.

I can’t just let him go without telling him everything.

“Wait here, Molly.” I don’t give myself time to second-guess my plan; I’m already running through the gap in the bleachers.

But he’s not in the field next to the club—the one with the bouncy castle and fun-fair type games—and he’s not in the one beyond that, in the space we’re using as an overflow carpark. Maybe he went back to the cottage.

So I run uphill until I get to Fernbank Cottage, my lungs screaming and sweat streaming from every pore, but Mathias is not there either. Where the fuck did he go?

I’m panicking now. The tears I held in earlier threaten to surface.

I part stumble, part run across the road to The Little Thatch. It’s busy, crammed with folk who couldn’t get tickets, and I have to push inside. People cheer when they realise it’s me, one half of the reason they’re here, and move out of my way.

Viv looks up from behind the bar. She scowls at me. “What in the blazes are you doing here?”

“Mathias!” I’m so out of breath and it’s got nothing to do with jogging uphill to get here. “I can’t find Mathias.”

“Mathias Jones?” A white woman with pillarbox-red hair asks. She has a Welsh accent and has arrived with a whole group of women around her age. The Mathias fan club, no doubt. Maybe I should request membership.

“Yeah.” I turn to the women. “Have you seen him?”

“Yeah, he’s lovely, he is,” one of them jokes.

I don’t have time for it. “No, I mean—”

“Oh look, he’s right there. On the telly.” Another points to the screen, and my heart jumps into my mouth.

Mathias, my Mathias, is on the pub’s ancient TV, staring straight into the camera lens, and for a moment I forget he can’t see me. That it’s not just us alone in my pub together.

He’s frowning, squinting against the sun trying to break through the clouds. There’s a penny-sized microphone gripped between his fingers. He looks around the grounds for something or . . . someone . . .

---