Glory Of The Football Manager System

Chapter 666: Sunday

I woke at half six on the Sunday with the kitchen plan in my head and Emma’s ass in my hand.

That is not me being crude. That is geography. She was half on top of me, one bare leg over mine, the vest she had put on at four ridden up to her ribs, the soft full weight of her chest against me through the cotton. No bra. She rarely is overnight.

And the boxers she had hooked off my floor at four, mine, squeezed onto hips they were never built for, the cotton stretched tight across the back of her, were exactly where my hand had ended up in the night.

Because that is where my hand ends up every night. It has a home. It goes to it.

I gave her a slow squeeze. Half asleep. Habit and worship in the same movement.

She made the low sound into my throat without waking properly and pressed back into my palm.

That is the thing about Emma nobody else gets to know. The woman the country watches ask hard questions with a face like a closed door is, in this bed, the most touchable creature alive. Three years and I have never once reached for her and had her move away. She moves into a hand the way a cat moves into sun.

I worked the hand slow over the curve of her through the cotton. She stirred. Hummed. Her own hand came off her cheek and went flat onto my stomach, warm, and stayed.

"Morning," she said. Into my neck. Eyes still shut.

"Morning."

"Don’t stop on my account."

I did not stop.

She woke up the rest of the way like that, by inches, under my hand, her thigh sliding heavier over my hip, her face turning up out of my neck, and when the green eyes finally opened they were already warm, and she looked at me a long second and brought her mouth up to mine.

The kiss was slow and going somewhere.

Her hand had started moving on my stomach. Mine had the back of her in both palms now, full, the cotton stretched over her under them, the kitchen plan getting quieter in my head by the second.

Kitchen. The light the way she likes it. Her on a stool with a mug, saying yes.

That was the plan. The plan could wait an hour.

Then her phone went off on the side table like a fire drill.

She groaned into my mouth, the sound coming up from her chest, and shoved her face harder into my throat like she could block the phone out by not looking at it.

"Leave it," I said.

"It’s the news alert tone, Daniel."

"Leave it."

She left it for four more buzzes. Then the journalist in her won, the way the journalist in her always wins, and she peeled off me and reached for it, and I lay there with both hands suddenly empty and watched her read the screen.

The slow grin came up her face.

"Oh my God, Danny."

"What."

"You’re still going."

"How bad."

"You are on the radio."

"Mad."

She sat up cross-legged on the bed with the phone, the vest doing very little, the morning light off the blind on her shoulders, and read it to me.

"Eleven million views in the night. There’s an angry man on Five Live who has been on for forty minutes. The producer keeps trying to take him off, you can hear it in his voice. He has had three goes at the word disrespectful and is getting worse at it."

She turned the phone round.

The angry pundit was on a loop. Some ex-Arsenal lad, red in the face. Disrespect, classless, frankly tells you everything, on and on. Behind him the producer trying to cut to a song.

I laughed.

"You are vile, Danny, he is going to have a stroke and he is going to blame you for it, "

She fell forward laughing onto my chest, phone still in her hand, and I caught her, both hands going straight back to where they had been before the alert, full of her in my own boxers, and she settled into the hands like she was settling into a chair.

She scrolled with her chin on my sternum. I had stopped caring about the news. I had both hands full and a warm laughing woman on my chest and the kitchen plan three feet and one hour away.

Then the laugh went off her face like a door shutting.

"Daniel."

"Mm."

"There is a van on our road."

She turned the phone so I could see. A photo, posted ten minutes ago by somebody on a dog walk. A Sky Sports News van at our kerb. A man in a waxed jacket holding a microphone, doing a piece to camera with our front door over his shoulder.

"God."

She put her forehead on my chest. Closed her eyes.

"I wanted my Sunday, Daniel."

"I know."

"I had plans for my Sunday."

"I know."

She sat up. Pushed the hair back off her face.

"Get me out of this building. Take me somewhere with no satellite dishes, where nobody is doing a piece to camera about our front door."

"Aye."

"And put a shirt on, Daniel, for the love of God."

She climbed off the bed and turned in the bathroom door.

"This is not over, Walsh."

"Em."

"I mean it."

Click.

I got out of bed. Got the ring out of the boot bag while the shower ran. Left side of the jacket. Over the chest. Where it had lived for a fortnight.

She came out twelve minutes later.

Soft old jeans low on the hips. Thin white T-shirt. No bra. She was not putting one on, on a Sunday she was being kidnapped on.

Then my grey hoodie back on over the T-shirt. It came down past her hips and sat heavy and thick on her, and the thin white T-shirt and what was under it vanished into it.

Which was the whole point.

She was not going out into a Sunday under satellite cameras with the warm soft of her chest pressing through thin cotton for any of them to look at.

The hoodie was mine. What was under the hoodie was mine. Mine to know about for the next ten hours.

Hair half-twisted up. Trainers. The Cartier.

She took my coffee off me without looking. Drank half. Gave it back. Bent down to do the laces.

The hoodie rode up at the back. The waistband of the soft old jeans showed and the small dimples either side of her spine where her body went in before it went out.

I put my hand flat on the warm dip of her back. Because it was there. Because I am not a strong man.

She did not straighten up. She did the small grin into the laces and finished the bow at her own pace with my hand on her the whole time.

"You," she said, coming up off the laces, "are going to be a problem today."

"Aye."

She came across. Put her hand on the side of my face, the thumb across my cheekbone, looked at me a long second.

She kissed me. Slow. Once.

"Out the door, Daniel. Whatever this look is, hold it till later."

"Aye."

"Move."

The car got us past the vans before anybody saw the glass.

There were two of them now. Sky Sports and the BBC. The BBC bloke was eating a sandwich. He looked up at the Mercedes coming out, lifted the sandwich half an inch on a reflex of professional interest, decided there was nothing to see, and went back to his lunch.

Slam of the gates closing behind us.

We turned out of the road and three lads on the corner who had been hanging round for a sighting spotted the car. One of them lifted his phone. The other two lifted their hands in a wave. One shouted we told you, Danny through the closed glass.

I lifted a hand off the wheel.

They went off down the road already on their phones telling their group chats.

"They love you, you know," Emma said. She had her feet up on the dash already.

"They do not love me."

"They love you, Daniel. They have just shouted your own catchphrase at you on a Sunday morning in May like you are the Pope. That is love."

"It’s not love. It’s, "

"It is love, Danny, you are not allowed to be modest about it any more. You won them three trophies. They are allowed to love you."

She put her hand on the back of mine on the gearstick.

She did not lace. She just put it there.

She left it.