Beckham (38 page)

How could it all not have made me think about my own family? The story of my parents' marriage makes me feel sad, empty inside. What was home isn't any more. Who can tell what lies down the road for you in your own life? At home with Victoria and the boys is where I feel I'm fulfilled. My marriage and my family are precious to me. So precious I don't know what life would be about without them. I want to see our children grow up. I want me and Victoria to grow old in each other's company, the two of us together always. I married just this once and I want it to mean what it does now, forever. Mum and Dad separating has made me even more aware of that. Growing up, I learned from my parents how to live, how to make decisions and how to treat other people. They also taught me that, if you really want something, you have to work hard for it. I think they had my soccer career in mind. But I've realized for myself now: that's true for a marriage as well.

I've never felt a disappointment like it. I really believed we were going to win the 2002 World Cup in Japan. I don't know what had made me so sure. Being captain? My foot healing in time? The little coincidences, like being allocated seat number 7 on flights, just by chance? It had definitely felt like they were the right omens pointing towards this being England's time. What I do know is that being knocked out when we were—and how we were—left me with a real hangover into the new season back home. Victoria and I went away for a week soon after the England squad got back to the UK, but even that did nothing to brighten my mood. In fact, by the end of the week, Victoria had had about enough:

‘I don't know how much more of that I could have taken', she said, ‘being with someone who didn't smile or show any emotion from one day to the next, who could hardly bring himself to say two words to me or to anyone else'.

She didn't need to tell me it was unfair on her. In the past I'd always tried to make sure that I didn't take work home with me, didn't get moody with my family when things weren't going well for me, for whatever reason, at United. But this was different. And when it came time to start pre-season training, I was still feeling the same, like I hadn't had a break at all: tired, heavy legs, no spark. It was all wrong. My job isn't a job at all. It's not nine to five, is it? It's not going down a mine or driving a truck all day long. Playing soccer, training, is what I love
doing and I knew I shouldn't have been feeling like I did: as if I didn't really want to be there, back at United already and with a new season about to get underway.

You can't just wish that kind of depression away. You get your head down and get on with what you know you've got to do. United players are lucky that the manager understands his players well enough to recognize how they're feeling and that they're not faking it. Maybe because of that, pre-season wasn't as hard as it's sometimes been in the past. Even so, when we kicked off 2002/03 I still felt a long way off ready for a new season which, after the previous May had come and gone without a trophy at Old Trafford, had plenty riding on it. When you don't feel right, sometimes you need to work that much harder, to train and play your way through it, and I was ready for that. What I didn't realize was that some of the worst of what lay ahead had nothing to do with soccer at all.

Victoria and I do what we can to keep our lives organized; not just to keep our own heads straight but because our schedules mean life's already complicated enough for Brooklyn and Romeo. Sometimes, though, things come out of nowhere, things you could never lay plans for. And, even if you could, you wouldn't want to because just thinking about them would have you wanting to lock your front door and never come out.

The first game in November at Old Trafford was against Southampton. Not a game that, usually, would have stuck in my mind. We weren't at our best and it was one of those afternoons when you're glad to have done enough to take all three points. For all that every home game is a big occasion, especially when you're wearing the captain's armband like I was with Roy Keane out injured, I came off at the end of our 2–1 win with a bit of a ‘that's another Saturday afternoon' feeling. I was looking forward to seeing Victoria and heading home for a night in with the boys. Which meant that what was waiting for me came as all the more of a shock.

As soon as I got to the dressing room, the manager said we needed to talk in his office. Not after I'd changed. Not as soon as I could. Now. So I clattered through, still in my boots and my uniform. We went inside. I don't know what I was expecting but it wasn't that Victoria would be there waiting for us. She looked pale and nervous.
I'm handling this but only just
. I looked at her, as if I expected her to tell me what was going on: it's such a strange feeling, knowing something's terribly wrong, just from the tension in the room, but not having any idea what it was. I looked at the manager, too. He looked drawn. It was only then, really, that I took in the other people who were present: four of them. One I half-recognized as a Manchester-based police officer and he introduced me to the other three. They were from SO7, the Serious and Organized Crime Command unit, and had driven up from Scotland Yard.

So four men standing there in their suits, with me still dripping sweat in my United uniform: it felt like we were all waiting to find out what was going to happen next. The manager said I should sit down and listen. What I heard I had trouble believing. I was trying to make some sense of what was being said.
This can't be happening. This shouldn't be happening.

I looked across at Victoria and I could see in her eyes she already had the same question in her mind as I did.
What are we going to do?

After a tip-off from the
News of the World
, four men and a woman had been arrested in London. They were part of a gang of art thieves—four more people were picked up that night and the following morning—believed to be planning to kidnap Victoria, Brooklyn and Romeo and hold them for a £5 million ransom.

Victoria had already heard all this and she was doing her best to be strong about it. She'd jokingly said if they were going to kidnap her, they'd have to kidnap her hairdresser as well. Now, she was listening to the details again, and watching me take it all in. And I was really upset. I felt my stomach turn over: it's anybody's worst kind of nightmare, although not many people will have to listen to policemen talking them
through a threat that's very real indeed. Right at the start, the guys from Scotland Yard were telling us that they took this thing seriously. They'd already made those arrests and, as of right now, they were putting officers outside the houses at Alderley Edge and Sawbridgeworth.

Sure enough, by the time we got home, there was a police car at the end of the lane and a couple of policemen were on duty at the gate. We went in and there was another car in the drive, right outside our front door. I think Victoria and I were trying hard not to panic and, I've got to say, it helped that the police seemed so in control of things so quickly. That evening and the next morning, as we read the papers and watched the television coverage of it all, the truth of what might have happened started to hit home. We might have been used to seeing and hearing stories about ourselves, often to do with things we've had no idea about beforehand, but this was different. There were the pictures of the gang at the gates of the house down south and details of the threats they'd made about what might happen to Victoria if I didn't pay up: that kind of wickedness and on my own doorstep made my blood run cold. I think it was overnight that the shock really sank in for both of us.

We were upset and scared, but you can't just hide and hope it will all go away. My family's safety is the most important thing in the world; it's the same for any dad. So in the days after, it was a case of trying to workout what we could do. I lost count of the number of experts that we took advice from. Some of the time, it felt like we were just getting more and more confused: everybody had different ideas and I even had the feeling that a certain amount of politics was behind some of it, people staking claims for their own reputations at the same time as offering to help. It came down to not being sure exactly who we could trust.

In the end, the person we turned to was Tony, Victoria's dad. He'd always taken an interest in security equipment in connection with his own work and, when we bought the house in Sawbridgeworth, he'd
put in alarm systems without us, until now, ever having to know the details. These security measures were sophisticated enough to impress the officers from Scotland Yard when they began looking at what improvements they thought we could make to our arrangements.

We've now got levels of security in our lives, from day to day, which we'd not even considered before the kidnap plot was uncovered. It's not easy: never mind going to work or out to social engagements, we've always wanted to be able to go down to Marks & Spencer or McDonald's like any other family. Now we have to be careful like never before. At the same time as making sure the boys are safe, we've tried not to make life too strange for them. In the day or two just after the plot was uncovered, I told Brooklyn that the policeman parked outside had come down especially to show him his car. You can imagine what a three-year-old made of that: he was out there every ten minutes wanting to sit behind the wheel and turn the patrol car's lights on and off.

If you'd asked me then, I'd have said that I'd rather not play against Leicester in the Worthington Cup on the Tuesday night after that Saturday afternoon. The manager had said he was going to rest those players who he thought needed a break. And I felt like I was one of those players. Over the years, we've sometimes not played our strongest side in that competition. It's been an opportunity for younger players to come in and make their mark, like I did, down at Brighton, nearly ten years ago. But my name was on the teamsheet against Leicester; and, if I was picked to play for United, the boss knew he'd get no argument from me.

There's always a very good reason behind every decision the manager makes. You may not agree with it at the time—like when he'd left me out against Leeds—but, when you stop and think, you remember that all he's focused on is what's right for the team. And often that turns out to be the right thing for the player as well. It drives you mad sometimes: you feel almost like he knows you better than you know
yourself. He knows that playing soccer is what I'm all about and decided, I think, that me captaining the team that night would help the other lads and, at the same time, give me a break from the chaos of the previous few days away from Old Trafford. Once I'm out on the field, nothing's ever got in the way of me doing my job. The manager knew it wouldn't that night either, and I got the first goal, from the penalty spot, in a 2–0 win.

I got a break in that game, too, but not the kind I needed. A few minutes before the end, I went in for a challenge with their center-forward, Trevor Benjamin, who's a big lad, and he fell on top of me. I was left sitting there knowing something serious had happened: I could hardly breathe. Afterwards and over the next few days, the United medical staff said I'd just bruised my ribs. I trained. I even played at the weekend. They thought that, if there'd been a fracture, I'd not have been able to do either. I was convinced the pain meant there was more to this than bruising though and, when we followed it up, the scan showed I had actually broken a rib.

I've never had trouble with injury beyond little niggles but this was my second in less than a year: This particular knock was maybe a blessing in disguise. I never want to miss games, but even before the season started I'd been feeling tired, mentally and physically, after coming back from Japan and, now, I didn't have any choice but to rest. I joined up with England for a get-together during the international week. The whole squad was invited to Buckingham Palace, which was something I couldn't miss out on. I felt unbelievably proud, being introduced to Her Majesty the Queen again as the England captain. She asked about my injury—last season's foot, I think she meant, not this season's rib—and about our arrangements since the kidnap plot. She obviously took an interest in that, personal security being something she knows all about herself.

For what seemed like the first time in ages, we took the boys on vacation, just us for a week in Barbados. Arranging it was a bit stressful:
where to go, who to tell about it and the rest. We decided at the very last minute and just told the family but, by the time we got to the hotel, the papers had tracked us down. Who knows how it happens? Someone on the plane, or at the airport, sees you and passes the word along? It meant we spent almost the whole time by the pool, which was fenced off and private. The very last day I took Brooklyn to the beach, which was only a few yards away from our villa, and the cameras were already out there, waiting. I know I'm lucky to be able to fly off to a beautiful place in the sun and enjoy the luxury; not so lucky, maybe, that I can't spend a few hours playing in the sea with my family while I'm there. Anyway, it was great to have some time to relax and just be with each other while, I imagined, life rolled on back at home.

I came back fresh and couldn't wait to be playing again, although I was still a couple of weeks short of being ready for a game. Something had changed, though, while I'd been away. Almost as soon as I started work on building up my fitness at Carrington, I began to feel a chill in the atmosphere: not around the club, but between me and Alex Ferguson. It's often like that when you're injured. You're not involved and so it's as if you don't really exist. Obviously, the manager has to get on with winning matches with the players he's got.

This felt like something different, though. Perhaps if I'd known what was going to happen over the next few weeks, I'd have been able to do something about it before events spun out of control. After the ten happiest years of my life at Old Trafford, how could I ever have imagined that things were going to unravel, and so quickly, to a point where I'd find myself wondering whether my future didn't lie away from United, or even away from soccer altogether?

The boss hardly said a word to me at training or anywhere else. After a month of getting the cold shoulder, I decided I needed to find out what was going on. In the past, any kind of meeting with the boss would have been intimidating just to think about. I'd be standing in front of
him and, before I'd said a word, my bottom lip would be starting to go. I've always been stubborn but I'm older now and more mature as a person. Most important of all, I'm surer of myself. I've got my wife believing in me to thank for that. I asked the manager if I could see him and said it straight out:

‘Is there a problem? Have you got a problem with me?'