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Somehow he found himself propped on the sofa, her leant against him, a film on the TV, light-hearted, irrelevant, easy. He felt her drop into sleep, relax into regular breaths. He sat watching the screen, sipping vodka because there was nothing else, trying not to think, trying to remain in the moment and not slip backward through fifteen years to nights like this one on the yellow sofa in his upstairs flat, her over for the night, the borrowed furniture, the mismatched lampshades, empty cupboards. His first forays into independent living. He told himself he wasn’t guilty of anything, told himself that over and over. He’d come to pay his respects. That was all.

To pay his respects. He could hardly fucking believe it.

When the film ended he sat for half an hour, not wanting to move, not wanting to wake her, using the remote to flick through an endless stream of channels, unable to connect with anything. And so he sat for another hour, eyes half shut, drifting where the vodka took him, until she stirred, sat up, grounded herself.

He looked at the clock. It was almost 2 a.m.

‘I’d best go,’ he said.

She got to her feet, disappeared upstairs, left him sitting there, awkward, wanting to leave now, wanting to leave in the right way, satisfied he’d achieved what he came for, offered some empathy. He heard the toilet flush, her footfall on the stairs. She returned to the living room, came right out and said it.

‘You can stay here.’

He didn’t move. She laughed at his awkwardness.

‘Listen,’ she said. ‘That’s the first time I’ve slept since this nightmare started. I need someone here.’

‘Your family?’

She shook her head, laughed.

‘If you want…’ he said, ‘… I can sleep here, no trouble.’

He patted the sofa.

She shook her head again.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Sleep next to me.’

He realised his head was spinning. He glanced at the empty vodka bottle.

‘Please,’ she said.

‘What if somebody finds out,’ he said, pathetically.

‘I don’t fucking care,’ she said. ‘I don’t give a shit what anyone thinks. They can think whatever they like.’

She turned her back to him and walked out of the room. He heard her climbing the stairs.

‘Do what you want,’ she said.

He got to his feet, stood there in the living room, staring about himself, thinking of Stimmo at Leicester, steaming in with BJ and the others, Stimmo on Bob’s bus, Everton away, laid out on the back seat covered in his own puke, Stimmo a dead weight in a dark shed by the railway tracks, the quiet creak of the rope against the beam, a passing train sending him rocking into a crack of daylight. And he thought of Stimmo on the steep terrace at Hillsborough, those three words falling from his mouth, the very moment he changed to somebody with whom none of them were able to correlate.

‘He’s fucking dead.’

And now Stimmo was dead.

He thought about Kelly. He pictured the spotless kitchen, the meticulous living room, the narrow staircase, the dark landing, the bedroom door. He tried to picture beyond it but came up against his barrier.

Time and time and time again.

He looked at the front door, his exit point, heard the wind buffeting the wood, considered the blustery street beyond. He imagined himself trudging back to the hotel, collar up, his footsteps echoing through the old town’s narrow lanes, out on to the High Street, up the hill to that bed in the room with the windows that wouldn’t fucking open. He was pissed for fuck’s sake. He wasn’t sure he’d make it. And what if those
two nasty fuckers were about, eager to give him another seeing to?

What then?

All excuses of course. Because he couldn’t do it to her, not again, couldn’t leave her so coldly, so fucking selfishly.

Not tonight.

The bedroom window was open. Did she remember? Did she open it for his sake? She was already beneath the covers. He took off his jeans, slipped in beside her, lay there for a minute staring at the ceiling, wondering if she’d changed the fucking sheets since…

… and then she moved closer to him, pressed herself against him. He pulled her in until she was wrapped up in his warmth, closed his eyes.

Scared shitless.

But she fell asleep in seconds, left him marooned in darkness and staring at the gap in the curtains, listening to the rain drumming against the roof tiles. He tried to let himself go, to feel the same as she did perhaps, as though the world beyond the window had retreated a notch, just for a little while, just for a few hours, that it didn’t matter if it was 1989 or 2004, that fifteen years had compressed to form a seamless stretch of a moment they could inhabit as their own.

But if there was such a place he couldn’t reach her there. He lay awake in a black vault instead, watching grainy scenes repeat themselves on the ceiling above him, shameful acts of heartless selfishness in black and white, splashes of colour for the odd times he made her smile.

And he does make her smile. Through a winter and a spring. Nights at hers with her mam and dad, her sister, her brother.

Nights in his flat, just the two of them.

Sometimes, afterwards, she falls asleep with her head on his chest. He lays awake and strokes her hair, breathes in the scent of her perfume, feels the warmth of her body against his own.
He has yearned for this, a connection like this, a wholeness like this one.

For a time he feels himself wanting for nothing else.

He can’t imagine a scenario in which they won’t be together forever.

That’s how young he is.

That’s how much living he’s yet to experience.

He was awake when dawn broke, as still as death itself, staring at the crack in the curtains, willing the new morning to come, terrified of hearing a knock at the door, the click of a key in a lock, imagining any number of visitors; her mum; her sister; her brother. One of Stimmo’s lot.

But nobody came.

She was still sleeping, pressed against him. He felt sick in the stomach, imagining her waking from futile dreams to find him there and not Stimmo.

He shouldn’t have stayed. He should have looked after number one.

Ever the selfish bastard.

When the sun came bleeding through the curtains he put some space between the two of them, eased his skin free of her skin, manoeuvred his body to the edge of the bed. She stirred and he closed his eyes, pretending to sleep, to be comfortable where he was. She rose from the bed with her back to him. Through narrowed eyes he watched her naked silhouette against the curtain. He closed his eyes as she turned to face him, felt her watching him. He lay there wanting to believe that when he opened his eyes again he’d be back in Room 11 at the hotel, that all of this was a desperate fucking dream of his own.

He heard her leave the room, heard her pull the door shut quietly behind her, heard the rush of a tap in the bathroom. He tried to sit up in Stimmo’s bed, feeling the room spin, his stomach burn, the vodka returning to punish him. He placed his bare feet on the carpet, prepared himself, shifted his weight
on to his legs. The rush of blood caused him to stumble forward into the chair his clothes were draped across. He reached out an arm, steadied himself against the wall. Then he fought to dress himself. It was all he could do to keep his balance as he stepped from one leg to the other, to stop his head from swimming, to prevent his stomach from going into spasm. He managed everything except his socks.

Footsteps on the stairs. She came into the room in her dressing gown carrying two mugs of black tea, passed one to him, sat on the edge of the bed, staring at that same crack in the curtains, at the same slice of sky beyond. He watched her, uncertain what to do with himself.

‘Thanks,’ she said at last.

He didn’t say anything. He was lost for fucking words.

The two of them, sipping at steaming black tea in silence, her on the edge of the bed, him sat upright, his back propped against the wall.

‘You left so quickly,’ she said.

‘Jen…’

‘Shut up. Just let me get all of this out,’ she said. She brushed at her knee with the palm of her hand. ‘It took me a long time to get over you leaving the way you did.’

‘It was eight months,’ he said. ‘February to October. All drawn out. I didn’t just…’

She turned to look at him.

‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Please, don’t. We were still sleeping with each other in August.’

‘You wouldn’t leave things…’

‘I was barely eighteen.’

‘Your sister…’

‘My sister?’

‘She came to the flat.’

‘My sister.’

‘I had all that coming at me, wedding plans, bridesmaids’ dresses, your mam and dad…’

She shook her head.

‘It was the engagement party,’ he said. ‘That’s what started it. They were all asking about us.’

‘You daft prick. Do you think I wanted what she wanted?’

He stared at his socks on the chair.

She stood up, went to the window and pulled the curtain open, stood there looking down on the street. ‘I just want you to listen,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you to say anything, just fucking listen. Then you can do what the fuck you want.’

She turned to look at him. He nodded silently in her direction.

‘When you left I threw myself at someone else,’ she said. ‘I ended up moving in with him.’

She looked down at herself, seemed to consider her appearance for the first time then dismiss the thought with a knowing laugh. Or something like that. He was no fucking expert.

‘I lived with that bloke for three years,’ she said. ‘And I spent a lot of that time thinking about you, even though you were miles away living another fucking life, even though you were a bastard to me in all sorts of ways. I’d get up and stare out of the window at the same fucking streets morning after morning and I’d think to myself
you know something, he was right to do it, right to fuck off
, but then I’d hear another voice telling me
he could have taken you with him, he could have saved the both of you
and that was enough to make me hate you for an hour or so, just long enough to get another day kicked off, then the whole sorry scenario would repeat itself…’

‘Saved?’

She looked directly at him, shook her head.

‘When that sham ended I had to move back home. It was a disaster. My brother was kicking off big time, everybody this close to murdering each other. I saw you one Christmas around then. You were home for the holidays, out with your old mates. You sailed right past me, didn’t even bat an eyelid…’

‘I didn’t see…’

‘Shut up,’ she said. ‘I know you didn’t. I remember thinking to myself
he didn’t fucking look at you. What the fuck have you done to yourself?
I gave up for a while after that, stopped going out, stopped bothering. I tried the ‘concentrate on a career’ thing. That was a joke. I ended up having meaningless flings with blokes at work, did my fucking reputation the world of good. Another fucking story. And then, when I finally got to going out again I met Stimmo and would you credit it, he was another shadow of the fucking past.’

She smiled an ironic smile.

‘I met him in town,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know who he was. He came straight up to me. He said he knew me as your ex and that you were a fucking silly prick for breaking up with me and fucking off.’

He supped his black tea, tried not to grimace.

‘I nearly didn’t bother. But he was a perfect gent,’ she said. ‘I told myself I could do with a bit of that, a bit of fucking appreciation for a change. Nobody treated me like he did. I’ve been on a pedestal for the past five years…’

He forced a smile. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d been so aware of himself, of his movements, of the expression he was exhibiting, of how someone might read those things.

‘I fucking hated that pedestal,’ she said. ‘I saw other men behind his back. I blame you for that.’ She pointed to herself. ‘So this isn’t some broken body wracked with grief for a dead boyfriend. It’s someone who’s riddled with guilt over what they did to a good man. Or what they didn’t fucking do.’

He saw anger welling in her eyes again, the same anger surfacing and re-surfacing.

‘I could lie to you,’ she said. ‘I could tell you I stopped thinking about you, got over you in a flash, but I didn’t. You were always fucking there. Even when I had a man that would do anything for me I had to keep him at arm’s length. I tormented the poor bastard really. I don’t think he ever felt he truly had me. And now this…’

‘What he did has nothing to do with you,’ he said

‘How the fuck do you know?’

He made a move to get out of the bed, felt the same sharp pain behind his eyes.

‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘You aren’t fucking going anywhere.’

She moved across the room to the doorway, slammed it shut, stood there with her back against it.

‘Let me tell you something,’ she said. ‘This has everything to do with me. I’ll live with this for the rest of my life because I should have cared more, made him feel wanted, made him feel loved.’

‘Maybe he was happy loving you.’

She shook her head.

‘I should have married him. He asked me enough times. Soon, I kept saying. Soon. And in my head I was thinking just one more night with someone else, one more encounter that wasn’t what he was laying on the table, which was solidity and settlement and a future together. And he must have known. He fucking must have. This town’s too small to keep those things quiet. But he never fucking challenged me, never said anything. And then he goes and does this to himself and people tell me it’s all because of a fucking football match.

He stared at her.

‘Even if it is I should have known about that because I should have been open to him telling me. But I wasn’t. I didn’t fucking listen to him and I didn’t know anything about it. I should have made the connection, but he wasn’t like you. He didn’t bother with football.’

‘He never said anything?’

‘About what?’

‘About football? About Forest?’

She shook her head.

‘Do you know something else?’ she said. ‘Do you want to hear something truly fucking horrendous? Do you want to know what sort of person I really am?’

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t do anything. He just sat there on the bed, marooned in the covers, his back against the wall.

‘I’ve had this thing going through my head,’ she said. ‘This thing that keeps telling me I don’t even get the satisfaction of knowing he did what he did because of me. I get questions instead. Questions and more questions, about fucking football and that fucking day you all went to a match and came back changed. Everybody’s been telling me about it. And all I can think about is you. You not calling me to tell me you were okay. Me hearing it on the radio and not even knowing what fucking end you were in. Waiting and waiting by the fucking phone, becoming more and more convinced that something had happened to you, that you were in the midst of it all. Fuck, when I picture that day and what you put me through I can hardly believe I’m stood here speaking to you, that I forgave you for putting me through that anguish. And my mam, and my dad. All of us. But you didn’t give a fuck.’

She crashed the door with her fist.

‘I blame that day,’ she said. ‘I blame that day for everything that happened between us. You were happy before and miserable after. You were satisfied before and restless after. You were one person and then you were someone else. But I didn’t know Stimmo was there too. Nobody told me. He never told me. So I got it twice, didn’t I. Once and then again. You and Stimmo. What are the chances?’

He sat there in silence. Truly found out. Truly exposed.

‘Kenny Dalglish,’ he said at last. ‘Three fucking times.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’

They fell into silence. The curtain twitched in the breeze. He thought about the street below, encroaching footsteps.

Eventually she asked him, ‘What’s it like down there?’

‘Where?’

‘Down south.’

‘The same,’ he said. ‘More expensive. The people aren’t so friendly…’

‘But you’re happy you went?’

He shrugged.

‘It was fifteen years ago. I had to…’

She stared back at him.

‘I had to do something,’ he said. ‘Before it was too late.’

‘Because your life was so fucking awful?’

‘Because I could see the next forty years in front of me, the lifers at the PO, intelligent blokes just going through the motions. I wanted more than what they had…’

‘And?’

‘And nothing. I’m not sure what they had was so bad, not now, but then … then I was certain…’

He put his tea down.

‘… and frightened,’ he said. ‘Of what people wanted for us.’

‘My sister. My perfect fucking sister.’ She spewed laughter at him. ‘So now you’re back…’

‘To sort some things,’ he said.

He could remember her now. Scenes were flooding back, the dam well and truly breached. He could see the uncertain seventeen-year-old, see her in the town pubs in the early days, him all stoked up with jealousy, terrified of losing what he’d discovered, and he could see her naked and unwanted in his bed eighteen months down the line, how she’d come to represent the very thing he needed to escape from, the town and everything in it, everything that had happened. He remembered the things he’d done to her in those desperate months when he didn’t have the fucking decency to turn her away from his door, always inviting her in, throwing down crumbs of hope, making a fucking mess. And here he was all these years later propped up in her bed, wondering once again how the fuck he was going to slide away, knowing it had to start with him getting his socks on and getting out of the bedroom, knowing there was that and then everything else to get through before
he returned from whence he came … or crawled back under his fucking stone.

He saw the woman she grew into before he left, how he’d aged her. And he saw her looking at him now, staring across the room at him.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘What for?’

‘Everything,’ he said. ‘All of it.’

‘We’re all sorry,’ she said.

She followed him down the stairs to the front door. He stopped there, waiting to be shown out, not wanting it to look like he was running away again, both of them clear that it was exactly what he was doing, still terrified the door might burst open, that he’d be discovered there in his old mate’s house with his old mate’s girlfriend.

His old mate’s fucking widow.

And then he was out of there, back in the light, staring across the old town at the grand old church spire, thinking of the hotel and a cooked breakfast, thinking of Kelly, thinking how long this whole fucking charade might be set to go on for. Kids were making their way to school, the same uniforms, the boys in their black blazers heading one way, burdened with bags, urgent in their steps, the brown-jacketed others heading in the opposite direction, sauntering, hands in pockets, hardly a bag between them.

And never the twain shall meet
…

Nothing changing in the old town.

And why the fuck should it have? It was fifteen years, the blink of an eye. Or it was half a lifetime. It was one of those things.

When he turned to look over his shoulder to see her still stood in the doorway in her dressing gown, her eyes red from crying, he knew he’d see her again before the mess was cleaned up. He couldn’t leave things half-baked with her again.

He just couldn’t.

12th March 1988
FA Cup Quarter-Final