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You would like to go to the World Cup with England but you don’t. You would like to be there when it all kicks off in Cagliari but you won’t.

But you’re at Anfield on this day of remembrance, on this day of mourning. You visit the gates and the memorial to Hillsborough. You place your palm on the metal and close your eyes.

But you do not look at the list of names.

You will never look at the list of names.

You’re there when the Kop pays you its respects and you pay your respects in turn.

There are tears in your eyes when you see the flags bearing testament to ninety-five lost souls. There are tears in your eyes when the Kop sings ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’. There are tears in your eyes when you wander in the direction of the coach and the life you no longer recognise as your own.

It has been three hundred and sixty-four nights of turmoil.

It has been three hundred and sixty-four days of waking to another morning.

You are guilty of nothing.

You are guilty of everything.

There is April, there is May.

There are Mondays and Tuesdays and Wednesdays and

Thursdays and Fridays and Saturdays. An ever-spinning wheel.

There are patterns.

There are routines.

There are fixed fucking duties.

There are no pills.

There is no Jen.

Not any more.

There are no surprises.

There’s no football either.

The press have predicted a summer of blood. The government have fanned the flames. The Italian authorities fear the worst.

Sardinia is a fortress.

Alcohol is banned.

There are limited ports of entry and restricted movement.

There is a stop-and-search policy at the border.

Moynihan in his element.

Moynihan the opportunist.

Moynihan.

Thatcher’s poisonous dwarf.

Leading the war on football.

Fucking revelling in it.

Those fans that get in risk summary deportation just for being.

It’s a crime to be English.

The old town cinema showing the game on the big screen. Big John Robertson guest of honour. Big fucking mistake. Lads barrelled up, barrelling in.

Beer in the aisles.

Beer on the seats.

Puke on the seats.

Puke in the aisles.

The owner fretting and fussing.

England 1 Rep. Ireland 1.

Forest fans like lapdogs in the post-match Q&A. Robbo slagging off England. Every fucker slagging off England. Half the Irish players from the best fucking English teams.

Heroes and villains.

Villains and heroes.

You’re not having any of it. You’re on your feet, making your point to a bloke you’d once worshipped, the bloke you used to pretend to be on a Tuesday evening at football club, on a Saturday in the park, you in your yellow Forest away shirt with the blue trim.

And Robbo is playing to the crowd, taking the piss. The crowd are lapping it up.

Cunts.

The boys are lapping it up.

All cunts.

You want the earth to swallow you and you are a laughing stock.

But England make it out of the group.

He moves across to cover the old boys, a different route each week, mental stimulation, delivering to the country, a fucking day off midweek, a chance to do something less boring instead. Eight walk, pushing his barrow up the High Street, flirting with the shopgirls. Thirty walk, on his bike, nice and easy does it, roasting in the summer sunshine. Nightingale in the van, job done by mid-morning, parking up in the woods, munching on his sandwiches, having a kip, the best fucking job in the world.

The rough with the smooth.

The smooth with the rough.

Thirty-three walk, his old favourite but growing with the new estate, becoming a pain in the arse, fourteen walk, with the schoolgirls’ ‘Morning Mr Postman’, twenty-two by the old canal, twenty-one’s dirty sibling, the rabbit warren estate, alleyways and dogs, broken fences, broken houses, broken lives.

The deadland.

Two walk, nipping into his flat for tea and biscuits, terraced houses, easy fucking money. And every day throughout the summer, each and every time he delivers to a school, he feels the pull of it, hears a calling, wonders how that might be, how he might get there, if it’s too late for that already, at nineteen, if the chance has passed him by, if he’s earmarked for this life and no other for the next forty-five years. When he brings the subject up in the canteen the blokes have a field day.

‘A fucking teacher?’

‘Don’t you need a brain to do that?’

‘You just want to shag the girlies.’

‘Fuck me, I couldn’t do that job. I’d murder the little bastards.’

‘I couldn’t keep my dick in my pants.’

‘Bollocks, I hated school.’

Only Harcross truly listening, delivering a quiet word in his ear.

‘Do it. You’re too fucking intelligent for this place.’

He doubts that but he listens to Harcross all the same because he loves the skinheaded bastard.

He doesn’t know it yet but he always will.

One hundred and nineteen minutes. Penalties looming. Gascoigne free-kick. Platt volley.

One fucking nil.

The lads in the living room at Gav’s place, piling on top of each other, piling in. And you on the sofa, strangely out of it.

Thinking.

Weighing things up.

Loving it and hating it.

Thinking it’s coming to an end, feeling that and not knowing what to do, thinking about journeys, about new beginnings, about endings and partings, saying goodbye to nineteen fucking years of growth in the old town, thinking about your college application, thinking about the lads, about leaving one life and starting another, thinking about all of that in the slice of time it takes for them to get to their feet and call you a miserable bastard.

And so you’re dancing.

Dancing in the living room at Gav’s place as England book themselves a place in the Quarter-Finals.

Sometimes he dreams of pouring petrol on the yellow sofa, lighting a match to it and watching it burn.

Sometimes.

He switches on the stereo. The Blue Aeroplanes. Swagger. He listens to Gerard Langley spout his poetry, drags his body out of bed and over to the window, gazes out at the quiet street.

A movement in the bathroom opposite. He catches his breath, shuffles into the shadows, watches the vague outline of the woman opposite struggle out of her clothes, watches the red sweater come off, the blue jeans, the black underwear, revealing pink skin, the dark patch between her legs, all of this a suggestion through frosted glass.

The woman opposite, single mum, no bloke on the scene, his flatmate providing the interim entertainment whenever the two fancy it.

Bizarre.

Not his type, truth be told, but he watches her anyway, watches her step into the shower and pull the curtain across, watches the frosted glass mist over, so that when she steps out of the shower he can barely distinguish the shape of her at all. He waits for her to move from the bathroom to the bedroom, her in a towel, black hair pushed back, watches her do all of those things then draw the curtains across and shut him out.

Selfish cow.

He drifts to the kitchen, sticks some toast under the grill, goes to the phone in the living room, drops on to the yellow sofa and calls up Gav.

‘Half seven?’

‘Sounds good.’

‘I’ll pick you up.’

‘Is that it?’

‘What else do you want me to fucking say?’

‘I don’t know. How was your day, something like that.’

‘Okay. How was your day?’

‘Shit.’

‘Right. See you at half seven.’

He puts the phone down, smells the fucking toast burning, races into the kitchen to save it. Too late. He goes back to the packet. Just the crusts left. He takes out a knife and starts scraping the burnt edges of the toast into the sink.

‘Bollocks to this,’ he says.

He drives to his mam’s, hoping to strike lucky, to stumble in on a hot pot, sausage and mash, something wholesome. Six-thirty on a Tuesday evening, the streets emptying of traffic, the dead day of the week, no fucking football, no fucker in the pubs, early to bed and early to rise.

There’s no hot pot, no sausage and mash, just the dog end of a steak and kidney pie. His dad throws some chips in the oven to go with it. He sits at the kitchen table, the radio in the background, the local news, the same locked-in places,
the same dull stories. He stuffs himself, talks about the job and football and when he’ll be around again.

He drives back to the flat as the long summer day comes to an end, unlocks the boarded-up door, steps into the dark foyer, climbs the steep stairs. He hates coming home to the flat as much as he hates going home to his mam and dad’s to steal a meal.

There’s just him and the twilight again, him and the alarm clock, him and the dark hours counting away towards another day in paradise.

And a World Cup Semi-Final.

The Hound packed to the rafters. Shilton flat-footed on that deflection. Jammy German bastards. Lineker levelling. The place erupting.

Beer on the walls.

Beer on the ceiling.

A right fucking mess.

Extra time. The landlord weighing up the damage against the dough. Waddle off the post.

Jammy – German – bastards.

The fucking penalty shoot-out.

The cheers and the tears.

Blokes spitting blood at Pearce. Your Stuart Pearce. But he’s not yours, he’s England’s and England are out of the World Cup. Blokes spitting blood at Forest all the same, Forest spitting back with fists and foreheads, everything kicking off in the pub, spilling into the street, the throng joined by other throngs from other pubs.

Police on the High Street and the Market Square, barking their orders and sticking the boot in but not enough police, not on this evening. Lads and lasses drunk on the drama. A horde marching up the High Street towards the clock tower.

Bottles exploding as grenades.

Shop windows shivering.

Car windscreens.

Everything a fucking target.

The Guildhall decorated with scaffolding, the throng gathering there, nowhere left to go except home and no fucker going home, not yet.

Blood still up.

Some mad fucker on the scaffolding, clambering up the outside like Spiderman. Police on the tannoy. No fucker listening. Spiderman at the clock tower now, turning to the massed ranks, tearing off his T-shirt to show his bulldog tattoo, raising his fists to the cheers, climbing onwards, upwards, fearless. A gaggle of police urging him to come down, booze and bottles raining down. The police issuing their ultimatums.

No fucker adhering.

England at war with itself.

Not for the fucking first time.

You watch the drunk on the scaffolding, the crowds of lads, the boys and the men, the lasses too. You watch the bottles hurtling through the air, some finding their mark, others falling short. You look across at the police vans and you listen to the fuckers spitting and spouting their anger at nobody and nothing. You stand there under the trees, a way off from it all, watching it unfold.

You aren’t pissed. You’re not devoured by it any more either. And you want no part of it. You turn away, slip into the alley, thinking about getting your boots dirty on a Saturday, discovering something else about yourself that isn’t all of this.

Thirteen million viewers.

Mothers and daughters.

Fathers and sons.

Thirteen million.

For many it’s the beginning.

For you it’s the end.

But you don’t want to go to the flat. You can’t face the emptiness. You venture through the estate instead, past the kiddies’ swings, past the fucking car park, the hedge bottom, through the folds of darkness, feeling the separation, the past unravelling, the old town loosening its grip, loosening its hold, letting you go.

At last.

The lights are off at your mam’s. You let yourself in, steal some ham from the fridge. You fix yourself a sandwich. Your dad comes down to check who’s in the house and then heads back upstairs without saying anything.

There’s nothing to say.

You need sleep. You crash on the sofa. You’re thinking about getting out of the flat, getting some money together. You have one eye on a future, sorting yourself out, putting the things you’ve been mulling over into action before the old town drags you back into itself, cuts off your air supply, suffocates your spirit.

Forever.

You’re just in time.