The Footballer's Wife (12 page)

Len sighed. He couldn't believe she had married without telling him. He had played through the scenario over and over in his head. Every time he tried to convince himself that this might all work out for the best in the end he only had to think about lying in hospital as a result of Joel's temper to remember that things with characters like Joel Baldy
never
worked out in the end. He'd seen men like him before; the sort that were deeply angry about something and were never going to get over it. The men that Len had known like this, though, had been safely out of harm's way at Her Majesty's pleasure, not feted as the new face of football. As far as Len was concerned, an ego like Joel's and public adoration were a lethal combination. Len checked his watch. It was quarter past seven: Charly was late.

By half past seven Len was starting to worry. He called Charly's mobile but there was no answer. He looked at the fish and chips sitting on the table and wondered if maybe he should eat his and put Charly's in the oven until she got here. Maybe she was running late and didn't want to answer her
phone. But Len knew his daughter and knew that under the circumstances if she was going to be late she would have called. He tried her phone one more time and as it clicked through to voicemail he grabbed his coat and headed for the door.

TRACY WALKED INTO
the theatre where the Elvis competition was being held and looked around disapprovingly. Bleeding hell, she thought, as she took in the peeling wallpaper and the cabaret-style setting with its shabby lamps and peeling Formica tables. She headed for the bar. Nothing was going to dampen her mood tonight, not even this tat palace. She and Mac had had an afternoon of passion that she wasn't going to forget for a while. As they had checked out of their love den, the sour-faced landlady had asked knowingly, ‘Was everything alright for you? Only, one of the guests thought they'd heard someone in pain.'

‘Everything was fine, thank you,' Mac had replied. Tracy had watched the exchange with interest; it wasn't like Mac Jones to leave someone else with the last word. True to form, as they were
stepping out of the door he said over his shoulder, ‘That wasn't pain, it was shagging, love. You might want to try it one day. Loosen yourself up a bit.' Tracy had laughed like a drain as they fell out into the car park under the tight-lipped, disapproving glare of the landlady. Mac had grabbed Tracy's bum as they walked across the car park and pulled her in close for another kiss.

‘Not here!' Tracy had said, looking around.

‘Give up. He'll be swinging his rhinestone pants somewhere. Not hiding in a car park waiting to catch us two at it,' Mac had said.

Tracy ordered herself a double vodka and coke with a whisky chaser and took a seat. The blue-rinse brigade was out in force, she thought, looking around at the crowd. Barry Manilow's ‘Can't Smile Without You' was being piped into the room and a load of the old dears were swaying and singing along out of tune, clapping their hands to the rhythm. Tracy hoped that someone would put her out of her misery before she got to the stage where she deemed this the pinnacle of entertainment.

She'd had a couple of texts from Kent, telling her how he was getting on that afternoon. It seemed that the pressure of all the other superior Elvises around the country was getting to him. His last text
had informed her that he was turning his phone off in order to concentrate. Tracy had texted back saying that she'd had an afternoon of sightseeing. She didn't think Kent would have appreciated her detailing the actual sights she saw. Tracy ordered herself another large vodka and, hearing her phone beep, took it out of her bag.

There were two texts from Mac: one saying that he was wearing no knickers which made Tracy laugh and the other which read
Look behind you.
She spun around to see Mac standing at the other end of the bar. He made his way over to her. ‘What you doing here?' she asked, checking her watch worriedly. ‘You've got to be in Manchester for ten, haven't you?'

Mac smiled. ‘I'll put my foot down. Just thought I'd come and say bye.'

Tracy wanted to run away with Mac there and then. What was she doing with a loser like Kent? She'd nearly managed to escape a life of boredom with him before but had ended up allowing him to move back in because she felt sorry for him and, if she was honest with herself, she needed a man around; even if he was a useless one who sang to his birds and dressed as a dead rocker.

‘Seen anything of Kent yet?' Mac asked. The way
he was tracing her mouth with his eyes let her know that he wasn't really the slightest bit interested in whether she had seen Kent or not.

‘No. He's on halfway through.'

‘Time for a quickie, then, before I go.'

Tracy looked at him. ‘You cheeky get,' she said, breaking into a smile. But that didn't stop her following Mac to his car as the strains of the first Elvis of the night filled the air.

*

Len was standing outside Charly's apartment having broken every Allegro speed record getting into Manchester that evening. He had tried her phone a number of times but got no answer. He didn't have Joel's number to call him, not that he ever wanted to speak to him again anyway. Len had asked his neighbour Maggie to keep an eye out for Charly. Maggie was such a gossip that the notion that something might be wrong and Len was on a hunt for his semi-famous daughter would have her twitching her curtains and on the phone at the first sign of Charly. He looked up at the building: there was no sign of any life from Charly's flat, and Len had had his finger pressed against the buzzer for the
past five minutes. As he was standing wondering desperately what he was going to do next, he saw the button for the concierge and pressed that. The speaker crackled to life.

‘Can I help you?'

‘It's my daughter. She lives in the top flat . . .'

‘Penthouse,' the concierge interrupted.

Len took a deep breath. ‘I don't care if it's a mud hut, I need to see her.'

‘Well, I'm sorry, sir,' came the hoity-toity response, ‘but I don't need to be spoken to in that manner.'

It took all of Len's strength not to bawl down the intercom at the officious little man. ‘Look, my daughter is missing and I think that something bad might have happened to her. Now I know you're not going to let me in alone, but I'd really appreciate it if you would come upstairs with me and see if anything is wrong.' He said this with as much measure in his voice as he could muster.

The door buzzed and Len pushed it. Soon there was a tall, overweight man standing in the hallway – his appearance didn't fit the squeaky timbre of his voice at all.

‘Is she Joel Baldy's girlfriend?'

Len was about to say ‘wife' but couldn't bring himself to say the word. ‘Yes, that's right.'

Len entered the lift with the man and the journey to the top floor seemed to take an age. Len tried to picture his relief at his own foolishness when the man opened the door to find the flat empty and he returned home to find Charly in front of the TV with a totally plausible reason for why she was so late. But he couldn't. A gut feeling kept dragging his mind to darker thoughts of what awaited him at the other side of her apartment door.

The concierge knocked on the door; there was no answer. He tried again. ‘Look,' he said finally to Len, ‘I can't just go opening the door because you're her dad and she hasn't gone to your house.'

Len knew he was going to have to level with him. ‘Look . . . I wouldn't ask but he hit her the other week. And he put me in hospital.' The man's jaw nearly hit the floor. Joel Baldy – the palatable face of football – was a woman beater; that was news. He rustled in his pockets and produced his keys, and within seconds the door was open. Len ran into the apartment and glanced around.

He didn't see anything at first and felt something approaching relief. The concierge joined him. Len was about to apologise for causing a fuss when the colour drained from the other man's face and Len followed his gaze to the floor, just by his own feet. A
pool of blood had been obscured and soaked up by the dark woollen rug. The blood was coming from a wound in Charly's head. She appeared lifeless. Len knelt down beside her and took her hand; he could feel a pulse. ‘Call an ambulance!' he screamed at the concierge. The man was shocked out of his stare and grabbed his phone from his pocket. Len bent forward over his daughter, holding his face close to hers, trying to detect if she was breathing. He felt the shallowest of breaths. As he lay across his daughter, waiting for the ambulance, Len began to cry. The concierge put a hand on his back but Len didn't feel it. The pain he felt inside was too great for him to concentrate on anything else happening around him.

*

Jodie was dreading this evening. She used to love going out in town and getting legless for free, but now it always seemed to come at a price and tonight's price was having to be nice to all the other girls that were signed to Leanne's agency and make sure they were all behaving themselves.

They were starting their night in the bar of the Radisson Edwardian, which was a nice enough
place to have cocktails, but she knew that the girls would want to move on quickly to somewhere they were more likely to be seen by the paparazzi. Jodie was wearing gold hot pants and a billowing long-sleeved top. Her legs were flawlessly bronzed and she was trying to remain upright in her gold killer heels. Her hair was perfectly coiffed in a Farrah Fawcett circa 1976 style and her make-up was sunkissed LA goddess. All in all she thought she looked rather good, which was more than could be said for some of the girls. Kim and Helen, two of the latest signings, looked like they'd just come from a bikini shoot. They were both wearing the tiniest tops and knickers and both were plastered in make-up. As they realised that their group was garnering a lot of attention from the men in the room, the girls got closer and held hands. Kim pretended to spill champagne down Helen's front and Shauna made a big show of acting outraged. Jodie looked at the pair in despair, knowing exactly what was coming next. Kim followed the champagne dribble along the outline of Helen's breast with her mouth. A group of men who were sitting behind the women all vied to get the best viewing position. Jodie had seen it all before, glamour girls pretending to be lesbians. It was
tedious and it was going to get them thrown out of the bar.

Jodie leaned forward. ‘Can you two can it or get a room, please?'

The girls broke apart and looked at Jodie like chastened naughty teenagers. ‘Sorry,' they said in unison. Jodie knew that they weren't.

‘You're not even lesbians.'

‘I just get horny,' Helen said loudly for the benefit of the men listening. Jodie's jaw set.
Give me strength,
she thought.

‘Course you do, love. But there's a time and a place and here isn't it. Comprendez?' Jesus, Jodie thought, tonight was going to be a long night.

She finally managed to get the girls to the Sea Bar at ten o'clock. It was a private members bar which was far more accommodating of glamour models with penchants for getting off with one another than a lot of places. At least here she felt that she could relax. Whatever the girls got up to in here would generally stay within the four walls and Jodie could sit and sink a few cocktails with the saner of the girls without having to worry about wanting to hit some of the others. She texted Leanne:
You owe me!
Leanne texted back a smiley face.

Jodie was just in conversation with a quiet model named Jess who had been on Leanne's books for a while when out of the corner of her eye she spotted Joel Baldy lurch to the bar. His eyes were black and he looked demonic. Whatever he'd been enjoying this evening, one thing was for sure – it wasn't just alcohol. Jodie thought about not saying anything to him, but she couldn't help herself. She wanted to know how Charly was and she wanted to know why the newlywed was out on the tiles on his own. She asked Jess to excuse her and made her way over to Joel. Before she managed to get to him he was intercepted by Kim and Helen. Joel was staring blankly at the two faux-lesbians. Jodie tapped the two girls on the shoulder and indicated that they should sit down until she had had a chance to speak to the footballer.

‘Mr Baldy. How's tricks?'

‘Fine. You?' He didn't seem to be in the mood for chatting.

‘No Charly?'

Jodie wouldn't have thought it was possible for Joel's face to look any darker but it clouded over. ‘She's at home.'

‘Who you out with?'

Joel looked at her as if registering for the first
time that she was there. ‘What do you care, Jodie?'

‘Charmed.' She glared at him. ‘I'm making polite conversation, that's all.'

‘Well, I'm over it tonight, if you don't mind. So why don't you let your little pretend lezzie mates come over here and sit on my cock.'

Jodie felt her face form into an involuntary sneer. ‘Tell you what, Joel, sort your head out before you speak to anyone else tonight. You're in danger of people thinking you're a right nob-head.' A look of hatred flashed in Joel's eyes and he stepped towards Jodie. She recoiled, sure that he was about to strike her. But he laughed and walked away.

Jodie fled to the other side of the bar. ‘Psycho,' she mumbled to herself.

*

Tracy was back through the door of the club, tugging at her skirt, in time for Kent's appearance. She didn't hold out much hope for him. He was good, but the standard of performance at something like this was going to far outweigh anything the tinpot Elvises of Bradington had to offer. Tracy settled into her chair and her fresh large vodka and waited
to see what Kent had in store for everyone. The stage went dark and dry ice billowed from under the glittering backdrop curtains.

Kent strode across the stage as if he owned the place. Tracy sat back and watched, impressed. As the first bars of ‘In the Ghetto' began to play, Tracy felt a shiver run down her spine. There was something quite breathtaking about Kent's staging tonight. She couldn't quite believe what she was seeing. When he turned round and began to sing, he
was
Elvis. He had the audience eating out of his hand. As he held the last note and brought his hand down to signal the end of the song, the crowd went wild. Well, as wild as they could. Tracy stood up, clapping, tears filling her eyes. It wasn't guilt – she could block out the fact that she'd just had a quickie with Mac in the car park – she was genuinely moved by Kent's performance.