Glory Of The Football Manager System

I woke up with Emma’s hair in my face and her foot on my shin and her breathing slow and even against my shoulder.

The curtains were half-open. She never closed them properly because she said she liked waking up with the light, which was a romantic way of saying she was too lazy to walk to the window at midnight.

The January sun, thin and pale, was filling the bedroom with the kind of grey-gold light that made London look like a watercolour painting. The Dulwich rooftops were visible through the glass, the chimneys and the aerials and the bare trees, the city still waking up.

I lay there. Emma was pressed against me, her back to my chest, her red hair fanned across the pillow and across my face and into my mouth, because Emma’s hair had its own ambitions and did not respect personal space.

She was wearing one of my old Palace training shirts, the one from pre-season that was two sizes too big for her and that she had claimed in September and had never returned. Her legs were bare. Her feet were cold, which was why one of them was on my shin, using me as a radiator, the way she had done every morning since the Croydon flat.

I put my arm around her waist and pulled her closer. She made a sound that was half-asleep and half-content, the sound of a woman who was not yet awake but who was aware, on some level below consciousness, that the man behind her was there and that being there was enough.

"Morning," I said.

"Mm."

"We’re in a cup final."

"Mm." A pause. Then, still not opening her eyes: "I know. I screamed so loud last night the banker knocked on the wall again."

"You screamed loudly about the Chelsea match, too."

"The banker is going to think we’re either the loudest football fans in South London or the most enthusiastic couple."

"Could be both."

She turned over. Her eyes opened. Green. Sleep-soft.

Her face carried the particular morning beauty that had nothing to do with makeup or preparation and everything to do with the way the light caught the freckles on her nose and the way her lips were slightly swollen from sleep and the way her hair, which was everywhere, framed her face in a chaos that she would spend twenty minutes taming and that I preferred untamed.

"Good morning, cup finalist," she said.

"Good morning, podcaster."

She smiled. Then she stretched, her arms above her head, the training shirt riding up, and I let my hand settle on her hip and she didn’t move it.

"Breakfast?" she said.

"You’re cooking?"

"We’re cooking. Together. Like adults."

"I’m not an adult. I’m a football manager. It’s different."

"Get up, Danny."

We cooked together. Scrambled eggs. Toast. Coffee. The kitchen was warm, the radio playing something soft that neither of us was listening to, the morning routine that we had built over eighteen months of living together.

Emma cracked the eggs because she said I cracked them too hard and got shell in the bowl. I made the coffee because she said my coffee was better than hers, which was not true but which I accepted because the compliment was more valuable than the accuracy.

She stood at the stove in the training shirt and bare feet, stirring the eggs with the focused precision she brought to everything, and I stood beside her, my hand on the small of her back, then lower, resting on the curve of her hip, and then lower still, because she was standing in my kitchen in my shirt with her hair undone and the morning light on her skin and I was a man who was paying attention.

She looked at me over her shoulder. "Danny Walsh. Your hand."

"What about it?"

"It’s migrating."

"Is it?"

"Significantly."

"I hadn’t noticed."

"You’re a terrible liar." She moved the pan off the heat, turned around, and kissed me with the casual intimacy of a woman who had been kissed in this kitchen a thousand times and who intended to be kissed in this kitchen a thousand more. Then she turned back to the eggs. "Eat your breakfast. We have errands."

We ate at the counter. The eggs were perfect. The toast was slightly burnt because I had been distracted by her hip and had forgotten about the toaster.

She ate the burnt toast without complaint because Emma ate everything without complaint, a trait she had inherited from a mother who had taught her that wasting food was a moral failure regardless of the household income.

"Errands," I said. "What errands?"

"You need to return the Audi."

The Audi. The club car that Palace had given me when I was appointed and I had no vehicle. A Q5, functional, grey, anonymous.

I had driven it for three months before I negotiated the Aston Martin deal. Since then, the Audi had been Emma’s. She used it for Athletic assignments, podcast recordings, and the weekly shop at Waitrose, which she called "the shop" and I called "the place where a bag of apples costs the same as a Championship player’s weekly wage."

"The Audi goes back to the club. It was always a loan."

"And then what do I drive?"

"That’s the errand."

She looked at me. The green eyes were narrowing. The particular expression of a woman who suspected she was about to be surprised and who was deciding whether to allow the surprise or interrogate it out of existence.

"Danny. What have you done?"

"Nothing yet. But Jessica may have spoken to a dealership."

"Which dealership?"

"Mercedes."

"Mercedes."

"I thought we needed something practical. The DB11 is beautiful, but you can’t put a bag of shopping in it without rearranging the laws of physics. And the Audi was always the club’s."

"So you’re buying me a car."

"I’m buying us a car. For practical purposes. An SUV. Something with boot space and four-wheel drive and heating that works on both sides."

"Why did you say ’heating that works on both sides’ as if that’s a specific complaint?"

"No reason."

"Is this about Lorraine’s bus?"

"It might be tangentially related."

She finished her eggs. She put her plate in the sink. She walked to the bedroom. She came back eleven minutes later wearing jeans, a cream jumper, ankle boots, and a green coat, her hair pulled back, her face carrying the minimal makeup she wore when she left the house, which was so minimal it was essentially the same face she wore when she didn’t leave the house, which was the point.

"Let’s go," she said.

"You’re not going to argue?"

"You’re buying me a Mercedes, Danny. I’m not an idiot."

We took the DB11. The January morning was cold and bright, the roads quiet. A Thursday in late January, the city between rhythms, the Christmas energy spent, the spring energy not yet arrived.

I drove through Dulwich, past the park, past the gallery, past the café where Elena had interviewed Emma (although that interview hadn’t happened yet, it was planned for the coming weeks, the café already identified, the location already scouted by Clara with the meticulous attention to detail that defined Elena’s operation).

"Have you thought about it?" Emma said.

"About what?"

"Marriage."

I nearly drove into a parked van. Not because the question surprised me. Because the casualness of it surprised me. She said it the way she said "have you thought about dinner" or "have you thought about what to wear." As if marriage was a logistical question rather than a life-altering one.

"I’ve thought about it," I said, recovering the steering wheel and my composure in roughly equal measure.

"And?"

"And I think that when I propose to you, it won’t be in a DB11 on the way to a Mercedes dealership on a Thursday morning after you’ve eaten burnt toast."

"Who said you’re the one proposing?"

"Tradition."

"Tradition says the manager of a football club should be over forty and have grey hair. You’re twenty-eight and you use moisturiser. Tradition is not our strong suit."

"Are you proposing to me, Emma?"

"I’m opening a dialogue."

"A dialogue."

"About the possibility of a future discussion regarding the potential consideration of a hypothetical engagement."

"That’s very romantic."

"I’m a journalist. Romance is deadline day. The rest is planning."

I laughed. She laughed. The DB11 rumbled through the South London streets, the V12 too loud for the residential roads, the car too beautiful for the potholes, and the woman beside me too clever for the man behind the wheel. I reached across the centre console and took her hand. She let me.

***

Thank you to Sir nameyelus for the Massage Chair.