Emma was on the sofa with . Not next to . On .
Her legs across my lap. Her back against the arm of the sofa. A mug of coffee balanced on her stomach. My left hand resting on the warm bare bit of her thigh between the hem of the long T-shirt she had pulled on at half six and the top of her knee.
The yoga pants she had got dressed in twenty minutes ago, when she had wandered out of the bedroom to find the coffee I had already started, were doing the thing yoga pants do.
Black. Worn. Six months of six o’clock starts on the machines in the spare room had built a body under them that the older joggers in her drawer no longer fit properly, and she had moved on to the new ones in May and had not gone back.
They sat low on her hips and high everywhere else.
They put the work she had been putting in on display every ti she got off the sofa, and the bit between the hem of the T-shirt and the waistband of the yoga pants was a strip of warm freckled bare she had not been bothering to hide all morning, because she knew exactly what it was doing to and was charging for the coffee in instalnts.
The redhead had a strategy. She had always had a strategy.
The presenter wasn’t done. He never is.
"But hold on, Thierry. Every season sobody has the idea. We have admired ideas at this desk before. Bielsa had the idea. Pochettino had the idea. Having it and keeping it standing once everyone has worked out the trick are two completely different things, and they will have worked the trick out by Christmas."
"They worked it out in March." Henry let it land.
"Watch the Sporting tie back. They knew the press was coming, they packed ten n behind the ball, and he changed it at half ti, in a European semi-final, with a twenty-three-year-old centre-half and two teenagers on the grass, and it still worked. That is the part you cannot coach and cannot buy. He has a plan, and then he has a plan for when the plan dies, and most managers twice his age only ever have the first one."
Emma shifted on my lap. Settled deeper. The coffee on her stomach wobbled and held.
I let my hand wander up the inside of her thigh, slow, no agenda. Far enough to register, not far enough to push.
She did not look away from the telly. She made the small approving sound she makes when my hand finds the place she has been waiting for it to find, and the warm freckled strip above the waistband moved an inch as her hips redistributed in my lap.
"So you’re telling he’s the finished article." Carragher ca forward, jabbing the desk.
"At twenty-eight, still working through his Pro Licence while he’s actually managing in the Champions League. That’s the bit I won’t have. Klopp had Mainz. Klopp had a relegation that broke his heart. Pep had Barcelona B and a year out and Cruyff in his ear for a decade before he won a thing. This kid has had eighteen months and a fairytale. The first ti he loses a final. The first ti he has to rebuild a team that’s been picked apart over a single sumr. The first ti a giant cos for that sixteen-year-old with a hundred million in a brown envelope. That is when we find out what he is. Not now."
"Now is never the easy bit," Neville said quietly. "You won things young. You know it isn’t."
"I’m saying it’s the easy bit next to what’s coming."
The green eye over the rim of Emma’s mug ca round to , sideways, and went back to the telly without comnt. The corner of her mouth was doing the thing it does.
"On that," Henry said, "you are right. And on that, he will be fine, because a man who walks back into a graveyard he has avoided for years in the sa week he wins Europe is not a man who hides from the hard part." He caught himself. "I am guessing. I do not know the man."
I put the coffee down.
I had not told them that. I had not told anyone outside the building.
But the docuntary had a cara on in a car park in Lyon, and Eze had said sothing to by that car, and a sentence said to one player at midnight can co back from a man on the telly half-knowing it on a Saturday morning. The reach of it. They were starting to know the part, not the football, and the part was the part I had been the most careful about.
Emma felt go still under her. She did not say anything. She put her free hand down and covered the hand of mine that was on her thigh, and squeezed once, and went back to her coffee. The telly went on.
"So is it a dynasty," the presenter said, "or a mont. One word each. We called Leicester a dynasty."
"We did not," Carragher said. "I did not. Leicester was a season, a beautiful season, and it closed. This does not close, and that is the one thing I’ll give it. The boy’s sixteen. The centre-half’s twenty-three. They are buying ti. It’s a dynasty."
"It’s a dynasty," Henry said.
Neville looked at the graphic, then shook his head, and the other two turned on him.
"Not because I disagree. Because dynasty is the United word, and I’m not lending it out this morning, not even to him. Call it what it is. It’s the start of sothing we’ll be talking about for ten years, and I’ll be on this exact desk for most of it, probably being told I was wrong about the next bit and all."
"So we have agreed on everything except the words," the presenter said.
"Which for and him," Carragher said, "is the sa as not agreeing at all."
I turned the telly off.
The room went quiet. The radiator. A bus on East Dulwich Grove. The weight of Emma still on . The hand she had not taken off the back of mine since I had gone still.
"You alright?"
"They’ve taken the question mark off."
"I saw."
"Three years ago you found on a bench writing down a left-back nobody wanted, on eight pound fifteen an hour." I looked at the dead screen. "It’s a lovely thing for three clever n to argue about, and it’s got nothing to do with . It’s them. Olise is sixteen. Konaté’s twenty-three. The greatest anything hasn’t happened yet. They’ve decided to start the clock early."
Emma looked at for a long second.
"That," she said, "is the most arrogant humble thing I have ever heard a man say."
"It’s not arrogant if it’s true."
"It’s extrely arrogant if it’s true."
She put the coffee on the side table.
She moved properly then.
The legs across my lap ca down, one and the other, and she shifted up the sofa until she was straddling with her knees either side of my hips, the warm working weight of her flush against through the thin worn fabric of the yoga pants, her hands on my shoulders, her face inches off mine.
The T-shirt rode up at the back. My hand went where my hand wanted to go without consulting about it, full on the warm bare curve of the small of her back where the waistband of the yoga pants sat low, the other one finding the hip, and she was watching find her.
***
Thank you to Sir nayelus for the support.
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