‘Are you sure you’re not ashamed of being with a knucklehead who didn’t scrape a single C-grade GCSE?’

‘You’re as smart as me.’

‘Bollocks, Kerry, if I didn’t have football, I’d struggle to get a job pulling pints or sweeping up on the seafront.’

‘Well, if you had to, you could do resits.’

If you had to. The implication behind those words sends chills through me: if the football doesn’t work out, I could sit in a classroom again, with all the other losers.

‘I’d rather die than go back to school.’

She frowns and I feel shit. ‘You don’t mean that, Joel.’

I do. ‘You’re right. I’m nervous about tomorrow. I tell you what would take my mind off it, though.’

She gives me a look. Not the fake pout that my other girlfriends have copied from Page 3 pin-ups, but a steady gaze that makes me want to see inside her head, though it’d probably terrify me, because she’s so clever and she understands me more than anyone ever has, more than I understand myself.

Now I’m kissing her and I stop caring about tomorrow, and so does she.

The next day Dad drives me to the training ground. Funny he never had time to do this when I was a kid.

‘Stop here,’ I say, before we turn the corner. I’ve had to surrender my driving licence for six months because of my heart but I don’t want anyone on the team to know that.

Cold rain drips down my collar as I walk the last stretch, and I try not to shiver. The beta blockers mean I feel the cold like I never did before, but once I’ve warmed up in the gym with Coach Coley, I won’t notice it as much.

Today’s a half-day so the field is empty, but I wonder if any of my teammates will have hung around to welcome me home. I’m picturing piss-taking in the locker rooms, like I’m a New York cop getting my badge back.

The green plastic cones are stacked tall next to the goals. I know every centimetre of that field: the swampy parts where Coley makes us do push-ups if he thinks we’re not trying hard enough. The spots where I’ve scored some of my most dazzling practice goals.

I’m ready for my trial. That field will tell them if I’m still Joel Greenaway, the home-grown Dolphins hotshot.

Or a nobody.

As I walk into the drab building, Coley comes out of nowhere.

‘Let me look at you, Millennium Miracle! How are the ribs, Joel?’

Joel. I wish he hadn’t used my first name.

‘All healed up, Coach. Dying to get back to it. Even the chores. My pros will have the shiniest boots, and the bogs will never have been so clean.’