Whether she did or she didn’t, she must know now, but she’s not said a fucking word. She must understand, after all the time we’ve spent together: for me, this life feels more like death without football in it.

No one else would understand. I can hear them: You’re so lucky to be here, focus on that.

But they can’t know what it’s like to have a gift that makes sense of your whole existence. When I was on the pitch, I shone. I was better than good – I was a star. I was alive. What am I if you take the football away? A nobody.

Last night, Kerry said I could do resits. Resits. She must have been trying to prepare me, but instead it’s another bloody betrayal, thinking I could settle for a life like everyone else’s. I thought she knew me.

They must have called my dad, because he comes to pick me up, lifting my head off the table, taking my hands, walking me across the car park. I can’t look at Coley as we leave. When I get home, I don’t go to the den, but my old bedroom, with my squad posters and signed programmes Blu-tacked to the wall.

Kerry comes round but I tell Dad not to let her in. ‘Tell her I’m tired. Tell her I’ll call her in the morning.’

I hear them on the doorstep, her protesting, him repeating the same lines in the voice he uses on the phone with girlfriends he’s tired of.

When he finally shuts the door, I am almost relieved. She wasn’t who I thought she was, and I will never be Joel Greenaway again.

Chapter 16: Kerry

10 May 2000

I go home but I don’t sleep.

What if it’s over?

No. It can’t be over, because that means it’s the end of the world.

His dad was kind but firm. Joel’s had a knockback, he kept repeating. I’m sure it’ll look better in the morning.

But I know Joel, I understand what this means.

Of course, I knew what would happen at the club. A braver person would have tried to warn him, but I couldn’t take away his hope like that. It would have been like performing an amputation.

I kept telling myself he already knew, at some deep level, that his career was over. How could it not be?

Instead of imagining his reaction when they told him, I try to fill my head with Physics, ready for my exam tomorrow. But all I see is him.

I take my exam in a trance, somehow managing to fill pages in the exam booklet, though when I close it at the end, for all I know I’ve written ‘Joel Greenaway’ over and over again.