His phone’s sudden vibration had him wincing again. The screen glowed with the name MARTY JOHNSON: his agent. Marty always called to confirm breakfast appointments. Danny didn’t answer. Marty wouldn’t be expecting him to by now. Instead, he threw his phone into the middle of his messed-up bed and turned the shower on.

‘Jesus, Danny, your wife tried to warn me, but you’re worse than she said.’

‘You spoke to Sharon?’ Danny’s knife dropped to clang against the plate as he fixed on Marty. His toast would have to make do with being half-buttered.

‘Of course I did. You don’t answer your phone anymore.’

‘What did she say?’

‘That you were staying in a hotel. That you were drinking too much and that whatever hotel it was she was sure it would have a shit-hole bar to suit your new lifestyle. She wanted to know which hotel too. Obviously I said I didn’t know.’

Danny took a moment to look around. The Duke Inn doubled as the venue for their buffet breakfast. Shutters had been pulled down to conceal the bottles of alcohol but from their table he could still see the stool he had made his own. The interior of the place looked worse in the daylight. There was no hiding the carpets with their worn tracks to the bathrooms, the slapdash paint job in fading orange, or the fake fireplace stacked with dusty pine cones. His wife was right; she was always right.

‘I needed somewhere to go, somewhere she can’t find me. Just for now.’

‘You can’t stay here for ever.’

‘Nothing’s for ever, Marty. The last year has taught me that for sure.’

Marty smiled. He was Danny’s latest football agent and very likely to be his last. Danny had been through several, some of them representing far bigger players than he had ever become. But Marty was still typical of all of them. He had the expensive watch, the LaCoste motif on a crisp white polo shirt and again on fitted chinos that led down to shoes with no socks. He also had impossibly neat facial hair and, at that time, was partaking in the ‘man-bun’ craze that seemed to fit with the BMW coupe he had parked outside. The watch was on a monthly repayment, of course, the car too, and the combined amounts were eye-watering to the point that it meant Marty couldn’t rent in London like he aspired to. He would need players at bigger clubs for that. It was the unspoken truth between them but Danny didn’t think it would be long before Marty gave up on him. He was starting to get used to that.

Football had always been Danny’s obsession. He had never seen it as a negative thing. Until now, facing the end of his playing days with no real sense of a plan B.