But as I sat in the corner of the pub with my chair mashed up against Adam Linley’s mobility scooter, gripping my wineglass and listening to his interminable ramble that included, among many other self-pitying side notes, how he’d been kicked out of university because of an incident with a stolen exam paper, how he could have been an elite athlete if he hadn’t “popped a fucking gasket” from a hernia that turned gangrenous, and how useless everyone that worked in the government Health Department was, I realized it was entirely possible I’d assumed wrong.

It turned out the day before the night we’d got together thirteen years ago was actually the last time Adam had ever run around a football field. At any decent speed, anyhow. He’d woken up in my room before dawn with some unreliable memories and the hangover from hell, so after getting himself home (no mention of my sandwich maker, I noticed) he’d climbed into his own bed and slept for fourteen hours straight. Naturally, that was the day the selectors from West Ham had come calling, and he’d missed his chance of becoming one of the most famous players in history. Apparently. Although while he was talking I did get a sudden vague flashback to him pulling a clipping of himself on the front page of the Edinburgh News out of his pocket at some stage of our liaison, so I guess it could have been true.

He slowed down and looked a bit thoughtful when he got to that part, and I wondered if he was just now figuring out he might be able to blame me for it. Anyhow, according to Adam, that week turned into the beginning of the end. His coach had been so angry with him that they’d ended up in a huge fight, so he didn’t show up to training for the rest of the month, either. Then he’d been kicked off the team and then, you know, the hernia and the incident with the stolen exam paper, yada yada yada. With university a bust, he came home to Bournemouth and took a job at a local bakery chain, where his mum had worked her entire adult life.

Persistent complications with his hernia meant even joining the local football team was off the cards, so he’d thrown himself wholeheartedly into his new career. It seems Adam’s collaboration with The Crusty Slice turned out to be the most successful thing he’d ever done, working his way up to area manager in twelve months and close on doubling his body weight in eighteen. But his rapid increase in size brought a whole lot of new health issues, and “fucking Crusty’s” (“I gave them two fucking years of my fucking life”) had started to object to the amount of time off he needed to go to blood-pressure and obesity clinics. In the end they laid him off with a lousy redundancy package and an excuse that they were downsizing.

“As opposed to what I did myself, clearly. Ha ha ha.”