Two Halves

By Nic Stevenson

Scott is in his late twenties, he’s bored with his job, settled in his relationship, and the only time he gets excited any more is when he’s watching the football.

Then he meets Suzi during the 2006 World Cup and his life gets turned upside down.

Two Halves is a book about football, girls, growing up and what happens when you get what you want.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nic Stevenson
• Release date: Jun 3, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452398778

Nic Stevenson

27 years old, Londoner, football and music fan, married man, animal lover, tech geek.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Looking back now, it feels like for every beat of my heart that summer, there was the kick of a ball. It was all new to me that year: the crisp colour of the grass; red crosses on white; and the religious, exultant emotion of it all. It was the World Cup in Germany that year, the first time I had cared enough to watch more than the final, and the first time I realised that love might mean more than being with one person for the rest of my life.

That year, as with so many others, England played the Grecian hero, predicting and inevitably playing into their own destiny and going out on penalties, but for most people the competition will be memorable for one thing; Zidane’s extra time head butt to the heart of Marco Materazzi in the final – ending the international career of the best player in the world . Italy were never supposed to win that match and lift the Jules Rimmet, and Zidane was never supposed to end his career that way, but football managed to be more like life than anyone expected and the unexpected triumphed.

I watched the first game of the competition on a Friday night after work; down in the pub with the guys to take part in the quadrennial football focus. Later that night, I saw Suzi again. A month later when the final ticked out its inevitable 120 minutes, everything had changed.

Suzi was six years younger than me, but seemed to have lived 10 years longer; she had done everything and been everywhere. We met at a party Gemma had dragged me to, a 2 hour drive south of the river to hang out with a bunch of advertising execs – like a work day but at the weekend. In fact I’m fairly sure I missed one of the England friendlies because of the drive. When we got there, she captured me almost instantly, this hazel-eyed, elfin girl, 22 and fresh back from Kuala Lumpur.

We talked for hours that night, I don’t know what Gemma’s friends thought, but I reckoned Gemma would just be pleased to see me engaging with someone at one of her parties. It was in a big Edwardian terrace in Crystal Palace, owned by one of her trust fund uni friends, with decking and tea light candles across the back garden and a swing seat we shared.

I was settling into my normal role, finding a quiet place to capture my thoughts and make occasional forays into conversation with strangers, when I saw her, alone and chewing a straw, sat in the garden. I spent the next 30 minutes working out how to approach her, how to say hello, how to impress her, before she walked up and invited me to join to her on the swing, like we were five year olds in the local park.

Gemma was doing her usual thing of flitting between every group and drinking enough. I had, of course, driven, so after one Magners switched to Coke, expecting the others’ descent to a drunker level as I stayed sober and upstanding. Suzi changed that, she sipped a glass of wine, but never got drunk in the three hours we were together. We perched side-by-side on the swing and talked about Asia at first; I had travelled in India three summers previously, just before I met Gemma when I started at WMB, and visited Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia after Uni. She had travelled all over, visiting places I hadn’t heard of - even some countries that had passed the encyclopaedia of Scott by.

And now I’m back here, living in New Cross, working at my sister’s firm and bored to death. All day long surrounded by people who are striving towards something I can’t even understand. This, about 45 minutes into our relationship came like a plea. I basically don’t understand how people grow up from who they are until they’re 21 to the people they are for the rest of their lives. It seems like leaping off some giant chasm, never really knowing whether your feet will land down in snow, on sand, against rock or into a deep, freezing river.

I pause for the first time.

Sorry, I shouldn’t rant like that, not when we’ve just met.

It’s fine, it’s fine. All I wanted to do at this point was to not say ‘everyone feels that’, and avoid saying, ‘when I was your age...’.

It’s just, looking back, everything kinda glows, and I look forward and all there is is this drab, plodding future, nothing like I expected but totally unavoidable.

Welcome to the world I thought, but she looked so uniquely disturbed by this everyday realisation that it touched me and reminded me of the year after I finished uni. I worked as a copy boy in this giant, impersonal ad agency, churning out text for adverts that no-one ever saw. The highlight of 18 months work was being asked to proof read that ad that goes ‘Erer, if you can corect this advert you could geta job as a proof reader.’ I’ve still not worked out how they wanted me to proof that.

You know, I think a lot of people feel like you do. I know I have done, sometimes still do. There it was – that inevitable patronising empathy. But most people don’t act on it. Most people live it out, always think of themselves as unique and able to have this completely awe-inspiring life, but never actually do anything about it. I always thought that the people who become famous or infamous, Dylans, Warhols, Kerouacs , they’re the ones who don’t ever give up the ideal of achievement.

Her mother was French, her father Malay – she had ended up growing up in London when he had been posted as a diplomat here for 10 years. They had left when she was 14, she decided that she wanted to stay, so she had, living on floors and in spare rooms for 3 years until she finished her exams and went off to university, a year earlier than the rest of us. After that she had had the life I wished I’d had, drifting through uni and making her money by singing and playing piano in jazz bars around Oxford.

Next to that, my potted biography sounded just that. School, university, travel, job in advertising, long-term girlfriend and carefully nurturing the beginnings of a lifetime of debt. And the new idea of a new career that would make it all ok and make my life interesting again every two to three months until Gemma (usually sensibly) talked me out of it. Last year it had been landscape gardener; then the police; very briefly the army; and recently teaching and journalism. It’s not much of a story, let’s call it modern-everyman ennui, but she listened and chatted and as we told each other the stories of ourselves I knew I wanted to see her again, alone. I could still flatter myself that it was an intellectual thing, not a sexual one, that it was the things we had in common - mainstream jazz and underground rock, indie cinema and trendy literature - that were attractive, not the pixie nose and ever-so nearly but not quite see-through lacy Victorian blouse with no bra beneath it.

As evening turned into night we ate nibbles and chatted more, the tea lights illuminating her face and allowing glimpses of the splash of freckles across her nose. She was there alone. Her sister and her worked at the same firm, the plan had been that she would accompany big sis to get more contacts while sis did her thing with the others, but she had had to cancel at the last minute, leaving Suzi knowing nearly as few people as I did and looking for some to latch on to. The first time being the guy at the party in the corner on his own had paid out for me.

-----

The feeling of the wall behind my back was uncomfortable, the tightness of my jeans around my thighs was getting painful, the effort of trying to stay on my feet while balancing her weight in my arms was distracting. It should have been the thought that I was in an upstairs bedroom, with a girl I met two hours earlier wrapping her legs around my waist and trying to reach between her legs to manoeuvre me out of my boxers while my long-term girlfriend was downstairs chatting to various trustafarians and hedgies that distracted me. But strangely it only started to worry me when I heard from the open window Gemma’s voice shouting out to the bottom of the garden to see where I was.

Shit.

What?

Didn’t you hear that?

Um, the sound of desire slipping rapidly away from me? Nope, didn’t notice it so it must still be here.

Right, ok, so that was my girlfriend, the girl I came here tonight with, the girl I live with. Anyway, that was her. Looking for me.

Well she was outside right? Let’s worry if she actually starts looking in the right spatial dimensions eh?

What, like upstairs?

Ah ha.

So we did. Or rather we didn’t. Worry that is.

And that cost us a good three minutes. Meaning that when we heard Gemma’s voice on the stairs coming up, three rooms down the hall (bathroom, we’d tried; second bedroom, already a couple in there; then a locked door) we only had about 30 seconds to get dressed and get out.

Scott. The call again, a little hint of impatience, maybe some worry in there too.

Fuck. Bollocks.

I thought that was what we were trying, well roughly.

Why was she so fucking calm? Did she do this a lot?

Shit. Get dressed, she’ll be here in a second. You go out that door.

Scott! A exclamation mark in her voice now, I could hear a door handle turning – the bathroom. Two rooms to go before us. Great time to develop acute hearing Scott, if only it could have come with added spidey senses.

Well I would, but that door’s an ensuite.

Shit. I was pulling up my jeans, trying to do my shirt up one handed while I scrambled around for the belt she had whipped off me.

Scott... This one trailing off, worry at the end of the syllable. She’d found the other couple, thank god they had been there to push us further down the corridor. Oh, er, sorry. Look you haven’t seen a bloke wondering around have you? The answer was too muffled for me to hear but Gemma obviously didn’t like it. No you fuck off, who the fuck do you think you are? And what are you, bloody fourteen, shagging in someone else’s bed. Wanker. Slammed door.

Ah great, now she was pissed off as well. I’d got the jeans sorted, the belt through most of its loops, only the shirt remained. Suzi, wearing so little that dressing was easy, looked like she had started to take the problem more seriously when she heard Gemma having a go. She was scouting round the room for hiding places, realising that in about ten seconds, Gemma was going to plough through the door and we would need to do some serious explaining.

The problem was, minimal design being what it is, there was bloody nowhere for her to go.

I could hear Gemma trying the locked door now. Feet away from us. I felt sweat patches appear under the arms of the still unbuttoned shirt, and as I did the last two buttons up with one hand, pushed Suzi into the bathroom with the other, turned and pulled the door to as Gemma pushed open the other one across the bed.

Our eyes met and she looked somewhere between bemused and ballistic.

Oh hello.

Oh, hello? I suppose you didn’t hear me shouting? Then shouting at the twats next door?

Um.

I was going to need to raise my game.

Um. No.

Good job. That would be fine.

Um. No. I was, I was in the loo to be honest, had the fan on. The, uh, the curry. I think something about it didn’t agree with me.

Right.

Right. So, I’m, uh, about ready to go. I think. You?

She was still looking odd. There was a mirror over the bed to my right and her left, I would have had to lean forward and round to see my reflection in it from where I stood, so I was edging around the bed until I could glance in that and at her at the same time. First glance was ok. Shirt on the right way round. Jeans on. Hair. Ah, hair all over the place. I didn’t even remember her touching my hair, but it looked like a wolverine had been burrowing in my barnet. Not a good look and certainly not the one I had had when she had last seen me. As I walked around the bed towards her, self-conscious of my self-consciousness and the sweat on my lip, she moved towards me.

Yeah, I’m good to go, That’s why I spent the last ten minutes looking for you Scott. But first I need the loo. She indicated the door behind me with a nod of her chin.

Bollocks. Big fat sweaty scabby bollocks. Who the fuck told her that the door was an ensuite, not a wardrobe, or a dumb waiter, or the ninth portal to the blazing inferno of Hades. Oh right, me.

You sure? We should probably get going no? Got to be at your parents tomorrow morning. Well, this morning.

Yes, I’m sure. I need to pee. It’ll take two minutes.

Ok. Right. Listen, like I said, that curry really did not agree with me. To be honest I’d give it a minute in there. Well, actually, I’d give it about an hour in there. And if you’ve got one of those biohazard suits and can pee through it, I’d wear that when you go in.

I wasn’t convincing anyone.

Listen, I’ve lived with you deciding to go to the loo just as I want to do my makeup in the morning for long enough to be able to cope I’d say.

She paused, looked like she might be rethinking her decision, giving me a few long, agonising moments of hope, then she swung the door wide open, took a step into the bathroom and started to close the door behind her.

And sprang backwards out of the room, slamming the door shut and spluttering:

Jesus fucking god, Scott, that’s disgusting, did you even flush it?

-----

The car home, the downstairs loo successfully, I presume, used.

Who was the girl? I’m used to you going to sit in the corner for all night, but at least tonight you took a little friend.

Suzi, she’s in marketing or PR or something. So candidly concealing. She was an account assistant at fashion PR firm called She Relations. She was there with her fella, a fellow dragee. No she wasn’t, she was singularly fellowless. Or at least that’s what she’d told me.

So you bonded in opposition did you?

Something like that.

I sank back quiet, absorbed by the rain on the windshield and the passing lights, Morrissey softly on the stereo and Gemma slipping from sleep and back. The only thing I could think about, the whole drive home, was ‘what on earth had that pretty little girl done in the bathroom to drive Gemma out so quickly?’

-----

We pulled up and as I stretched out of the car Gemma shook herself awake. I opened the door and stepped in, waiting for her to follow me. She did, but before I could close the door, she had wrapped herself around me and was whispering about being together and her love for me. I slipped the door shut and held her close, making the promises and praises she expected, but as we made love, Suzi’s face flickered in and out of my mind like a TV picture in a gale.

After, I went downstairs for some water. Mira, the little black cat which was about the only thing I brought to our relationship, was perched on the kitchen table, mewling for attention as I stepped into the darkened room. Even hours later, I could still see the slight upturn of her nose, and hear the delicate accent of her voice. As I petted and spoke to Mari, I was lost in my thoughts of her, and I knew that although it broke every rule, and could lead to worse than that, I would have to see her again. Slipping my hand into my jeans pocket I could feel the sharp corners of her card against my thumb.

With only the light of the street lamp across the road casting orange shadows across the hall I scouted out where my mobile had come to rest as Gemma and I had fallen up the stairs to bed. Pulling out the card, I turned it over to read the message printed across the back in neatly spaced curling writing, Call me. This was more fun than I expected 07790 589895. Pressed into my hand as Gemma was in the toilet, not a word. What did it mean that ‘expected’? Was she talking about the party, our conversation, or maybe my clumsy and out of practice attempts at flirting and even clumsier and even more out-of-practice attempts at sex in someone else’s house?

In a sense it mattered little as I thumbed at the mobile, tapping into the key pad I had a fun time tonight. I want to see you again. You say when and where. Push send and gone, the start of one thing and the end of another.

Chapter 2

Driving again. This time we were going westward around the North Circular in lazy Sunday traffic, past Ikeas and Polish food stores, towards Gemma’s parents in Harrow. It was a Sunday routine, dinner at the parents in the afternoon, pub with her school friends in the evening. Ever since we had met I had got on really well with her parents and her brother Stewart and sister Anna; and her friends were pretty much my friends now too, so Sunday’s routine was something I usually looked forward to.

That morning though, I had been distracted, barely murmuring in response to Gemma’s questions about the night before and raising no interest in the papers or the TV. I had still received no response from my text the previous evening, and was bouncing back and forward between trying to decide when to give it another go or whether to just accept that if she was interested in me she would respond, and if not, it was definitely for the best.

During the drive I had been grateful for the bleating from Radio 1 to distract attention from my distracted attention, but now we were pulling up to the house and I would have to pull it together. Gemma’s parents lived in a huge town house in Harrow on the Hill; a 5 bedroom, 4 bathroom, 3 storey monster with a 30 metre back garden, bought back when London property was worth less than platinum. John, her dad, was a self-made man in the proper sense of the term, not a Richard Branson boaster, but a guy who had come out of school with no qualifications, got himself a trade (plumbing) and worked his way up until he had his own business employing 15 people and pulling in a hefty profit. Next to my hand waving, ‘new economy’ advertising job it was a proper career, masculine, traditional and timeless. We’ll always need a plumber; a senior copywriting exec – that I’m less sure about.

John had been one of the main factors in getting me more and more into football, he was a lifetime Spurs fan, grew up in Northumberland Park about 5 minutes walk from Whitehart Lane and liked to boast that he was in a pram when he went to his first game there. Between him and the constant Arsenal, Chelsea rivalry at the office, a sport I had shown little interest in, and less ability at, since the age of five was dragging me into its nationwide grip. John and I had been to a few Spurs games, me feeling like an impostor, him knowing everyone and making sure I was made welcome – like a personal recruiting sergeant to both the beautiful game and Spurs. It didn’t half grate on him that I lived closer to the Lane than he did, and he lived closer to Stanford Bridge than Spurs.

At least Spurs gave me something to argue with the new money / new success Chelsea fans at work but it still felt wrong for me to be a football fan at all. None of my old friends could quite believe it I don’t think