Chapter 17

17

HAYDEN

Rae jogs over to the sixth-form kids waiting for him. He takes his roll of paper from one and then heads off with them towards the woods, only he walks the last few steps backwards, as if keeping me in sight is important.

Typing a quick text to Kirsty then is easy. I send it before I can change my mind.

Hayden: Might actually make it back for their birthday during the half-term break.

She replies just as swiftly, all exclamation marks and heart-eye emojis. So fucking many of them. My screen fills with her excitement.

Kirsty: Can’t wait to tell the girls!!!

I type quickly one more time.

Hayden: Don’t say anything just yet. I need to double-check my schedule.

I already know that Marc and Stefan would chase me out of Cornwall if I asked them—they’re all about making time for family, which their fast reply proves while also confirming that they’re a massive pair of dickheads.

Marc: So that’s a yes to a November wedding, right?

Stefan: Mum wants to know how many tiers you want on your cake.

He’s a wanker. They both are. So are the other farmers in our group chat who send rude emojis, but who also confirm that I could make it happen. I tell them I’ll let them know for certain as soon as I can, then follow that with another message to Kirsty.

Hayden: If I can make it happen, would it be okay to bring a plus-one?

My screen fills again with more emojis that I can’t help smiling down at, which is how Luke Lawson finds me.

“Good news?” he asks.

“Uh, yeah. Yes, I hope so.” I almost slide my phone away, and Luke must see my hesitation.

“Go ahead if you need to reply.” He tilts his head at the football left on the grass. “We’re so close to the half-term break now that I had a sudden urge to play instead of working.” He takes a shot, which goes wide of the goal to a chorus of oohs from the little ones in Rowan’s outdoor classroom.

“Try again, Mr. Lawson,” Asa shouts through a gap in the fence. He repeats what I’ve told him while trying out new ways to make his mark in my clearing. “Practice makes progress.”

Luke does take a second shot, although I’m pretty sure he misses it on purpose. A final bell rings, signalling it is time for lessons to start, and I quickly fish my phone from my pocket to send one last message. Not to Kirsty. I type this one to Rae, my thumbs stuttering all over the screen before I get my shit together.

Hayden: Catch up with me later? Need to ask you something.

Luke saunters back, seemingly in no hurry to return to his study. “I’ve been hoping for some good news too.”

He inclines his head at the pitch again, his eyebrows rising. He’s asked me once already if I’ll coach football for him. I guess this is him asking if I’ve reconsidered. He also offers a get out.

“Mitch has volunteered to help with the after-school footy club. He is a very busy man though.” Luke quickly adds, “I know you are too.” Here is additional proof that he’s a real local. “For a few more weeks, at least, until the harvest is in.” He inclines his head one more time, this time towards a goalmouth I never expected to stand in again. “Only you looked so at home there, and I know the boys were impressed with your stopping skills. With your advice too. When it comes to coaching, that’s what really matters, isn’t it?”

“What does?”

“Having the trust and respect of your players.” Luke meets my eyes. “Mitch talks a good game, but he’s honest about only knowing so much because someone he supports lives and breathes the sport.”

He means Justin.

That’s who I picture now. I also can’t help remembering what barely registered with me years ago, but Justin did come to plenty of my matches before I got scouted. He sat behind Dad, so I bet he soaked up a ton of knowledge.

Luke continues. “That’s what we do for people we care about, isn’t it? Get involved with their passion, especially if they’re an important person in our lives. Of course you’d want to speak the same language as them, especially if communication otherwise is an issue.”

I guess that he is still talking about Justin. I have only ever heard him mutter a few words—even if they were devastating—but it’s Dad I picture, who struggled with speech at the end, but who worked so hard to keep communicating if soccer was the subject.

All those stories about how he nearly made it?

How he took up coaching after he didn’t, and learned to love it?

I wish I’d listened harder to them.

To him.

Luke crosses the grass to retrieve a football. He touches it with the tip of a shiny black shoe and says, “The difference between you and Mitch is that you can’t only talk about the game. You’ve lived it for real in a way that makes you an exceptional example.”

That’s the second time he’s used that word to describe me.

Exceptional.

Fuck knows why this shoots out from me. “My reason for not playing wasn’t exceptional though, was it?”

There isn’t anyone left out here on the pitch other than him and me. No one else can have heard me admit that. Only Luke and I are out here playing hooky. We’re also playing footy, passing the ball to each other, and the little ones must all be lined up at the fence of Rowan’s classroom watching—they cheer when Luke chips the ball at me and I catch it in a foot stall.

That catch is pure muscle memory, not deliberate showboating, but I flick it up in the air to another cheer, and the next series of flick-ups I launch into is as easy as breathing.

Easier.

I don’t have to think. The ball goes where I send it. I catch it on my knee where it balances as if glued there, then I let it fall only to catch it in another foot stall, all to a chorus of little ohs and ahs from the watching children . Then I boot it up, sending it soaring to a host of cheers and to another sound that carries across the grass to me.

Fucking drumming.

A quick glance over my shoulder shows Rowan tapping away on the classroom fence with sticks as I flick the ball up again for a last time, barely able to hear Luke over that percussion and the children’s excitement.

He says, “Don’t mix up having to leave that academy with you having to stop playing. No one can take the game from you, Hayden. No one.”

Apart from me.

For the second time today, I end up in goal, this time with a line of little children taking shots at me. They all get to put a ball in the back of the net to an accompaniment of Rowan drumming along with their run-ups.

I only really reach to stop one shot.

Luke isn’t a sore loser. He laughs. He also says, “Those sixth-form students knew the difference between you and Mitch the moment you got a foot on a ball. It’s why they listened.” He offers me the ball.

I want to take it.

I can’t.

“I’ve got to go.” I point to the kids. “They’re waiting for me.”

Little Asa breaks away from the line of children. He’s usually distracted but today he’s deadly serious. “Come to our footy club, Mr. Novac!”

He darts away, but I’m stuck.

I’m also torn.

Luke lands a hand on my shoulder one last time. “Maybe talk to Mitch about dropping in on one of his coaching sessions. Start small. No worry, no hurry.”

“Maybe.” That’s actually another no, and I guess Luke knows it. Those forehead furrows deepen. I allow a small concession. “I’ll mention it when I next see him.”

That turns out to be much sooner than I’m prepared for.

Mitch is my mentor today, and is waiting at the clearing when I get there with the children.

He isn’t alone.

Justin hovers in the background, clutching what looks like one of Rae’s sketchbooks. And that is who else waits in the clearing with his students.

“We were just leaving,” Rae promises. His voice lowers. “But I can hang around if…” He tips his head in Mitch’s direction, and I’m caught like I was in that river, pulled by opposing currents. One tugs me closer to Rae because he thinks I need defending. The other pulls me closer to the real truth, which floods out.

“No. It’s okay. You don’t need to stay. Mitch is a good guy.”

He is. Even now when he’s got his own work to do, he’s here to help me out. And he stopped the kids from taking headers I didn’t even know were risky, didn’t he? Which was the exact opposite of what my last coaches demanded from me. He even flashes a smile my way, although it’s wary, and that’s…

My fault.

I’ve hung back too often. Avoided him and Justin. Now I almost feel Luke’s hand on my shoulder again, and I do my best to live up to his image of me.

“Hey, Mitch. Good to see you.” I include Justin. “Both of you.”

That’s nothing exceptional, is it? It’s only a simple greeting, and the bare minimum of politeness. Mitch beams like I made his whole day brighter. “Good to see you too.” He’s so smiley, it’s contagious. His big voice booms. “Ready to play?”

And we do for this last session before the half-term break.

We play until lunch, or the kids and Mitch do at least. I’m not sure when I realise that I’ve taken on the role of session leader, but I stand back the way that Charles and Luke and Rowan have role-modelled for weeks. And like them, I observe before I make suggestions. Mitch is more of a man of action—of big moves and even bigger bursts of laughter—but he also keeps coming to me for input.

“Their concentration is amazing. I didn’t expect it from the really little ones,” he confesses. He also frowns. “Should he have that hammer?” He means Asa, who taps away just like I taught him. Mitch frowns even harder. “Adults with brain injuries sometimes need a lot of supervision. I kinda thought the kids would need an even closer eye kept on them, not less.”

“Oh, they still need watching.” It’s pretty much all I need to do now I’ve got a better handle on the individual trajectories that Charles says they can shoot for so much faster when they’re self-directed. “Asa knows what he’s doing.”

I say it within his earshot because I know how motivating a coach’s praise can feel, and Asa deserves some. He’s far from having ants in his pants now, so I go ahead and give him some more armour for his future in case he meets a coach like my last ones.

“I can see how hard he’s been listening to me. How closely he’s watched my demonstrations.” Yes, Asa watched while fiddling with all the nails in a container, but I didn’t need to watch him for long to see he was actually sorting and categorising, his hands busy while his brain was even busier learning. “I can trust him to ask for help if he needs it.” I sit in that storytelling chair Charles once called a throne, and for once it does feel like I rule here. “I’ll be right here if he needs me.”

We both watch Asa work as Mitch crouches beside me. “What’s he doing?” he asks quietly.

“Making his mark.”

He is, even if it takes him all morning to do it. By the end of the session, a child who was too wriggly to sit still is done. He’s also bursting with pride to show off what he’s created when Rowan arrives to collect the kids for their lunch.

Asa holds up one of those thin log slices that I chainsawed, clutching this one in front of his chest like a shield. “Look!” The wide and shiny heads of those nails now spell out his name, and fuck me if my chest doesn’t puff almost as much as his.

I’m still chuffed when Rae passes through the clearing again with his students on his way back to the main school building for lunch. He smiles across the clearing and calls out, “Someone looks happy,” as a beam of sunlight crowns him with licks of flame in a reminder of the very first time I met him.

Back then, I mistook him for someone I once thought could fill my future. It isn’t Marc I see in that role these days. It hasn’t been in forever. Now Rae looks at me the same way Marc looks at Stefan, and fuck permanent being off my agenda.

Like Asa’s work this morning, Rae’s name might as well be hammered across my chest.

Maybe it’s a good thing he isn’t staying.

I won’t be able to claw out those nails if they lodge any deeper.

“Listen,” Rae says, this bright smile another hammer blow to my heart. “I just had some amazing news—” He can’t have noticed that Mitch is still present until that moment. Rae suddenly halts, asking me a silent question, which I can read with zero problem.

You okay?

That’s a sudden reminder of someone else I haven’t stopped thinking about all morning, who also spoke to me with his eyes. And who, if I’m honest, has been on my mind for months now, even though he’s long departed.

Mitch picks up on that, and if he’d ushered me over to a picnic table where Justin now sits with that sketchpad any sooner, I wouldn’t have joined him. Couldn’t have. Today, I watch him help the brain-injured man he’s supported for years by opening what turns out to be a scrapbook full of memories I’m not prepared for.

“That’s…” I sit more heavily than I mean to, and of course my hands shake. Anyone’s would in the same situation. “That’s Dad.”

A different hand lands on my shoulder. Rae has sent his students for lunch. He’s alone, but for once I don’t feel like I am while faced with what made me hide in woodland.

“That’s…” He studies the photo. “That’s your back garden, yeah?” Rae asks. “Those are the goal posts you showed me?” Giant sunflowers stand in a row behind them, and I nod like they used to.

“They are,” Mitch agrees. He sits beside Justin. “You’ve followed the local team for years, haven’t you, mate?” he gently prompts him. “And what do the team all call you?”

“Number one fan,” Justin mutters. He shifts in his seat as if agitated and snaps that scrapbook closed. This is fierce, if faint, from him. “Still my team.”

“That’s right, they’re still your team,” Mitch promises, his tone reassuring. His glance my way seems apologetic. “So it was a bit of a surprise when the son of one of your favourite coaches didn’t want to see your scrapbook. Because that’s who Mr. Novac was to you, yeah? Your favourite coach after your accident.”

Mitch touches his own forehead, but my gaze fixes on the deep depression in Justin’s, a clue that he’s played through plenty of pain of his own. It means I can say this without choking.

“He was my best coach too.”

Here I go again, reading eyes instead of needing to hear Mitch say thank you. His crinkle at their corners to send that message across the table to me while he aims this next comment at Rae, who takes a seat on the bench beside me. “Justin didn’t grow up locally. Before his accident, he was a prospect in the city. In Plymouth. Your dad remembered seeing him play for the under-elevens when they were up against Porthperrin in school tournaments.”

Trust Dad to never forget a player with potential. Now Mitch swallows, his gaze fixed on Justin. “That was your superstar heyday, right, mate?” His fingertips graze his brow again. “And when Justin came to me and wanted to watch some live footy, your dad welcomed him back, didn’t he? Mr. Novac let you watch practices with those kids you used to play against, didn’t he, J-man? Made sure no one took your seat. Kept you right in the middle of all that football gossip, and he let me take photos to help you remember.”

He pauses. This time, his gaze lands on me and stays there. “And he invited Justin to your home so he could practise kicking a ball into the back of a real net with no one watching. Made sure everyone was out. Didn’t matter if you missed a shot, did it, J-man, or if you fell over.”

“No.”

Justin’s death grip on his book loosens. He hasn’t spoken with emotion around me until today. He’s been fierce once already. That same fierceness is loud and clear all over again.

“Miss him.”

Me too, mate.

Me too.

Mitch pushes the scrapbook closer to me, and he’s got a big voice, right? Can boom loudly enough that the whole school could hear him, if he wanted.

This is so, so gentle.

“Justin still goes to games now. Still sits with the local team. They all followed your progress while you were away. You know what clubs are like.”

I do. I almost suggest hotbeds of gossip only he has a different viewpoint.

“Protective of their home-grown talent. Invested in their futures, especially when there’s a strong family connection. And if that family connection ends all too abruptly?” He touches the edge of that goal-post photo. “The club gets even more protective. Add in what happened right before you got your big shot…” He glances Rae’s way before locking with me again, and who the fuck knows what he sees, or if he was about to spill a loser label that I so want to leave behind me.

It’s an unwelcome flashback to Justin mentioning the shame I hoped I hadn’t brought back to Cornwall with me.

Luke Lawson suggested that old shame wasn’t mine to carry. Now Mitch lets me off the hook of having to feel more of it in front of Rae by not being explicit. Instead, he makes a promise.

“The reason why things didn’t pan out for you doesn’t matter. Clubs talk, but they close ranks around their own, now and forever.”

He’s telling me my fall from grace will stay between us, and relief floods me.

He tags on a quiet, “If that’s what you want?”

The reason why I do sits right beside me.

Rae sets down his roll of paper, and I hope to fuck he’s drawn me on it as strong instead of weak. As someone he’s glad he crossed short-term paths with. Right now, I don’t want to step out of a story where he sees me as a giant. I’ve also seen him sketching us hurtling downhill while wet and laughing.

He’s my rush now. My high. My healing from all the old wounds that faded the moment he showed me how he saw me.

As a hero whose journey isn’t over.

Now I show him a hero of my own, and this time, when I reach for that scrapbook, Justin lets me take it.

Dad fills it.

So do I, and I can’t speak. I can only turn page after page that shows us on so many pitch sides along with other players. Mitch names them, but I barely hear him. I’m focussed on images of me with skinny legs and goalie gloves that look massive on me before I got my growth spurt. Dad’s taller than me in many of these snaps, stooping while pointing at a goalmouth. For a moment, seeing both of us in profile is confusing.

I could be the adult, we’re so alike now.

I turn more pages to be confronted with a reversal. Dad is in a wheelchair with me stooping to point out gameplay, and Rae’s hand lands on my thigh.

Fuck knows why I feel that touch somewhere else—this pressure right over my chest is a phantom reminder, a sensory ghost telling me to breathe, so I do my best to inhale and exhale while Mitch keeps going.

“I’ve been with Justin for over twelve years. He couldn’t talk when I first started working with him. Too much damage. Too many dead ends in his noggin. Brains are brilliant though, aren’t they, mate?” He nudges Justin, who nods just like that owl I showed Rae by the river, looking wise and solemn. “Everything in the traumatic brain injury textbooks says that maximising sensory input helps to forge new connections. When people with TBIs engage more senses, their progress can be amazing. There’s no better place for that to happen than in nature. I knew that, but I had no real idea about where to start.”

There’s a smile in his voice next. “Back then, you could have written what this city boy knew about working outdoors on the back of a condom wrapper and had room left over.” He flips another page, taking me back in time to Dad’s days as a moorland warden. In this image, he’s at work with a younger Justin as his shadow. “Your dad told me about the Haven. How it had a focus on gardening.” He tilts his head in the direction of the care home. “And he reached out when I started work there. Offered to teach me about nature.” The smile in his tone turns serious. “Every single activity I do outdoors grew from the seeds he planted. You better believe it was a fucking privilege to return the favour.”

Mitch shows me how.

He shows Rae too by turning a last page. This one holds familiar sheets covered in words and phrases, and in single alphabet letters. The later cards only show pictures. Some are highlighted the same way we would highlight whichever picture or word Dad stared at, piecing together our last conversations.

Rae surprises me by saying, “I use these.” He touches a row of images showing facial expressions. “So I can work with kids even if I don’t have an interpreter.”

That’s what Mitch did, if he was who gave these tools to Kirsty. He helped us interpret for Dad when he physically couldn’t tell us what he needed. Now Mitch touches his temple. “When the PSP kicked in and communicating became hard for your dad, Justin put this scrapbook together for him. Used to show it to him when your dad came to the club, neither of them talking, both of them enjoying your journey.”

Rae asks, “PSP?”

Mitch waits a beat before answering for me, thank fuck, because there’s no way I can say this. “Progressive supranuclear palsy. Presents a little like Parkinson’s, but the progression is different and can be much faster.”

So fucking fast.

“That’s tough on families,” Mitch says.

It was tough on Dad, not on me. Tougher still on Kirsty, who had to hold us all together. The triplets were too little to be aware, which was the only blessing.

Mitch isn’t done yet. “That’s why we wanted you to have this.” He pulls out one of those communication sheets. “I mean, you can have the whole scrapbook, but this is the last conversation he had with Justin, so it seems kinda special.”

This communication sheet is covered with single letters. Only four of them are highlighted.

Mitch says, “He was looking at photos of you.”

Rae pieces those four letters together.

“Star.”

I’m voiceless. Almost sightless, as well. All I can do is hear Mitch ask a string of questions followed with a firm promise.

“If he could see what you’ve done with your life? What you’ve made here? What a chip off the old block you’ve grown into? Hayden, I guarantee he’d still think the same about you.”