Chapter Four: Goal

Though she had worn the Real Martinez training kit for a few sessions now, pulling on a match-day shirt that was not Hanmore’s and preparing to play a game wearing it felt traitorous.

Eve had been plucked from the streets of her estate at the age of nine by a coach who had just happened to be passing by. Having seen her battling for the ball among the boys, the coach had called her over and told her about Hanmore's newly formed girls academy and an open day they were holding. The boys had jeered but Eve had persuaded her mother to take her on the bus to give it a go. The rest was history and she had risen through Hanmore's ranks, holding her breath at the end of every year when decisions were made about who the club would keep hold of and who they would let go. She’d always survived the cut and had burst into tears of relief and joy when she'd been offered her first semi-professional contract at the age of eighteen. It had felt so good to be chosen by Hanmore. It had cemented in her a loyalty that had made her stay with them for two decades, even when other big clubs had come calling with bigger salaries. She had chanted ‘Hanmore till I die’ with the fans after every match, tapped the badge when she scored, and worn Hanmore kit even on her days off.  

The Real Martinez dressing room was noisy, full of Reggaeton beats that jarred her nerves, but Eve didn’t want to don her headphones in case it looked offish. She couldn’t even pretend to be invested in social media because opening Instagram these days was like an elbow to the chest on a cold pitch in January. There had been more photographs from Kate and Sam. They seemed to record everything, nothing was private, every dinner and trip was snapped and posted. This morning they were getting coffee with some other Hanmore players - people Eve had thought she was close to - and had heard nothing from since her move to Spain. Out of sight, out of mind, she told herself, and it was like something her mother might have said, which was funny because as soon as she thought of her mother, a message from her appeared. 

Your brother got a promotion at work. 

Eve bit her lip and sent back her congratulations but then another text appeared.  

Can't wait for the wedding.

Patrick was the golden child. Her younger brother who’d aced his A levels and got a well-paid job in finance straight-away. There’d been no gap year, no touring music festivals with his head full of drugs. He hadn't blown his wages on designer clothes or fast cars. Patrick worked long hours at his desk, had an attractive girlfriend who had an equally serious approach to life, and a mortgage on a three-bed terrace in Twickenham. Eve had their wedding date saved on her phone. Patrick was what her mother had wanted their father to be. 

Happy young Maria, the girl whose boots Eve had borrowed was jigging about to the beat but stopped in front of her and held up a hand for her to high five. ‘Vamos.’ 

Her enthusiasm couldn’t help but make Eve smile and she slapped the girl's palm in response.

The club had scheduled a friendly game, a pre-season warm-up against a team in the league below them. They’d boarded a bus to the stadium and spirits were generally high. Lucia however, sitting opposite Eve, had her head lowered, her shoulders hunched. Lucia Perez, Barcelona legend, was clearly not happy about her loan spell and was likely struggling as much with the idea of walking out in a Real Martinez shirt as Eve was.  

Mikel had only posted the starting eleven an hour previously by attaching a piece of A4 paper to the dressing room door. Different managers had different tactics, some did it as early as the day before, giving the players who would be on the bench time to adjust, while others favoured a few hours before kick off. The really good managers went as far as to speak with the subs and reassure them how valued they were; that they needed to be ready to come on and make a difference at any point in the game. Mikel had just left the list tacked to the door to be seen by the players when they arrived. Eve was not on it, even though she'd been pretty much a nailed-on starter at Hanmore. At first, she thought it was because she was new and the coach probably thought she needed time to bed into the team, but Lucia was just as new and was starting. Eve tried not to care or be offended, Lucia was a multiple Champions League winner after all. It would take a brave head coach to bench her. Eve watcher her out of the corner of her eye. The Spaniard was going through what seemed to be pre-game rituals, adjusting socks, tightening her hairband, preparing spare boots, even though she already had a pair on her feet - she was setting up for this nothing friendly like it was a world cup final. 

Eve trudged out of the changing room when directed and went through the motions of warming up, the rondos and drills. She looked around the stadium, noting the quietness and lack of a crowd. At Hanmore, every single match had been well-attended; well maybe not in the beginning, but as the club had grown and women’s football had become popular, they’d turned up in their thousands, even to friendlies. There wasn't even a hundred people in the Real Martinez stands. A few bored looking mothers with beer in plastic tumblers sat gossiping while their teenage daughters hung over the barriers, filming each other and the players on their mobile phones. A group of men half-stood and half-sat, their feet propped up on chairs, hands on one hip, were looking down at the pitch judgmentally as if their only purpose in attending was to mock and find fault. There was a tiny contingent of very enthusiastic supporters with signs and banners. Eve was a little bit worried that they were merely the family members of the players, and her fears were confirmed when one of the players waved up at them and shouted a greeting. 

What have I done? Eve asked herself. Maybe she could have braved it out, stayed at Hanmore, at least until another decent English club had come in for her, but then she would have had to play against Hanmore, which she never wanted to do. Maybe she could have waited until the American leagues had started, she could have been on a completely different continent to Kate. It was too late now though, she had signed a two-year contract. 

At least she had her own boots. Eve had asked her agent to call her sponsor when her boxes from London still hadn’t turned up on day two of her arrival in Spain. Her agent had sounded bothered and irritated, but numerous pairs of boots and a batch of branded sports bras had duly turned up, surprisingly quickly. For everything else, she had found a supermercado on an early morning stroll that sold everything from shampoo to knickers, to screwdrivers to surfboards.

When the game began, she took a seat on the plastic chairs that formed the bench and drummed the studs of her new boots against the tarmac, kicked them against each other and flexed her toes to break them in a little more. She watched the friendly unfold with equal amounts of frustration and hope. Real Martinez were not bad - but they were equally - not good. 

Their younger players seemed fascinated by their own ability with the ball, but entirely forgot their teammates existed. Eve watched, and tried not to judge, as they played a lot of fancy football that amounted to nothing. Lucia stormed around the pitch, looking ready to murder someone. She ate up tackles and won possession back repeatedly, spreading the play out, but she became visually more deflated as the match wore on, and her creative, clever playmaking went to waste. It was nil-nil when the half-time whistle blew. 

The half-time talk was delivered by an assistant coach in a mash-up Spanglish that didn’t benefit either the English or the Spanish speakers in the room. Eve wished that he’d just stuck to Spanish, at least she could have asked one of the English-speaking Maria’s to roughly translate for her. 

They trotted back onto the pitch in a general state of confusion. Eve had sort of expected, given that it was friendly, that the team would be heavily rotated, and she might be subbed-on at half-time, but she was immediately sent to the bench again. Mikel strutted around the technical area in a designer suit with his chest puffed out. He would mutter something occasionally to one of the other staff members but said nothing to the players. Eventually a goal came, a corner taken by Young Happy Maria, floated high into the air and was cleared off the line by one of the opposing team members only to hit to Lucia Perez and rebound off her to nestle in the back of the net. Lucia walked away without celebration, but the rest of the team jumped around and hollered like they had won the league. Lucia looked annoyed and embarrassed, as if she wanted the pitch to swallow her up whole. It was only when the player on the bench next to her doubled-over in laughter and slapped her knees that Eve understood exactly what had happened. 

‘She score with her ass. Miss Champions League scored from her ass,’ she roared at Eve, expecting her to join in with the joke.  

Eve mustered up a smile in response. ‘A goal’s a goal I guess.’ 

The manager was calling Lucia off and subbing someone else in. As Lucia passed her, she glanced at Eve as if daring her to laugh before marching off down the tunnel.  

There were no more goals. The game became flat and difficult for Real Martinez as the opposing team ‘parked the bus’. All ten of their outfield players camped in their own penalty area reducing shooting opportunities. Eve had not been asked to play, not even been told to warm up. When the final whistle blew, the second division club, which probably included a few part-timers with other jobs looked pleased. For them, holding Real Martinez to only one goal was almost a victory.  

Mikel seemed satisfied but said nothing, There was no post-match huddle. Some of Eve’s teammates went over to thank the few fans that had turned up for the friendly but Eve didn’t join them. Having not played, she felt awkward. The dressing room when she walked back into it was as boisterous as it had been before the match. She couldn’t help but compare it to Hanmore. Her previous club would not have been celebrating such a mediocre performance and result. But then, she supposed the season hadn't even started, and there were some very young players on the team who just wanted to have fun. Young Happy Maria was dancing, pizzas were arriving, plans were being made, and they were sweet enough to try and include her. 

‘We go to Jose’s Bar tonight, you come, yes you come?’ 

Eve laughed. ‘I think I’d cramp your style.’ 

They cajoled and didn’t want to take no for an answer. 

‘I am old,’ Eve told them. 

‘No, you are MILF.’ one of them replied. This caused belly laughs.  

Eve wasn’t sure if the young player knew exactly what she had said, or the true meaning of the phrase, because she was most definitely not a mother. They went on and on, to the point that she almost gave in just to shut them up, before the vice-captain, Greta, a German with impeccable English intervened to save her. ‘Eve cannot join you tonight, because she has already agreed to be my guest at home for a civilised dinner, away from you young wild brats, cooked expertly by my husband. Isn't that right, Eve?’ 

She and Greta hadn’t spoken much, but Eve had seen much to admire in her. She was steady, and her comments and direction in training were wise to the point that she probably would be the captain and not just a vice-captain if she were Spanish. She’d been at Real Martinez for many years. She was blonde and blue-eyed, tall and leggy. 

‘Dinner?’ Eve said dumbly, eyeing the pile of pizza boxes as Greta came to sit beside her. 

‘Yes, real food, my husband is a chef. A good and proper one.’ She lowered her voice to as she leaned in. ‘Did you have anything else to do?’ 

‘No,’ Eve admitted.  

‘Good. Then we will see you at seven, and you can meet Mateo.’ 

Lucia then came into the dressing room, having showered, her dark just below shoulder length hair was wet, and she wore only a towel. Eve watched as she wandered over to the cubby hole that held her things and had to avert her gaze when she realised she might have been staring. The music changed and an American rap artist chanted ‘I like big buts and I cannot lie’ over the speaker. There were some sniggers and them some more dancing before Lucia threw the towel aside angrily, and quickly donned underwear and a t-shirt. She then turned and faced the room and said something sharply in Spanish that seemed to quieten the youngsters. She then pulled on the rest of her clothes, slung a sports bag over her shoulders and stomped out in direction of the coach that had brought them here. 

Eve looked at the multilingual Greta for clarification. 

‘She said, Yes, I score with my butt. It is a shame none of you can score with your feet.’ 

‘Oh,’ Eve replied. ‘Can score with her butt, but can’t take a joke.’ 

Greta only raised an eyebrow. ‘I see you at seven. I will send the address.’