The Kicks: An original novel
Meet Eve Middleton, a legend at Women's Super League Club, Hanmore WFC, whose world is turned upside down when her girlfriend betrays her with a teammate. Heartbroken and needing an escape route, she makes the rash decision to join struggling Spanish side Real Martinez.
And now all the rules of the game are changing - a new shirt, a new language, a new manager who sees no need for tactics, and a scary, slow-burning, entirely unexpected new crush.
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Chapter One
The plane touched down, bumping and shuddering, jarring Eve's nerves, as its wheels met the hot Spanish tarmac. She was holding her breath and her hands were balled into fists in her lap. Her eyes were screwed tightly shut until she felt someone tap her arm in a comforting way and she was forced to look at the woman in the seat next to her who said something she didn’t understand. She was in Spain now, this is what it would be like, constant confusion. A different language, a new city, unusual food, and twenty-four new teammates to get used to.
The woman spoke again, but in English this time. ‘No be scared, ground now.’
Eve nodded, opened her eyes, and turned to offer the woman a smile she hoped looked genuine. ‘Yes. Si.’ She was a footballer who had traveled and played all over the world, at club and international level. The sickness and nervousness she felt was nothing to do with air travel.
Grabbing the small rucksack which contained only her essentials - face cream, lip balm, hairbrush and toothbrush - Eve made her way down the gangway of the plane, nodding goodbye to the air stewards as she left. The heat of the Mediterranean sun hit her like a slap in the face, and she regretted wearing long sleeves. Her grey top was only t-shirt material but as she descended the metal stairs towards the bus that was waiting to take them to the terminal, it began to feel like a padded winter coat. Eve paused to dig around in her rucksack pockets for her sunglasses, annoying a man in a suit behind her who was obviously in a hurry, and resented being blocked by her elbows. He said something in Spanish under his breath that Eve suspected might be a swear word as he nudged her out of the way. She gave up on the sunglasses and muttered ‘Lo siento’ at him without confidence, hoping it did in fact mean sorry.
There was nowhere to sit on the bus by the time she got on. It was packed, so she spent the journey squished against the doors, and when her mobile phone bleeped, she had to squirm and twist to pull it out of her trouser pocket. Eve looked at the screen in dread - it rarely brought her good news these days - but it was just her service provider letting her know that she was now ‘roaming’ in the EU, as if she didn’t already know. She was indeed roaming, set adrift, and a little bit lost. She was about to put the phone away again when a new message popped up. It contained only one word.
Landed?
It was from Poppy. Eve texted her back.
Unfortunately.
Neither of them favoured long text messages, so she was surprised when the response she got back from her best friend and ex-teammate was lengthy; practically book-like by their standards.
Cheer up our kid, it’s raining here, and at least you haven’t just spent the morning training alongside cockwomble and fuckface. Let us know what the beach is like. I'm dead jealous.
Eve could almost hear Poppy’s Yorkshire accent in the text and smiled sadly at it for a while, knowing Poppy wasn't really jealous, not at all. She sent a thumbs up emoji as the bus stopped abruptly. The standing passengers swayed and exclaimed as they regained their balance, the big doors whooshed open, and they were released into the belly of the airport.
At least the small terminal was air-conditioned. Eve wondered what sort of state she was in. Was her face was sweaty? Was her long strawberry blonde hair plastered to her head? It was probably the first time she’d worried about what she looked like in weeks. Her new club had said they would send someone to meet her and bring her straight to the training ground. If her outward appearance mirrored the ugliness she felt on the inside, then she'd make a bad first impression.
After locating the women’s bathroom, Eve squared up to her reflection in the mirror and gave herself a long, hard look. She was thirty years old. Normally people told her she didn’t look it, but today her usually tanned face was pale from lack of sleep and her wide green eyes were red-rimmed. Her brows, her nails, her skin, all those features that she normally took great pride in and kept well-maintained, were now ragged and frayed; a bit like her career, her ego, and her love life. She brushed her hair, cleaned her teeth, and smeared peach-flavoured balm over her lips before she deciding she looked acceptable.
What she’d expected to see, when she had cleared passport control and customs, was a full-bellied, slipper-wearing, proud owner of a people-carrier, holding a piece of scrappy piece of cardboard with Eve Middleton scrawled across it. She scanned the crowd in the arrivals hall, read all the signs being held aloft, then bit her lip in confusion when none of them seemed to be for her. Why did she feel like crying? It was ridiculous. They were probably just running late, or maybe she’d given them the wrong flight details. She was a fully-grown woman who had been getting herself from A to B all on her own for many years, and she had a phone, money, and the number and email of the person at Real Martinez who had been arranging everything for her. Still, it felt pretty shitty. She was tired of feeling rejected, not good enough, ignored.
Eve bit her lip and fought back tears while people greeted each other enthusiastically in Spanish, and her hands shook a little before she saw someone come through the crowds, waving lazily in her direction. She blinked and squinted and wondered if she was who she thought it was or if the stress of the day was playing tricks on her mind. They had played against one another - a few seasons ago now - but Eve remembered it well - hard tackles, sharp elbows - and a 4-0 loss. The bruises had lingered for weeks. On that Champions League night in Barcelona, Lucia Perez had scored two of the goals and assisted another. She was dangling a car key in one hand.
Eve took a few steps towards her. ‘You’re here for me?’ she asked Lucia hesitantly and then felt stupid. What if she wasn't. What if she just happened to be travelling through on her way to somewhere else.
'Si.' She was smaller than Eve by an inch, maybe two, stockier, more muscled, tanned and handsome rather than pretty - with a Romanesque nose, thick deep set brown eyes, and a rich mane of dark hair that had been gathered at the back of her head into a mess of a bun. ‘Si, just me. You expect a Rose Royce?
Obviously, Lucia meant Rolls Royce, not Rose Royce, which Eve thought might have been a band; a 70s soul group that her Nanna had once stumbled around to at family parties on Christmases past. ‘No, I just, didn’t expect...you.'
‘Club asks me to. You bags?’
Eve reached around to tap the rucksack on her back. ‘Just this one, all I need. The moving people have got the rest of my stuff. It should've been delivered to the apartment this morning.’
Lucia raised a thick, disbelieving eyebrow.
Eve felt panic rise within her, an all too common feeling these days. ‘They said, today, definitely, I packed it all up a week ago.’
‘Is Spain.’ Lucia replied, as if this meant something, but then she shrugged her shoulders, turned around and started walking off in the direction of the exit.
‘So, you play for Real Martinez now,' Eve asked. as she followed her through the small airport. ‘We’ve met before, when Barcelona played Hanmore.’
‘I remember.’
‘Haven’t been keeping up with the transfer news, when did you…?’
Lucia stopped and turned to Eve. She gave her a stare that was unnerving in its steadiness. ‘Is a loan, this one season, then I go back to Barcelona.’
‘Right. Okay.’ They began walking again. It was unusual for players of Lucia’s age - what was she now, maybe 28 or 29 - to be loaned out. It was usually something a parent club as big as Barcelona gave to their young emerging talents so they could gain game time and experience. Loans involving older players usually indicated some kind of problem, a falling-out with the coach perhaps. Whatever had happened, Lucia clearly did not want to talk about it. And Eve’s departure from Hanmore had been messy and rushed, so maybe the subject of why they were both now playing for Real Martinez was best avoided.
Luckily, the awkward silent trudge to the car park took no more than five minutes and Lucia quickly pointed to her car, a smart compact 4x4. Eve walked to what she thought was the passenger side of the car before realising her mistake. Of course, they drove on the other side of the road here. When she passed Lucia on her way to the actual passenger side, the Spaniard was smirking.
'Guess we're not in Kansas anymore, Toto.'
Being English, Eve found it hard to resist filling the silence that had hung heavy between them. Twice she had opened her mouth to say something about the weather before shutting it again. Lucia wove her way expertly out of the car park and onto a bypass and then, just when Eve had decided that this woman was an arsehole who clearly did not want to be friends, she spoke.
‘Who is Toto?’
‘Huh.' Eve was confused and then laughed. ‘The Wizard of Oz. Means you’re in a strange place, you know, out of your depth. The film.’
‘I never see it.’
‘You’ve never seen the Wizard of Oz? Not even when you were a kid? It was always on in the summer holidays. Maybe it wasn’t on over here though.’
‘Maybe yes. I was playing football. I no watch TV.’
‘Every day, all day?’
‘Si, football, every day, always football.’
Chapter Two
They drove on down the highway, Eve noting the spaced out, dark commercial buildings that littered the sides of the road. It wasn’t what she had imagined. Dusty road signs were scrawled over with graffiti and the palm trees were few and far between.
‘Is it all like this?’
‘No, some,’ Lucia replied.
Eve’s worries multiplied. She had made a rash decision in order to get out of a painful situation. Too rash, maybe, but the thought of a whole season playing alongside someone who had lied to her, who had wounded her right down to her emotional bones, had been too much. She’d tried to put a positive spin on it by telling herself this was an opportunity to experience a new culture, to learn a new language, to play a different kind of football, but the truth was that she had run away. Eve had begged her agent to get her out of Hanmore as quickly as possible, and Real Martinez had been the first to splash the required cash.
The entrance to the training ground appeared after they had pulled suddenly onto a rugged track and they drove under a Spanish sign and into a compound that actually gave Eve a little bit of hope. There were two training pitches, a building that looked like a gym and changing rooms, and another that seemed to house some offices. Everything seemed newish and well-kept. She had only seen a video of it all before joining and was worried that it had been put together with the aid of glossy filters. Her only meeting with anyone at the club had been a brief video call with the technical director, via an interpreter, before signing.
She had been told enthusiastically that she would be coached in English until her Spanish improved. Given that the only words she currently knew were Ola, cerveza and gracias it was going to take a while.
‘Bon dia, bon dia,’ a balding man in a tracksuit and a pair of oversized glasses stepped up to shake her hand as soon as she left Lucia’s car. This was her new coach, Mikel Cabello. Was he an ex-footballer or just some guy who talked a good game and had done his coaching licences? Eve momentarily regretted not having looked him up online before arriving, but then decided it would be wrong to judge. Last year, Real Martinez had come a respectable third in the league under his reign. ‘We go?’
Eve frowned. ‘Go?’
‘Play, go, play the footballs.’ Mikel made a sweeping motion with his foot at an imaginary ball.
‘Oh yeah, can’t wait to get going.’
Mikel beamed at her. ‘Si, si.’
Eve smiled back before Lucia brushed past her. ‘He means now. The team is training now.’
‘Si, si.’ Mikel waved an arm in the direction of one of the buildings, where Lucia was now headed ‘Is all for you, ready, ready.’
‘I just got off a plane,’ Eve gasped.
‘Que?’ Mikel frowned.
‘No bally, bally, no ready, ready. Too sunny, sunny, I need to acclimatise,’ Eve said but Mikel was nonplussed. She had been lied to. There was no way this guy was going to be able to communicate instructions to her.
‘Come,’ Lucia yelled. She had stopped by the door to a flat-roofed, red-tiled building and was beckoning Eve over. There was something about Lucia, a calm authoritative tone and a way of speaking that made Eve stride towards her even though the look on Lucia’s face suggested she found her tiresome.
The changing rooms were clean and neat and sure enough, hanging on a peg was a training kit in Real Martinez colours, emblazoned with her name and favourite number, ten. Her jaw fell open at the sight of it and she dropped her rucksack to the floor. It shouldn’t have been a shock but she had been at Hanmore for so long that a wave of something that felt like grief almost knocked her over. ‘I don’t have any boots. They’re with the movers. I mean, I didn’t think I would be playing right away,’ she croaked. How stupid she had been, what had she thought, that they’d pay her to do nothing for a few days?
Lucia looked pointedly at feet and without even asking her size, left briefly, and came back with a pair of boots that she shoved into Eve’s arms. ‘They are Maria’s, she will not mind.’
Eve nodded dumbly and started to change.
Lucia had said not a word, not even looked her way, while Eve had pulled on the strange kit and borrowed boots. They fitted perfectly, were broken in nicely without being wrecked, but were not the make she normally wore - the make that she was sponsored to wear. She supposed this was a closed training session that was already underway, so it was highly unlikely her sponsors would find out and be annoyed. The session would likely be almost finished by the time she and Lucia made it out onto the pitch anyway.
And as they left the changing room, and walked behind the building, there they were, her new team. They were shouting and laughing, in Spanish. They were so very Spanish; with their shoulder shrugs, the rapid banter in Romanesque tones, their tanned skin and loud laughter, and the way they passed the ball around in tikka taka fashion with short, sharp, no-look instinctive passes.
This was what she had always loved about football. Yes, trophies, awards, and winning leagues were all fantastic, but Eve had never felt more at home, never more at ease with herself, than on a training pitch. There was no better joy than when the pressure was off and she was just kicking a ball about with twenty or so other women who didn’t think it was an odd way for a grown-ups to s pend their time. It had been her refuge and source of joy, until lately. Before everything.
But then she had a moment of panic. What if she was shit, like proper shit? What if she didn’t fit into this tika taka, fast passing, fluid team? She had grown up playing English - hold the ball, wait for the opening - football. They began to acknowledge her, approaching cautiously. Some were enthusiastic and told her, in broken English, how much they were looking forward to playing with her, others were not confident enough to speak and so nodded her way. And there were some who were very wary - the midfielders and the older players, who were likely concerned that she was there to take their place in the starting eleven. A great many of them seemed to be called Maria, or variations of Maria.
The coach shouted something at her and Eve froze until Lucia tugged at her shirt and pulled over to a patch of dry grass at the side of the pitch. ‘Warm-up.’
An assistant coach ran them through a few drills which seemed easy at first, then a little more testing as Eve began to sweat under the heat. They ran between cones, and her breath came quicker and quicker, her lungs and heart began to pound more than it would have three or four years ago, although she couldn’t blame it all on her age. Lately, sleep had become difficult, dinner had become cereal, and coffees had been swapped out for wine. All habits she needed to curb. This was what it was all about. She had come to Spain to change everything, to get fit and start again. Day one, she supposed, was always going to be tough.
A whistle blew and she was waved over to take part in a rondo. The ball was kicked about, player to player, in quick succession, until the player in the middle of the circle was able to intercept a pass. Eve played a soft ball to her right that was easily intercepted. She blamed the longish, harsh grass for it, and took her turn as the ‘piggy’. She couldn’t get near them. Her new teammates lifted, shovelled, and slid the ball past her with ease, and she was relieved beyond measure when Mikel blew the whistle to signal a change; so relieved that she had to blink back tears. Only then she became part of a five-a-side training team.
In the short, ten minutes each half, game that followed, she was mostly absent, running without purpose. She felt so slow.
Thankfully, a whistle blew to signal the end of training. Eve turned her face up to the sky and blinked, breathed, and tried to be thankful for the sun, the grass, the day, the job.
‘This my boots,’ one of the Maria’s said, catching Eve up on the way back to the changing room. She was one of the younger players, a smiling, happy teenager.
‘Yeah, sorry, Lucia said you wouldn’t mind.’
‘No. Eve Middleton wear my boots, is honour,’ she said.
Eve smiled back at her and felt just a tiny bit good about herself.
‘We play, yes?’ Maria said. She held out a hand.
Eve slapped the hand and nodded. ‘Yes, we play.’
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