Pretending to love the football king

ms

myself I would never

m a journalist who had tracked down my mother's landline. I kept it right up until the moment I sat on a navy

way people do when they are about to take something f

umb. Behind the cameras, a producer held up a cue card I refused to

Walk out. That is

ck feeling that if I left now, I would spend the

that week," I he

e is a trick. I knew it was a

in the rain, because he said that was when he felt most certain about things." A small, wet laugh escaped me. "But t

he repeated softly. "A

es

o the room like a pl

tell y

nd. He kissed me goodbye on Thursday morning and said, 'Whatever peo

ights, a cameraman sto

. Tried. As if he already

ur years of silence had piled up inside me like water behind a d

unger brother, Raff Ashgrove, who is now one of the most celebrated footballers in Engla

me, something hot and b

ck suit that did not fit his grief, pointing at me in front of three hundred peo

still did not kn

leave in good s

dio wen

ng now, but I could not stop, "because he cal

technician looked up, one h

d, her voice barely above a whisper. "A

ng so hard I could

f him laughing. I thought of his mother, Honora, who had stopped answering my letters three weeks after the funeral. I thought of th

truth about that night," I said. "And I

ent, no o

kind you would miss if you were not staring right at her. The sympathy slid off

iu

" she said. "That w

mach d

mething our viewers

r. He had lowered the c

talking abo

ssed a button, and a soft electro

voice message recorded by Silas As

ce. I felt it go, li

hispered. "I would have kn

?" she as

cordin

g fast down a quiet street. Then footsteps. Then a breat

heard that voice anywhe

" said Silas, "it means

sofa under me. The studio had dissolved into t

ey know what I know now. I can't say who,

lence, I could hear

have been a

sped. I thi

he people you love." A long exhale, like a man closing a door on his own life. "And Tamsin, if

rding cl

t, nobody in that

of my vision, the producer's phone lit up, buzzed, lit up again, and a second phone join

d me with the calm of a woman who had j

thed. "You had thi

aid, almost kin

mouth. Nothi

ble thought slid into my mind, cold

age eleven days before he di

years, the man I was going to marry, had

t to ask what else he had hidden, a