season.’
Paige and another one of Victoria’s cronies shared a scandalised stare and I saw Paige mouth a horrified ‘Eleven’.
‘Because he’s missed so many matches.’
‘He’s missed two,’ I repeated, ‘one to attend a wedding, which he was supposed to go to with your daughter, and the second to attend a wedding after it had been made clear he was unlikely to be selected until he resumed his relationship with Victoria. You can check the scorebooks.’
‘Is this true, Victoria?’ asked Mr Langley-Jones.
Victoria turned scarlet under her father’s bullfrog outrage.
‘You bitch,’ said Victoria, her eyes narrowing into squinty little lines as she turned to me. ‘Everything was fine until you came along.’
‘But I did come along, and I’m not going to apologise for that. At that stage, neither Sam nor I did anything wrong.’
‘He was mine, not yours.’ Her mouth tightened and she tapped her glossy fingernails on her wine glass. ‘You should have left him alone.’
I winced but stood firm against the familiar guilt which was trying to creep back in. ‘We don’t own people,’ I said gently.
Her mouth moved as if there was a lot she wanted to say but couldn’t frame the words.
‘I can forgive you for being heartbroken. It’s not nice to be rejected, but Sam tried to do the right thing.’
‘The right thing would have been to stay with me,’ she spat.
‘Not for him, it wasn’t. Would you want him to be miserable?’
‘He was perfectly happy until you came along. You ruined everything.’
I sighed. She had a point and now I had to be brutally honest with her.
‘Victoria,’ I said, more kindly. ‘This is real life, not a soap opera or a Victorian melodrama. Sam’s a grown man who can make his own choices. The harsh truth is … he didn’t love you anymore, and you have to get over that. I’m sorry for that.’
She gasped, still in an actor fashion, looking to her friends for support, but Paige had subtly put a few steps of distance between them, along with the other girls.
‘Why do you want Sam? Because you love him? If that were the case you’d want him to be happy, wouldn’t you?’
‘You need to leave,’ she suddenly snapped, looking round, noting the space that had opened up between her and her friends.
‘As long as you maintain this myth that Sam is yours, you’ll never be happy. I felt sorry for you at first but you need to move on. You can’t force someone to love you. My mother did that when my dad left. She’s been miserable for years because she couldn’t let go. I promise you, you’re going to turn into a bitter and unhappy person, if you keep this up.’
‘I don’t think so.’ Her smirk was suddenly triumphant. ‘I heard from Sally that you’ve split up.’
‘And has he come running back to you?’ I asked the question quietly without any sense of victory because I knew that Sam would never go back to her. It wasn’t vanity on my part, but just that sure knowledge of the depth of love that we shared. I knew that the question would cause her more pain than anything else.
For a moment, she lifted her head like a defiant Boudicca, determined to battle on but then her face crumpled, her eyes filling with tears. ‘He will.’
I shook my head, feeling a punch of sadness for her. ‘That’s not going to happen.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I know Sam. He didn’t break up with you lightly. He won’t change that decision, and you know him as well as I do. He’s a decent, honourable man.’
Her mouth quivered, the full lips oddly loose and shapeless as she tried to form words, but at last the defeat registered. Suddenly she looked smaller as if she’d shrunk into herself. ‘What am I going to do?’ she whispered, and I felt desperately sorry for her, but without the guilt and sympathy that I’d originally felt. For her own sake she had to move on. I’d seen first-hand what could happen if she didn’t.
I caught Paige’s eye and we exchanged a brief wordless message. She nodded at me and crossed to Victoria, putting her arm around the weeping woman’s shoulders and led her away to the ladies.
There was a sudden hush in the immediate vicinity and the other women all lifted their heads, like a row of wide-eyed meerkats, and looked beyond me. In the same moment, I realised that the pitch below the balcony was now empty.
‘Jess?’
I whirled around at the sound of Sam’s