recognise them if they bit her on the bottom. She’s so naïve sometimes.’ Faye said it as though she was criticising Georgia, but it felt as if there was an unspoken jab at Phoebe hanging in the air, that she’d be an absolute hotshot at the identity parade on all the Class As.
I let it go.
Faye’s husband, Lee, joined us, slapping Patrick on the back. ‘Come to watch the future contenders for the Six Nations again then?’ he said, which led into an easy conversation about the form of the England players, followed by the chances of our school getting anywhere in the Daily Mail Trophy.
I searched for Victor, before I spotted him on the sidelines wearing a hoodie. I turned to Faye. ‘I hope he’ll get on at some point.’
‘They’ll probably swap him in at half-time, if not before. I suppose they want to get a few tries up before they bring on someone who’s still really new to the team.’
As I watched the boys pile into each other, studded boots dangerously close to their young faces, I felt that familiar angst, torn between wanting Victor to get a chance to do what he loved and a wish for him to stay away from the action, safe from harm.
Patrick and Lee were shouting out incomprehensible things from the sidelines, with Lee getting increasingly agitated. ‘Knock-on, ref!’ ‘Offside!’
I still couldn’t get used to how seriously Faye followed the rugby. She was nothing like her normal chatty self, locked onto every move Jordan made, ignoring my attempts to talk about anything else in favour of commenting on the match.
About twenty minutes in, Jordan fumbled a pass, allowing the other side to commandeer the ball and score a try. Patrick said, ‘He should have kicked that out. Didn’t have enough support around him to make that work.’
He’d obviously overstepped the new ‘father’ on the touchline opinion quota because Lee pulled a face and said, ‘It’s not the Rugby World Cup, mate.’
Faye joined in. ‘It’s early in the season. He’s just finding his feet.’
I’d have felt the need to apologise and spend the rest of the match cheering overloudly every time Jordan touched the ball, but Patrick just ignored them.
Then a player went off and Victor came on. For a boy that seemed so gentle in every other area of his life, he was a force to be reckoned with. There was something in his movements that reminded me of Ginny, that same fluidity and rhythm. Within minutes, he’d powered through the opposition with an aggression that surprised me, proper hand in face, shoulder-barge stuff. When he dived over the line to score, I thought I was going to burst with excitement.
‘That was amazing!’ I turned to Faye, all wide-eyed with delight.
‘He’s certainly getting a few lucky breaks today,’ she said.
I frowned, that funny little prickle of anxiety flickering again. ‘I think he’s used to playing at county level where he lived before. I watched him a couple of times and there were some big old boys at the Cardiff club.’
‘He’s a great asset to the team. Black people are so quick on their feet. They’ve got that whole running thing in their DNA,’ Lee said.
I felt a coldness settle on me. When Jordan got the captaincy, Lee saw it as the rightful outcome of years of schlepping to rugby matches, putting Jordan in rugby holiday camps, taking him to Twickenham to see the greats. At no point did he shrug and say, ‘Well, he was only made captain because being an English boy with blonde hair/Scottish grandparents/a few freckles across his nose means he has a superior ability to read the ball.’ I scanned my memory. No, Jordan being captain was all about his amazing talent.
I caught Patrick’s eye to see if he was reacting, but he just said, ‘He’s doing really well, isn’t he?’
Maybe I was being too protective.
While we watched, several parents came over to speak to us, complimenting Patrick on Victor’s rugby as though we had anything to do with it. I was amazed how everyone seemed to know so much about him.
Jasmine came bowling up, barely visible under a woolly scarf wound around her neck and face. ‘Victor’s playing brilliantly. It’s so brave what you’re doing. You’re so generous to take in someone else’s child. I’d be terrified. I’ve made enough mistakes with my own brood without inflicting my crap parenting on anyone else’s.’ She jerked her head towards her ex-husband who was busy booming out the statistics