coat.
My plan was simple. I’d go inside the shop and if the boy was in clear sight I’d ask the man behind the counter for something from the storeroom. With him gone, I’d use my camera-phone to take a picture of the child.
I was almost at the off-licence when a group of boys appeared up ahead. Backpacks dangling from shoulders, they were all clad in the same grey trousers, black shoes and royal blue sweatshirts. School uniform. Primary school, by the looks of it. One of them was kicking a football. Dribbling it in and around his friends’ ankles, he would snug the ball back under his foot and pretend to take it off to the right whenever they tried to challenge him for possession. Then, at the very last second, he would flick it in the totally opposite direction. The sleeves on his jumper were too long and he kept pushing them back up onto his elbows.
They drew closer.
I watched as the largest kid in the group launched a particularly aggressive tackle. Sweeping in low, he went for the boy’s shins, trying to bully the ball away. He almost succeeded in knocking him off balance, but the boy was too quick. Folding the ball back up into the air behind him, he turned to meet it and then used his knee to guide it down to the ground and over to the safety of the kerb. He lifted his face in triumph and his features came into focus.
I felt my heart jump.
Blond hair, wonky front teeth with a gap in the middle and dark brown, almost black eyes. It was the boy from the off-licence. Barney?
This was the first time I’d seen him up close, without mesh between us, and the effect was dizzying.
Without thinking, I got out my phone and started taking pictures. I was moving in for a better shot when I realised I’d caught the attention of a few passers-by. An elderly lady on a mobility scooter changed route and began gliding towards me, her face a mixture of suspicion and concern. Suddenly aware of how dubious I must seem I put my phone away, sidestepped into a nearby bus stop and pretended to study the timetable. The lady on the scooter came to within a few feet of where I stood and stopped. She sat there watching me, apparently debating whether or not to say something, while I kept my eyes fixed on the timetable. A few seconds later and I heard the squeak-thump of her scooter starting up. I waited until its battery-powered wail had faded into the distance and then I turned back to the group of boys.
They’d started a kick-around on the pavement directly in front of the off-licence, Chinese take-away and launderette. Laughing and shouting, they were passing the ball to each other in quick little movements designed to keep everyone quite literally on their toes. The boy was now red-faced and breathless, the blond hair around his neck and ears dark with sweat.
Lauren had been a devoted football fan. Thanks to my dad, she’d inherited an evangelical love of our local, two-bit team, Sittingbourne FC. The proud owner of both their red and black home strip and their yellow and black away colours, she had faithfully attended every match they played from the age of four. During football season you could guarantee she’d spend the preceding bath-times before a match perfecting the chants she and my dad were planning to bellow in the stands that weekend. I would have to cover my mouth with my hand, hiding my smile, as Dad amended the racier chants into something more PG (the team’s arch rivals were referred to locally as the Lilywhites, a nickname that easily lent itself to a very sweary rhyme when they weren’t playing up to scratch). Once she had the hang of a particular chant, Lauren would try singing along with Dad. Surrounded by bubbles, the bottom of her hair damp and curling against her shoulders, she would do her best to make her small voice boom as loud as his against the bathroom walls.
My football knowledge had been zero but still, she’d tried her best. Saturday teatimes after a game would see her forego her usual Powerpuff Girls or Charlie and Lola telly in place of that day’s match-day programme. Printed on shiny A4 paper, stapled in the middle, it was presented to me like a precious gift. ‘Mummy,’ she would say in the bossy, officious tone