‘I said come for lunch. I’ve got to see someone in Newcastle. Come along.’
‘But I can’t. I mean…’ Did I even want to go to lunch with him? Why did this man keep popping up in my life? First the club, then the pub and now, just when I thought I’d found one of the most isolated parts of England, he turns up there too. I shrugged my arms to show I was in jeans and a fleece and boots and, in any case, wasn’t too impressed by celebrity footballers.
‘That don’t matter.’ He laughed. ‘The pilot’s getting a bit antsy. You’ve got ten seconds to make up your mind, Miss Tilly. Lunch or no lunch. Deal or no deal. Ten…nine…eight…’ He was grinning as he turned to go back to the helicopter.
The nerve of the guy! He was so in love with himself that he expected everyone else to be as well. Just turning away like that, as if I would meekly follow him. Who did he think he was?
‘…four…three…two…’ He turned back, grinning and stretching out his hand towards me.
Despite myself, I was smiling now too. Why not? What was the point of this sudden feeling of freedom if I didn’t do things I’d never done before?
I’d done most of my work for the day. A helicopter ride was always going to be fun, whoever it was with. My mum always told me never to get into strange cars. She never said anything about strange helicopters. Seize the day…I grinned.
Clayton grabbed my hand and we ran under the blades and jumped up into the helicopter. As we soared upwards, the ground dropped away, glorious views stretched out for miles. Clayton was still holding my hand. I eased out of his grip and, rather primly, sat on my hands as I looked out of the windows.
Inside the helicopter it was still noisy, not ideal for intimate conversation, even if I’d had a clue what to say, so I contented myself with working out where we were. We flew over miles of moorland then above the motorway. ‘Durham Cathedral!’ I said, pointing into the distance. Then, a few minutes later a huge metal giant loomed up on a small hill at the side of a motorway, families looking like dolls playing at its feet. ‘It’s the Angel of the North!’ I exclaimed and then, ‘All those bridges! It must be Newcastle.’
We followed the Tyne for a while—I hadn’t realised it was a country river too—until we hovered over a golf course and then landed gently in the grounds of a huge country house hotel, where the helipad sat in the middle of perfectly tended lawns. Clayton helped me out of the helicopter and then yelled to the pilot, ‘I’ll give you a call, mate.’ As if it was just a normal minicab. We walked across a path and into the hotel. It was one of those seriously stylish places, where they were so cool they didn’t bat an eyelid at my walking boots. I wanted to giggle. This was turning into a ridiculous adventure.
‘Good morning, Mr Silver,’ said the receptionist. ‘Your guests are waiting for you in the Brown Room. Would you like coffee or drinks brought through?’
‘No thanks. But I’d like a table for lunch, in about half an hour. For two.’
‘Certainly.’
‘This won’t take long, Tilly,’ said Clayton. ‘Get yourself a drink or whatever you want and I’ll be back soon.’ And he vanished, leaving me in my jeans, boots and fleece in one of England’s poshest hotels. I had no bag, no money, not even a lippy or a hairbrush. The receptionist was hovering.
‘Can I get you anything, madam?’ he asked.
‘Some coffee, please,’ I said. ‘And I don’t suppose you could conjure up a hairbrush? A comb? Anything?’
‘Of course, madam,’ he replied, as if it was the most normal request in the world.
He rematerialised about two minutes later, with a dinky little bag containing brush, comb, toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, face cloth, and razor. How many guests must arrive here as ill prepared as I was? I dashed to the Ladies, cleaned my teeth, brushed my hair, helped myself to some of their richly scented hand creams and cologne and felt a little better. Back in the reception area, the coffee was waiting for me. I sat back in the leather armchair thinking that I might as well enjoy all of this.
Then Clayton was standing in front of me, smiling down. ‘Time to eat,’ he said, ‘and to drink something a bit more interesting than that.’
‘What about the people you were meeting?’
‘Gone,’ he said dismissively. I didn’t ask more. But I wondered who they were, why he would be meeting them all the way up here. I wondered if it was the sort of thing that Jake would want to know about.
We sat in the big bay window of the dining room, with a view across lawns down to the river. The menu was full of delicious things. I dithered over Thai-scented salmon salad with lemon potatoes, or maybe quails’ eggs and capers, pigeon and celeriac, pumpkin gnocchi or sea trout…I would have liked to ask for a copy to show to Bill. Clayton hardly seemed interested. ‘Just bring me some grilled chicken with lots of vegetables,’ he said to the waiter, but then spent ages poring over the wine list.
‘I know, Miss Foodie, who cares about every mouthful,’ he said in a laughing, mocking tone, ‘but food is just fuel to me. Yeah, I can see what the club dietician means about not too many pies and pizzas and all that, but food is just there to keep you going. But wine…well, wine is something else. Do you know,’ he asked as he finally made his choice, ‘I was seventeen before I first tasted wine? I thought it was for poofs and posers. Then Denny Sharpe, the manager at my first club—he was a bit of a wine buff—he gave me a glass of Château Laf ite. “Just shut up and drink that slowly,” he said, and I was like, wow, why didn’t anyone ever tell me about this before?! I was hooked. It is just so-o good.’
‘Clever Denny.’
‘Yeah, he was. Not just about the wine. I was a bit of a smart-arse street kid, I guess, thought I knew it all. I knew nothing. Absolutely rock-all. But Denny was good. He was good with all us young lads. Tried to keep us in order—I say tried, because we were a wild bunch all right. He and his missus took us out to places like this, proper places, you know what I mean, taught us our table manners and stuff. He even had us doing exams.’
I looked at him, enquiringly.
‘Bunked off school too much to do exams, didn’t I? Too busy playing football. Reckoned I didn’t need exams. But the club—well, Denny really—said there was an awful lot of life once our football days were over, so they got this tutor guy in. And me and a couple of others got some exams. I’ve got English, maths, PE and geography,’ he said proudly. ‘I’d have done some more but then I moved into the Premiership and it was all different then. And I was nineteen by then, so they reckoned I was all grown up, couldn’t tell me what to do.’
‘Must have been hard studying after you left school.’
‘No, it was all right really. Sort of interesting. There was just four or five of us and the teacher was pretty good. Didn’t treat us like kids. Couldn’t really. Even then we were earning shed-loads more than he was. But it was pretty cool. Never done anything like that before. My mum didn’t do books. Too busy trying to survive. She was only a kid herself when she had me.’
I was trying to remember what I knew about Clayton Silver. A tough childhood, on a council estate where gangs and guns were commonplace. He was always being held up as an example of how sport could make a difference, provide a way out for a lad with talent and determination.
