14
With all twenty-two Crawford players present, plus Dad, Cassie, Bob and me (Marge declares herself the bag guardian), we end up in a thirteen-on-thirteen rounders battle. Ben is joining us later, once he’s completed his weekly Millford check-in– where his coach calls to check up on his diet and exercise from the last seven days and sets a new programme for the following week to make sure he’s still fit when he returns to the squad.
Perhaps due to his height, Elliot proves to be a demon bowler, but almost all the players have excellent hand–eye coordination and can run like lightning, so the scores quickly rack up. To begin with at least. On Bob’s suggestion, a table of vodka shots is set up at fourth base for anyone who makes it round, so the chances of them doing so again are significantly reduced.
As now seems to be the way, our mini fan club of Barbour’s family, Helen from the Herald and a handful of others come to watch. Phoebs joins us as well, having decided her revision can wait for a few hours after I told her I’d spent a second evening with Ben.
The conversation went something like this:
‘That’s it, I’m coming down there, before there’s nobody left.’
‘I’m not planning on working my way through all of them!’
‘I know that, I just mean I want to get in there before anyone else decides to. I don’t want to miss out on all the fun.’
I warned her I don’t know which, if any of them, are single. But she came back with: ‘Leave that to me. I’ll soon find out.’
And it’s not long before she’s mingling with all the players after Bailey, the top run-scorer of the afternoon, declares himself too tipsy to continue with the rounders. Phoebs immediately volunteers to jump in– and starts flirting with Craig as she stands in front of him in the batting square.
‘He’s definitely in the running,’ she tells me, when she makes it to first base where I’m fielding. ‘You didn’t tell me how hot he is when you said he likes getting his kit off.’
‘For work,’ I remind her.
‘We’ll see,’ she says with a grin.
Jason is next to withdraw from the game, followed by Scott then Dad, after Bob decides that penalty drinks should also be awarded to anyone who is caught out or who hits the ball further than the back fielder. Barbour steps in to fill one of the gaps and at one point even Nathan has the bat in his hand. But luckily he doesn’t manage to connect with the ball– no one wants to give vodka shots to a four-year-old.
By mid-afternoon, it’s fair to say the majority of our players are looking the worse for wear. Time, then, to call it quits on the rounders and bring everyone back together for our second game– a modified life-size version of Cranium that Dad and I invented yesterday, with a circle of cones rather than a board for the teams to work their way around.
Our four categories are karaoke, dance move, act it out and animal alliterations, and we’ve drawn a coloured football on each cone to show which is which. When a team lands on a blue ball, one of the members has to sing a song and the first person, out of everyone, to identify it and shout out the name of the artist gets to move their team on one cone. For a yellow ball, the entire team has to perform a dance move, and Marge gets to judge whether it’s good or not, and consequently whether the team gets to advance one cone or move back two.
Green signifies speed charades, where the team has just twenty seconds for one of its members to use another as a puppet to mime whatever film or TV show is on the card that’s handed to them. If the remaining two guess it, on they go to the next cone. And in the final category– red, my favourite– the team member who’s selected to play must come up with an animal and an adjective that start with the same letter, for instance an elegant elephant, then do an impression of it so the others can try to guess what it is, a correct guess again moving the team one cone forward.
We have six teams of four, including Bob and Marge this time, with Cassie sitting out so she can hand out the activity cards and me so I can film some of the silliness that follows. And it starts straight away with Levi’s team landing an animal alliteration and Jacob choosing to act out a sexy squirrel. As he floofs his pretend tail and nibbles coquettishly on an invisible nut, his teammates get the giggles so badly they can’t even speak.
‘Don’t guess anything, just make him keep doing it,’ Levi gasps through tears of laughter. ‘You are never going to live this down, Jacob. This is going straight on TikTok.’
Jacob rolls his eyes then lays it on even thicker, wiggling his tail and mock stroking tufty ears.
‘Oh God, make it stop, it’s giving me the creeps,’ Elliot snorts. ‘It’s a squirrel, right? A seductive squirrel? I mean, I want to say a somewhat disturbing squirrel but I don’t think that’s how it works.’
‘A sexy squirrel,’ Jacob corrects, ‘but that’s close enough. And when my TikTok followers double, you’ll be wishing you’d done it yourself. I might just put a new one up every day.’
It probably isn’t his worst idea if he wants to grow his following.
Phoebs, who is quick to stand in on Craig’s team when Adio has to dash off for a toilet break, just as speedily volunteers to be the puppet when Craig is tasked with acting out a movie. He raises her arms up in front of her, thumbs up, forefingers pointing forward, then moves in behind her and jiggles her arms up and down to make it look like she’s shooting guns.
‘Shooter?’ Bailey suggests, to which Craig shakes his head. ‘Then can you narrow it down a bit?’
Craig reaches round Phoebs and makes rings with his fingers and thumbs in front of her eyes.
‘Binoculars?’ Bailey asks with a frown.
‘Glasses,’ Scott guesses.
Craig nods then moves Phoebs’ hands down to waist height, revs her wrists and swings her body like she’s riding a motorbike before moving her back into the shooting arms position.
‘Five seconds,’ Cassie calls out.
‘Oh jeez,’ Bailey mutters, just as Scott shouts, ‘I’ve got it! It’s the Terminator.’
Craig punches the air then holds his hands up to Phoebs for a double high five. And I can’t help laughing as she shamelessly ignores them and goes in for a hug instead. Her ballsiness is one of the reasons I love her. Once he’s recovered from his surprise, Craig puts his arms round her and hugs her back.
While all this is going on, Dad gets a barbecue going and the game comes to a natural end at the point where the smell of homemade burgers cooking becomes too good to ignore. It’s time to flop on to the grass with a loaded paper plate and a can of beer, and that’s where Ben finds us, chatting and laughing. It gives me butterflies when he makes a beeline straight for me.
‘Have I missed all the fun?’ he asks, as I shuffle to the side so he can sit between me and Bailey. ‘You’re looking a bit bleary-eyed there, bro.’
‘Cassie and Lily don’t mess around on the drinking games,’ Bailey says. ‘I can’t remember the last time I felt this giddy at this time of day.’
‘I’m not going to have to escort you home and tuck you up in bed, am I?’ Ben asks. He turns to me and shields his mouth as if he’s about to tell me a secret, but says, loud enough for Bailey to hear, ‘It wouldn’t be the first time.’
‘That’s fair. He does look out for me,’ Bailey agrees. ‘Remember that time you brought me home in a shopping trolley?’
‘He couldn’t walk,’ Ben explains, laughing at the memory. ‘What were you, fifteen or something?’
‘About that. It was the first time I’d ever had alcohol.’
‘He was round his mate’s house and I got this barely comprehensible voice message asking if I could come to the rescue. I tried to piggyback him home initially, but must have decided he was too heavy. So I broke a trolley free from outside the Morrisons and got him back that way. Mum and Dad were so annoyed they made us offer to pay for the damage the next day. We were let off though, luckily.’
‘And he’s been getting me out of trouble ever since then,’ Bailey says.
Ben nods to confirm this. ‘You’re good today though, yeah?’
‘Absolutely,’ Bailey agrees. ‘But I’m glad we don’t do this at every training session.’
The afternoon gradually winds down once all the food is finished. I think everyone’s too stuffed to do any more running around– and I suspect a couple of hangovers might already be kicking in. When Elliot stands up and admits he’s ready to call it a day, there are calls of ‘lightweight’ before two of the reserve team players also say they need to head off. One has a birthday do to get to, the other a demanding two-year-old.
Dad calls for everyone’s attention and thanks us for really throwing ourselves into it today. ‘It’s been a pleasure for me to get to know each of you a little bit better and I hope you all feel the same way. Before you go, I have some news to share that I think will be the perfect way to round off the afternoon. I know you must have been wondering what’s going on with our league application and the ground share, and I want to thank you all for your patience...’
‘Have you got them?’ Craig interrupts, sitting up straighter.
The other players who were reclined on their elbows also push themselves upright, poised for Dad’s answer, but before he says anything, I think they’ve already guessed from his face. No one smiles that broadly if they’re about to about to crush someone’s dreams.
‘That will be a yes!’ Dad declares.
Which sparks a similar scene to the one in our kitchen, with half the team rolling on to their backs and kicking their arms and legs in the air, and the rest leaping to their feet and tearing round each other in circles before pulling Dad into a bouncing group hug while their cheers ring out across the park. It’s the photo that Helen ends up using on the Herald website when she breaks the news to the rest of Hamcott.
‘This is the best Saturday ever,’ Jacob says, beaming.
‘Out of interest, by a show of hands, can I see how many of you would be able to make this a regular Saturday meet-up over the summer?’ Cassie asks. ‘I’m not suggesting we play rounders every week, we’d just have a fun, relaxed session to bolster our other training. Maybe two till five, to get us in the right kind of routine before we start match days.’
Scott is first to reply. ‘I’m down for that.’
It’s followed by a chorus of ‘me too’s.
‘Let’s make it official then,’ Cassie says. ‘Two till five every Saturday. We’ll work on a few things but we’ll keep it light. Thanks, guys. You’re the best.’
Bit by bit everyone starts drifting off after that, and I have good reason to be one of them. My first exam is on Tuesday– I can’t believe how quickly it’s come round– and I need to cram some last-minute study in. I can’t help feeling disappointed, though. I’d assumed Ben and I would sneak off somewhere first after our last two liaisons, but although I think I detect an inquisitive narrowing of his eyes as we’re saying goodbye, he doesn’t suggest it.
I walk out of the park with Phoebs, the ache in my stomach making me realise how much I’d been looking forward to more time with just him. Phoebs, meanwhile, excitedly tells me she’s decided, now she’s met all the players, that it’s Craig she wants to get together with.
‘You don’t want to pick someone nicer?’ I can’t help asking. ‘You know he’s been a bit over-friendly with me and Cassie and he can come across like he thinks he’s superior to his teammates.’
‘I’m not planning on marrying him.’ She laughs. ‘Seriously, who’d want to lumber themselves with a footballer? All those girls flinging themselves at them every weekend. No thank you.’
She stops in her tracks. ‘Wait a minute. When you told me Ben had grown on you, you didn’t mean you’d actually consider dating him, did you?’
I’m about to protest, but the words don’t come. I know I was hesitant to even go for one drink with him initially, but that was before I’d got to know him a bit. Now, for the few weeks he’s here in Hamcott, I’d be happy to spend more time in his company.
‘Oh no, no, no.’ Phoebs shakes her head emphatically. ‘You don’t date the Ben Pryces of this world. He’ll break your heart faster than you can say offside.’
‘It doesn’t matter anyway.’ I shrug. ‘If he wanted to, I’d be with him now.’
And it’s at that exact moment that his name pops up on my ringing mobile phone, instantly making my heart race.
‘Speak of the devil?’ Phoebs asks as I lift the phone to my ear and nod my head.
‘Can you talk?’ he says after my tentative hello. ‘It was a bit tricky before, under the watchful eye of your dad.’
I feel my shoulders relaxing. So that’s why he didn’t say anything earlier. ‘Yes, I can talk. Where are you now?’
‘I stayed in the park. I was hoping you might want to come back.’
‘Er, yeah, I could do that. Are you in the same spot?’
‘On one of the benches. I’ve checked– no one else is still around.’
I watch Phoebs roll her eyes as I tell him I can be there in five minutes.
‘Am I crazy?’ I ask her once I’ve disconnected the call.
‘Yes, but when did that ever stop you?’ she says with a smile. ‘Go and have some fun, but just be cautious. Remember Craig’s not the only one with a few red flags to his name.’