Chapter 3
Lia tossed her keys into the bowl on the table beside the front door of her apartment, humming along to the song playing through her AirPods.
When Milly and her player liaison team had asked her about her preference for living arrangements, Lia had asked for her own place, but she’d forgotten how quiet an empty apartment could feel.
The house she’d shared with Hannah had been so loud in comparison: the baby wailing from their next-door neighbours’, the couple on the other side arguing, Hannah clattering around in the kitchen or blaring podcasts while Charlie scampered around at her feet, claws tip-tapping across the wooden floors.
Now, on the seventh floor of an apartment complex in the heart of Manchester city centre, the walls thick and the glass on the windows and balcony doors reinforced to keep any noise from the street filtering in, the silence was oppressive.
Three days in, Lia’s AirPods were all but surgically attached, chasing away the loneliness.
It didn’t help that the space felt too empty, either.
Her meagre possessions had fit into a total of three cardboard boxes and two suitcases—she’d left the rest at Hannah’s, wanting few reminders of their time together.
To be fair to her, Milly had done a great job with furnishing the place.
The open-plan kitchen-slash-dining room-slash-living room was dominated by a large, round mahogany table and a pair of comfortable brown leather couches.
It would be a good place to entertain guests—if Lia was inclined to invite anyone around.
Maybe Cerys, once she felt more settled.
She hoped that day would come soon.
On her way to her favourite part of her new place, Lia passed the wall of photographs she’d hung on her first night.
In the centre, her grandmother beamed, one arm around Lia’s shoulders.
It was a proud moment for them both—Lia’s professional debut—and she could still picture the tears in her grandmother’s eyes at the end of the game as she’d hugged Lia close.
Guilt flooded Lia’s stomach. In all the rigmarole of her move, she’d been lax that week with her visits to the care home.
Unacceptable. Pushing open her balcony doors, Lia vowed to do better.
She’d go tomorrow, right after training.
And the day after, too, to make up for the fact that then she’d be away for two weeks.
She shouldn’t have bothered emptying the suitcases, considering in two days’ time she’d be hopping on a plane to New York with her new teammates.
A shudder wracked through her as she settled onto her outdoor sofa, the cushion crinkling as she sat. For once, her shudder didn’t have anything to do with the temperature. It was a mild August evening, the sun still high in the sky and warm against her skin.
No, her trepidation was all to do with the prospect of two weeks in the US and trying to integrate herself into a new squad.
It was going well so far, but it had only been a few days.
And she was already tired of being peppered with questions, though she knew it was necessary if they were going to get to know her.
Still, being asked the same thing by twenty different people was exhausting. Not to mention mind-bogglingly boring. Maybe she should make a printout of the most common questions with her answers and hand them out in advance.
Yes, she’d really started playing football at the age of six, tired of being dragged along to her stepbrother’s training practices and expected to sit on the sidelines—joining in with the eight-year-old boys instead.
No, it had never been weird to be the only girl on the team, though she couldn’t deny that the day she’d first gotten to play on an all-girls team had been a special moment.
It had been difficult to be part of a blended family, despite her stepmother being in her life since she was five years old.
Manchester had been her home since she was seventeen, but she’d spent the first ten years of her life in London before moving to Wales to live with her grandmother.
No, nothing had happened to her parents, they were just too focused on Brett’s career and the promise of the financial security a place in a Premier League team could provide to properly care for her as well.
Yes, that was outrageous—but it was the best decision her father ever made for all of them.
Her lips curved into a smile. At least all her teammates seemed harmless, if too curious.
Well. All aside from one. Erin Finch was still steadfastly avoiding Lia.
And it wasn’t like Lia hadn’t tried. She smiled at Erin in the canteen.
Approached her whenever the opportunity presented itself—just to say hello.
To maybe try and clear the air. But each time, Erin disappeared before Lia reached her.
It had happened too many times now to be a coincidence.
Lia was trying hard not to take it personally.
A few balconies over, on the floor below, a black cat rolled onto its back in a patch of sunlight. Its tail flicked lazily. Lia wished she was that relaxed.
In her pocket, her phone buzzed with an incoming call, tearing her gaze away.
Lia picked it up, heart dropping. Vanessa (stepmonster) was written on the screen.
Watching it buzz, she debated not answering it, but she hadn’t spoken to her in a while.
This would get Vanessa off Lia’s back for at least the next few weeks. “Hello?”
She received no such pleasantries back.
“You left Wanderers?”
“Yes. A few days ago, now—thank you for finally noticing.”
Her stepmother sniffed. “We were on holiday visiting your brother in Spain.”
Lia glanced at her watch. Thirty seconds for her to mention Brett.
She’d love to say that was the record. Under the dictionary definition of golden child, Lia wouldn’t be surprised to see a photograph of her smarmy older stepbrother.
His mother certainly thought the sun shone right out of his arsehole.
“And how is Valencia at this time of year?”
“Lovely. As you’d know if you ever visited.”
Lia would rather go for a pap smear than spend an hour with Brett.
She could still remember the bullying she’d endured when her father had moved himself and Lia in with Brett and Vanessa, Brett being unable to deal with the attention being on anyone other than him.
How she remembered the snarl on his face when he’d told her girls didn’t play football and she’d never amount to anything.
Lia had used it all as motivation to prove him and her father—who’d been so desperate to keep his new wife happy that he’d always believed Brett over her—wrong.
“I’m kinda busy with my own career,” she told Vanessa.
Which was currently much more successful than Brett’s.
After a strong start in Premier League football, Vanessa’s golden boy had tapered off sharply in the last few years, landing at a mid-tier team in Spain, his last accolade an FA Cup runner’s-up medal five years ago.
Lia’s trophy cabinet, on the other hand, was growing.
She had a league winner’s medal, one FA Cup, a Golden Boot, and a dozen player-of-the-match awards.
All that was missing was a League Cup and a Champions League medal, which Lia hoped she could achieve at Albion.
She wouldn’t say no to another FA Cup or league title, either.
“Yes, well,” Vanessa tutted, “your own career seems to be on the decline.”
“Because I left one winning club to go to another?”
“Because you went from the winning club last year to the loser. And you didn’t tell us! I had to hear about it from my hairdresser. Do you know how embarrassing it is to be asked about why your daughter switched clubs and not know where she went?”
Lia couldn’t help but laugh. So that was the real reason she’d called.
Not because she cared. But because she didn’t want to be caught out when asked about Lia by people who assumed her stepmother cared about her daughter.
“I am so sorry you embarrassed yourself by not checking on me. And you’re wrong.
My goals helped Wanderers get the better of Albion last season.
I was their standout player. I was the one who turned the FA Cup final around when we were losing.
They’re the ones who are going to struggle without me, not the other way around. ”
“Well, you certainly think highly of yourself, don’t you?”
Lia ground her teeth. “Someone has to, because we both know you or Dad don’t give a fuck about me.”
Silence, other than her stepmother’s breathing. She’d never been good at listening to hard truths. Vanessa and Daniel Ashcroft’s approach to problems had always been denial, or to brush them under the carpet, never to be spoken of again.
But what other reason would there be for packing off your daughter to her grandmother’s at ten years old?
That wasn’t something parents who gave a shit would do.
The sparse phone calls in the years since had only served to further prove that to Lia.
But she knew she was better off without them.
Her grandmother had treated her better than either Daniel or Vanessa ever had.
“I see you’re in a bad mood today. Call me back when you’re feeling more amiable.” Vanessa hung up.
Lia shoved her phone back into her pocket and tried not to scream. Tears stung at her eyes, and she pressed her palms to them to scrub them away as she sank further into her chair. Call her back when she was feeling more amiable? What had Vanessa ever done to earn Lia’s amiability?
Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad thing to put some distance between them. Everything else in Lia’s life had changed in the past month—why not finally cut all contact with her toxic stepmother as well?
* * *
“Have you seen this?” Erin waved her itinerary for Albion’s pre-season tour at Alex as they ate breakfast in the Park Lane canteen. “How much bullshit can they cram into two weeks?”