Chapter 2
DOMINIC
The players go through their warmups on the field below me as I watch from the stands, shoulders drawn up against the cold. The drizzle hasn’t let up all day, and I don’t envy them powering through this weather. I pick them all out easily, one by one, even from this distance.
None of them looks like Archie.
Barry has them running sprints, practicing their footwork, passing the ball back and forth. Troy Everest shows up ten minutes late, and runs laps as punishment. But after forty-five minutes, there are no other late arrivals.
He’s not bloody here.
I pull out my phone, checking it for the millionth time. A ton of messages. Several missed calls. But nothing from Archie. When I call him, it just goes straight to voicemail.
I dial Mia’s number. It rings three times, and then I’m met with a curt, “What?”
“I just wanted to let you know he’s not shown up to training.”
Mia laughs harshly. “Colour me fucking surprised.”
“Mia…” I trail off, because I’m not entirely sure what to say. “I’m… I’m really very sorry. I am.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Come on, I am. You don’t deserve this. If you need anything-”
“I’m fine, Dom.” And she hangs up.
“Shit,” I hiss through my teeth. I watch the lads training for a few more minutes, then decide I’ve had enough of this day, and get to my feet, making my way through the stands. I swing past my office to grab my things, checking my phone again as I stride past Sarah’s desk.
“I’m off,” I tell her. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Mr Graves, your ex-wife called.”
I turn back to Sarah with a suppressed groan. “Which one?”
“Andrea.”
Archie’s mother. Of course. “Great. Thanks for letting me know.”
Sarah gives me a sympathetic nod. “Not a problem. I’ll try to remember to say which one in future.”
“Bless you for that. Don’t stay too late.”
Gordon is pulling up with my car just as I walk outside, new headlights glowing. He kills the engine and climbs out, hurrying across the parking lot to my side under the roof.
“Mechanic told me to take it for a test-drive, the wiring in these is apparently very moody,” he says, handing me the keys.
“Thanks for that.”
“Didn’t show up, did he?”
“No.” I clutch the keys in my hand and shake my head. “No, he didn’t. And now his mother’s called me, so I have that to look forward to when I get home.”
“Brilliant.” Gordon leans against the wall with a sigh. “I wonder, a young man like him, bright career, world at his feet - what’s he thinking when he throws it all away?”
“Not bloody much apparently.”
“No.” Gordon frowns at me. “But, you know, what is it? What sets a man off to just destroy his life like that?” He shakes his head. “Anyway, for now we can contain it, but this isn’t going to stay undercover for long. At the latest, by the next game, we’ve got a PR disaster on our hands.”
“I know.” I clutch the keys harder in my hand. “He’s really going to bring it down on all of us.”
We say our goodbyes, and I take a deep breath in the car. Which is promptly interrupted by someone knocking on the window. My father waves, then begins to open the car door.
“What excellent timing!” He tries to lift his oxygen tank, and I quickly climb out of the car again, hurrying around to help him. “You can give me a lift home.”
“What are you doing here, Dad?” I hold up the oxygen tank while he carefully lowers himself into the seat, adjusting the thin plastic hose over his shoulder so he can secure his seat belt. “I thought you went to see Mia.”
“I did.” My father lets me tuck the oxygen tank between his feet on the floor. “Had a nice old chat, too.”
I roll my eyes as I close the door, heading back around to the driver’s side.
“Andrea called her,” my father says as I start the engine. “Christ, that woman is a miserable old cow. I told you not to get her pregnant, didn’t I?”
“Yes, Dad, you did, thank you.” I pull out of the parking lot and onto the side road, which isn’t as busy as usual. Everyone seems to be sick of this day, just like me. I give my father a brief side glance. “Andrea give her hell?”
“Mia told her to go fuck herself and hung up,” my father says with a gruff laugh, sounding deeply proud. “She’s a good girl, that one. Doesn’t take any guff.”
“Mmm.” I stop at a red light, and can feel my father staring at me. “What is it, Dad?”
“What are we going to do about this?”
“Well, there’s not a lot we can do, is there?”
My father snorts. “We can’t just keep quiet about it and let the story get ahead of us, the speculation will run rampant.”
The light turns green and I accelerate into the intersection. “What do you suggest, a press conference? Tell everyone Archie’s disappeared and we have no idea where or with whom or for how long, but everything’s fine?”
My father growls disapprovingly. “You’re being far too emotional about all of this.”
“Of course I’m emotional, this is my son we’re talking about.”
“This is business, Dominic.” My father’s voice booms in the car, surprisingly strong despite the disease whittling away at his lungs.
“Yes, Archie is your son, and you can have all that out with him when he gets back. But right now, the club is what matters, the team is what matters, and the fans are what matter. Archie has let down more than just his wife here, and that’s what I’m worried about. ”
“There’s not much we can do about the fans, they’ll either be angry that he’s gone or angry when he gets back.
” I take a right turn, down a peaceful tree-lined street dotted with posh wine bars and windows hung with fairy lights as we move closer to Holland Park.
“But you’re right, we need to… minimise the damage somehow. ”
“And the best way to do that is to be honest. Hiding things in the dark serves no one. Not these days when every Tom, Dick or Harry fancies themselves a journalist because they have a phone in their hand.” My father catches a cough with a white handkerchief, and my head instinctively snaps in his direction to check for blood.
Thankfully, there’s none. “And we certainly can’t have the fans show up to the game on Tuesday expecting to see Archie bloody Graves on the field, only to find he’s not there. There’ll be riots.”
I grip the steering wheel harder and growl. “Yeah, you’re right.”
I come up with a hundred speeches in my head during the last ten minutes of the drive, while my father goes on about how in my day and back when we understood loyalty, and every other term he can think of that just has my guilt twisting tighter and tighter around my stomach.
“I was a bad father,” I suddenly blurt out, and my father stops short.
“You what?”
I stop at another cursed red light, and exhale heavily. “I was. I was a bad father. I was too busy, too focused on my career, too selfish, and I wasn’t around enough. Archie idolised me and I never made sure it was the good parts he saw.”
My father pats my shoulder heavily. “You been reading too many girly books, mate.”
I shrug him off. “Sorry, I guess we should all be more like your generation was and just drink all day, cheat on our wives and forget we even had kids, would have solved the entire issue.”
“Hey, now you listen here,” my father snaps, which sends him into a violent coughing fit.
Mercifully, we’re right outside his place, so I bring the car to a stop and dash around to his side. He’s going almost purple by the time I open his door, and I increase the flow of his oxygen.
“Alright, Dad, calm down,” I say, putting a hand on his arm. “Deep breaths. Just calm your breathing.”
“I… bloody… know,” he rasps, each word punctuated by more wheezing and coughing. He wipes the spittle from his lips with his handkerchief, and slowly, his breathing calms. He holds up a shaky finger, his eyes wide, and he shakes his head. “I loved your mother.”
“I know, Dad.”
“She was a wonderful wife, and-” Another deep, catching breath that rattles in his throat. “A bloody wonderful mother.”
“Yes, Dad. She was.”
“And I never claimed to be perfect.” He coughs one last string of harsh, racking coughs, then his breathing seems to settle. “I know I made mistakes. But I did the best I could by you and your mum. I did. You’re too bloody old to keep blaming me for your life, son. That’s on you now.”
I take a deep breath, hooking my hand under his arm. “Come on, Dad, let’s get you inside.”
“Everything alright?” A friendly voice drifts along the garden path, and I hear hurried footsteps.
A red umbrella comes into view, shielding the stocky body of a woman in a pink cardigan and bleached jeans.
“Hello, there Dom. Had a spell has he?” Sally, my father’s carer, always has a smile on her face, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her frowning.
A miracle considering she deals with my dad every day.
“Just got a bit agitated in the car, Sal,” I say as my father leans heavily on my arm. “Think he got out and about a bit much.”
“I went to see my granddaughter,” my father says indignantly. “She enjoys my company.”
“That she does,” Sally says, giving me a surreptitious wink. “Mia loves you, and so do we.”
My father grumbles and waves dismissively, refusing our help once he’s on his feet, and taking off down the path to his home.
Sally turns back to me with a sigh and shakes her head. “He’s a stubborn old mule.”
“That he is.” I close the car door and run a hand over my damp hair. “Happy enough for me to drive him home, though.”
“I think the idea of a driver still makes him uneasy. When it’s you, he just feels like it’s your duty.
” Sally shrugs, and she looks over her shoulder, craning her neck to make sure Dad’s gotten to the house.
“He’s not coping well with losing his license.
Misses driving a lot.” She turns back to face me, smile still firmly in place.
“But don’t worry, we’ve plenty to keep him busy. ”
“Thanks, Sally. I appreciate it.” The rain gets heavier, and I give her a quick nod. “I’d best be off, and you should get inside.”
“Not a worry. Have a good night!” The red umbrella bobs out of sight as she scurries down the path after my dad.
The drive home is dark and quiet, people everywhere eager to get home and comfortable. I pull into the parking garage of my apartment block, ignoring the constant pinging of my phone because I am in no mood to address anything until I get upstairs.
I’ve only lived in this apartment for a year now, since my separation, but it feels like I’ve lived here for ages. Hammersmith isn’t as posh as Shepherd’s Bush, nowhere near, but that is what I like about it. Here, amongst new-builds and cheery old pubs, I’d managed to find a place to breathe.
And a place where I knew my painfully snobbish ex-wife wouldn’t accidentally cross my path.
I kick off my shoes, shrug off my coat, and take a few deep breaths in the mostly dark apartment. The only light comes from the glow of the streetlights below. It’s peaceful, and quiet, and just what I need after the day from hell.
My phone begins to buzz. Insistently.
I pull it out of my pocket to see Andrea’s name pop up on the screen. Here we go.
“Hello, Andrea,” I say, bracing myself. “How are you?”
“How do you think I am? I’m worried sick.”
“I suppose Archie did always like being a bit dramatic.” I wander into the apartment, flicking on the light in the kitchen. “Although this is a lot, even for him.”
“When were you going to tell me he was missing?” Andrea shrieks down the phone. “I have to find out from my sister? You don’t think I should know something like that?”
“Listen, I found out today, same as everyone else, and we still don’t even know what’s happened to him, alright?”
“Why hasn’t anyone called the police?”
I sigh heavily. “Because he’s quite probably gone off to Spain, this isn’t some murder mystery. He’s not been kidnapped.”
“It’s her that did it to him,” Andrea snaps, and there’s a sharp sound of high heels on tiles, no doubt her pacing through her obscenely large house in the Cotswolds while she rants. “I knew that one was trouble, nasty little madam, all she ever wanted was Archie’s money!”
“I’ll remind you that Mia is obscenely wealthy all on her own, and that Archie pursued her,” I say evenly. “And also that our son is being unfaithful to his wife, which is hardly her fault.”
“You spoiled him,” Andrea spits out. “This is your fault. I always told you it would end badly, and this is what you made him.”
“You know what I’m going to do?” I walk over to the window, watching the cars drive along the wet street below. “I’m going to make a bingo card, so that whenever you call me, I can tick off every single thing you say to me, because it’s always the same bloody thing.”
“You just don’t want to take responsibility is your problem,” Andrea sneers. “Dominic bloody Graves, one woman after another in your bed, always a new wife to show off, it’s pathetic. And then you wonder why Archie is the way he is. He’s exactly like you!”
“And it couldn’t possibly be that you always told him nothing was ever his fault and that apologising was - how did you put it? - wet?”
Andrea’s rage is almost a bubbling sound on the line. It feels ridiculous to be arguing this point with her, but this was our marriage all over. Finger-pointing, blame, spite, endless arguments because both of us were determined to be right. Never led to anything good.
“This is pointless,” I say before she can fire another barb down the phone. “We both made mistakes, but this is Archie’s decision, Archie’s bad choice, and it has nothing to do with us.”
“So says the guilty party.”
“Is this what you called me for? To unload your rage? Do you feel better now?”
Andrea huffs an angry breath into the phone. “If there’s any news, any at all, I want to hear it. And tell that cheap slag I’ll be recommending my son a divorce lawyer when he’s back!”
It used to be more dramatic, being hung up on, back when we had phones that you could slam. Now, instead of an almighty crash that left me wondering if the bakelite had cracked, there’s just… silence.
Boring.
I go to the kitchen, pour myself a glass of wine, and stretch out on the couch.
I click on the fireplace - another oddity of this apartment that fills me with almost childish delight - and watch the flames dance for a while before my stomach protests.
I haven’t eaten all day, too busy and caught up in the drama.
I can hear my mother reprimanding me from wherever she is now.
I decide today is most certainly a cheat day, and order myself a curry.
Just as the little icon pops up to tell me the driver has picked up my food, a message from my father appears on my phone.
I expect you to do your duty and look after Mia. No good blaming me for your faults when you won’t man up and do the same for your son.
I throw the phone onto the side table and take another large gulp of wine.
The last thing Mia wants is her decrepit old father-in-law looking after her. Sounds like a fast way to get my eyes clawed out.