Chapter 3
MIA
“Over here, Mia! Keep that look! Yes, amazing! Oh my god, you look like you want to kill me! I love it! Yes, queen!”
Kai is bursting with joy from behind her camera, and while she’s always enthusiastic about working with me, today she’s extra pleased with my look.
Resting Bitch Face is a lot easier when you imagine everyone in the room is your stupid husband and you’re getting ready to lop his balls off with a pair of kitchen shears.
At least Archie being a wanker helps my brand.
I toss my hair over my left shoulder, putting a hand on my right hip, glaring down the camera, and I wonder how many more pictures they need of me wearing these jeans. We’ve been at it for what feels like hours.
Finally, Kai calls it a wrap, and I slump with relief, stretching my back.
“Amazing work, Mia!” Kai exclaims, wrapping me in a hug. “You look fucking stunning, darling.”
“Thank you.” I look at the screen on her camera as she swipes through a few of the pictures. My dark hair is so impossibly shiny that I’m sure someone could see their reflection in it, and my eyes look greener than usual. “Good job, I look half decent for once.”
“Oh, stop it, you,” Kai says with a laugh, and taps my shoulder. “You’re fit and you know it.”
“Hey, that was a comment on your camerawork, not my face.”
Kai throws her head back and laughs. “Oh, you bitch. I love it.” She gives me a soft smile, and puts an arm around my shoulder. “Good to see you’re not losing your sense of humour amongst all this shit going on.”
And suddenly everyone in the room is Archie again, and I want to cut off his balls.
I give Kai a tight smile, and nod. “Yeah, hasn’t been fun.”
“Everyone’s starting to wonder when the club’s going to say anything,” Kai murmurs. “The game against Salford’s in two days.”
The past three days have been a nightmare.
Everywhere I went - coffee with friends, taking Tank for a walk, even fucking Waitrose - I was hounded by the press.
Endless questions of where’s Archie? What’s the club doing?
Is your marriage over? It’s been exhausting, and means I’m driving more than usual, which I hate.
London traffic does nothing for my frayed nerves.
The worst part of it all though is I don’t know myself what’s happening.
I’m in a weird limbo state - still Archie’s wife, but also not wanting to be, and knowing that he likely didn’t want me to be either.
The emotional push-pull of hating him, while also being so fucking hurt that he’d cheated on me, was doing my head in.
I just wanted it all to stop, to go away.
Maybe I should have run off to Spain and all.
But, unlike Archie, I wasn’t going to abandon my job. I had contracts to fulfill, events to attend, and products to promote. At least it was keeping me busy.
“How we doing, sweetheart?” Holly, my PA, appears at my side with a cup of coffee, which I take from her gratefully.
“Fine. Just a little tired.”
“Arlington just announced a press conference for this afternoon,” Holly says in a low voice. “I think it would be wise for you to be home and safe before that happens, because the press are going to be unhinged as fuck, we all know that.”
“Miles ahead of you,” I tell her with a smile. “Charlotte’s coming over, we’re ordering in from the Persian restaurant down the road, and I’m drinking so much wine I’ll be asking, Archie who? by the end of the evening.”
“Sounds perfect.” Holly’s attention is torn back to her phone, more and more emails pouring in, and I decide that I need to give her the bonus of all bonuses for fielding the shitstorm stupid fucking Archie has brought down on us all.
By the time we leave the studio, it’s getting dark, and a group of photographers are waiting down on the street for me. Holly holds up a hand and tells them all to sod off, but their voices drown her out.
“Mia! What do you have to say about the state of Arlington’s team right now?” A voice calls from the back.
“Team’s not really my department, is it?” I respond without looking up. “Barry’s a great coach, he’ll know what to do.”
“Mia! Mia!” A man’s voice sounds right at my shoulder, and I roll my eyes.
“Slow day, Paulie?” I ask, looking at Paulie Hardcastle as Holly tries to put some distance between us. “Or you just back to stalking me now?”
Paulie, a middle-aged man with silver hair and a face that’s just a little too jolly to be genuine, gives me one of his smarmy smiles. “You know I can’t stay away too long, don’t you?”
“Creeping after a woman young enough to be your daughter, bit weird, innit?” I’m almost at the car, but it’s still plenty of time for Paulie to be a fucking cunt.
“How has this latest incident affected your relationship with Dominic?” Paulie asks, and the question has me pausing and blinking at him.
“You what?”
“Your issues with your father-in-law are well known, since he made Archie captain right after your marriage,” Paulie pants as I almost reach the car. “Your feud is almost legendary.”
“Christ, it really is a slow day if you think me and Dominic having a spat is newsworthy.” My hand is on the car door. “Nice chatting to you, Paulie.”
“But did you hear that-”
“That’s enough,” Holly interjects, pushing Paulie and the other photographers back so I can open the car door and climb into the backseat. “You can call me if you want to ask any questions.”
“But you never answer!” Someone calls from the back, and the reporters all laugh.
“Then send me something worth answering, you sods!” Holly calls back cheekily, and climbs in after me.
The door is slammed shut amidst more protests, and she huffs out a breath once the car starts to move.
“Them reporters and their stupid questions. Always on about you and Dom, it’s so fucking weird.
” She leans forward, tapping on the console beside the driver.
“Knightsbridge, first please. We need to get Mrs Graves home.”
The driver throws up two fingers in a sign of understanding, and Holly slouches back into her seat with a soft sigh.
“I don’t even know where they got the idea that Dominic and I don’t like each other,” I mutter, staring out the window at the London traffic. “I’ve always been nice to him in public.”
Holly chuckles softly. “Well there is that photo-”
“Oh stop,” I interject quickly, my cheeks burning.
“I’ve never bloody lived that one stupid photo down.
” The photo. The image is burned forever into my brain.
Me, by a huge plate glass window, hurling an expensive Chinese vase at Archie’s head.
It was taken the day of his announcement as Captain of the team, when Archie had sat beside his father at a press conference, and Dominic had thumped him on the back, his face glowing with pride.
The press had dreamt up some story about a rivalry between Dom and I, that we were both vying for Archie’s attention, or something. It was ridiculous, but it had kick-started rumours that Dom and I hated each other.
The vase hadn’t even hit Archie. Nowhere near.
And that wasn’t even what the argument was about anyway.
Stupid Paulie Hardcastle. He always knew just how to get the best photos of me and make me look like a psycho.
“So, we’ve got tomorrow off, then on Monday we have the Ladies Who Launch event with Joanne Murray,” Holly says, scrolling through my schedule for the next few days. “Then Tuesday there’s the game against Salford.”
“I don’t know if I’m going to that,” I say quickly, and the silence is so loud I turn to look at Holly. “I mean, why should I?”
“To support the team?” Holly raises her eyebrows. “To show solidarity? I don’t know but I think it would be wise.”
“You don’t think it’ll piss the fans off more that Archie Graves’ wife is there, and he isn’t?”
“No, I think it shows that you’re one of them, not just a WAG.” Holly looks back down at her phone with a shrug. “Up to you. Game’s at 4pm.”
“Yeah.” I stare back out the window, the streetlights rolling past as we navigate the busy streets.
Football. I’d never expected it to become such a big part of my life.
I was just a 21-year-old working a make-up counter when a beautiful man in an expensive suit, surrounded by an entourage stopped right in front of me, asking when Harrods started selling angels.
It was a cheesy line, it made me laugh and blush - and it totally knocked me off my feet. No one could believe I didn’t know who he was. That’s Archie Graves! My friend had squealed into my ear, and I still hadn’t known who he was.
Football royalty.
His family had a stadium named after them.
They’d played for Arlington since its founding in 1899.
Everyone in his family lived and breathed football.
And then Archie had dragged home a poor shopgirl with tattoos and a Yorkshire accent, who made money posing in her underwear and selling mascara.
Must have been a bit of a shock to them.
“There’s been another report that Archie was spotted,” Holly says, and I glance over to see her peering at her phone. “This one’s in Madrid, but it’s just a side angle shot and it’s hard to say if it’s him.” She flips the phone around to me, and I squint at the photo.
The set of the jaw, and the way he seems to be biting his lip, definitely makes it look like Archie.
“Why the fuck would he be in Madrid?” I mutter, and rub my head. “I just don’t understand what he’s doing.”
“What you going to do when he gets back?” Holly asks, and I shrug.
“Haven’t even thought about it,” I reply, playing with the strap of my handbag. “I don’t want to either. I’m done wondering what to do about him. I’m done worrying, and I just want to forget he exists.”
“Good plan.” Holly pats my leg. “Nothing to be done right now anyway.”
I wonder if I should be more worried about Archie. I’d assumed he’d run off to hide with his mistress, but for him to abandon the club, it felt like maybe something else was brewing in the background.