The Footballer's Wife (13 page)

‘Thank you!' the compere said over the cheers. ‘Thank you. And I see that our judges are looking very impressed by Kent Graham. Will he be the one to win our five thousand pound prize and an all-expenses-paid trip to Memphis? We'll know later this evening . . .'

Tracy stood to attention. Five grand? He never mentioned five grand, she thought. Maybe she
wouldn't be so quick to kick him into touch after all.

There had been some stiff competition but Tracy couldn't think of anyone who'd been better than Kent tonight. The compere came onto the stage holding the gold envelope that contained the winner's name. There was a huge fanfare that ground to a halt halfway through and another man went shooting across the stage under the compere's disapproving glare. There was an ear-splitting sound of a tape being wound back and then the music began again.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, we have witnessed here tonight some of the best performances, I think you'll agree, that Elvis has put on since his death . . .' He smiled, waiting for the laughter. The joke went down like a lead balloon. The compere coughed and soldiered on. Tracy looked at him.
Nob-head
, she thought. Who didn't know to avoid wisecracks when referring to Elvis at an Elvis impersonators competition? Elvis was sacrosanct to these people.

There was a chance that Kent might actually be on the verge of doing something interesting for once. And more importantly, he could be about to give her the holiday she'd been hankering after, not to mention a bit of spends. Tracy had her eye on a
jacket in the catalogue and since her account had been closed after she was declared bankrupt, she couldn't do her usual trick and pay for it at a pound a week for the rest of her life. Tracy had jackets older than most of her kids that still hadn't been paid for outright. Maybe now wasn't the time to tell Kent that he was boring her and that she wanted to be with Mac. Mac would understand. They could just continue having a bit of fun until all this Elvis business was over and then see how the land lay.

*

Len was sitting at Charly's bedside holding her hand. Her face was purple and bruised. Her breathing was shallow but the doctors had informed Len that she was stable and she would need rest. She had briefly opened her eyes and smiled sadly at her dad, but now she was fast asleep again. Len thought back to when Charly had been a little girl. She'd always looked like such a little angel with her baby blonde hair and her blue eyes. He would have killed anyone that had touched a hair on her head back then, but now, he was sitting here knowing that this wasn't the first time Joel Baldy had beaten her, and he hadn't done much about it on either
occasion. Len felt the knot of anger tightening. He wanted Joel Baldy to pay for this, but he wasn't some ordinary bloke down the pub. Someone Len could just go and find and have it out with face to face. He was a snivelling footballer and he was surrounded by flunkies.

Len heard a click from behind him and spun round. A young woman had poked her phone through the curtain and taken a picture of Charly. Len jumped to his feet and ran after her. The girl shot down the corridor. Len reached out and grabbed the woman's coat, pulling her back sharply and throwing her to the floor. Two orderlies were hard on Len's heels.

‘Where is it?' he barked.

‘What you on about, you mong?' the girl spat.

The orderlies grabbed Len and pulled him back. ‘She's just taken a picture of my daughter on her phone,' he said, trying to wrestle free from the men.

‘I never.'

‘Can we see your phone, please.'

‘No.' The girl set her jaw in defiance.

‘Phone. Now!' the larger of the orderlies demanded.

The girl pulled it from her pocket. ‘This is against my human rights!'

The orderly looked at her phone. Len saw him press a few buttons before handing it back to the girl. ‘I've deleted it.'

‘You can't do that, it's against the law.'

‘You can't take pictures of other people in hospital just because you think you can sell it to the paper, darling. That's against the law, too.'

The girl grabbed her phone back angrily before storming off.

‘Thank you,' Len said.

The orderly turned his piercing gaze on Len. ‘And you can't take the law into your own hands.'

Len clenched his fists, fed up with being at the mercy of other people's decisions. ‘My daughter is badly beaten and some little scroat wants to take a picture of her? What would you have done?'

The man hung his head. So he should, Len thought.

The smaller orderly stepped forward. ‘We're going to be moving your daughter to a different ward soon and visiting time there is between two and eight.'

‘You're sending me home.'

‘No. But your daughter is stable and visiting hours have to be adhered to.'

‘Fine.' Len nodded. ‘Fine.' But it was far from
fine. Len was angrier than he'd ever been. He knew that there was only one thing he wanted to do if he left the hospital and that was to find Joel Baldy and make him pay for what he'd done.

JODIE HAD HAD
an average night. There was a time, not so long ago, when the idea of free drinks all night in glamorous bars and being idolised by men would have been her idea of heaven. Now Jodie saw it for what it was: vacuous rubbish. She might as well have been in the Beacon – the pub on the Bolingbroke estate where she used to work – than propping up private members bars in Manchester. At least the customers were down to earth there and knew how to have a laugh. Thankfully she was staying in the Manchester Hilton, which was an impressive building – the large glass edifice could be seen on the skyline from any vantage point in the city – and was a nice place to rest her weary half-cut head. The other girls were all staying there too, but Jodie didn't expect that many of them would get their money's worth from the room. It was three
o'clock now as she crawled into bed; the others had looked like they still had a good few partying hours left in them.

Jodie felt like an old soul as she lay in her hotel room. She wasn't even twenty-one but she knew that her partying days were well and truly over. With a mum like Tracy the party had started early for Jodie and her siblings. Jodie had been given her first proper drink (not including all the whisky she had been fed on the end of her dummy as a child) at the age of six. She remembered feeling dizzy and Markie shouting at his mum, but Tracy had just laughed and put the inebriated Jodie to bed.

From then on, alcohol and drugs were just
around
. When Jodie reached her teens she hadn't felt the need to go out and get rolling drunk in order to rebel. For a Crompton to rebel she'd have had to come home wearing a twinset and pearls and informed Tracy that she was going to university to do a degree in accountancy. Jodie drifted off to sleep thinking about the coming week's work schedule.

The first thing that Jodie knew about the following morning was that it was beginning very loudly and very early. The hammering at her door had started in her dreams but as she sat up in bed and looked at the clock, which informed her it was
4.37, Jodie realised someone was desperately trying to get her attention and, judging from the urgency of the knock, it wasn't housekeeping wanting to check the mini bar.

‘Jodie! Are you in there?'

Jodie grabbed the complimentary dressing gown that was hanging in her wardrobe and walked quickly to the door. She knew that it must be one of the other models – she just couldn't work out which one from the sound of their voice alone. Whoever it was was going to receive a severe tongue-lashing, she thought, as she angrily pulled open the door. Standing in the doorway was Kim. She was crying and running on the spot as if trying to get out of her skin.

‘He's dead!' she screamed.

Jodie took in the sight that greeted her. Kim was covered in blood.

‘Who's dead? Who?' Jodie grabbed the girl's arm and tried to get her to calm down. Kim didn't answer, she just stood there making desperate gulping noises. Jodie looked across the corridor to the room where Kim had been staying and, dragging the girl with her, made her way over. She pushed the door open and looked across the room; her eyes fell on the blood-soaked male body at the side of the
bed, a knife protruding from his torso. Jodie fell backwards against the wall and clutched her hands to her mouth. Kim was right: the man was definitely dead. And he was definitely Joel Baldy.

*

Tracy awoke with a desperate thirst and looked at the radio alarm clock at the side of the bed. Kent rolled over, revealing a pillowcase smeared with boot polish from his Elvis quiff. He was still clutching the trophy that he'd won the night before.

‘Time is it?'

‘Five. I've got a mouth like Gandhi's flip-flop,' Tracy said, making her way into the bathroom and sticking her head under the tap.

‘Did I dream last night?' Kent asked, half asleep.

‘No. You won. Memphis here we come,' Tracy said, looking at her hazy reflection through bloodshot eyes.

‘I could have sworn blind that kid was going to win.' Kent pushed himself up on his elbows.

‘I know, you've said,' Tracy said flatly. Kent had got blind drunk once he had been announced winner of the Elvis contest and had insisted on getting the poor lad who was runner-up in a near-
headlock, telling him how good he thought he was. He was full of praise for his hip thrust, he said, but he felt that until the lad had watched the entire back catalogue of Elvis films – which as far as Tracy could work out ran to thousands – he wouldn't be able to truly replicate the King. By 1am Kent was so inebriated that he was thoroughly convinced he was channelling the spirit of Elvis himself. He wrote an illegible note to Tracy and said, straight-faced, in his best Elvis voice, ‘Give this to Priscilla; tell her I always loved her.' When Tracy finally deciphered it, she realised it read
Engelbert knows what really happened.

‘Engelbert knows what?' Tracy had asked.

Kent's eyes had darkened and he had looked her straight in the eye with a menacing glare. ‘What?' he had snapped.

Tracy had rolled her eyes; it had been like dealing with an elderly Alzheimer's-addled relative. ‘Your note says
Engelbert knows what really happened
and I said “Engelbert knows what?”'

‘Engelbert knows fuck all,' Kent had hissed.

‘Right!' Tracy had announced, getting to her feet and grabbing Kent by the arm. ‘We're off home. I can't be arsed listening to this.'

Kent had stared at the floor as she dragged him out
of the club. She hadn't seen him like this often and it was usually a product of drinking whisky, but occasionally Kent would become morose and conspiratorial when drunk. The worst time had been when he'd insisted on ringing the UN and asked to be put through to Kofi Annan because he thought Angelina Jolie's tattoos were a code for terrorists. Tracy hadn't managed to get to the bottom of what he'd been on about and she hadn't really cared; she'd just wanted him to shut up as they'd been at his sister's fiftieth at the time. Thankfully his phone credit had run out before he could make a total show of himself to the poor woman on reception at the United Nations.

Tracy had thrown Kent out into the fresh air where he seemed to come around. ‘I won!' he announced. He staggered around in a circle for a moment as if his right foot had somehow inadvertently become glued to the floor and then, throwing his arms out to the side, clutching his Elvis trophy and falling to one knee, he began to sing the opening lines of ‘The Wonder of You'.

Tracy looked at him. It took all her strength not to put her foot on his chest and push him over. But she
knew that in two months' time she would be on the holiday of a lifetime with Kent and that was reason enough to grin and bear it for the time being.

‘Get up, you soft arse,' Tracy had said, shaking her head. Kent had done as he was told and wobbled his way back along Blackpool front behind Tracy as she marched ahead with her arms folded across her chest, wishing she'd brought a coat.

Tracy came out of the bathroom and looked at Kent. ‘You were talking some shit last night.'

‘Can't a man have a whisky in celebration?'

‘A man can have a whisky, but I'd prefer it if a man didn't start thinking that he was channelling the dead and passing on messages.'

‘What messages?'

‘Apparently Engelbert fucking Humperdinck knows all about something.'

‘What?'

‘That's what I said.'

‘Did I say that?'

‘Among other things.'

‘Bloody hell, I must have been pissed.'

‘Trust me, you were.'

Tracy came out of the bathroom and was about to get back into bed when she saw the light from her phone come on in her bag. The phone was on
silent. Kent turned around in the bed and threw his head under the pillow. ‘I don't know if I'll get back to sleep now,' he said, rustling around. Tracy wasn't listening. She was looking at a message from Mac.

‘Hi. Can't meet you next week. Had to go away on business. You'll have to do your collections on your own. Back soon.' Tracy looked at the message. This wasn't like Mac. He'd usually have something cheeky or dirty to say in his text. She pushed the phone back into her bag and wondered for a moment what this could mean but quickly dismissed the thought. Tracy never spent much time wondering about people's motives. She was very male in that respect and she'd tried to drill it into her daughters to do the same, with varying degrees of success. There was nothing she hated more than hearing grown women poring over something some bloke's said and saying, ‘What do you think he meant by that?' when invariably the bloke in question won't have meant anything.

Tracy got into bed and Kent shifted around; he was evidently wide awake.

‘How d'you fancy giving Elvis a blow job?' Kent asked, charm personified.