Earth: From the Bestselling Author of the Heart's Invisible Furies
Author: John Boyne
Date: 2024-04-17T14:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fiction; Literary; Lgbtq+; Gay; Coming of Age; Legal; General; Contemporary
Description: 'Compelling... a potent portrait of a flawed young man' - Daily Mail' A strong set-up, and with the masterly Boyne at the helm, the tension never lets up' - Mail on Sunday From million-copy-bestselling author John Boyne, an inescapably gritty story about one young man whose direction in life takes a vastly different turn than what he expected. It’s the tabloid sensation of the year: two well-known footballers standing in the dock, charged with sexual assault, a series of vile text messages pointing towards their guilt. As the trial unfolds, Evan Keogh reflects on the events that have led him t
Publisher: Random House

About the Author

John Boyne is the author of fifteen novels for adults, six for younger readers, and a collection of short stories. His 2006 novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas has sold more than eleven million copies worldwide and has been adapted for cinema, theatre, ballet and opera. He has won four Irish Book Awards, including Author of the Year in 2022, along with a host of other international literary prizes. His novels are published in sixty languages, making him the most translated Irish writer of all time.

Twitter: @JohnBoyneBooks

Instagram: @JohnBoyneAuthor

Also by John Boyne

NOVELS

The Thief of Time

The Congress of Rough Riders

Crippen

Next of Kin

Mutiny on the Bounty

The House of Special Purpose

The Absolutist

This House is Haunted

A History of Loneliness

The Heart’s Invisible Furies

A Ladder to the Sky

A Traveller at the Gates of Wisdom

The Echo Chamber

All the Broken Places

Water

NOVELS FOR YOUNGER READERS

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

Noah Barleywater Runs Away

The Terrible Thing That Happened to Barnaby Brocket

Stay Where You Are and Then Leave

The Boy at the Top of the Mountain

My Brother’s Name is Jessica

NOVELLAS

The Second Child

The Dare

SHORT STORIES

Beneath the Earth

John Boyne

EARTH

For Larry Finlay

1

I DREAMED THAT I dreamed about the musty grey soil of the island and the sweet perfume it emits after rainfall, a double remove from a place I will never visit again. My mother explained to me once that the fragrance comes from a combination of chemicals and bacteria in the earth which form filaments when wet, sending spores of aromatic vapour into the air. We find the scent comforting, she told me, because we want to believe there’ll be a welcoming place for us one day, when we’re buried deep inside it.

I’ve been awake for almost an hour when my phone lights up with a message. I ignore it until another arrives a few moments later. Lifting it from its charger, I see that it’s from Robbie, as I knew it would be. I read the first one:

Counting on you today, bro. Don’t let me down.

And then the second:

Delete that, yeah?

I wonder how he can be so stupid as to text me at all. Messages like this have contributed to the trouble we’re in. The WhatsApp group chat where he had to brag about that night, and the replies, all made public, that made us look like a bunch of animals. He thinks that boasting is proof of our innocence, that if we’d actually committed a crime, then the last thing either of us would have done is brag about it. That might be true, but doesn’t he know that deleting them means nothing? Everything is saved in the phone’s internal hardware, or in the cloud, or on some anonymous server in a vast warehouse located under the Mojave Desert.

Nothing disappears. Nothing is forgotten. Everything we say or do these days clings to us for ever.

I climb out of bed and place my feet on the carpet. These feet that can do things that other boys’ feet cannot. Run down a pitch, evading human obstacles, with the grace of Rudolf Nureyev. Pick up a ball and bounce it effortlessly on strong toes. Curve it from the corner spot in a perfect arc, landing on the head of a chosen forward, or send it soaring over the leaping bodies of crotch-guarding defenders into the top-right corner of a net. How many times have they carried me to the sidelines, where I drop to my knees before our army of fans, arms outstretched, pretending that I care about the adulation coming my way? They’ve been able to do this from as far back as I can recall, in the same way that some children are able to draw, or sing, or do impressions. Unfortunately, whatever magic I was granted found its way to the wrong limbs, for I did not want to be a footballer. I wanted to be a painter, but my eyes and hands did not have the gifts granted to my feet.

I walk over to the curtains and pull them apart, looking down towards the residents’ parking spaces below. My bright yellow Audi R8 glistens in the sunshine. I spent a fortune on it a year ago, eight weeks’ wages at the time, I calculated, and I only ever drive it to the training ground and back. It would have been cheaper to use taxis.

The fourteen-storey building I live in is located on the outskirts of the city, near the river. Each floor contains only a single apartment of 2,500 square feet and I live on the twelfth. Facing it, on the other side of a perfectly manicured circle of flowerbeds with a fountain at its centre, stands an identical building, where Robbie lives in a penthouse duplex. On the floors below me live two well-known actors, a moderately successful popstar and a former Home Secretary. In Robbie’s, there are three other footballers and a disgraced tennis coach. Our homes have more space than any of us need. There are home pods in every room and, if I want to hear a song, I say its name out loud and it plays. My voice controls the temperature, the water flow, the underfloor heating. There are six televisions, one in the living room, one in each of the three bedrooms, one in the kitchen and one facing the bath. I’d have preferred something simpler, but the club insisted, because they like to send the glossies over occasionally to photograph us relaxing with our girlfriends and this is the kind of place that the fans expect. Not that I have a girlfriend. Although they arranged one for me a few weeks after I moved in, when Hello! came to call. She seemed friendly enough, even suggested going for drinks afterwards, but I said no, blaming the following morning’s training session.

‘I’m not looking for anything,’ she told me. ‘It’s just a drink. I’ve been living with a woman for the last three years.’

I still said no.

‘Then I guess we’re breaking up,’ she said, kissing me on the cheek as she left. ‘It’s been fun, Evan.’

As I head towards the en suite, my phone rings and I sigh, assuming it’s Robbie again, but no, when I look at the screen, I see that it’s Dad calling. He and Mam arrived four days ago and are staying in a hotel in the city centre. I wish they hadn’t come over at all, but there was nothing I could do to keep them away. I consider rejecting the call, but I know what he’s like. He’ll keep phoning until I answer.

‘Hi,’ I say, lifting it to my ear.

‘You’re up, then.’

‘Of course I’m up.’

I can hear him breathing heavily. This life, this terrible life that I have, was his dream, not mine. I’ve become everything he wanted me to be since I left the island four years ago, but he’s still controlling me.

‘Watch your tone,’ he says quietly, and my nostrils fill with the smell of the loam, as they always do when I’m frightened or when I remember what I did that made me run away in the first place.

‘Sorry,’ I say.

‘You’re getting a taxi?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did the club organize it?’

‘No. They can’t get involved.’

‘Do you want me to have a word with them?’

I stifle a laugh. He actually thinks the club would listen to him. Its owner, directors and assets are worth somewhere between three and four hundred million pounds. He might be a big man on the island with his farm and his third share of a grocery store and his fifth share of a boat, but he’s nothing here. He wouldn’t even get through the front door.

‘Best to leave it,’ I say. ‘I’ll use an app, it’s easier.’

‘Right.’ There’s a lengthy pause. I wonder whether I can hang up, but the choice is taken away from me when he does so first. I throw the phone on to the bed and take a long, hot shower, shaving carefully, then use the hairdryer to plump up my blond curls. I know how innocent they make me look, and I might as well take advantage of that. My face has a childlike aspect to it, making me appear younger than my twenty-two years. More innocent. If I wasn’t so well known in the city, I’d have trouble getting served in bars. As it is, the only difficulty I have is paying for my own drinks. When I go out, girls want to get close to me and boys want to be my best friend. When I went out, I mean. I don’t any more, for obvious reasons. The only person I see regularly is Wojciech, and even he seems to be reconsidering our relationship. We go to a local pub sometimes, one where the regulars have no interest in football, and I keep my back to the room and pull a baseball cap down over my forehead. More often than not, though, he just comes here, and we watch a movie together, my head in his lap. I like how he strokes my hair. Mam used to do that when I was a boy, lying on the sofa watching Toy Story over and over. Cormac and I knew every line of that film and, when we were children, we would go to each other’s houses and act out scenes for our parents, who howled with laughter, even Dad, who only allows himself a handful of smiles a year, as if each one costs him something he can’t afford. We were so close, Cormac and I, united as much by having known each other since we were babies as by the fact that I had no siblings, while his only brother, his senior by only a year, had been killed in an accident when we were seven. He’d never quite got over Ronan’s death, traumatized at an age when he would either move past it quickly or not recover at all, and he clung to me in his grief.

I open one of my many wardrobes and stare at the suits within, most of which I don’t recognize, since I don’t buy my own clothes. The club employs a woman, Lucy, who takes care of all that for us. She stores all the players’ measurements – shirt size, shoe size, trouser length – on her laptop and seems to understand instinctively what will look best on each of us. Every month two boxes arrive, one from Nike, because they’re my sponsor – were my sponsor – and the other from one of the big luxury brands. If I’m photographed in them, and those pictures subsequently appear in the papers, my account is credited with 30–50 per cent of their value, depending on the publication. I don’t wash my boxers or socks; they go straight in the bin after a single use. There’s always dozens more waiting in my underwear drawer. I’ve been given clear instructions on how to dress today: relatable but aspirational. It’s important that I look like I care enough about, or at least respect, what’s happening to make an effort, but that I’m too distressed by the injustice of it all to try too hard. In the end, I select a dark blue Armani suit with a white Balenciaga shirt and a navy Tom Ford tie. A pair of dark brown Ted Baker shoes that feel uncomfortable on my precious feet. Maybe if I wear them long enough, I can cause some permanent damage and be set free.

Before I dress, however, I examine my body in the bedroom’s full-length mirror. My left arm is a little stiff this morning, which it occasionally is when I feel stressed. I broke it a few years ago – or rather, I had it broken for me – and it’s never been quite the same since. But I’m still toned, since I use the building’s gym and private pool most days, although the definition of my abdominals has diminished a little. Neither Robbie nor I are allowed anywhere near the club right now, so I can’t eat in the players’ canteen, where the food is carefully prepared and nutritionally balanced, so my diet has slipped. A private trainer shows up three times a week, supplied by the club, and this is something we’re not allowed to tell anyone. Robbie’s worth more than ten million pounds, and I’m valued at just over half that amount, so it needs to protect its assets. When this is over, if it goes our way, we’ll be expected back on the pitch as soon as possible. If it ends badly, they’ll never speak of us again. We’ll be erased from their records as if we never existed and, I imagine, the insurance will kick in.

By nine fifteen, I’m dressed, and I return to the window, waiting for Robbie to leave. I’m only there a few minutes when a taxi pulls up and he emerges from the front entrance. Only when it drives away do I open the app and order one for myself. I could have travelled with him, of course, but Catherine, our barrister, said it would look better if we arrived separately.

When the driver pulls up, I’m standing by the small area of overgrown grass which houses the development’s performative commitment to the environment, a wild sanctuary that allows insects and birds to land or nest without disturbance. It has a rough beauty to it, but it contains a secret in its depths, and I become so lost in thought that the driver has to sound his horn to snap me out of it. I turn away, open the back door and step inside. I’ve entered my destination already, so there should be no need for conversation. I keep my head low, pretending to scroll through my phone, and it’s only when we’re halfway there that I notice how he keeps glancing at me in the rear-view mirror.

‘I know who you are,’ he says.

I don’t reply.

‘It starts today, doesn’t it?’

I nod.

‘I’m a fan,’ he tells me, his face breaking into a wide smile. ‘That goal you scored against—’

‘Thanks,’ I say. I have no interest in reliving the highlights of my brief career.

‘So how long will it go on?’ he asks.

‘A couple of weeks, I’m told.’

‘If you like,’ he says, ‘I could pick you up every morning. And then, when you’re done for the day, I could be waiting outside. Might make life easier for you.’

He’s not wrong. It would be more convenient to use the same taxi and driver throughout this whole ordeal. After a day or two, he’ll grow tired of interrogating me.

‘All right,’ I say.

‘What time should I come back for you today?’

‘Four.’

‘And pick-up tomorrow at nine thirty?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll bill you when it’s all over.’

‘Fine.’

‘So don’t go to jail.’

My teeth grind against each other.

‘And do I call you Evan or Mr Keogh?’

‘Evan’s fine,’ I tell him.

‘Then I’m Max,’ he says, reaching into a pocket between the two front seats and extracting a pack of business cards before passing one back. ‘All my details are on there. But you don’t need to worry. I’ll be where I’m supposed to be.’

‘Thanks,’ I say.

As he turns a corner, the courthouse appears in sight, and I see the media scrum outside. I realize now that I should have left before Robbie. Then I could have been inside when he pulled up and they would have turned their attention towards him. He’s the bigger star, after all. Now they’ll focus on me.

We pull up and I reach for the door handle.

‘Give ’em hell, lad,’ says Max, turning around and grinning. His teeth are yellow and his lips badly chapped. Hair springs from beneath the collar of his shirt, his eyebrows, his ears, his nose. He’s an unkempt forest of a man. ‘Remember, any girl who takes on two lads like that is nothing more than a cheap little whore, and the jury will see that. You think I’ve never been there? Some girl saying no when you know they mean yes? More times than I can count.’

I imagine how it would feel to pull his head towards me and smash it into the gap between the seats, to keep pounding it against the cheap interior until I’ve ended him. But I do nothing. Instead, I simply nod, open the door and step outside, the flash of the cameras and the shouting of the reporters overwhelming me, like I’m arriving for a film premiere and not a rape trial. I wonder, as Max drives away, does he notice me crush his business card within my fist and toss it away, flicking it with my index finger so it lands in the dark soil of the bushes outside the building. He can come back at four if he wants, but I won’t be waiting for him.

A policeman approaches. I think he’s going to guide me into the courthouse, but no, he reprimands me for littering, making me pick up the card while the photographers snap away and the journalists roar my name. It’s dirty now, covered with moist earth, and muddies the fingers of my left hand, but I don’t want to wipe them against my suit, so I wait until I enter the building, where the people standing in the lobby turn to look at me, then discard it in the nearest bin and run my hand under a sanitizing tap, a holdover from the days of the pandemic, when we could all stay inside, alone, and avoid the world entirely.

2

TWELVE HOURS AFTER LEAVING the island, I boarded a ferry from Dublin to Holyhead, before hitching a ride to South Wales, where I found work on a farm cultivating a mixture of wheat and barley. I’d worked with crops before so fitted in well, being suited to early starts and long days. Eight of us lived in a house on the north-east corner of the land, two in each of the four bedrooms. My roommate was a boy named Buddha, a nickname he’d earned because he was fat and bald, despite being only a few years older than me. He was involved in an on–off relationship with a Canadian girl, Joanna, who slept in the room opposite ours. Buddha and I didn’t get on well. He’d had the room to himself for two months before my arrival and objected to my intrusion. He was vulgar in his habits and spoke of women in ways that made me uncomfortable. When he and Joanna wanted to have sex, he’d send me to sleep on the sofa downstairs, where the springs pressed into my back. I protested once and a threat of violence followed so I backed down.

I asked Joanna’s roommate whether I could use the spare bed in her room when it was empty, and she said no. I told her I was gay, so she didn’t have to worry about me making a pass at her, but she said she didn’t care about my sexuality, she just didn’t want to share with a boy.

‘Don’t you like boys?’ I asked her, and she said that was the problem, she liked boys too much, and that I wouldn’t be safe around her. I must have looked bewildered, as she burst out laughing and told me not to flatter myself.

Once I was settled, I wrote to Mam and Dad to reassure them that I was safe and had a job, but didn’t give them my address. I did, however, share my new mobile number, and a few days later, the phone rang. It was Dad, calling to tell me what a useless cunt I was, that I had it in me to be one of the great footballers of all time – better than Pelé, he said; better than Georgie Best – and that I was throwing it all away.

‘But I don’t want to be a footballer,’ I told him, for what must have been the thousandth time since I was a child. ‘I’m not even interested in watching it, let alone playing it.’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ he roared. ‘You have a God-given talent that I would have killed for. Do you know how many trials I had when I was your age?’

‘I know,’ I said, for he’d told me often enough. Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Birmingham, Newcastle. A long list of cities and towns he’d travelled to when he was a teenager in the hope of escaping his own father. But he didn’t have the skill that I did.

‘I’d have given my left foot to have your talent,’ he said.

‘Wouldn’t have made you much of a footballer then, would it?’ I replied, and he swore at me and demanded my address, which I refused.

‘But a farm,’ he said, exasperated. ‘If you wanted to work on a fuckin’ farm, you could have stayed here.’

‘I don’t want to work on a farm,’ I said. ‘It’s just somewhere to make money, that’s all. I want to be a painter.’

‘You’re not going to be a fuckin’ painter!’ he shouted.

‘I am,’ I said.

‘Like a fuckin’ … like a fuckin’ queer,’ he said.

I fell silent then. I wasn’t sure what the connection between art and homosexuality was in his mind, but they seemed to be closely aligned. Of course, he’d never read a book in his life. Or gone to the theatre. Or watched a film that didn’t have explosions in it. He would have thought it effete. He would have thought my using the word effete was effete, for that matter. I felt like telling him the truth about me, just to make him even angrier, but worried that if he knew, he might march down the road to take out his fury on Cormac. And I couldn’t risk Cormac telling him why I ran away the first time. Or why I left for ever a few months after that.

He started ranting then, so I ended the call and blocked his number. When I looked up, Buddha was standing in the doorway, staring at me.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

‘Nothing,’ I said.

‘You’re crying,’ he said, and I put my hands to my face. To my surprise, my cheeks were wet with tears.

‘My dad,’ I told him. ‘He scares me.’

He nodded and sat down on the bed next to me and I placed my head on his shoulder and he allowed it. He put an arm around me and asked did I think he was working on this farm because he wanted to? I’m running away from something too, he told me. Not getting into it. Too long a story. Too fucked up. But you’re not alone. So no more crying, all right? You’re a bit of a twat, Evan, but you don’t get to cry around me. If I have to, I’ll tickle you to make you smile again. I couldn’t imagine anything more uncomfortable, so I dried my eyes, not wanting to test his resolve. We grew friendlier after that.

One Sunday afternoon, a game of football was arranged in the south-west field, five-a-side, temporary workers versus the farmer and his four sons. The second-to-youngest son’s name was Harry, he was my age and had spent the summer working alongside us. He talked relentlessly about the girlfriend he had in university, how beautiful she was and how they did it every night. He was obsessive on the subject, making sure everyone knew. I kissed him by the side of a barn one evening and he kissed me back, and the next day he pretended that I didn’t exist. I didn’t know any other way to play football than well, so we won 18–2 and I scored fourteen of those goals. Harry was their goalkeeper and he looked humiliated by the end of it. The farmer took me aside afterwards and asked me why I was working there and not as a professional footballer.

‘It’s not for me,’ I told him. ‘I don’t mind the odd game, but I don’t want to play for a living.’

‘But you could make millions.’

I shrugged. I was fond of the farmer, but he was beginning to sound like my father.

Later that night, I glanced out my bedroom window and saw Harry standing by a tree, smoking a cigarette, looking up at me. I put my shoes on and went outside to join him and we made our way into one of the far fields where we were hidden by the trees.

The next day, he ignored me again. I didn’t much care.

I used my wages to buy canvases, brushes and paint supplies online and set myself up in a small, empty storehouse that the farmer wasn’t using and, over the course of about seven months, during the evenings, created a portfolio of work, more than two dozen paintings that I was proud of. Some of the labourers came to look at them and made complimentary remarks, but I could tell they were baffled by what I was doing. I didn’t paint landscapes or seascapes or people or animals. My work was abstract. I liked geometric shapes. I admired Kandinsky. And Mondrian. And Paul Klee. The only thing that reappeared time and again in my work were images of soil, not the smooth, tilled land of the farm I was working on, but the rough, unploughed hills that led from the island port to my parents’ house. I was reared in the mud and the dirt, and it showed up repeatedly on my canvases, even when I didn’t want it to. But the earth is a part of me. The feel of it on my skin. The taste of it in my mouth.

When the season was over and it was time to leave the farm, I made my way to London, naively intending to live as an artist. I thought that if I could sell some of my work, then perhaps I could rent a studio in one of the cheaper parts of the city. Somewhere I could shake the land out of my system and replace its ugliness with colour, beauty, fine lines, and the wild ideas that roared through my head and often made no sense, not even to me.

Over time, I approached every gallery I could find and was rejected by all of them. Each one said the same thing, that I was not untalented but that there was no originality in what I had produced.

‘You like Kandinsky, don’t you?’ one gallerist asked, carefully examining the three canvases that I considered my best, stepping very close to them to study my brushwork and the places where the lines intersected.

‘I do,’ I said.

‘And Mondrian.’

‘Yes.’

‘And Paul Klee.’

I nodded.

‘I can tell,’ he said, sounding half regretful, for he was kind and didn’t want to hurt me unnecessarily. He put a hand on my shoulder and gently massaged the muscle there. ‘And that’s the problem.’

Should I go to college, I asked, knowing I couldn’t afford it anyway, and he shook his head, telling me that I would be wasting my time. You must be born with the gift, he said. And I’m sorry, but you haven’t been. You’re young, Evan. You must find something else to do with your life. Trying to achieve the impossible will only bring you misery. And you will grow to hate art, as if it is your enemy.

This broke my heart. But when I stood before the paintings that hung in the museums and galleries around London and compared them to my own, I knew that he was right. I was no artist. I was just good at painting. In the same way that my father was good at football but was no footballer.

I couldn’t allow myself to return to the island. Not because I was afraid to admit failure but because I didn’t want to grow old with the eternal mud beneath my fingernails, dirt that would remain there stubbornly, no matter how hard I tried to wash it away.

But my money was running out. I wrote to the farmer, asking for my job back, and he said he was sorry, but he’d hired someone in my place. I moved into a rented room in Dagenham, in a house that contained twelve decrepit bedrooms and a shared kitchen where the mice lived for free. The other residents were mostly off their heads on drink and drugs. My room had a single bed and a sink and there were only two showers on the third floor, which you came out of feeling dirtier than when you went in.

A woman older than my mother knocked on my door late one night demanding sex, saying I was the most beautiful boy she’d ever seen in her life. I refused and she called me a faggot. She said if I didn’t fuck her, then she’d tell everyone in the house that I liked boys, and I told her she could do what she liked, what did I care, so she asked me whether I could lend her a cigarette instead, but I said I didn’t smoke, and she told me I was fucking useless and I should fuck off back to Ireland like the Fenian bastard I was.

And then one night, with only sixty pounds left to my name, I took the Tube to Walthamstow, to a pub I’d heard about but never visited before, hoping to find a boy my own age to talk to, someone who might take me home with him. For a warm body. For arms around me. For a hot shower.

But I was the youngest there by far. The old men who sat on stools by the bar, nursing tired gins and tonics, perked up briefly when I walked in. I could have left but had nowhere else to go. I ordered a beer and sat in a dark corner, underneath a poster for a film called La Cage aux Folles, sipping my drink while I tried to figure out what to do next with my life.

That’s when he approached me.

I could sense him as he made his way across the floor but didn’t look up, even as his footsteps grew louder, brogues tapping on the woodwork. He didn’t look like the dinosaurs at the bar, although he was a good twenty-five years older than me. His clothes were smart, and he had short greying hair and pale blue eyes. Handsome, for his age. For any age. Sitting down opposite me, he lit a cigarette. I glanced towards the barman, expecting him to intervene, to tell him that he couldn’t smoke in here, but he didn’t seem to care. The man studied me carefully as he drew on it.

‘I’m Rafe,’ he said, reaching a hand across, and I shook it. He wore a gold signet ring on the little finger of his left hand.

‘Evan,’ I replied.

He raised my chin until I was looking him directly in the eye. We held each other’s gaze.

‘Have you ever heard of Luchino Visconti?’ he asked.

I shook my head.

‘You’re probably too young,’ he said. ‘He made a very famous film – well, he made quite a few of them – but in one, there’s a boy. A boy who becomes the obsession of an older man. In the film, the part was played by a young actor who you won’t have heard of either, but for a time, he was known as the most beautiful boy in the world.’

I stared at him. I waited for him to continue, although I knew exactly what he was going to say.

‘You could be his twin,’ he told me.

3

I’M ESCORTED UP A staircase by my barrister, Catherine, who explains how the day will unravel, but I’m so conscious of the contemptuous way people are staring at me that I find it difficult to focus on her words. There’s the click of an iPhone camera from somewhere behind me, and she spins around, making it clear to whoever took the shot that photography is not permitted within the court building, before taking me by the arm and leading me along the corridor towards a large oak door. Stepping inside, I’m surprised by the brightness of the room. Enormous windows flood the space with light while the walls are covered in artworks, all reproductions, of course, but they’re where my eyes go first. Traditional British landscapes. Portraits of people I don’t recognize. A long table dominates the centre and, at one end, sits Robbie. He glances up when I enter, and our eyes meet; there’s a warning in his expression, a successor to his messages from a few hours earlier. I’m sure he’s checking social media to see whether we’re trending.

In his suit, he looks handsome, and the unexpected longing I’ve felt for him since our first meeting rears up inside me. He’s still one of only two boys I’ve ever truly desired, and he knows this. It’s how he’s kept his hold over me.

Near him, standing by a bookcase, are his parents. His mother looks me up and down with obvious disdain, as if she can’t quite accept that her life, for now, is intertwined with the life of someone like me.

‘I’ll leave you here,’ says Catherine, looking around and probably as anxious to escape this room as I am. ‘We’ll be called in about twenty minutes. I’ll come back for you all then.’

She disappears, and now there’s just me, the Wolvertons, and my parents, who followed me upstairs. We stare at each other awkwardly, four adults, two young men, none of us quite knowing what to say. Finally, Lady Wolverton strides down the room as if she’s walking a runway, which, of course, she often did in her youth, before extending her hand to Mam.

‘Grace Wolverton,’ she says. ‘Robert’s mother.’

‘Margaret Keogh,’ says Mam, using her full name for once. Everyone on the island knows her as Maggie. ‘And this is my husband, Charles.’

‘Charlie,’ says Dad, eyeing Lord Wolverton warily as he approaches. Robbie’s father is studying my parents in the way that wealthy, privileged English people often do whenever they’re confronted by Irish people with accents as thick as ours. They assume that we’re barely literate and will be astonished by the fact that the room is illuminated by electric lightbulbs. He introduces himself to my parents, extending a hand somewhat reluctantly.

‘Well, this is a fine state of affairs, isn’t it?’ he says, glancing towards his son, who’s leaning back in his chair, watching the drama play out. ‘Not a situation I ever thought I’d find myself in, I must admit.’

‘Us either,’ says Mam, then corrects herself. ‘Us neither, I mean. Is it either or neither?’

I’m embarrassed by her obsequiousness and worry that she might drop a curtsey before them. The majesty of the building and the aura of affluence that surrounds the Wolvertons are simply too much for her, a woman who’s never known life outside the island since she was brought there as a young bride. My father visibly wilts inside his cheap suit, the tie loosened at the neck and the top button undone, his chin being too fat to keep it closed.

‘It’s such a nonsense,’ continues Lord Wolverton. ‘The CPS is obviously trying to scapegoat Robert and …’ He glances in my direction; apparently, I’m not important enough even to have a name. ‘Your son. If they weren’t who they are, I doubt it would have even got this far. The girl at the centre of all this seems a rather cheap person, don’t you agree? She comes from a broken home, but I assume you know that.’

‘Darling,’ says Lady Wolverton, placing a hand on his forearm.

‘I’m simply stating the facts,’ he says with the tone of someone who is unaccustomed to being interrupted or corrected. ‘I know we live in supposedly progressive times’ – and here he makes inverted comma symbols with his fingers in the air – ‘but more often than not, that means we must believe the victim, however absurd the allegation, without any consideration for due process.’

‘She’s not a victim,’ says Robbie from the other end of the room, and we all turn to look at him. ‘Don’t use that word.’

‘You’re quite right,’ replies Lord Wolverton, nodding emphatically. ‘If anyone is the victim here, it’s you.’ He pauses, and we all wait for the obvious addendum. Finally, grudgingly, he deigns to offer it. ‘And your son, of course.’

‘Evan,’ says Mam.

More silence. I wonder whether, if I flung myself towards one of the enormous windows, would it break upon impact, letting me plunge to the street below. The staircase outside was highly elevated; we must be at a significant distance from the ground. I’d probably die. That would be nice.

‘Are you a football man yourself, Lord Wolverton?’ asks Dad, and I make my way around the table, taking a seat opposite Robbie. I glance down towards the carpet. He’s wearing invisible socks, and his trousers, as he sits, rise to expose his ankles.

‘I was brought up an Arsenal fan,’ he replies, speaking as if he’s addressing an audience at the Guildhall. ‘Or “The Gunners”, as we call them over here.’

‘I know who the Gunners are,’ says Dad, who’s willing to be subservient but won’t be patronized when it comes to the subject of football.

‘Although I rarely have the time to go to matches,’ he continues. ‘Busy with work and social commitments and what have you.’

‘You were a politician, weren’t you?’ asks Mam. ‘That must have been very interesting.’

‘I still am, in a sense,’ he replies. ‘But I maintain many diverse business interests.’

‘You came to the Birmingham match last year,’ I point out, and he turns to look at me now, a nerve in his cheek twitching slightly.

‘We go when we can,’ says Lady Wolverton. ‘Quite honestly, it’s not what we ever expected of Robert. I had always hoped he might go into medicine or the law. But from the time he was a child, it was just football, football, football. I don’t know where he got it from.’

Lord Wolverton is still looking at me and, to my frustration, I’m the first to look away.

‘I have to admit that I find the atmosphere at football matches very hostile,’ continues Robbie’s mother. ‘All that shouting and cursing. And the …’ She hesitates. ‘Well, one doesn’t mind the homophobia so much, I suppose the fans have to let off steam, but the racist chanting every time one of the coloured players has the ball—’

‘Jesus, Mum,’ says Robbie, bursting into laughter. ‘Coloured players! We don’t use that word any more.’

‘It’s difficult for us too,’ says Mam, ignoring this. ‘Given where we live, I mean. We have to take a ferry across to Galway, and then it’s a flight from either Shannon or Dublin. But we’ve been over a few times. We went to the FA Cup semi-final last year, didn’t we, Charlie?’

‘We did,’ says Dad. ‘Nearly eight hundred euros that trip cost me, and I’d have been better off pissing the money up against a wall.’

‘We’ve gone to some of the international matches in Dublin too,’ she continues. ‘Actually, Charlie goes to all of them.’

‘That was always my dream,’ says Dad. ‘To line up for my country. Did you see the final group match for the Euros a couple of years back, no?’

The Wolvertons stare at him as if he’s speaking a foreign language.

‘We were playing Greece,’ he says, holding his hands far apart, as if a hologram of the game might appear between them, allowing us to relive the moment. ‘And all we needed was a draw to get through. It’s 2–1 to the Greeks in injury time. And we get a penalty. And who steps up to the spot? This cunt.’ He nods in my direction. I’m that cunt. ‘And sends it well over the bar. It’s still up there, somewhere, I’d say, shooting across the Milky Way. It’ll fall back to earth one of these days soon.’

Lord Wolverton considers this and has enough self-awareness to recognize that, even though my father has denigrated me, he’s also initiated a competition in which he has no choice but to participate.

‘Of course, it’s harder for Robert to make the national team,’ he counters. ‘We have so many extraordinary players here in England. Easier for your son, I imagine. Ireland needs to take players from the Second Division.’

‘The Championship,’ says Robbie, looking up from his phone, his tone filled with exasperation. ‘It hasn’t been called the Second Division for decades.’

‘In England,’ continues his father, ignoring this, ‘the players would have to be Premier League.’

The room grows quiet again. We’re not here to talk about football, after all. We’re here because Robbie and I are being tried for rape and accessory to rape respectively.

‘We’ve never had anything like this in our family before,’ says Lady Wolverton eventually, laughing nervously, as if this is a tremendous joke.

‘Neither have we,’ says Mam.

‘I do wonder about the part these football clubs have to play in it all,’ she continues. ‘From what I hear, the atmosphere there is drenched in the most despicable misogyny. All these young men given fame and fortune, but that just makes them targets for cheap tarts in nightclubs wearing next to nothing. WAGs, that’s what they call them, isn’t it?’ She pauses and shakes her head. ‘WAGs! Such a term! Always in the papers too, these girls. Mutton dressed as lamb. Remember those two who ended up in court over some ludicrous Twitter argument?’

‘Instagram,’ says Robbie.

‘Two privileged fools wasting millions arguing over something of absolutely no consequence to anyone,’ she says, shaking her head. ‘Utterly ridiculous. When there are people in the world with actual problems.’

I wonder what she knows about people with actual problems. Very little, I imagine.

‘And you, young man,’ says Lord Wolverton, turning to me. ‘You’re very quiet. What do you have to say for yourself?’

‘Not guilty, Your Honour,’ I say, resisting the urge to punch the smug bastard in the face.

‘Not guilty indeed,’ he replies. ‘You look like butter wouldn’t melt, don’t you?’

‘Now hold on,’ says Dad, raising himself up to his full height. ‘Let’s not forget that my son is not the one accused of rape here. That’s your lad. Mine was just in the room.’

‘And recording it on his smartphone,’ says Lord Wolverton. ‘An uncontested fact, I might remind you. What kind of animal does such a thing? My son and that girl engaged in a consensual sexual encounter. But it was your son, Mr Keogh, your son, who filmed them like some sort of pervert, no doubt getting his jollies from watching it back later on. Isn’t that right?’ he asks, turning back to me. ‘Evan,’ he adds, with emphasis.

I remain silent.

‘And as for those WhatsApp messages,’ he continues.

‘My son didn’t say anything in them,’ says Dad, which isn’t true, because I did. I said a lot; none of it good. ‘Yours, on the other hand—’

‘Locker-room talk,’ insists Lord Wolverton, waving this away.

‘So it’s locker-room talk for your son,’ says Mam. ‘But ours should be shamed for it, is that what you’re saying?’

‘I know that our son wasn’t brought up to use the sort of language that yours did.’

‘Jesus, Dad,’ says Robbie, throwing his phone down on the table. ‘Leave it, will you? This isn’t helping anyone.’

‘I simply think it would be better for all parties involved,’ says Lord Wolverton, retaining his composure, ‘if we acknowledged the truth. We might not need to go through this sham of a trial if your boy simply owned up to what he did. He filmed a sexual encounter between two consenting adults, which is a disgusting thing to do. Grounds for a charge of voyeurism contrary to the Sexual Offences Act, as I understand it. If he accepted that, and took his punishment, then maybe this girl would be happy to let the rest of the matter go. Everyone could claim victory and we could all get on with our lives.’

‘You mean our son should take the blame while yours gets off scot-free?’ asks Mam, rearing up now. ‘Let’s not forget that your son is the sicko who forced himself on that poor girl.’

Lady Wolverton laughs and shakes her head. ‘No offence, Mrs … Keogh, is it? But look at Robert. Does he look like someone who would need to force himself on any girl? He’s never had any difficulties in that area. Quite the contrary.’

‘This is a mess of both their making,’ says Dad. ‘So the pair of them can stand together to face the jury. And if things go badly, well, it won’t be our son who’ll be serving the longer stretch or listed on the sex offenders register for the rest of his life. It’ll be yours.’

Lord Wolverton takes a slow step towards my father now. He’s taller. He’s fitter. He’s stronger. And Dad retreats. I can’t help myself. I smile. Let him feel what it’s like to be frightened for a change.

‘I’m just trying to bring this obscenity to an end,’ says Lord Wolverton. ‘I don’t know what kind of upbringing boys have on that little island of yours, but here on the mainland—’

‘The mainland?’ roars Mam, because there is no word that is more of a red rag to an Irish person than that. ‘What mainland is that, would you mind telling me?’

‘Here on the mainland,’ continues Lord Wolverton, not even deigning to look at her, ‘we instil certain standards in our children.’

‘And we don’t?’ she asks, and I think she might be close to physically attacking him. ‘Do you think we told Evan it was all right to attack any girl he sees on the street?’

‘As far as I understand it,’ says Lord Wolverton, remaining so calm that it’s chilling to observe, ‘it’s not girls who are at jeopardy around your son.’

I feel a stab in my stomach and glance towards Robbie, who looks away, unwilling to meet my eye.

‘And what in God’s name is that supposed to mean?’ begins Dad, but before he can get any further, the door opens, and Catherine returns.

‘For pity’s sake, I can hear the lot of you out in the corridor,’ she says, glaring at all of us like a furious mother scolding her children. ‘And so can everyone else. It’s not a good way to begin proceedings when we’re trying to convince a jury that your sons are innocent men.’

The four parents each have the good grace to look a little shamefaced.

Catherine shakes her head in disgust before turning to Robbie and me and saying the words that I’ve dreaded for months.

‘It’s time.’

4

I LOOKED UP LUCHINO Visconti when I was next online and it wasn’t difficult to track down the film that Rafe had mentioned, or the young actor to whom he’d compared me. I couldn’t see the resemblance myself, other than the fact that we were both young and blond, for the boy’s hair was long and feminine, in that heavy 1970s style, while I had a tight mop of curls. His face had a gauntness to it too that mine lacked. But Rafe had insisted upon the likeness.

He was quite upfront in the bar in Walthamstow, telling me exactly what he wanted to do to me, what he expected me to do to him in return, and for how long he would require my services. His offer was three hundred pounds, five times more than remained in my bank account. I didn’t even think about saying no.

Rafe had an apartment close to London City Airport, with a view over the Thames near Woolwich Ferry. The hallway was lined with books. I’d been fond of reading when I was growing up but hadn’t devoted much time to it since leaving the island. Books were expensive, after all, and most of my money had been spent on canvases, paint and brushes.

‘Nice place,’ I told him, meaning it. This was the type of apartment I had imagined myself living in when my artistic dreams still seemed achievable.

‘It serves its purpose,’ he said. ‘It’s just my bolthole, really.’

He could tell from the expression on my face that I didn’t know what that meant.

‘A place to stay when I’m in London,’ he explained. ‘The family home is elsewhere.’

‘You’re married?’ I asked.

‘Of course,’ he said. I glanced around and saw some framed photographs and walked towards them. One showed him and his wife with their arms around each other in a place that I thought was St Mark’s Square in Venice, smiling for the camera. He had children too. Some daughters in tennis whites. A son in a football strip.

‘More of a squash man, myself,’ he said, noticing where I was looking. ‘You?’

‘Me what?’

‘Are you interested in sport?’

I shook my head and continued to study the room. An entire wall was filled with vinyl records, and I gravitated towards them, scanning them like objects in a museum. I had never held an actual record in my hands before but liked the feel of one when I took it down.

‘Do you enjoy music?’ asked Rafe, pouring us both a whiskey, and I took mine and sipped it slowly. The glass was remarkably heavy. The difference between the rich and the poor, it occurred to me, was that, for the former, their glassware was just as expensive as the liquor they poured into it, while people like me were happy to drink out of cans, bottles or plastic cups. As the alcohol entered my bloodstream and mixed with the beer from earlier, I began to feel more relaxed, which I hadn’t in the taxi. Travelling the twelve miles across London, I’d started to worry that I was making a mistake. Maybe he would try to kill me when he got me home. When we stopped at a traffic light, I’d even considered opening the door and jumping out, but the money was too alluring.

‘Doesn’t everyone?’ I asked, examining an old Prince album I’d plucked out.

‘Tell me an artist you like,’ he said, kicking off his shoes, and I noticed that he wore garish Kermit the Frog socks, the type that a man his age might think made him appear youthful and unconventional but just made him seem a little ridiculous. I listed a few bands and singers that I listened to regularly, assuming he wouldn’t have heard of any of them, but, to my surprise, he strolled towards his collection and removed an album by the first group I had named, whose members were only a year or two older than me.

‘I like this song particularly,’ he said, removing the record from its sleeve and placing it on the turntable. He dusted the black grooves with a small cloth before examining the needle and placing it gently upon the vinyl. I liked the ceremony with which he did this, I respected it, and understood why a person might prefer to engage in such theatre before the music began. It was so much more civilized than the haphazard way in which I scrolled through songs on my phone, cutting each one off to switch to another whenever I grew bored. By chance, he’d chosen a song that happened to be one of my favourites, and he smiled when he saw me move my head in time with the music. As he watched me for a few moments, I experienced a sudden fear that he would ask me to dance for him but, thankfully, this humiliation did not come to pass. Instead, he simply placed his glass down on a side table and leaned forward to kiss me.

I had never kissed anyone as old as him before, nor had I ever wanted to, and found it a strange but not entirely disagreeable experience, although I didn’t care for the roughness of his skin. When he placed his left hand on the back of my head and slipped his tongue into my mouth I wasn’t sure whether this was because he was worried that I might change my mind or because he liked the idea of being in control. Despite not being particularly attracted to him, I found my body responding to his embrace. It was arousing to know that he wanted me. And there was a part of me that wanted to be here, to stay here, to be someone like him or someone with him.

‘First things first,’ I said, settling into my new role as I pulled away, and he nodded and reached for his wallet.

‘Quite right,’ he said, handing across six fifty-pound notes, which I counted quickly before slipping them into the back pocket of my jeans. The moment I did so, the atmosphere changed. He owned me now, for the agreed amount of time anyway, and wanted me to know it. ‘Take your clothes off,’ he said in a matter-of-fact voice as he dimmed the lights.

‘The curtains,’ I said, for the windows of his apartment looked out on to the river beyond, but also towards the windows of other buildings nearby. There was a strange, inconsistent blaze of lights reflecting above the water. I would have liked to have painted it.

‘Don’t be disobedient, Evan,’ he replied, frowning. ‘I said take your clothes off. Please do as you’re told.’

I glanced towards the hallway and wondered what he would do if I tried to leave. But I didn’t test him. Whatever this was, whatever I was doing, I was content to see it through. I had never known any power in my life before, but in this moment my youth and beauty had given me both and I had enough self-awareness to understand that neither would last for ever. I kicked off my trainers, pulled my T-shirt over my head, unbuckled my belt and removed my jeans.

‘Socks,’ he said.

I took them off and Rafe ordered me to sit on the sofa, where he took my feet in his hands, one by one, and examined them carefully, his fingers moving softly across my toes. It felt absurd to me, vaguely embarrassing. Of course, he had no idea of the things I could do with those feet. When he released them, he instructed me to stand, and I closed my eyes as he removed my boxer shorts. In that moment, I knew that the only way to go through with this was to separate my mind from its present location and allow it to remove itself to a different world entirely. Rafe did the things he had said he would do, nothing more and nothing less. He asked me to do the things that I had agreed to do, nothing more and nothing less.

And while we both performed our roles, buyer and seller, my mind returned to the island, where I walked the path through the village towards the school, greeting friends along the way and stopping to chat with one of my more considerate teachers, a man who had encouraged me in my artwork. I knelt down to tie my laces outside the old pub, where Larry Mulshay asked after my mother. I sat on the bench outside the new pub, where Tim Devlin told me he’d give me ten euros to clear all the leaves from the courtyard out the back. I made my way up the hill towards the house in which I’d been reared and the farm I would reluctantly inherit some day.

I felt the earth beneath my fingernails, the fine dust secreted into the lines of my hands, as he pressed me against the window and muttered obscenities into my ears. Perhaps he found this a turn-on, to speak in such a coarse way, but it did nothing for me. If anything, I felt disappointed in him. He had appeared so refined before, but now he just seemed like any other middle-aged man getting his kicks by trying to humiliate a boy. I wanted to tell him that nothing he could say could have any emotional effect on me whatsoever. I’d spent my life being humiliated by someone who was far better at it than him.

And still, despite all this, I didn’t regret being there. I wanted him too.

He leaned into me and covered my face with his left hand, and I inhaled the smell of him. He must have sprayed cologne on his wrists before going out for the evening, something I’d never heard of anyone doing before. I thought of Cormac, who’d been given a bottle of CK One the Christmas before I left, and how he’d worn it every day and I’d teased him for it even though I found the scent dizzying. I thought of Harry, the farmer’s son in South Wales, and the way he’d spun me around against an old oak tree, pushing me into the bark, and the exquisite pain of the wood as it imprinted itself on the pale, hairless skin of my stomach when he fucked me. When he finished, my knees had given out from beneath me and I’d collapsed on to the earth, content to fall asleep right there, with the dirt in my ears and the worms crawling over my face. Bury me here, I had thought at the time. Just bury me here. How many labourers had he fucked? I wondered. How many had he told that, if they revealed his secret, they would lose their job. I’m not like you, he’d insisted. I’m not a queer.

When it was over, when Rafe was finished, I asked whether I could use his shower and he looked at me as if I’d asked to borrow his car for the weekend.

‘I’d prefer that you didn’t,’ he said, glancing towards my clothes, which were scattered across the floor. He was done with me now and wanted me gone. Well, fuck this for a game of soldiers, I thought.

‘Where is it?’ I asked, turning around and walking towards the corridor, not waiting for an answer. ‘Down here?’

I found the bathroom without difficulty and enjoyed a long, hot shower, lathering myself with as much of his expensive shower gel as I could and exfoliating my face with a scrub that sat on the shower shelf. Even the packaging looked like it cost more than he’d spent on me. I hadn’t felt so dirty in a long time and wanted to scour my body of everything he’d left upon me. Afterwards, wrapping a towel around my waist, I examined myself in the mirror. I was eighteen years old and perfect. I might not be able to sell my paintings, but I could sell myself.

When I returned to the living room, Rafe was fully dressed, and my clothes were gathered neatly in a pile.

‘Feel better?’ he asked.

‘Much,’ I said, stripping the towel away and dressing before him without an ounce of self-consciousness. In my absence, he’d turned the television on, and it was showing an old black-and-white movie, although he’d muted the volume. I recognized Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. These were the kind of films Mam had always enjoyed, and I wanted him to invite me to stay, to suggest that we watch the rest of the film together, for him to run his hands through my hair and put me to bed afterwards in the spare room, to tuck me in. To be my father, to be my kind father. For me to be his obedient son.

When I was dressed, I checked my back pocket to make sure that he hadn’t taken the money back while I was in the shower. He looked a little disappointed when he saw me do this.

‘Now that’s beneath you,’ he said, and, strangely, this was the first time all evening that I’d felt any sense of shame.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I have low expectations of people.’

He shrugged, as if he shared my cynicism about human nature.

‘There’s a pad of paper over there, by the occasional table,’ he said, nodding towards the left corner of the room.

I glanced around. I had no clue what that phrase meant but walked towards a round marble table on a narrow stem, assuming this was what he was referring to.

‘Write your phone number down,’ he said.

‘Why?’ I asked.

He picked up the Prince album that I’d left on an armchair and returned it to the shelf before taking the record he’d been playing from the turntable, holding it at eye level and gently blowing a speck of dust from it, then slid it carefully back inside its sleeve.

‘You need money, I assume?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Then write your number down.’

‘You want me to come back another night?’

‘Oh no,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘No, I never draw water from the same well twice. This was just … how shall I put it? … an audition.’

‘An audition for what?’

‘Just write your number down, Evan. Or don’t. It’s entirely up to you.’

I thought about it, then lifted the pen and pad of paper and did as he asked. Why not? I reasoned. I was foolish enough to think that I could remain in control.

‘Good boy,’ he said, smiling.

‘How do I get home from here?’ I asked as I made my way towards the door. ‘I don’t really know where I am.’

‘Where do you live?’ he asked, and I told him the general area. ‘The DLR to Canning Town,’ he told me. ‘Then, I think, the District Line the rest of the way. Although you might want to check the map to be sure.’

‘It’s late,’ I said. ‘Dangerous out there. Bad men everywhere. All trying to take advantage of innocent young lads like me.’

He couldn’t help himself. He laughed.

‘Quite the little operator, aren’t you?’ he said, reaching for his wallet again and removing some notes before handing them to me. ‘Here. This should be enough for a taxi.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. We both knew I’d keep the money and just take the Tube. And it wasn’t the District Line the rest of the way, I had to change at West Ham. He obviously didn’t spend a lot of time on public transport.

5

THE COURTROOM, UNSURPRISINGLY, IS packed. Reporters sit in an elevated row with their backs to the wall, while about one hundred strangers have packed into the public gallery. All they’re lacking is popcorn. Some, to my horror, are wearing club T-shirts, and they raise their arms in solidarity with Robbie and me when we enter the dock, then pound their fists against the club crest positioned above their hearts. They don’t care whether we’re guilty or not; all they want is to see us back on the pitch. Mam and Dad settle into a pew among them. Further along, I notice a man and woman in their mid-forties staring at me with such loathing on their faces that they can only be the girl’s parents.

The girl.

I have to stop calling her that. She has a name: Lauren Mackintosh. She’s nineteen years old and reading history at the local university. I had never met her before that night and have never met her since. But I’ve talked about her endlessly with the police officers investigating the case, when I’ve insisted that she’s lying about what took place. She’d been flirting with Robbie all evening, I’ve told them, and it was she who took him by the hand and led him upstairs, not the other way around. I don’t mention that Robbie turned to me as he followed her, giving me a grin, a wink and the thumbs-up sign.

As for what happened after that, I have been consistent in my account of what took place.

Yes, I waited a few minutes before following them. Yes, I was jealous of her. Yes, I wanted it to be me who Robbie went upstairs with. No, I’m not ashamed of that; why should I be? Yes, most of the lads know I’m gay, but no one cares. No, the press doesn’t know. Because it’s private, that’s why, and it would only get in the way of the football. No, I don’t see any contradiction there, I’m entitled to a private life, amn’t I? No, I didn’t knock, the door was ajar. Yes, they both saw me enter the room. No, neither of them protested. Yes, I watched them. No, I don’t think that’s a strange thing to do. Yes, she was totally into it. No, she never protested. No, she never asked him to stop. Yes, if she had, I would have made sure that he did. Yes, I filmed the encounter on my phone. No, I didn’t touch myself. No, just because you think that’s a perverse thing to do doesn’t mean it is. Yes, I enjoyed it. No, Robbie never invited me to have sex with her. No, I can’t find the phone. Yes, I’ve looked for it, but it’s vanished. Yes, I know how that looks, but remember, the truth is on that phone, so I wish I hadn’t lost it, because then we wouldn’t even be having this conversation, would we? Yes, you can search my apartment; feel free, I have nothing to hide. Yes, I bought a new phone the following morning. Because I needed one; why do you think? No, I didn’t bother reclaiming on the insurance. It only cost a grand, that’s why, and that kind of money means nothing to me. Yes, I was part of the WhatsApp group. No, that’s not the way I normally speak about women. No, I don’t have a sister. Yes, I accept they were disgusting things to say, but they’re not illegal things to say. No, I wouldn’t lie to protect my teammates, not even Robbie. Yes, I’m telling you the truth.

I’ve stuck by every word of that for months now.

And I’ll stick by it when I’m on the stand.

Counting on you today, bro. Don’t let me down.

Listening to the opening statements makes me feel like an actor in a television show. The barristers are ruthlessly polite to the judge, Dame Edith Kerrey KC, who everyone refers to as My Lady. When the King’s Counsel, Mr Armstrong, rises to address the jury of seven men and five women, he wears an expression of profound sadness. He tells them that he needs to be honest with them from the start. The club, our club, has been his club since he was a child, he says. It was his father’s club before that, and his grandfather’s before that. He’s a season-ticket holder, he tells us, and tries never to miss a home game. His own son, only ten years old, sleeps in club pyjamas, and is devoted to the club. His bedroom walls are papered with posters of the club’s players.

‘All the players,’ he adds. ‘Including Robert Wolverton and Evan Keogh. At least, he did have their images on his walls until recently when, I’m proud to say, with no encouragement on my part, he chose to remove them.’

He looks down then. His voice catches as he plays the part of Proud Father. ‘The credit for my son’s decency must go to his mother,’ he continues, ‘who has been a far better parent than I. Always there for him, while I, for my sins, have spent rather too much of my life within the walls of this fine building, where justice is dispensed without fear or favour, to rich and poor, famous and unknown, alike.’

He pauses now and shakes his head. He seems disappointed by the world.

‘What do we do when our heroes let us down?’ he muses, as if this question has come to him spontaneously and isn’t one that he’s spent weeks refining. ‘What will my son do? Be a better man than those he idolized, I hope, for after all, while he’s too young to understand what this case is about, it’s actually rather simple.’

He smiles now, as if he hopes this might encourage the jury to deliver a guilty verdict before they’ve even heard any of the evidence, thus saving us all the bother of showing up every day for the next two weeks.

I notice Juror no. 6, a woman in her late twenties, looking directly at me, but she turns away when I catch her eye.

‘On a drunken evening, a young woman was seduced by a famous footballer,’ continues Mr Armstrong. ‘Someone that each of us might have read about in the tabloid newspapers. I must admit, I occasionally buy those papers myself,’ he adds, performing Man of the People now, disassociating himself from Wealthy Advocate in a Gown and Wig. ‘And I read the gossip. I can’t help myself. How the other half live, am I right?’

Some of the jury smile and nod. They like him. He is one of them. He understands their guilty pleasures because they’re his pleasures too. ‘Miss Mackintosh, the complainant, entered a bedroom with Robert Wolverton, and engaged in what, in my day, used to be called a little slap and tickle. Some kissing, some touching. Nothing unusual there, and nothing to be ashamed of. Young people, young women particularly, have agency over their own bodies these days, and this, I think we can all agree, is a good thing. But when Mr Wolverton decided that he wanted to go further, that he was not prepared to stop at a little harmless fun’ – he raises his voice now, sharply; he’s suddenly incensed – ‘he refused to take no for an answer! And ladies and gentlemen of the jury, he did what so many entitled men before him have done. He didn’t listen. He chose to ignore her when she said that she did not want to have sex with him because he did not believe that was a choice that she had any right to make. So he pinned her down. As you can see, Mr Wolverton is a strong, athletic man, and Miss Mackintosh, as you will discover, is a rather petite young woman. But before this even began, his friend, his teammate Mr Evan Keogh, an Irishman, who had followed them upstairs, looked inside and, rather than stopping Mr Wolverton from committing this heinous crime, he chose to film the encounter. Mr Wolverton even invited him to have sex with his victim afterwards! No, excuse me, I misspoke. Not to have sex with her. Because Mr Wolverton did not, in fact, have sex with Miss Mackintosh. He raped her. And these are two very different things. What is it with these footballers that makes them apparently unable to perform sexually unless one of their teammates is there, watching them, cheering them on like the fans in the terraces as they, metaphorically speaking, score? They share young women in the way you or I might share a bag of toffees. We’ve all seen the videos leaked online as they’ve been publicly shamed, suspended briefly from their clubs before being taken back again. What is that all about, would someone please explain to me? It’s something I simply do not understand. But these young men, sadly, do not see women as human beings but as physical objects to be used, exploited and then tossed aside. Now, you will hear Mr Wolverton and Mr Keogh deny their parts in this grotesquery, and you might ask why the police and forensic investigators have not searched Mr Keogh’s phone for evidence. Well, they would have, had Mr Keogh not, by the most extraordinary piece of misfortune on his part, lost his phone later that same night. A phone, I might add, that he had owned for two years and that had gone everywhere with him. But on this particular night, when the footage would have given us the truth of the matter, Mr Keogh … somehow misplaced it! And bought a brand-new one the next morning! Do you find this credible? I don’t. He didn’t bother to call Mr Wolverton to see whether he’d left it behind in his apartment, as any normal person might do. Nor did he ask the concierge of his building whether it had been handed in. No, instead, he went directly into town and purchased a new one. The fact is, he knew that the old one would never be held by human hand again. It’s terribly inconvenient for the defendants, isn’t it, this distressing and inconvenient loss? Because, if what they say is true, and Miss Mackintosh was a willing participant in their swordplay, then the footage would presumably have exonerated them and none of us would be here today. But no, the phone just vanished into thin air, which allows the defendants to paint my client as a liar. The Crown will prove that these two privileged young men, blessed with sporting talent and good looks, their moral compasses destroyed by financial success and the adoration of honest football fans, simply took what they wanted, caring nothing for the pain inflicted upon their victim. Their vile WhatsApp messages will show how little remorse they felt afterwards. Some of the most disgusting pieces of conversation I have ever had the misfortune to read and which I do not look forward to presenting to you. Those messages left fans throughout this city reeling. In fact, they have disgusted people across the country, and also in Ireland, where they caused shock waves, for Mr Keogh was a vital and much-admired presence in that country’s national team, a hero to children, teenagers and adults alike from Dublin to Skibbereen to Donegal. But, worst of all, they left a young woman, just entering adulthood, traumatized and ashamed, unable to go out and enjoy her life as any young woman should be able to do.’

He shakes his head now and looks as if he is about to sit down, but a final thought occurs to him. ‘The whole thing is sickening, is it not?’ he asks, his voice lower now. ‘We cannot allow society to be infected by such brutality. But how do we stop it?’

He considers this, as if he’s not quite sure of the answer, but then it comes to him, as if out of nowhere. ‘You can stop it,’ he says, his eyes panning across each of the jury members, who are captivated by him now. ‘I can’t. My learned friend Miss Brenton can’t. Judge Kerrey can’t. The police, the press, the agents, the coaches, the club managers – they can’t. The prosecution will prove the defendants’ guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, which means that you can stop it, each of you, individually and as a collective. If you choose to.’ A pause. ‘And I hope you will,’ he adds, sitting down and pulling his gown around him as he turns his gaze to the floor, his face lost in a frown, as if there’s nothing left for him in life but to contemplate the evils of the universe.

Although I’ve been told not to look at him, I find myself glancing towards Robbie, whose face is rigid, contemptuous and angry. I turn to the press pew and note the presence of a writer known for both his fiction and for his sports columns in Irish newspapers. We’ve met a few times, sharing drinks in a hotel bar in Budapest during the Euros qualification campaign, when I scored a goal that put us second in the group. I don’t like many people, but I always liked him. Perhaps he feels my eyes on him because he turns and looks directly at me. His expression forces me to turn away. No matter the result of the trial, I know he will never drink with me again.

I search the room for other faces I might recognize and feel that familiar twinge in my left arm where the bones didn’t knit together correctly after it was broken. Naturally, no players from the club are present. They’re under strict instructions not to say or do anything which might either jeopardize the case or damage the reputation of the club any more than it already has been. Several participated in the notorious WhatsApp messages anyway, so they’ve been keeping their heads down for months, knowing their reputations are already balancing on a pin-head.

When it’s Catherine’s turn to rise, she sighs a little before looking at the jury.

‘This might surprise you,’ she begins, after introducing herself, ‘but I actually agree with a lot of what my learned friend Mr Armstrong has said. We live in strange times, where young men are placed on podiums for nothing more complicated than dribbling a ball down a pitch and kicking it into the back of a net. I’m a football fan myself. I always have been.’ Of course she is. Like Mr Armstrong, she must not be seen to be elitist. I notice that her accent, which had been quite refined in all our conversations to date, has suddenly taken on a more Yorkshire twang – she is from Halifax – and somehow, this doesn’t surprise me. ‘When I was twenty, I ran into Gary Lineker in a nightclub in Leicester,’ she continues, ‘and embarrassed myself so badly that my closest friends joke about it to this day. And I won’t even tell you about the time I found myself in conversation with Gary Neville at a wedding. Maybe it’s the name Gary, maybe that does something for me?’

A cough from the bench, and despite the laughter of the jury, Judge Kerrey is clearing her throat for a reason. Catherine looks at her and offers an apologetic nod.

‘My Lady,’ she says, before turning back to the twelve. ‘My learned friend has spoken at some length. But, of course, it takes a lot of words to persuade people of a lie. The truth, happily, requires less energy, and the defence intends to let the evidence in this case speak for itself. All I ask of you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is that you base your judgement on the evidence, and on the evidence alone. Evidence that will show that Mr Wolverton and Mr Keogh are innocent of the charges laid against them. That said, please remember that Miss Mackintosh is not on trial here, nor will I put her on trial. That level of misogyny is beneath me, beneath this court, and beneath all of you. However, it will be important that you understand that Miss Mackintosh has a history of troubling behaviour when it comes to relationships. I am cognizant of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999, which places restrictions on the extent to which a complainant in a sexual offence can be examined over his or her sexual history, but, before my learned friend cites this as a reason not to discuss such matters, I would remind him of Section 2 of that act, which allows such history to be examined if it has taken place in close proximity of time to the alleged offence, and the defence will prove that it has. And yes, while it might seem strange that Evan’s mobile phone was lost, that is the simple fact of the matter – which of us has not lost a phone? – so we cannot surmise what may or may not have been on it and it cannot be part of this trial. Miss Mackintosh engaged in a mutually consenting sexual experience that she regretted the next day. We all make mistakes. I believe it’s called being human. Under no circumstances should we condemn Miss Mackintosh for her mistake, but nor should we destroy the lives of two innocent young men over that same error. Is that what you would want if Robbie and Evan were your sons? Or would you want proof, demand proof, incontestable proof, that a crime had actually taken place? I know I would.’

She retakes her seat, and the same twelve faces that were looking at us with contempt ten minutes ago now appear more sympathetic. I glance back at Juror no. 6, who has been listening carefully to everything Catherine has said. Like the sports writer, she senses me looking at her and turns in my direction, but her expression is inscrutable.

It’s hard not to wonder whether all of this will simply come down to who speaks last.

6

FOLLOWING MY SUCCESSFUL AUDITION, Rafe put me to work.

I had a very particular clientele; or, rather, he did. Mostly men in late middle age. Thriving in financially successful jobs. Some in the public eye. Occasionally married. I was professional in my dealings with them but clear from the start about what I was willing to do and what I was not. If a client ignored my rules, then I would leave, and Rafe never reproached me for this. On the contrary, I knew he could be unforgiving with anyone who demanded more than was on offer. Payments were made directly to him. He took a one-third share, and I took the rest. Despite the nature of our first meeting, I grew strangely fond of him, and wanted to impress, feeling a curious sense of pleasure whenever he reported positive remarks from clients back to me.

Some men wanted to book me on a regular basis, but I limited myself to a maximum of four encounters with each. Any more than that and they would start to believe that we were something we were not. I once spent a half-hour studying Constable’s Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop’s Grounds at the V&A while waiting for a client who was taking me as his guest to a party at the Natural History Museum. Often, when I was hired as a piece of human jewellery at some lavish engagement, the client preferred to connect somewhere nearby first to ensure that I was appropriately dressed and could adhere to basic social niceties. As it turned out, he liked me, and I didn’t entirely loathe him, so we saw each other a few times afterwards. He was entirely vanilla in his tastes, which was a bonus, and it probably could have lasted longer, for he was wealthy, and generous with his cash, but I ended it when he invited me to move in with him, promising that I’d never have to pay for anything again for as long as I lived. Men like him never understood what a turn-off a line like that could be.

I learned this lesson a second time with Samuel, who ran a luxury real-estate company and lived in an exquisite apartment near Hyde Park. Our routine was that I would visit him on the last Friday of every month when his wife went to Cornwall to visit her parents. His needs were simple, and I was relaxed in his company, but after our fourth meeting he asked me to join him for a drink in a Soho wine bar and, as he would be paying for both my time and my Margaritas, I agreed. We’d never met in the wild before, so the evening started with some awkward small talk, but it grew even worse when he announced that he had fallen in love with me and, to my intense embarrassment, seemed convinced that I had developed similar feelings towards him. He talked of leaving his wife and of our setting up home together, expressing the hope that, in time, his son would come to accept our relationship.

‘What relationship?’ I asked.

‘This relationship,’ he said, reaching across to take my hand. I allowed this. He was the client, after all. ‘The one we’ve built. It’s gone past just a commercial transaction, Evan, don’t you think? I know you feel the same way.’

‘I’m sorry, but I don’t,’ I told him. ‘I’m sure you’re a nice enough person, if we disregard your marital infidelities and your willingness to exploit a young man in financial difficulties, but I have no interest in pursuing anything long term with you. You employed me to do a job, that’s all. Outside of that, I have no feelings for you whatsoever. I do what I do simply to avoid returning to the island.’

‘The island?’ he asked, looking puzzled.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said, shaking my head, annoyed that I had revealed any part of my previous life to him. ‘The point is, you mean nothing to me, Samuel. Nothing at all. I say this to be kind. So you won’t deceive yourself.’

He was clearly shocked by the brutality of my words and began to cry, which was excruciating. I grew nauseous. People were looking at us. It was too much.

‘You’re lying,’ he said, wiping away his tears. ‘I know you feel something.’

‘No.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Try.’

‘But I can give you everything you—’

I excused myself then, saying I needed the bathroom, before leaving the bar and blocking his number on my phone. That was the moment I decided I would never see any man more than four times.

Until Sir arrived, that is. With Sir, I had no choice. The decisions were all his.

That experience, my final as human chattel, began a few months after the Samuel debacle when Rafe phoned to say that he had a very special client who was interested in meeting me.

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Send me his details.’

‘No, I don’t want to put anything in text,’ he told me.

‘Why not?’

‘Because nothing disappears. Nothing is forgotten. Everything we say or do these days clings to us for ever. Meet me for a coffee and I’ll explain.’

We met in the Reform Club on Pall Mall, where he was a member, and he handed me an A4 envelope containing a document that he instructed me to sign. It was a non-disclosure agreement, he explained. The previous boys with whom his client had spent time had all done so, he told me, so I shouldn’t worry about its contents. It simply said that I could never reveal any details about our encounters or I would be subject to criminal proceedings. I never spoke about what I did anyway, nor did I have anyone with whom I might speak about it, so was content to do as he asked. The payment, to my surprise, was more than twice my regular rate, which could change things considerably for me.

‘Excellent,’ he said, returning the document to the envelope. ‘What’s most important here, of course, is discretion. Are you discreet, Evan?’

‘You know I am,’ I told him.

‘I think I do, yes. But in this particular case, it’s important for you to understand that, if you were to be reckless, there would be consequences.’

‘What kind of consequences?’ I asked.

‘Severe consequences.’

He removed another envelope from his bag and told me that it contained a picture of his client. If I opened the envelope, he said, that would be taken as a tacit agreement on my part that I was willing to play by the rules. If I returned it to him unopened, then I could walk away now, he would find someone else, and our current arrangements would not change in any way.

‘But if you say yes,’ he told me, ‘you don’t get to choose when the arrangement ends. That will be his prerogative. Do you understand?’

‘You wouldn’t put me in danger, would you?’ I asked.

‘Of course not,’ he said, smiling at me. ‘You know you’re my favourite boy.’

I wanted to believe him but worried that I was doing what some of my clients did with me, believing that our relationship ran deeper than our professional ties. I didn’t want a sexual relationship with Rafe, but sometimes, when I was with other men, I thought of him. I wanted something. Something I couldn’t quite define.

I opened the second envelope and slid the picture out, recognizing the man immediately, and looked across at Rafe in disbelief.

‘Obviously, now you understand the need for discretion,’ he said, retrieving the envelope, along with the picture, and returning both to his bag.

‘Of course.’

‘I’ll text you with details of your first engagement. A day and time, nothing more. A car will collect you at a given place and return you there afterwards.’

Three days later, at seven p.m., I found myself standing outside one of the lesser-frequented Tube stations in London as a black Range Rover pulled up next to me. The most enormous man I had ever seen was driving, and we both remained silent throughout the journey. It took around forty minutes until we arrived at a set of iron gates, which were immediately opened for us. We made our way up a long driveway before stopping in a central courtyard, where a second man in livery was waiting to guide me inside and upstairs. He barely acknowledged me as I exited the vehicle, simply starting to walk, and I assumed that I should follow.

‘What do I call him?’ I asked, and he didn’t even turn as he answered.

‘Sir,’ he said. ‘You call him Sir at all times.’

I nodded, wishing he would slow down, for the walls of the corridors were hung with extraordinary paintings, the masterpieces of many centuries, and I wanted to pause for a moment so I could study them.

Soon, I was led into a spacious room where I recognized a chesterfield sofa and armchair, along with some handsomely upholstered chairs and a desk of Regency design. As he left the room, he instructed me to remain standing and not to touch anything. I examined the photographs that stood on the various surfaces, faces I’d seen on news programmes and in magazines throughout my life. They looked like any normal family. How had I got here? I asked myself. I grew up on an island of four hundred people. I worked on a farm. I wanted to be a painter. After about ten minutes, a door at the other end of the room opened and he came in, walking towards me with a smile on his face. I instinctively stood as tall as I could.

‘Good evening,’ he said. ‘It’s Evan, have I got that right?’

‘That’s right, Sir,’ I told him.

‘Splendid.’ He continued to smile, betraying no anxiety at how unusual this meeting was. ‘And where are you from exactly?’

I told him the name of the island and explained its location relative to Galway, and he nodded, looking me up and down as I talked. He seemed uninterested in my answer, even though he’d asked the question.

‘Very good,’ he said. ‘And you know the rules, yes? They’ve been explained to you?’

‘Yes, Sir,’ I replied. ‘I understand them fully.’

‘Excellent. Then shall we get started?’ He rubbed his hands together. ‘Chilly tonight, isn’t it?’

We engaged in no further conversation. Instead, he led me to a bedroom, where he degraded me in ways that I never knew a human being could be degraded. Behaving worse than any client ever had before, he humiliated me, physically and mentally, treating me worse than you would treat a rabid dog, while speaking to me as if I had ascended from the depths of hell to service him. I am not here, I told myself over and over. I am a dead person, observing this scene from a different plane.

When it was over, he reached for a dressing gown and left the bedroom without a word. I curled up on the floor, not wanting to move but uncertain what I was supposed to do next. There was blood. There was worse. In that, the first of our many encounters, he took something from me that would never return.

Finally, my original guide returned and seemed disgusted to find me still lying naked on a priceless rug. Instructing me to get dressed, he told me that the car was waiting outside, and within five minutes I was being driven back to the Tube station from which I had been collected.

This went on for six months, and I dreaded the encounters, barely sleeping the night before, but Rafe reiterated that I could not step away. I had made a commitment, he repeated, and there would be consequences – severe consequences – if I did anything to upset the client. Sir would let him know when he was finished with me and, until then, I had no choice but to allow him to do whatever he wanted without protest.

‘You said you wouldn’t put me in any danger,’ I whispered to Rafe on the phone after a particularly brutal session which had led me to making an appointment with a GP, who seemed appalled by the extent of my injuries and urged me to make a complaint to the police. There was a lengthy silence before the click made me realize that he was no longer there.

The sole advantage of this arrangement was that I was able to move into a small one-bedroom flat of my own. Being demeaned and physically abused every Thursday night was the price I had to pay for independence.

This might have continued for years had I not received a phone call one morning from a man who claimed to work for a tabloid newspaper and who said that he had heard certain rumours about me and Sir. He wondered whether I would be willing to meet to discuss them. He would make it worth my while, he told me. I was accustomed to being paid for my services but, this time, I panicked and hung up. By chance, I was due to meet Sir that same evening. As we walked towards his bedroom, I asked whether I might speak to him for a moment. He seemed surprised, even annoyed.

‘Well, what is it?’ he asked, checking his watch. I explained what had taken place and he listened carefully, a shadow crossing his face.

‘And what did you tell him?’ he asked.

‘Nothing at all,’ I said. ‘I hung up.’

He took a seat in what I was fairly sure was a George Hepplewhite chair and thought about this for a long time. When he looked up again, he nodded and told me that I had done the right thing, but it was best that I should leave now, that he wouldn’t require my services that night after all. The following evening, however, I returned to my flat after a gym session to discover Rafe sitting in my living room, along with the enormous driver who always brought me to and from Sir’s residence. How he got in, I did not know.

‘We had an agreement, Evan, did we not?’ asked Rafe, without any preamble.

‘I swear I told no one,’ I said. And this was the truth. I had never opened my mouth about what I did or who I did it with. Should I even have wanted to confide in someone, who would I have chosen? I was alone in the world.

‘I believe you,’ said Rafe, his tone mixing disappointment with resignation. ‘The truth is, in a place like that, gossip is currency. It could have been any one of his flunkies. But the fact is, he won’t be requiring your services any more and I would advise you to change your phone number tomorrow in case any other reporters try to get in touch.’

‘Fine,’ I said.

‘I believe you know Dennis,’ he continued, nodding towards the driver.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Although I didn’t know his name was Dennis. He’s never spoken to me.’

Dennis allowed himself a half-smile.

‘You’re not the only one with rules to obey,’ he said, and I was surprised to hear a strong Welsh accent. I don’t know why but I had always taken him for a Londoner.

‘Dennis here,’ continued Rafe calmly, as if this was a perfectly normal conversation, ‘is going to break your arm. You can choose which one, the left or the right. This is not done to punish you – you’ve done nothing wrong – but simply to impress upon you how serious we are that you never speak about my client in the future. You will also be required to find a new source of income. I’m afraid your days of selling yourself have come to an end. If you disobey me on this, I will find out, and will assume that you are gossiping, which will be unacceptable. Do you understand?’

‘I won’t tell anyone,’ I said, shaking my head as panic settled in. ‘I promise. Please don’t hurt me.’

‘As it happens, I do trust you, Evan,’ said Rafe. ‘So believe me when I tell you that I am truly sorry about what has to happen. But it’s what Sir wants. Call it a shot across the bow.’

For a few moments, I couldn’t find any words.

‘But you told me I was your favourite boy,’ I said at last.

‘I say that to everyone,’ he replied, looking embarrassed for me. ‘Didn’t you know that? You can’t imagine you’re anything special? I employed you to do a job, that’s all. Outside of that, you mean nothing to me, Evan. Nothing at all. I say this to be kind. So you won’t deceive yourself.’

Somehow, in that moment, I made peace with what was to happen. There was no possibility of escape. There was no chance that I could convince him to leave me unharmed. Sir was too powerful. His secrets too important. His place in national life too significant.

Dennis walked towards me. Unlike Rafe, he seemed rather sympathetic to my situation.

‘This will only take a moment,’ he said, ‘and the adrenalin rush will kick in quickly, so you won’t feel much pain. Just a sort of general numbness, although you might get dizzy or nauseous. But by then, we’ll be halfway to A&E, where I’ll leave you.’

‘All right,’ I said, nodding. I couldn’t think what else to say. ‘Thanks, I guess.’

‘So which one?’ he asked, looking at me, and I raised an eyebrow, uncertain what he meant.

‘Which one what?’ I asked.

‘Which arm?’

The thought ran through my mind that my future was now decided. There would be no further work for me in London. I couldn’t sell my body any more and I would never be able to sell my art. But I had to live, to eat, and to clothe myself. I no longer had a choice. I would finally have to rely on the only skill I’d ever had. My beauty. I felt some relief, as if this moment had been a long time coming but had always been inevitable.

I looked at Dennis. I was right-handed, after all, so there was only one logical answer.

‘Left,’ I said.

7

LAUREN MACKINTOSH LOOKS DIFFERENT to how I remember her, but then we’ve only met once. In court, she’s dressed in a simple skirt-and-blouse combination, with her hair tied back in a ponytail. It’s the day on which Catherine gets to cross-examine her, but I can tell that the jury has responded well to Mr Armstrong’s questions yesterday when she gave her account of what happened.

I had an unsettling experience earlier after arriving at the courthouse. Walking down a corridor to use the gents’ toilets, I noticed a woman sitting by a window, bent over, her head in her hands. There was no one else nearby so I stopped to ask whether she was all right. When she looked up, however, I recognized her as Juror no. 6.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said immediately, understanding that any conversation between us could prejudice the trial, if not invalidate it entirely. I glanced down at the notebook she held in her hands, in which I’d noticed her making notes since the opening day, and saw, scored into the cover, her name: Dr Freya Petrus. I’m not supposed to know any of the jurors’ names, but now I know hers. And her occupation. Although I suppose it’s possible that she’s a Ph.D. and not a medical doctor.

‘Are you all right?’ I asked.

She took a long breath before replying.

‘Walk on,’ she said. ‘You know we can’t talk.’

I continued along the corridor, looking back to make sure that no one had observed the brief encounter. When I glance towards her now, I know we have a shared moment.

‘Miss Mackintosh,’ begins Catherine, standing up and leaning forward on the desk before her. ‘I recognize that this is a difficult experience for you, but I want you to know that I understand the courage it takes for you to come forward and give your account of what you claim took place on the night in question. I won’t keep you long, I just want to clarify a few things you said yesterday when being examined by my learned friend Mr Armstrong. Is that all right?’

The way she phrases this implies that Lauren has some choice in the matter, when of course she doesn’t. Lauren nods and reaches for a glass of water, taking a sip. Her hands, I notice, remain steady.

‘You’ve said that you had no knowledge of either Robert Wolverton or Evan Keogh until the night of the party. Is that correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘They are rather well-known footballers.’

‘I have no interest in football,’ she replies. ‘I’m not into sports at all. I know the most famous players, of course, the ones in the England squad and some of the bigger stars in the Premier League, but the defendants, well, they’re not really at that level, are they?’

I feel Robbie bristle next to me. It bruises his ego that he’s a Championship player, and I know it rankles with him that I play for Ireland. Played for Ireland. Whatever the outcome of the trial, I suspect those days are behind me.

‘But when you went to Mr Wolverton’s apartment,’ continues Catherine, ‘you knew who he was then, yes?’

‘Yes,’ she admits. ‘I’d been with my friends in the club, and they recognized him.’

‘And you were impressed by him.’

‘No, not particularly. Why would I be? He does a job like any other.’

‘But you went home with him.’

‘No, he and his friends invited a group of us back to continue partying. There were more than a dozen of us there, as you know. Saying I went home with him suggests it was just the two of us.’

Lauren’s unwillingness to be provoked impresses me. She is, I realize, a formidable woman.

‘But you did go home with him, didn’t you?’ persists Catherine. ‘Not alone, as you correctly say, but you went back to his apartment.’

‘Yes.’

‘Even though you’d never met him before and you claim that you had no idea who he was. Is that something that you’re in the habit of doing, Miss Mackintosh? Going back to the apartments of men you’ve never met before?’

‘I’ve done it from time to time, yes, like most girls my age,’ she replies. ‘Particularly when there’s a group of us. You meet people, you hit it off, you see where the night takes you. That’s not so unusual, is it? But I don’t do it regularly, if that’s what you’re implying.’

‘I didn’t mean to imply anything of the sort,’ says Catherine. ‘You’re entitled to go home with any man you want, even if you’ve just met him an hour or two earlier.’

‘That’s not what I do,’ says Lauren.

‘Well, as you’ve just clearly told us, you do it “from time to time”, which, to most reasonable people, would mean at regular intervals. But let’s leave that there for the moment. When you got to Mr Wolverton’s apartment, what did you make of it?’

Lauren frowns. ‘I don’t understand the question,’ she says.

‘Did you like it?’

‘I suppose so, yes. It’s very nice.’

‘Luxurious.’

‘Yes.’

‘Expensive.’

‘I imagine it must be.’

‘You live with your mother, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘Why what?’

‘Why do you live with your mother?’

Lauren stares at Catherine as if she can’t believe she has to explain something so obvious. ‘I’m a student,’ she says. ‘I can’t afford to move out.’

‘But you’d like to?’

‘Do you mean would I like to have my own place?’

‘Yes.’

She thinks about it. ‘I suppose so, yes. But I’m happy where I am right now, to be honest. I love my mum and we have a good relationship. We get along. We always have.’

This statement of filial affection goes down well with the jury, who look across at her parents approvingly.

‘Miss Mackintosh, would you agree that your evidence is materially based on the jury believing that you have a good memory? That you remember exactly what you said and did on the night in question and are relating it truthfully?’

‘Yes.’

‘And do you have a good memory?’

‘I think so.’

‘Then you will remember the beginning of our conversation.’

‘I wouldn’t call it a conversation,’ says Lauren. ‘But yes.’

‘When you explained to us that you supposed you liked Mr Wolverton’s apartment and that it was also, supposedly, luxurious.’

‘Yes.’

‘Is luxury not something that most people would, objectively, agree upon?’

‘Perhaps,’ she says. ‘To a degree.’

‘You decide a fair deal by supposing matters after the event, don’t you? Such as supposing that the apartment might have been luxurious, but only months after seeing it?’

‘Something as insignificant as the design of a flat, yes.’

‘Am I understanding correctly that you’re only guided by supposition about minor moments in life?’

‘I don’t know. Is that what I—’

‘Including you merely “supposing” that one day you would like to own a home and to live independently of your mother, which to most people would be a highly significant life event?’

‘I obviously did not mean it that way.’

‘How many other apparently significant events in your life did you merely “suppose” have happened recently, Miss Mackintosh?’

‘None.’

‘Do you want to reflect and give a less rehearsed answer?’

‘No.’

‘I didn’t anticipate you would.’ Catherine shakes her head and sighs loudly. ‘You’ve admitted already that you asked your friend Jennifer whether or not Mr Wolverton had a girlfriend.’

‘I asked her whether he had, yes. I don’t know what you mean by admitted it.’

‘And you asked her this question after you arrived at his apartment, not when you were in the nightclub?’

‘Yes.’

‘So presumably you were interested in applying for the position?’

‘What position?’

‘The position of girlfriend.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ says Lauren, losing a little of her composure now. ‘It was just a question. I’d been chatting to him, he seemed nice, so I wanted to know, that’s all. I mean, if he had a girlfriend, I didn’t want to waste my time.’

I watch Mr Armstrong when she says this and notice a nerve twitch in his cheek. This was a mistake on her part, and Catherine immediately pounces on it.

‘You didn’t want to waste your time,’ she repeats, looking baffled, as if she barely understands English. ‘What do you mean by that?’

‘I didn’t want to …’

She hesitates. She knows she’s slipped up.

‘What? Hope that you and Mr Wolverton might become romantically involved? That you might find yourself living in this luxurious apartment some day?’

‘I wasn’t thinking that far ahead,’ says Lauren. ‘Honestly, it’s a standard question when you meet someone and you’re having a good night out. Does he have a girlfriend? Guys ask me the same thing. Do you have a boyfriend? The difference being, I actually listen to the answer and respect it.’

‘So you weren’t thinking of moving in with Mr Wolverton?’

‘No.’

‘Were you thinking as far ahead as the next day, after perhaps having spent the night with him?’

‘No.’

‘Were you thinking as far ahead as how to get him to have sex with you?’

‘No.’

‘Miss Mackintosh, you’re not in the habit of giving much thought to matters, are you?’

‘But I am clearly in the habit of saying no,’ says Lauren, fighting back.

‘It was you who led Mr Wolverton upstairs, wasn’t it?’ continues Catherine, forcing a different answer, which is given reluctantly.

‘Yes.’

‘With the intention of having sex with him.’

‘We’d been talking, that’s all,’ insists Lauren. ‘Having a laugh. And he asked whether I wanted to see the rest of the apartment. I said OK. The only reason I led the way was because I happened to be the one standing closer to the staircase at the time.’

‘Or you had positioned yourself closest to the staircase, hoping that Mr Wolverton would issue an invitation.’

‘Oh, come on!’ says Lauren, growing angry now. ‘I was just standing there, the way anyone might be. It wasn’t some great Machiavellian plan.’

‘Still, fortunate for you,’ replies Catherine. ‘Because he took the hint.’

‘I’m not sure that I consider getting raped fortunate for me,’ says Lauren. ‘I assume it’s never happened to you.’

‘No,’ admits Catherine. ‘But then I don’t generally go back to the apartments of young, single, famous millionaires who I’ve only known for five minutes.’

‘I was waiting for that,’ says Lauren, offering a bitter laugh.

‘Waiting for what, Miss Mackintosh?’

‘Waiting for you to tell me that it was my fault.’

‘You misunderstand me,’ replies Catherine, shaking her head and looking entirely innocent of any wrongdoing. ‘I don’t think it’s your fault. After all, you can’t be blamed for something that never actually happened, can you?’

Lauren looks as if she wants to climb down from the stand and strangle our barrister with her bare hands, but she has the sense to remain still and silent, even though I can see that it takes all her self-control to do so. She glances towards Mr Armstrong, who is looking back at her. If I was seated elsewhere, I imagine I would see him urging her with his eyes to remain calm and focused.

‘The thing is,’ continues Catherine, ‘I listened very carefully to your testimony yesterday. And there were a few parts that confused me. You said that when you entered Mr Wolverton’s bedroom, you had no intention of having sex with him.’

‘That’s right.’

‘So what exactly did you think was going to happen in there? Were you hoping to examine his bookcases and have a conversation about his taste in literature?’

Mr Armstrong rises, ready to object, but Catherine cuts him off.

‘Apologies, My Lady. That was facetious.’ She turns back to the witness. ‘But tell me, Miss Mackintosh, exactly what did you think was going to take place?’

Lauren takes a breath before answering.

‘I don’t know,’ she says eventually. ‘I was having a good time. I’d had a few drinks. And I thought he was cute. I was happy just to see where things went.’

‘So you lay down on his bed.’

‘No, he pushed me on to it.’

‘I find that hard to imagine,’ says Catherine, laughing a little. ‘Why wouldn’t you leave if he became violent?’

‘Because it wasn’t violent, it was playful.’

‘A playful push? On to his bed?’

‘Yes.’

‘I see. But then he joined you on the bed. No one came along to push him, I assume? In his case, it was voluntary? Or did he trip over something?’

‘My Lady,’ says Mr Armstrong.

‘I withdraw that,’ says Catherine. ‘Please continue, Miss Mackintosh. What happened then?’

Lauren looks uncomfortable. ‘Well, we started kissing.’

‘You took your blouse off.’

‘No, he took it off me.’

‘And you allowed him to do this?’

‘I thought he was going a bit quick, but yes, I let him.’

‘So now you’re lying on Mr Wolverton’s bed in your underwear and, if I remember correctly, you testified that he took his shirt off.’

‘Yes.’

‘And still you didn’t think that you were going to have sex.’

‘I hadn’t decided yet. I wasn’t uncomfortable with the …’ She’s trying to find the right word. ‘With what was happening. But I hadn’t made up my mind yet.’

‘So you thought you could get Mr Wolverton aroused to this point where you’re in your underwear, he’s removed his shirt, and then you might simply say no, I’ve changed my mind, I want to go back downstairs. Is that what you’re telling me?’

‘Yes.’

Catherine frowns. This is not, perhaps, the answer she had expected.

‘I’m sorry?’ she asks.

‘I said yes. I assumed that if I said stop, then he would stop. I have the right to do that, don’t I? Even if we were completely naked, I can still say no, can’t I? Or is there a moment during foreplay where I’m legally obliged to see things through?’

Catherine looks rattled. A hint of a smile crosses Mr Armstrong’s face.

‘But you didn’t say stop, did you, Miss Mackintosh?’

‘I did,’ she insists.

‘Was this before or after you took your blouse off?’

‘After he took my blouse off.’

‘You said the word stop? Out loud?’

‘Yes. I said the word stop. Out loud.’

‘When?’

‘When he came in.’

She nods in my direction, and the entire court turns to look at me. I can’t bear to have their eyes on me and want to turn my gaze to the floor but know that will make me look guilty, so I simply stare directly ahead, towards Judge Kerrey.

‘Evan Keogh, you mean,’ says Catherine.

‘He pushed the door open, and he was just stood there, looking at us. I remember thinking—’ She pauses and shakes her head.

‘You remember thinking what, Miss Mackintosh?’

‘How angry he looked,’ she says. ‘He wasn’t even looking at me, he was looking at Robbie. At Mr Wolverton, I mean. He looked sort of … jealous.’

‘Jealous of Mr Wolverton?’

‘No, jealous of me.’

I feel a blush rise in my cheeks. I glance towards my father, who’s chewing his nails with such gusto that Mam slaps his hand away from his mouth.

‘And what happened then, Miss Mackintosh?’

‘Robbie turned around, he saw Evan, Mr Keogh, standing there, and he said, You want some too? And Evan came inside and closed the door behind him. And that’s when I said no.’

‘No to what?’

‘No to sex.’

‘But Mr Wolverton hadn’t offered you sex, had he?’

‘Oh, come on!’

‘It’s a genuine question, Miss Mackintosh. Had Mr Wolverton offered you sex?’

‘Boys don’t offer girls sex. It’s not a Jägerbomb. They don’t offer. They expect.’

Mr Armstrong’s half-smile again. He has a good client.

‘Please just answer the question,’ demands Catherine. ‘Had Mr Wolverton offered you sex?’

‘I mean—’

‘No “I mean”s. No “suppose”s. He either had or he hadn’t. Had Mr Wolverton offered you sex?’

‘Well, no,’ admits Lauren. ‘Not in so many words.’

‘Then, I’m sorry, but I don’t understand what you were saying no to? I can understand you getting off the bed, gathering your discarded clothing, and saying I’m leaving or I’m going back downstairs, but why would you say no to a question that hadn’t been asked? What exactly were you saying no to?’

Lauren looks flustered now.

‘Do you normally just say no to things randomly?’

‘No.’

‘No, you do, or no, you don’t?’

Mr Armstrong rises to protest, but Judge Kerrey waves him back to his seat.

‘The truth is, Miss Mackintosh,’ continues Catherine, ‘you were perfectly happy to have sex with Mr Wolverton, weren’t you? In fact, you wanted it. And it was you who asked Mr Keogh to film your romantic encounter.’

‘No,’ insists Lauren. ‘And it wasn’t a romantic encounter. It was the opposite of that.’

‘Have you ever filmed yourself having sex before?’

Lauren opens her mouth in outrage but closes it again just as quickly. Catherine looks up, pretending to be surprised. As if she’s stumbled upon something unexpectedly, which, of course, she hasn’t.

‘I ask again, Miss Mackintosh, have you ever filmed yourself having sex before?’

‘I don’t see why that matters.’

‘You can let the court decide its importance. Have you ever filmed yourself having sex before? A simple yes or no will suffice.’

‘Consensually,’ says Lauren, her eyes moving towards where her parents are seated. ‘With a long-term boyfriend.’

‘Miss Mackintosh, with respect, you’re nineteen years old. How long term could any relationship have been?’

Lauren remains silent.

‘How long term are we talking?’

‘Six months.’

Catherine laughs and glances towards the jury, shaking her head.

‘Six months is long term? I have cheese in my fridge that’s been there longer than that.’

Again, silence.

‘You enjoy being filmed, don’t you, Miss Mackintosh?’

‘No.’

‘It turns you on, doesn’t it?’

‘No.’

‘So your previous boyfriend, I assume he forced this on you too? Did you report him to the police afterwards?’

‘Of course not. I agreed to it then. There’s a difference.’

‘Is there?’ Catherine keeps her focus on the jury, knowing she has them now, because the older members are looking increasingly disapproving.

‘Yes,’ insists Lauren. ‘There is.’

‘And what did you do with the footage afterwards? The pornographic video you made with this six-month, terribly long-term boyfriend of yours. Did you watch it?’

Lauren says nothing but finally nods her head.

‘Can you answer in words, please, Miss Mackintosh? So the jury can hear you.’

‘Yes, we watched it.’

‘Who is we?’

‘My boyfriend and me. My ex-boyfriend, I mean.’

‘Which one?’

‘Which one what?’

‘Which ex-boyfriend?’

‘The one I filmed it with, of course!’

‘So not with a later boyfriend.’

Lauren looks incensed. ‘No,’ she says.

‘So, just to be clear, you watched the video with the boy you filmed it with, but not with any later boyfriends.’

‘Yes.’

‘It was a private video,’ continues Catherine.

‘Yes.’

‘Something just for you and this boy to enjoy together.’

I can see Lauren visibly crumbling. She knows where this is going, even if I don’t.

‘It’s not something you showed to anyone else,’ says Catherine.

Lauren is starting to cry now. I can’t help myself; I look towards her parents, her loving parents. They want to comfort her, but there’s nothing they can do.

‘Miss Mackintosh, did you show this pornographic video you made to anyone else, other than the boy you filmed it with?’

‘I was drunk,’ she says.

‘You were drunk and … what?’

‘I showed it to a friend. It was just a joke, that’s all.’

‘I’m sorry. Could you repeat that?’

‘I said I showed it to a friend.’

Catherine waits, making sure the jury has fully taken this in. ‘So, just to clarify, at some point in the recent past, you got drunk, had sex with a boy you hadn’t known for very long, filmed it, then shared it with others. Have I got that right?’

Lauren, reluctantly, nods.

‘Again, Miss Mackintosh, I have to ask you to say your answers aloud.’

‘Yes,’ she shouts.

‘But when you were in the luxury apartment of a famous footballer, lying on his bed in your underwear, and his friend walked in and started to film the encounter, this was something that conflicted horribly with your finely honed moral compass?’

‘You’re twisting what happened,’ says Lauren, tears streaming down her face.

‘I’m not doing anything of the sort. I’m simply placing your evidence into context. What you complain of here is something that you have done before, and apparently enjoyed so much that you shared it with your friends. You admit to having a history of enjoying sex with virtual strangers and filming those encounters. This is not a judgement on my part, Miss Mackintosh. Simply a statement of facts.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘And we are all here today because you had sex with Mr Wolverton, another virtual stranger, and allowed Mr Keogh to film it.’

‘This is coming out all wrong,’ says Lauren, looking away. Her words are almost inaudible now. ‘I’m tired.’

‘I’d be tired too, Miss Mackintosh,’ says Catherine, before resuming her seat. ‘If I’d spent the last two days lying on the stand.’

8

I WAS SIX YEARS old when I left the island for the first time, when my father and I took the boat to Galway and then a flight from Shannon Airport to England to see his favourite team play. I’d never been on a plane before and although the stadium, when we reached it, was impressive, the crowd unsettled me, the noise of the fans so much louder than anything I had ever known. Only four hundred people lived on the island, but here I was surrounded by forty times that number. To my alarm, our seats were located in the middle of an enormous stand, where it looked as if there would be no chance of escape if a riot ensued. All I wanted was to be home again, running around familiar fields with Cormac, my fingers mucky from the earth.

I held tight to Dad’s hand as we approached the stadium, but he released me as soon as we’d gone through the turnstiles.

‘You’re too old now for that carry-on,’ he said, pushing his way through the throng. I had to run to keep up with him. When we were finally seated, I looked out on to the pitch. The grass looked somehow different to the grass at home, as if the green had been painstakingly painted on, blade by blade. I wondered what the soil beneath it might feel like, whether it had the natural moistness of the island or if it might be tougher to the touch, less giving.

When the teams emerged from the tunnel and ran on to the pitch, they were greeted by deafening cheers, and I pressed myself close to Dad, but he pushed me away in annoyance. His team was playing The Enemy, and before a ball had even been kicked he let loose a string of obscenities against those players who dared to jog along the sidelines down beneath us. I’d heard him curse before – he cursed at Mam all the time – but I’d never heard anything like this. How could he have such hatred in his heart, I wondered, for people he didn’t even know? One of his targets played for the Irish team and he screamed abuse at him too, even though he’d pinned a picture of him to my bedroom wall in his green-and-white strip and told me how proud the player’s father must be of him.

The game was only twenty minutes in when I needed to use the toilet. I tried to hold it, knowing Dad would be angry with me if I asked to leave, but eventually it became too much. I whispered to him that I needed to find a bathroom, and he told me to wait until half-time, that he’d saved up too long to miss even a moment of this.

‘But I have to go,’ I insisted.

‘Tie a knot in it,’ he snapped.

‘I can go myself,’ I told him, looking back towards the staircase that led to what I considered the peaceful Eden outside.

‘I’m not letting you go alone,’ he said. ‘Sure, there’s paedophiles and all sorts out there waiting for lads like you. So just sit down, shut up, and watch the fuckin’ game, all right?’

I tried to do as instructed, but it was impossible. I found myself clutching at my crotch, a horrible pain building inside my kidneys as my small, valuable feet stamped on the concrete beneath me. I bit my lip and felt blood seeping into my mouth. And then, as if God had taken pity on me and decided to grant me a reprieve from unendurable discomfort, it magically eased, and I groaned in relief. It was only as I felt the warm stream of urine pass along my leg that I realized what had happened, and I looked down in horror as it travelled along the stone in the direction of Dad’s shoes. His mouth fell open in disbelief. The man seated next to him saw the piss coming his way and let out a bark of anger.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ said Dad, infuriated, dragging me to my feet now and pulling me along the row, my trousers staining dark as he hauled me towards the exit. Gripping my collar, he threw me down the staircase and flung me inside. ‘Get in there and clean yourself up!’ he roared as one of the security guards watched us from a distance but chose not to intervene. ‘You filthy little animal.’

I went inside and sat in a cubicle for a few minutes, sobbing helplessly, before emerging and doing my best to dry my trousers with hand towels, but there was nothing much that I could do. They were soaked. When I turned around, he was behind me.

‘You’re determined to shame me, aren’t you, Evan?’ he asked. ‘You can’t just be a normal son. If I could only swap you for Cormac Sweeney. His parents haven’t a brain cell to share between them, and yet somehow they produced him and his poor dead brother, who would have been a great hurler had he only lived. Look what I got.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, looking down at my runners in distress, and he waited until I dared to look up again before punching me hard in the face.

And so, when my life in London came to its untimely end, when I knew that there was only one way that I could make a living for myself, there was a part of me that wanted to offer myself to The Enemy, just to temper whatever joy he might feel at my capitulation to his plans with fury that I’d chosen the team he hated most in the world. But instead, I took a train to a city several hundred miles from London, where I walked into the reception area of the local football club and asked whether I could meet the manager.

‘Mr Hopworth?’ said the middle-aged woman behind the desk, taking off her glasses. ‘He’s not available today, I’m afraid. Can I help?’

‘One of the coaches, then,’ I suggested. ‘Are any of them around?’

‘Well, yes,’ she replied. ‘Some are, but they’ll all be busy, my love. Did you make an appointment?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘But if one had a few minutes to talk, then I’d really appreciate it.’

‘Talk to you about what?’

‘A job.’

‘Oh, I see,’ she said, before opening a drawer and reaching for a folder. ‘As it happens, I think we do have a couple of openings at the moment that you could apply for. We’d need a CV, of course. Did you bring one with you? And references too. There’s a job going in the canteen, I know that much, on account of a young lad from there going off to America last week – no great loss, if I’m honest – and there might be something going with the groundskeeping staff, only you’d need to—’

‘No,’ I said, cutting her off. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean that type of job.’

‘Then what type?’ she asked, looking up.

‘I’ve decided to become a professional footballer.’

A player walked past, making his way towards a staircase, and turned his head when he heard me say this, before bursting into laughter. I ignored him and kept my attention focused on the receptionist.

‘I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way, my love,’ she said in a kindly tone, throwing him a look, while speaking to me as if I was a simpleton. ‘You can’t just walk in off the street and ask to play for us. We’re a professional team, you see. A Championship club with ambitions.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘But, the thing is, I’m quite talented.’

‘I’m sure you are, but the answer’s no.’

I frowned. I hadn’t anticipated rejection. In my naivety I had assumed I could just show them what I could do and that would be that.

‘Please,’ I said. ‘I’ve come a long way.’ I told her about the island, pretending I’d arrived directly from there. She heard me out and seemed to soften. Finally, perhaps thinking this would be the quickest way to be rid of me, she picked up a phone, dialled a number and spoke quietly under her breath. After a few moments, she nodded and returned it to its cradle.

‘You take a seat over there, my love,’ she said. ‘Someone will be down to see you in a few minutes.’

I thanked her, and did as instructed. About ten minutes later a door to my right opened and a man in his late twenties emerged, sporting a man-bun and a tracksuit emblazoned with the club’s colours. He glanced at the receptionist, and she pointed in my direction. He turned to me, loosening his hair now and shaking it out.

‘I’m told you want to be a professional footballer,’ he said, extending his hand, and I stood up, shook it and introduced myself.

‘That’s right,’ I said.

‘You know this isn’t how we do things, right?’

‘Yes, I’m sorry about that, but—’

‘Where were you before this?’

‘London.’

‘Which team? I haven’t heard of you.’

‘No team,’ I said. ‘I’ve never played professionally.’

‘So you weren’t let go from a contract?’

‘No.’

‘Right.’ He looked at me, utterly baffled. ‘Well, which academy were you at when you were a boy?’

‘I’ve never been to an academy,’ I told him. ‘I only played for my school. On the island.’

‘What island?’

‘The island I grew up on,’ I told him, naming it and explaining where it was in relation to the west of Ireland. Then, seeing the blank expression on his face, explaining where the west of Ireland was in relation to Dublin. And then where Dublin was in relation to where we were currently standing.

Unlike the receptionist, the man, whose name was Matt, seemed to be more irritated than sympathetic.

‘Look, I’m sorry,’ he said, glancing at his watch impatiently. ‘But you can’t just … All our players have been playing since they were children.’

‘I’ve been playing since I was a child,’ I told him.

‘I mean at grassroots level, in cages, at academies. They’ve been spotted by scouts. We have files on what their heart rates were when they were five years old, ten, fifteen. How they’ve grown, how their weight has changed. How fast they can run. I could practically tell you the date each one’s balls dropped. Honestly, if you’re not spotted by the age of about eight, you don’t stand a chance. You can’t just show up at … what are you now, eighteen?’

‘Nineteen.’

‘Even worse. Sorry, but you haven’t a hope.’

‘Just give me a chance, that’s all I ask.’

‘There’s no point.’

‘You don’t know that until you see me play.’

‘Sorry,’ he repeated, shaking his head, trying to walk away. ‘And no offence, but I’m too busy for this. There’s the door.’

‘You don’t understand,’ I told him. ‘I’m good.’

‘If you’re so good,’ he asked, ‘then why are you only getting into the game now?’

‘Because I don’t really like football,’ I said, and he rolled his eyes.

‘Great,’ he said. ‘Exactly what we’re looking for. A nineteen-year-old with no experience and no medical records who doesn’t even like the game.’

‘Just because I’m good at it doesn’t mean I have to enjoy it,’ I said.

‘No, but it helps.’

And it was at that moment that the door opened again and a young man emerged, making his way towards the receptionist and handing some forms to her.

‘Thanks, Robbie, my love,’ she said. ‘You’ve filled everything in, yes? I don’t need to double-check them?’

‘I think I have,’ he said, flashing her that smile that would soon be my undoing. ‘But you know what I’m like, Doris. It might be worth giving them the once-over to be sure.’

She slapped his arm playfully, charmed by him, as everyone always was, and he turned to look in my direction. He was taller than me, and good-looking. I stared at him.

‘Hey,’ he said, looking from Matt to me and back again.

‘Just dealing with something,’ said Matt.

‘Who’s this, then?’

‘Evan Keogh,’ I told him. ‘I’ve decided to become a professional footballer.’

Robbie was the first person not to react to this statement in a derisive way. In fact, he looked as if the only thing that he might find strange would be for someone not to hold that ambition.

‘Are you any good?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Robbie’s just breaking into our first team,’ Matt told me. ‘He’s been with us since he was a boy.’

‘Just let me kick a ball around with some of the players for five minutes,’ I said, turning back to the coach. ‘That’s all I ask. You can time me. Blow a whistle when the five minutes are up. If, after that, you don’t think I’ve got what it takes, then I’ll leave, and I won’t bother you again.’

Matt frowned, then turned to look at Robbie. ‘Is this a wind-up?’ he asked, and Robbie shrugged.

‘Nothing to do with me if it is,’ he said. ‘But I can give him a kickabout if you like? I’ll grab a few of the lads.’

Matt shrugged, then shook his head as if he’d decided that, at worst, this would make a good story for his friends in the pub later.

‘Five minutes,’ he said, pointing a finger at me. ‘Not a second more. Agreed?’

‘Agreed,’ I said. ‘And thank you.’

Robbie led me back to the changing rooms and handed me a football strip, sitting on a bench and watching me as I changed. At first, I wondered why he was paying such close attention, but then understood from his expression that he was simply studying my body to assess whether I had the right physique for the game.

‘What’s your BMI?’ he asked, and I shrugged.

‘Haven’t a clue?’

‘Your body-fat percentage?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘Your resting heart rate?’

‘I’m not going to know the answer to any of these questions,’ I said. ‘I can tell you my height and weight, but that’s about all.’

‘Go on, then.’

‘A hundred and seventy centimetres, seventy-three kilos.’

He nodded and, a few minutes later, we were out on a training pitch with half a dozen other boys. They looked at me suspiciously, as if worried that I might be there to steal one of their places in the squad. On the sidelines, Matt appeared and held out a stopwatch. He’d tied up the man-bun again.

‘Five minutes!’ he shouted. ‘Starting now.’

I nodded, and another coach, acting as referee, blew a whistle. Robbie lifted the ball with the toe of his right foot and began to make his way down the pitch, preparing to pass it to one of the others. He didn’t get that far, though, because I took it off him effortlessly, slipped in and out of two midfielders, past a defender, and, in that moment, my career as a professional footballer began.

When it was over, I walked slowly towards Matt, feeling I’d done all right but not certain that I’d played quite as well as I could. I was talented, yes, but these boys were a lot better than any I’d ever competed against before. I could play alongside them, but it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that I could beat them.

Still, he stared at me for a long time before narrowing his eyes, then looking me up and down, holding his gaze on my calves for a few moments. I flexed them, to emphasize the muscles, and he nodded. That’s when I knew I was in.

‘Tell me your name again?’ he said.

9

BY THE SECOND WEEK of the trial, Catherine has done all she can to impress upon the jury that Lauren has a moral character only slightly less reprehensible than that of a war criminal. Some of her questions have been so blunt, so debasing, that I’ve felt ashamed to have them asked in my name.

It’s probable that the jury now knows more about Lauren Mackintosh than they do about their own families. They know that she took cocaine twice in the weeks leading up to her A-levels, although they do not know that she received two A*s and an A in those exams. That she once performed oral sex on a former contestant from The X Factor. That she was underage when she lost her virginity, fifteen when she had her first boyfriend, and fifteen and a half when she cheated on him with his best friend. That she was in the passenger seat when her cousin was arrested for drunk driving. That her parents never married and that her father almost never saw her for the first eleven years of her life. That she’s attended two football matches in the club’s home ground. That she once told a friend she fancied Phil Foden. That, among the nine pictures featured on her Tinder profile, are two of her in a bikini on a beach. That she’s been to Ibiza on three separate occasions. That she once kissed a girl. That she has, on occasion, gone out on a Friday or Saturday night wearing no underwear beneath her dress. That her favourite lipstick is called Brazen. That she has sent pictures of her breasts on Snapchat. That she would prefer to marry someone rich than someone poor. That she once stole some mascara from Debenhams. That she followed the Wagatha Christie trial. That she doesn’t believe in God. That she has credit-card debts totalling two thousand pounds. That she’s on the pill. And that she has a nut allergy.

Her parents also now know all these things about their daughter.

And yet, there is nothing she has done that I haven’t done, or wouldn’t do, or that Robbie hasn’t done, or wouldn’t do. Or that most young men or women our age haven’t done, or wouldn’t do. But they are not on trial, I tell myself as I stand in the dock; she is. It takes me a moment to recognize my error, and when I do, it’s hard not to admire how good my barrister is at her job.

I have observed the jury throughout all of this and seen varying responses. Juror no. 1, an older lady, seems disgusted by Lauren, pursing her lips regularly at every fresh revelation. Juror no. 4, a young man in his early twenties with horrendous acne, blushes violently whenever anything sexual is mentioned. Juror no. 11, an Asian man in his mid-fifties, surprises me by how incensed he appears by Catherine’s line of questioning. Once, I thought he was about to assume a barrister’s role and stand up to object. Juror no. 8 falls asleep from time to time. Juror no. 7 is visibly moved by how upset Lauren grows at times. Only Juror no. 6, Dr Freya Petrus, remains inscrutable to me. She scribbles intently in her notepad throughout proceedings, and I wonder what she’s writing. Is it notes about what has been said, her thoughts about the responses, or something entirely unrelated?

It’s a few days later, immediately following Robbie’s testimony, that I find myself in a bathroom off the second floor, one that I know from experience is almost always empty. I’ve gone there not just to pee but to try to clear my mind of everything he said.

When the door opens, I glance around, and to my dismay I see Robbie’s father walk in. I’ve avoided him since the start of the trial, only speaking to him on that first morning when our parents met, and haven’t looked in his direction in the courtroom, even when I’ve felt his eyes on me.

I hope he’ll turn around and leave when he sees me, but no, he must have planned this encounter, for, rather than approaching a urinal or entering the single cubicle, he walks slowly up behind me, as close as he can get without our touching, and stands perfectly still. I can feel his breath on my neck. I tell myself to remain calm, but the cold white tiling is before my face, and I’m worried he will slam my head against it and knock me out.

‘Please go away,’ I whisper.

‘No,’ he replies.

I zip myself up and turn around.

‘You’ve been avoiding me, Evan,’ he says.

‘I thought it was best.’

‘I never took you for much of a thinker.’

This annoys me. I don’t care how well read he is, or how much he knows about music or art. I’ve read books too. I can play piano. And I wanted to be a painter.

‘You didn’t avoid me at the Birmingham match,’ he says. ‘No, you made it very obvious then that you wanted me to notice you. I’ve thought about that evening a lot since then. I must say, it was quite a clever move on your part. You were hoping to have a little leverage over me, I suppose?’

‘Something like that,’ I say.

‘Twenty-four teams in the Second Division,’ he says. ‘And what, another sixty in the rest of the league?’

‘Sixty-eight,’ I say. ‘And it’s called the Championship.’

‘And yet you chose this club. The club my son plays for. You could have gone anywhere. But you came here.’

He glances towards my left shoulder.

‘How’s the arm?’ he asks.

‘Healed,’ I tell him. ‘Although when I get anxious, it starts to hurt.’

‘How does it feel now?’

‘It’s aching.’

‘You didn’t need the leverage,’ he says, sounding almost disappointed in me. ‘I meant what I said back then. That if you kept your mouth shut, then nothing bad would happen to you. You have kept your mouth shut. And nothing bad has happened to you, has it?’

‘Well, I’m being tried as an accessory to rape,’ I tell him. ‘So there’s that.’

‘You can’t blame me for what’s happening here.’

‘No, but I can blame your son. And you’re the one who brought him up.’

His jaw tenses. A memory flashes through my brain of the night we met, when he brought me back to his so-called bolthole near Woolwich Ferry and I unwittingly auditioned for him. The books in his hallway. The vinyl albums. The objets d’art. How I saw the photograph of his son wearing a football strip and wondered whether all fathers were obsessed with turning their sons into professional footballers. Rafe didn’t seem like the sort and, of course, Lady Wolverton told us on the morning that the trial started that they had expected something different from their son. I had always hoped he might go into medicine or the law. Well, he’s involved with the law now, but not, perhaps, in the way she’d imagined. But when I saw the photograph of him in his club kit, I stored that information away in case I ever needed it. And, one day, I did.

‘I’m disappointed in you, Evan,’ says Rafe.

‘And I’m frightened of you,’ I reply. ‘So I took out a little insurance. That’s not so stupid, is it?’

‘Are you in love with him?’ he asks.

‘With who?’

He rolls his eyes. ‘With my son,’ he says irritably. ‘With Robert.’

I take a moment to consider my answer. The truth is, there’s a lot that I hate about Robbie. I hate his smugness, his misogyny, his casual homophobia, his cruelty, his off-the-cuff racism, his taste in music, his ridiculous car, his habit of hogging the ball and not passing if he has even the slightest chance of scoring, his love of Pot Noodles and Toblerones. I hate how he silences people around him before burping, how he idolizes Nigel Farage, how he rates women on a scale of 1–10, how he imitates my accent when he wants to humiliate me, how he keeps a list on his phone of every girl he’s fucked and calls it his burn list, how he never says thank you to waiting staff, how he calls the older women in the club canteen ‘the hogs’, how he resents playing in the Championship, how he believes he’s this city’s answer to Lionel Messi. I hate his habit of taking selfies with his tongue out, of ordering bottles of Moët in clubs and leaving one of the reserves to pick up the tab, of standing before me in the dressing room stark naked because he knows where my eyes will go, of always wanting to go to karaoke at the end of a night out, of texting me to let me know whenever he gets laid. In fact, it’s almost impossible for me to think of anything I like about Robbie. But Rafe has asked me a question, and I’ve never lied to him before. I won’t start now.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I am.’

He looks baffled. Completely incredulous.

‘But why?’ he asks.

‘I don’t know,’ I admit, and for a moment, I feel like laughing, as if I’m talking to a friend and not my erstwhile pimp, the man who made me money but who also subjected me to degradation at the hands of Sir. ‘I just do. I have, from the moment I met him. He’s electricity to me.’

‘He’s not gay. You realize that? You can’t change him.’

‘I know,’ I admit. ‘But it’s how I feel. I can’t rationalize it. The truth is, I’ve always thought that if you can explain why you love someone, then you probably don’t.’

He frowns, as if considering this. He looks as if he actually feels sympathy for me.

‘But your little plan has backfired, hasn’t it?’ he asks. ‘You thought coming here would protect your future, and, instead, you’re on trial and in love with someone who will never feel the same way towards you.’

I feel tears begin to form and rub my eyes, not wanting to appear weak before him.

‘Do this for me,’ he says quietly, reaching out and placing his right hand against my cheek. I lean into it. ‘Take the blame.’

‘But how?’ I ask. ‘There isn’t even a way that I can do that.’

‘You’re a smart boy. You’d figure it out.’

‘Robbie is the one accused of rape. I’m just the pervert with the camera.’

‘I did so much for you,’ he says.

I step away, walk towards the sink, turn my back on him, and let the water pour over my hands for longer than necessary.

‘You introduced me to him,’ I say bitterly.

‘To Robbie? No, I didn’t. You came here of your own accord and—’

‘To Sir,’ I say.

He’s quiet now. I’ve silenced him. For a moment, anyway.

‘I knew he’d like you,’ he says. ‘And he paid well. You were happy to take the money.’

‘I have nightmares about him to this day,’ I say. ‘I don’t remember the faces of any of the others. But him? He’s always there. I never felt like a whore except when I was with him. The things he did to me. You have no idea how depraved he was.’

‘I have some,’ he says, looking down, unable to meet my eye. So, he does feel some shame. ‘The boys before you … well, they didn’t walk away without their own scars.’

‘And you let me walk into that, knowing what he was like? You said you wouldn’t put me in any danger.’

‘Evan,’ he says. ‘You worked for me. I was fond of you, yes. More than I usually am of any of the boys in my employ. But it was just a job, I told you that. And you knew what you were taking on. It’s not like you’d agreed to work the perfume counter at Selfridge’s.’

‘He was a fucking animal!’ I shout, my voice echoing around the room, and Rafe nods, accepts this, before exhaling loudly.

‘Well,’ he says. ‘This won’t count for much, but those days are over for him now, aren’t they? He won’t be hurting anyone ever again.’

This is true, but it’s small comfort.

‘When it all broke,’ I say. ‘His scandals, I mean. I wondered whether you’d get dragged into them.’

‘I worried about that too,’ he replies. ‘But he’s not stupid. I mean, he’s thick, yes, but he’s not stupid. You think you had a difficult childhood? Just imagine what his was like.’

I’m not unaware of this. But it’s no excuse.

‘You think you’re so different from him, don’t you?’ I ask.

‘Of course I am,’ he says, offended.

‘No. You’re just another rich married man fucking the help.’

He turns away. He doesn’t want to hear this.

‘Tell me what really happened that night,’ he says.

‘You want me to tell you that your son isn’t a rapist.’

‘Of course I do,’ he says, raising his voice, then glancing back towards the door. ‘Understand that I will do whatever it takes to prevent Robert from going to jail. Someone has to. You saw him on the stand today. He was arrogant. Dismissive. It didn’t play well with the jury.’

‘I blame the parents.’

‘We need to be clear on something,’ he says, growing angrier now. ‘If Robert ends up going to prison, then you’ll be going too, and there will be consequences for you inside.’

‘Severe consequences, I know,’ I reply. ‘I’ve been on the receiving end of those before, remember?’

‘A broken arm is nothing compared to what you can expect if this ends badly for my son. And you know from experience that when I say something, I follow through. I am not a man who deals in idle threats.’

We fall silent, staring at each other. He moves towards me. Puts his palm to my cheek again. He does care about me, I think. I could have been the son he wanted, the artist whose work he would have funded. He would have attended my openings and marvelled at the fortunes my canvases sold for. We would have given joint interviews to the Guardian. And Robbie could have been my father’s boy, the footballer, the wild man, the thug. They could have sat in his apartment watching Match of the Day and phoning hookers at the end of the night. I would have dedicated my Turner Prize to Rafe; Robbie his FIFA Best Men’s Player trophy to Charlie.

‘Are you sure it’s Robert you’re in love with?’ he asks quietly. ‘Or is it me?’

I say nothing. I don’t know.

‘What is it you want from me, Evan? Tell me. Be honest.’

I shake my head and look him directly in the eyes. ‘I want someone to love me,’ I say. ‘And not to hurt me. Never to hurt me.’

He holds my gaze, and I can see that somewhere deep inside him there’s something he doesn’t want to acknowledge. The usual apathy, but for once mixed with regret and an unexpected touch of love. This, I assume, has never happened to him before. To my surprise, he leans forward to kiss me, and I let him. Father, son; son, father. They’re wrapped up together in my head now and I don’t care which is which. He puts his arms around me and holds me close, whispers something into my ear, and when I ask him to take me into the cubicle he wins the conversation, as every conversation must have a victor, by pulling away and shaking his head.

‘Just remember what I said,’ he tells me, making his way towards the door. ‘Find a way to keep my son out of jail. Because if you both go down, only one of you can expect to come out again.’

When he leaves, I lock myself in the cubicle alone, put the seat down, and weep, just like I did in the football stadium when I was a boy. I’m crying for Robbie. For me. For our parents. Even for my father. But also for Lauren. It occurs to me that the jury now believes she’s a whore, even though, of the two of us, I’m the only one who has ever actually charged strangers for sex.

10

IN THE END, IT took almost a year before I made it into the first team. My fitness levels were nowhere near the standard needed and I had little understanding of how to treat my body to prevent it from sustaining injuries. Alongside this, I had to learn how to operate as part of a team. But the coaches stuck with me. Fitness could be worked on, they knew, but talent was innate.

The sports pages picked up on my signing and were puzzled that a complete unknown, at the age of nineteen, would be signed by a Championship club, even one that seemed at no risk of promotion any time soon. There was interest in what might happen if I found my way into the first team. Finally, during our eleventh home game of the season, I was brought on in the fifty-second minute and scored two goals, one of which was pretty good, while the other was a fluke. But flukes win games, and we won that one, which brought us up to tenth in the table. The following weekend, away from home, I scored a hat-trick, and suddenly my name was everywhere. A few weeks later, the manager of the Irish team came to watch me play and, soon after, I got called up for the qualifying rounds of the Euros, scoring against Denmark and providing an assist in a one-all draw with Germany, although, as my father was fond of pointing out, I missed a crucial penalty against Greece.

Dad attended all the Irish home games and, after my debut, tried to force his way into the changing rooms at the Aviva to offer his supposedly expert analysis to the players on what we’d done right or wrong, but, to my relief, security kept him outside. Embarrassed, I told him never to do that again, that no one other than the manager, coaches, medical staff and players were allowed in there, and he grabbed me by the neck, pushing me up against a wall, and told me that I wouldn’t be where I was if it wasn’t for him and I should show a little fucking gratitude. I apologized and crawled away.

It was around then that the club sorted out the apartment for me, and I was pleased when I was told that I would be living in the same development as Robbie. Following our first encounter, we’d become close. I’d cultivated the friendship, of course, for my own purposes, but it shocked me how drawn I was to him. Of course, it didn’t hurt that he was a defender, while I was a forward, so I didn’t threaten him in any way. In time, he introduced me to his agent, Neil, who approached me with relish.

‘You’re the dream,’ he told me. ‘Young, good-looking, a great player. Do you want to be rich?’

‘Sure, why not?’ I said with a shrug.

The way I looked at it was that in fifteen or so years’ time, I could retire, go wherever I wanted in the world, and never have to return to the island. And if that meant having to spend those years with my studs planted in the earth, then so be it. Within a month, Neil had signed two lucrative sponsorship deals for me and promised more ahead.

A boy from the reserves, only a year younger than me, started hanging around, and I knew he was cruising me. We didn’t speak, but when we passed in the corridors our eyes always met, and I recognized his desire. I asked around about him and learned that his name was Wojciech and that he’d come to the club from a team in eastern Poland. Two days after I moved into my apartment, he tracked me down as I was leaving the cafeteria.

‘I hear you’ve found somewhere to live,’ he said.

‘Just give me your phone,’ I replied, uninterested in small talk.

He took it from his pocket and held it to his face to unlock it before handing it across. I opened the Contacts tab and entered my name, address and phone number.

‘Nine o’clock,’ I told him.

Back home that evening, I showered and changed into sweatpants and a T-shirt. I hadn’t had sex in a year, since my rent-boy days had come to an end. After my London experiences, I’d avoided all physical intimacy, felt little interest in it, but, since meeting Robbie, I’d started to feel that buzz again.

Shortly before nine, I stepped out on to my balcony and leaned against the railing. At the same moment, on the other side of the courtyard, a door opened, and Robbie appeared. Below us, a taxi pulled up. Wojciech got out and glanced at the fountain and the perfectly manicured lawns, probably wondering whether he too would get to live in a place like this one day. I looked across and saw Robbie watching him, then looking back at me. He was too far away for me to read his expression. The buzzer sounded, and I went back inside and pressed the button to give Wojciech access, leaving my door ajar before going into the kitchen and chugging a bottle of beer in one go.

When we were done, I took another shower, expecting him to be gone when I emerged, but, to my irritation, he was sprawled on the sofa, one hand resting casually inside his boxer shorts, watching football on the enormous television set that came with the apartment.

‘You’re still here,’ I said, and he nodded, pulling a face when a player I vaguely recognized from the Northern Ireland squad was tackled and tumbled dramatically to the ground.

‘Who else have you fucked?’ he asked, glancing towards me as I knotted the towel around my waist.

‘You want my entire sexual history?’ I asked. ‘Seriously?’

‘No, I meant on the team.’

‘No one.’

‘And on the reserves?’

‘No one.’

‘Why not?’

‘No one’s offered. And I assume most of them are straight.’

‘Come on,’ he said, laughing a little. ‘No one’s straight these days.’

He named a couple of people. A kid who still hadn’t signed his papers and a left back from the first team who spent more time on the bench than he did on the pitch. He mentioned an older man on the coaching staff too who’d tried it on with him, without success.

‘We could do this again if you like,’ he suggested.

‘I’m tired,’ I said.

‘No, I meant another time.’

‘Sure.’

‘What about Robbie Wolverton?’ he asked as I collapsed into an armchair, wishing he’d just gather his shit together and leave. I knew how Rafe had felt now, on that first night when I’d outstayed my welcome.

‘What about him?’ I asked. ‘Robbie’s into girls.’

‘Yeah,’ said Woyciech. ‘But, you know, he has his kinks.’

I tried not to appear too interested. ‘What kind of kinks?’ I asked.

‘You haven’t heard?’

I shook my head.

‘He likes to be watched. Needs to be watched.’

I reached for the remote control and lowered the television volume until it was almost mute.

‘What are you talking about?’ I asked.

‘He let me watch once.’

‘When?’

‘Soon after I got here. We were at a party, and he was hooking up with some girl. He asked if I wanted to watch. Kind of insisted on it. He wanted me to film him.’

I raised an eyebrow, sceptical.

‘And you did it?’

‘Yeah. When they went upstairs, I followed them. The girl started complaining, saying she didn’t want me there, but he told her to shut up or he’d just go downstairs and choose someone else. It’ll take me less than two minutes, he said, I’ve got my pick of them. She wasn’t happy about it but didn’t want to lose out. He arranged the lighting, told me exactly where to stand. It was like a masterclass from Steven Spielberg.’

I felt myself growing hard again.

‘Did you join in?’

He shook his head. ‘I couldn’t,’ he said. ‘Not with a girl. But he wanted me to.’

I thought about this for a while. I remembered how I’d asked Rafe to close the curtains in his apartment on the night of my audition and how he’d refused. He wanted the city to watch us as he fucked me up against the window. They were so alike, both of them. Father, son; son, father.

‘Do you still have the video?’ I asked.

He shook his head. ‘No, I shot it on his phone.’

‘So I just have your word for this.’

‘Why would I lie?’ he asked. ‘You know what they say about him, right?’

‘What?’ I asked. ‘What do they say?’

‘That he can only get it up when there’s another guy there. It’s not that he wants to fuck the guy, or maybe he does, he’s a freak anyway, so who knows, but he has to be watched. They’re all like that, these English guys. They spend all their time in these academies from the time they’re five or six years old. They hit puberty together, and God knows what goes on between them then. In the end, they can only perform when there’s other players in the room. They’re literally playing to the gallery, like they do every Saturday afternoon. They need eyes on them, need someone to watch them score, to make them feel like gods. All those videos, you’ve seen them, players sharing a girl, watching each other, cheering each other on. They can be pretty homophobic, some of them, but most of them are gayer than we are, only they don’t realize it. In Poland, players don’t act like that. In Ireland?’

‘And the girl,’ I asked, ignoring his question. ‘The girl you filmed him with. What happened to her?’

He stared at me, baffled by the question. ‘I don’t know.’ He shrugged. ‘Why? What does it matter?’

When he reached for the remote to turn the volume up again, I made a grab for it and switched the television off.

‘Tell me what he did to her,’ I said, walking over and standing before him. ‘In detail.’

He smiled. He had a hold over me now.

‘I’ll show you if you want,’ he said, loosening my towel.

Afterwards, I knew I would see Wojciech again. Not for himself, but for what he could do for me with these stories.

When he left, it was almost midnight, and he tried to kiss me at the front door of my apartment, but I pushed him away.

‘Please,’ I said. ‘We’re not dating.’

‘You won’t tell anyone, will you?’ he asked.

‘Not if you don’t want me to.’

‘Cool. I won’t either.’

‘I couldn’t care less whether you do or don’t.’

‘Yeah, sure,’ he replied. ‘Until the fans start calling you faggot, and the sponsors don’t want to work with you any more.’

‘I couldn’t care less about the fans,’ I told him. ‘And as for the sponsors, let’s face it, they’d make even more money if I came out publicly. They’d kill to have a poster-boy like me.’

‘So why don’t you, then?’ he asked. ‘If you’re so brave.’

‘No one’s ever asked,’ I said.

11

IT’S THE SEVENTH DAY of the trial. Lauren has given evidence. Robbie has given evidence. Everyone who was present in Robbie’s apartment that night has given evidence. The gaffer has given evidence. Robbie’s closest childhood friend has given evidence. A player I’m friendly with from the Ireland team has given evidence, testifying to my good character, and is now being pilloried in the Irish press and getting crucified on Twitter. He’s backtracked since, naturally, pledging a month’s salary to the Rape Crisis Centre in Dublin, but it’s no good. He’s basically fucked. And, today, I gave evidence.

Leaving the courthouse afterwards, I’m stopped in my tracks when I see someone completely unexpected waiting for me on the pavement. Fr Ifechi Onkin, the Nigerian priest who caters to his small flock of four hundred on the island, and who I have not seen or spoken to since leaving. I regret not using a different exit, but he’s looking directly at me and nodding his head in greeting, so I have no choice but to go over.

‘You’re here,’ I say, extending my hand, which he takes between both of his.

‘Evan,’ he replies. ‘You’re surprised to see me, I imagine?’

‘Yes.’

‘I wondered whether you and I might talk?’

Before I can answer, I see my father descending the steps of the courthouse and charging towards us, a big smile on his face. He throws an arm around Ifechi’s shoulders, a gesture the priest shrugs off like a bad cold.

‘Father,’ he says. ‘Is it yourself? Why didn’t you tell us you were coming?’

‘It was something of a last-minute decision,’ he replies.

‘But you’ve come to support us,’ says Dad, and Fr Onkin’s face doesn’t change, neither confirming nor denying this assertion. ‘Were you in the courtroom earlier?’

‘I was, Charlie.’

‘So you heard this one’s evidence?’ he asks, nodding towards me.

‘I did.’

‘And what did you think?’

‘The jury seemed receptive to Evan’s account of what took place,’ he replies.

A moment later, Mam joins us. Like me, she’s confused by Ifechi’s presence. For some reason, an image of that last morning on the island comes back to me, her pushing banknotes into my hand and saying, Go on now, you, and don’t look back.

‘Can I buy you a pint, Father?’ asks Dad.

‘No, Charlie,’ says Ifechi, shaking his head. ‘I would, however, like to spend a little time with your son, if you don’t mind.’

‘Good luck getting any conversation out of him,’ he says. ‘He has all the personality of a brick wall, this one. But that said,’ he adds, turning to me, ‘you did well in there today. You got the tone just right. You didn’t lay it on too thick about the little slag, but you didn’t let her off the hook either. You played it exactly right.’

I glance towards Mam, whose expression is dark and difficult to read, but Ifechi’s appearance is unsettling me, so I agree to join him.

We make our way down a narrow lane, where he indicates a coffee shop on the corner, but I see a pub a few doors further along and ask if we can go there instead. Reluctantly, he agrees. After today, I need something to help me take the edge off.

Before we go inside, I notice Juror no. 6, Dr Freya Petrus, standing by the open door of a sports car with a boy who I think might be her younger brother, as he can’t be more than fourteen. They’re talking animatedly as he throws a tote bag with the phrase ‘The Rozelli Programme’ printed on it into the back and climbs into the passenger seat. Walking over to the driver’s side, she glances in my direction, catching my eye for a moment before turning away.

In the pub, I order a pint, and Ifechi asks for a small whiskey, but I make it a large one.

‘Why are you here?’ I ask him when we’re both seated.

‘I wanted to see you.’

‘Are they calling you?’ I ask, and he frowns. He doesn’t understand my question. ‘The prosecution,’ I say. ‘Have they asked you to give evidence?’

‘Why would they do that?’

‘I don’t know. It’s just—’

‘There is absolutely no reason why they would do that, Evan,’ he says. ‘I can offer nothing to this trial. The prosecution doesn’t even know that I exist.’

Frankly, I wish that he didn’t. At least not here. I want him to go back to the airport and return to the island.

‘It’s not my intention to cause any trouble,’ he continues. ‘You understand the seal of the confessional, yes?’

I nod. Although the school forced us to troop up the hill to the church every Thursday morning when I was a child, I never had much to confess, so I simply made things up. Ordinary decent sins. Until the day came when I found myself in such distress that I finally used the sacrament for its intended purpose.

‘This is a difficult time for you,’ he says, and I’m tempted to laugh.

‘You think?’ I say.

‘What will you do when it’s over?’ he asks.

‘I’ll go to jail,’ I tell him. ‘Or back to the club. One or the other.’

‘No, you misunderstand me,’ he says. ‘I don’t mean after the verdict is delivered. I mean fifteen years hence, when this trial is a distant memory and your playing career has come to a natural end. What will you do then?’

‘I won’t go back to the island, if that’s what you’re asking. I’ll never go back there.’

‘It might call you back,’ he says. ‘Don’t we all dream of returning home?’

‘You don’t,’ I say.

‘I don’t what?’

‘Dream of going home.’

‘You don’t know anything about my dreams,’ he tells me.

This is true, and I feel slightly chastened by his response. ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I’ve just always assumed that you didn’t leave Nigeria of your own accord. That you escaped.’

‘What an extraordinary word to use,’ he replies, looking mildly offended. ‘I love my country very much. And I miss it.’

‘I couldn’t even pick it out on a map, if I’m honest,’ I admit.

‘I will certainly go home one day,’ he says. ‘Just as you will. I will be buried in the earth of Nigeria, alongside my people. And I believe that you will eventually be buried on the island. Alongside yours.’

This sounds almost threatening when he says it. As if this might happen sooner than it should.

‘How is your mother coping with all of this?’ he asks. Only one person can guess my real reason for leaving the island, and that is Ifechi, although Mam, I think, has her suspicions. Consumed by shame, I came close to confiding in her on the night before I took my father’s boat out into the waves between the island and Galway, planning to throw myself over the side when I got halfway, when I knew that I was too far from land to swim to safety. Although, in the end, I simply sat there, staring at the water, knowing that I couldn’t take this final step, so hoping that it might pull me into its embrace. Eventually, Dad, Luke Duggan and two of his friends came to find me, and I sat in their vessel, crying like a baby as they brought me back, before running up the dunes, away from the chattering crowd that had gathered in the hope of drama.

‘She doesn’t say much,’ I tell him.

‘She loves you.’

‘She’s my mother.’

‘She doesn’t want to think badly of you.’

I take a long draught of my beer. I have nothing to say to this.

‘And your father?’

I offer a quick, bitter laugh.

‘He doesn’t care whether I’m guilty or not,’ I tell him. ‘All that matters to him is that I keep playing football. He’s already been in touch with the Irish manager, you know, about the World Cup qualification campaign. He’s told me that when I get off – his phrase – my place in the squad will be secure. He doesn’t see what I see, though.’

‘Which is what?’

‘The messages posted on socials.’

‘I don’t know that world at all.’ Ifechi waves a hand in the air dismissively. ‘Fools.’

‘Noisy fools.’

‘What do they say?’

‘Half the men call it a set-up,’ I tell him with a shrug. ‘The other half polish their halos and say I’m a degenerate animal.’

‘But your text messages,’ says Ifechi, shaking his head, and I look away in shame. It feels at times as if everyone in Ireland and the UK has read those WhatsApp messages. If I am found guilty, it will be the callousness of them, their unapologetic misogyny and depravity, that will convict me.

‘And as for the girls,’ I continue, ‘some of them call Lauren Mackintosh a slag. They say, look at the get-up of her in those photos. The ones leaked from her Instagram account before it was deleted.’

‘And the rest?’

‘They think I should be castrated.’

Ifechi finally lifts his whiskey to his lips.

‘As you know,’ he says at last, ‘I would never break the seal of the confessional with a third party. But I remain at liberty to discuss certain matters with you.’

‘I’d rather not,’ I tell him.

‘If that was true, then you would have declined my request to join me here. You would have found an excuse to return home.’

‘You came all this way, Father,’ I say. ‘I do have some manners, you know.’

We stare at each other for the longest time. It’s obvious to me that he’s waiting for me to introduce the subject. In the end, I have no choice.

‘You want to talk about Cormac, don’t you?’ I say with a sigh, looking down at the wood of the table, which is badly scarred by the fingernails, keys and glasses of many years. I run my thumb into one of the grooves until the point of a splinter touches the tender place beneath my nail. I hold it there for a moment, considering pushing harder.

‘Yes,’ he tells me. ‘I want to talk about Cormac.’

‘Where is he anyway?’ I ask. ‘Still working on his father’s farm, I suppose?’

I can hear it in my voice. I want to sound contemptuous, but, instead, I sound desperate to know.

‘Working on it?’ he replies. ‘No, of course not.’

I look up. For a moment, I imagine Cormac travelling the world. Working in an Irish bar in Munich. Studying for a degree in America. Teaching surfing in Australia. The idea of any of these things is painful to me.

‘He’s running it,’ says Ifechi.

I look up, surprised.

‘Running the farm?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re kidding.’ I didn’t expect this. I thought he would have got out.

‘You didn’t know?’ he asks.

‘No.’

‘I don’t mean about him running the farm, I mean about his father.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I say.

‘Evan, Joseph Sweeney died eighteen months ago.’

I’m genuinely shocked to hear this. Mam usually keeps me abreast of any gossip from the island, but she’s never mentioned this, even though I spent half my childhood in the Sweeney house and considered Joe and Siobhán to be like an uncle and aunt to me. I want to be somewhere else, somewhere alone, somewhere, anywhere, so I can think about this without having to talk.

‘I should go,’ I say, glancing at my watch. ‘If I look hung-over in court tomorrow, it won’t play well for me. It’s closing statements.’

‘You can stay a little longer,’ he tells me, and I remain where I am. He’s in control here, I understand that. Fine, I think. If he wants to talk, then let’s talk.

‘Look, what I said back then,’ I say. ‘I was just a kid. I was being dramatic, that’s all.’

‘No,’ he replies, shaking his head. ‘Evan, I remember our conversation very clearly. And I remember the despair you felt.’

‘Then you’re misremembering.’

‘You felt alone. And deeply wounded.’

‘No.’

‘You were ashamed. And hurt.’

‘No.’

‘You felt you’d lost someone that you loved.’

‘No.’

‘You told me what you did.’

‘I liked Cormac.’

‘I know you did.’

‘He was my friend. My best friend.’

‘I know that too. You grew up together.’

‘Yes.’

‘And when he lost his brother, you became his brother.’

‘But I wasn’t his brother, was I?’

‘As I understood it, he thought of you in that way.’

‘He could think what he liked,’ I say. ‘But it doesn’t make it so.’

Ifechi thinks about this for a few moments. He reaches for my hand, but I pull away. I’m not holding hands with a priest in a pub. The press pack is more interested in Robbie than in me, so I haven’t had to put up with as much harassment outside the court as him, but still, there are smartphones everywhere.

‘I don’t know Cormac Sweeney well,’ he tells me, looking me directly in the eye. ‘And, in my position, I should make no judgements. But, Evan, I do not like him. He is a cold person. A man who thinks only of himself. He is a bully.’

I feel my jaw clench in anger. I cannot bear to hear him speak these words. Not about Cormac.

‘You try losing your brother when you’re seven years old,’ I say, raising my voice, ready to fight my friend’s corner. ‘A brother you idolized and who was only a year older than you. Then see how you turn out.’

‘I did lose a brother when I was seven years old,’ he tells me.

‘Well, you’re just perfect, then, aren’t you?’ I say, drinking a sizeable amount of my beer. ‘A fucking saint.’

‘His name was Amobi.’

I don’t ask any questions about his lost brother. I’m not interested.

Neither of us speaks for three, four, five minutes.

‘You were a very vulnerable boy, I think,’ says Ifechi eventually.

‘We’re all fucking vulnerable.’

‘A boy who wanted someone to care about him.’

‘Who doesn’t?’

‘I recall the word you used when you described your feelings towards Cormac.’

I can’t meet his eye. Because I remember it too.

‘You might. I don’t.’

‘Love,’ he tells me. ‘You said you were in love with him.’

‘What do you know about love?’ I ask bitterly.

‘Many things.’

‘Jesus, fine,’ I say, throwing my hands up as I rear back in the seat. I didn’t realize, until this moment, that I was almost bent over the table, my forehead close to the woodwork. ‘But I was seventeen, Father. I didn’t know how to deal with my feelings for him. I was just a kid.’

‘Do you remember what you told me when you came to confession?’

‘No.’

‘Don’t lie.’

‘Fine. Fuck. Yes.’

‘You told me that you asked Cormac to call to your house late at night. You’d suggested to him that you would go into the fields together.’

‘And he came of his own accord. No one forced him.’

‘You said that you would bring alcohol. And the marijuana cigarettes. You planned on your both getting drunk and smoking until you became high.’

‘Which is what we did.’

‘But it’s not all you did, is it, Evan? We sat on either side of the grille, remember, and spoke for a long time. You told me what happened after that.’

‘Nothing happened,’ I insist, my foot tapping restlessly on the floor.

‘If that was true, then why were you in such pain afterwards? And why would you have left the island on your father’s boat and contemplated taking your own life?’

‘We have very different memories of our conversation, Father,’ I say, downing the last of my pint and staring at his whiskey, wishing I could just pick it up and finish that too. And then order five more.

‘I don’t believe we do. You were in such distress on the day you came to see me,’ he continues. ‘You told me how he treated you when you expressed your longing for him.’

‘This is all bullshit,’ I say, glancing back towards the bar. ‘Look, are we having another drink here or what?’

‘You said that you woke the next day and wanted to kill yourself.’

‘I’ll get my own so,’ I say, standing up. ‘Do you want one more, or would you prefer to just fuck off?’

‘All I want is for you to admit what you told me. It was a few years ago, yes, but you know that what I say is the truth.’

I remain standing. He doesn’t have to remind me of anything. I remember that night very well. I remember how infatuated I had become with Cormac and how I’d come to realize that I’d felt that way about him for as long as I could recall, even before I knew what infatuation was. I remember him showing up in his favourite David Bowie T-shirt. I remember him and me getting through two six-packs of beers while smoking a bunch of joints, talking nonsense, and giggling as we got high. I remember the surprise on his face when I leaned into him. I remember how he allowed me to kiss him, the alcohol and the weed softening his reserve, for ten, maybe fifteen seconds, before he pushed me away. I remember pressing my hand against his crotch. I remember the expression on his face when he pulled away, disgust mixed with confusion, and said he wasn’t interested in anything like that with me, that we were just friends. I remember trying to kiss him again. I remember him telling me to stop. I remember him shouting, For fuck’s sake, Evan, get your fuckin’ hands off me. I remember keeping going. I remember him saying, Fuckin’ Jesus, fuckin’ listen to me, will you? I remember him using both hands to push me away. I remember him slapping me when I refused to stop. Slapping me. Not even punching me, slapping me. The humiliation of that. I remember turning my face away to avoid the revulsion on his face. I remember how the soil gave way beneath me as I lay back, and wishing it could suck me down into its warm embrace. I remember worms. I remember weeds. I remember the smell of the earth and the glimmer of the stars above me. I remember his fury when he stood over me. I remember him saying how he didn’t care that I was into guys, but what the fuck, did I think he was a fag too? I remember the names he called me. I remember how I tried to talk to him over the days ahead, saying I was sorry, that I hadn’t meant any of it, that I’d been drunk, high. I remember him saying that he thought we were friends, but it had all been a lie. I remember him telling everyone we knew how I’d tried to kiss him. I remember the laughter, the mocking, the humiliation, the name-calling. I remember the shit on our WhatsApp groups, on Instagram, on Snapchat. I remember how, from that point on, he turned away whenever he saw me.

And I remember confiding all of this in Ifechi and telling him that I didn’t want to live any more, because I’d betrayed my best friend and he’d betrayed me in return, and I couldn’t decide which betrayal was worse.

I remember every moment. I remember wanting to die.

‘We are not in a confessional now,’ Ifechi tells me. ‘We are in a pub in England, far from the island of your birth, where no one can hear us. I wonder whether you want to unburden yourself to me again.’

‘In what way?’ I ask, looking up, wishing he could help me but knowing that he can’t. The memory has ruined me.

‘By telling me the truth. You suffered terribly in those last months on the island, through no fault of your own. And, when you left, you were damaged. No boy of that age should feel so badly about himself. You are who you are. You were born the way you were born. You did something that felt natural to you. And you were humiliated over it. Cormac Sweeney, this so-called friend of yours, was no friend at all.’

I can’t reply. I know he’s right, but I will not bring myself to criticize Cormac. I can’t.

‘So,’ he says at last. ‘Tell me the truth about what happened between you, this—’

‘Ah, for fuck’s sake.’

‘Robert Wolverton, and the young lady who has brought these terrible charges against you.’

‘I’ve been telling the truth since this whole nightmare began.’

‘I’m not sure that you have.’

‘But you’re not on the jury, are you?’ I ask, standing up. I look at him, wishing that he could save me, but no one can.

‘Evan,’ he says.

‘Fuck off.’

‘Let me help you.’

‘You can’t.’

‘If you let me—’

‘No.’

And now my head is in my hands. I am crying. I am crying like I haven’t cried in a long time. I reach out. I take his hand, as he tried to do with me earlier when I pulled away. I clasp it tightly. I wrap it in both my hands.

My sobs are so powerful, they threaten to overwhelm me.

‘Breathe,’ Ifechi says.

‘He said I was a bad friend,’ I say. ‘But I wasn’t. He was the bad friend.’

‘He was.’

‘He should have helped me.’

‘Yes, he should have.’

‘He should have told me there was nothing wrong with me.’

‘Yes, he should have.’

‘But he didn’t.’

‘No.’

‘Why didn’t he?’

‘He—’

I don’t even hear. I want beer. I want whiskey. I want drugs. I want sex. I want a sharp knife. I want fifty sleeping tablets. I want anything that might take away the pain.

‘Evan.’

‘What?’

‘Evan.’

‘What? What? Tell me!’

‘Evan.’

I look at him. He looks at me.

I pull him towards me, my eyes on his lips, he’s a good-looking man, but he pushes me away too, because they all do, and then the room grows dark and spins. I am on the island. I am in the woods with Cormac. I am on the boat. I am on the farm with Harry. I am in London. I am in Rafe’s apartment. I am in Sir’s palace. I am on the football pitch. I am in Robbie’s bedroom with him and Lauren. I am in a courtroom.

I am on the floor, looking up at the ceiling, and Ifechi is leaning over me, slapping my face, saying, Evan, Evan, wake up, Evan.

Talk to me.

12

THE EVENING AFTER MY twenty-second birthday, I was in Robbie’s apartment, where we found ourselves discussing the subject I felt we’d been working towards for a long time: our fathers. When he went to the kitchen to get some more beers, I studied the framed photographs scattered around his shelves, as I had done in Rafe’s apartment on the night we met, and in Sir’s residence before our first encounter. In a family picture taken perhaps a dozen years earlier, Rafe looked young and handsome, while Lady Wolverton was exactly as I had always imagined her to be. Blonde, trim, efficient-looking. There were two older sisters, who resembled their mother. And there, at the centre of the picture, was Robbie himself, around eight years old, missing a front tooth, and smiling widely, a football at his feet. I stared at it before being distracted by another picture sitting alongside it. Rafe, standing next to Sir, on the day that he was knighted, the two of them laughing uproariously over some private joke, displaying their great white teeth and their glorious, unassailable privilege.

‘I always knew he was important,’ Robbie told me, appearing by my side and taking the photograph from me, then studying it himself for a moment before returning it to its place. ‘He’d been busy for as long as I could remember. Rarely at home. Split most of his time between the House of Commons and his Chambers, although we usually travelled to the constituency house at weekends, which he hated. The day he entered the House of Lords, he sold it and never went back.’

I pointed at another photograph, where Rafe was standing between two familiar figures, one looking a little grim, the other grinning like the Cheshire Cat.

‘I grew up knowing Tony as Tony and Gordon as Gordon,’ said Robbie. ‘When I was a kid, I couldn’t understand why everyone made such a fuss when either of them came to dinner. Robin Cook was my godfather, you know.’

‘Who?’ I asked.

‘Doesn’t matter. He’s dead now.’

‘They never came together?’ I asked. ‘Tony and Gordon, I mean?’

‘Christ, no. Dad was very good at playing them off against each other. He kept on the good side of both all the way through, while pretty much everyone else had to choose a side. But by the end, he knew the gravy train was over, so he stepped down. He didn’t want to lose his seat, which he would have done in that election. Not losing has always been very important to my father. You know, he only texts me when we win a game, right? Never when we lose.’

‘And your sisters?’ I asked.

‘Ellie’s an investment banker and Honor’s training to be a vet. Much more popular with the olds than me. He knows I earn good money, more than he ever earned at my age, and I think he likes the fact that I’m a footballer. Makes him seem unconventional, like those stupid socks he wears. But he hates that I play in the Championship. Still calls it the Second Division, just to belittle me. He keeps telling me I should move to one of the big clubs, Man U, Arsenal, Liverpool, like it’s up to me, but that’s never going to happen.’

‘It might,’ I said. ‘You’re a good player.’

‘I’m all right. And your dad,’ he said, moving over to one of the enormous, overstuffed armchairs, opening a couple more bottles and handing one to me. ‘He wanted to play, didn’t he?’

‘He never stood a chance. He can kick a ball around, but that’s about it.’ I didn’t want to talk about my father; I wanted to talk about his. ‘Were your parents happy?’

‘They’ve stayed together all these years, so I guess there must be something there. When I was a kid, yeah, they seemed pretty loved up. But I think it’s more of an arrangement now than anything else. I’m pretty sure Dad’s had affairs.’

‘How many?’ I asked.

‘God knows. A man like him, with all that power. Good-looking. Wealthy. They were probably throwing themselves at him.’

‘Women, you mean?’

‘Yeah, of course.’ He paused. ‘What else would I mean?’

‘And your mum never thought of leaving him?’

He sighed and ran a hand across his eyes. ‘Something happened when I was around ten that nearly broke them up. I still don’t know exactly what it was. All I know is Mum came home early from a trip, so I assume she caught him with someone in the house.’

‘But she still didn’t leave?’

‘No, I guess he made it up to her somehow. Although they never shared a bedroom after that. Their relationship became much more … professional, I suppose. They lived together, brought the three of us up, we went on holidays as a family. But it didn’t seem like they were married any more. Not in any real sense.’

I thought about it. I imagined the scene that Lady Wolverton might have faced that evening and wondered who the boy was. Whether he was being auditioned too. Maybe that was when Rafe decided to buy the Woolwich Ferry flat. So he could have a place to conduct his try-outs without fear of disturbance. A thought occurred to me.

‘Do they own many homes?’ I asked.

‘My parents? No, just the house on Connaught Square. And a cottage in Cornwall, but I don’t think they go there very often any more.’

‘Nowhere else? He doesn’t have a flat or anything?’

Robbie frowned. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Why?’

‘No reason.’

‘What about you?’ asked Robbie.

‘What about me?’

‘Your parents. Different, I suppose.’

I always recognized a thin undercurrent of superiority in Robbie’s tone. As if his parents would, naturally, be complicated people with complex lives, while mine would be simple, unadventurous rural folk.

‘Well, they’ve never exactly been sweethearts,’ I admitted. ‘Or, if they ever were, it was before my time. Dad works the farm all day, and Mam’s spent most of her life regretting moving to the island. I don’t have any brothers or sisters, so I don’t know why she stays, to be honest. She could leave if she wanted. I thought she would when I moved away. But no. She’s institutionalized.’

‘Are you close to them?’

‘I’m not close to anyone.’

He looked directly at me as if he wanted to ask me something but wasn’t sure how I’d take it. One of his legs was slung over the side of the armchair, his feet bare. My eyes dwelled on them. Like me, like everyone on the team, he never wore shoes or socks when we didn’t have to. Anything to let our hard-working feet breathe.

‘Can I ask you something?’ he said eventually.

‘Sure,’ I said.

‘Wojciech. I’ve seen him coming and going from yours a few times. What’s that all about?’

I took a sip of my beer.

‘We’re fucking,’ I told him.

He seemed pleased that I hadn’t bothered to obfuscate.

‘How long has that been going on?’

‘A while.’

‘And are you, like, in love with him or something?’

I burst out laughing. ‘Christ, no,’ I said. ‘He’s just a hook-up, that’s all.’

‘Does he feel the same way?’

‘Don’t know. Don’t care.’

He raised his voice and asked Siri to change the music to something less high energy than we’d been listening to.

‘So is that how it’s always been for you?’ he asked.

‘Being gay?’ I asked. ‘Yeah.’

‘You’ve never been with a girl?’

‘Nope.’

‘Fuck.’ He shook his head. ‘Not even, like, to try it out? To see if you might enjoy it?’

‘Zero interest,’ I said. ‘I’m a gold-star gay, me.’

‘You know,’ he said, pointing a finger at me, ‘I had you figured out long ago.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. The day I met you. When you came to the club and were all, Hi, I want to be a professional footballer, where’s my contract, where do I sign, when’s my first match? I could see the way you were looking at me. I knew it then.’

I smiled but didn’t say anything. Yes, I’d been attracted to him, but that wasn’t why I’d been staring at him so intently, nor was it why I had worked so hard to establish our friendship.

‘You were so obvious,’ said Robbie.

‘Does it bother you?’ I asked, and he took a long draught from his beer.

‘Couldn’t give a fuck,’ he said. ‘Why would I?’

‘I don’t know. This whole football world.’

‘No one cares about shit like that, not any more. Shag whoever you want. The only people who’ll give you stick if it comes out will be the fans in the stand. The opposition stand, I mean.’

‘Nothing could matter less to me,’ I said, which was the truth. They shouted abuse during every match anyway. Because I’m blond, good-looking and look about twelve years old, they called me a faggot whenever I came anywhere near them. Water off a duck’s back. I barely noticed their presence. I was on the pitch strictly to earn enough money to live the future I wanted, when I would neither have to run up and down a field nor work on one.

‘And what about you?’ I asked tentatively. ‘Have you ever done anything with a guy?’

He paused for a few moments and smiled. ‘Are you hitting on me, Evan?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Nah, not my thing.’

‘So, never, then?’

‘Like you with girls. Zero interest.’

‘OK.’

‘Do you have a crush on me?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’d like to fuck me?’

‘Sure.’

He seemed pleased by this. I hated his ego. And yet I was drawn to it.

‘Are you going to tell people? About being gay, I mean.’

‘Why would I?’

‘I don’t know. To be brave, or whatever. Footballer comes out, all that crap. David Beckham tweeting his support to make sure he’s part of the story. You’d be BBC Sports Personality of the Year before you knew it.’

‘I don’t want to be a poster-boy.’

‘Why did you come to this club anyway?’ he asked. ‘Of all the clubs in England, why this one?’

‘You don’t want to know.’

‘I do.’

‘I came because I wanted to meet you.’

His smile faded a little then. It was one thing for him to enjoy the fact that I had a crush on him. It was another thing entirely to think that I might be some type of stalker. He seemed confused, even unsettled, by this revelation. But it was the truth. I had come there for one reason and one reason only. To have some hold over Rafe – and Sir – if I ever needed it.

We remained silent for a few minutes, then he put his bottle down and stood up, walking over to sit next to me on the sofa. He looked me directly in the eye, then reached out and placed both hands on my shoulders. I closed my eyes. I wanted him to start something; if it was going to happen, then it had to begin with him. He moved in close enough to kiss me, but still, I did nothing, waiting for him.

Instead, he stood up and walked towards the windows, opening the curtains so I could see across to my own building, the lights on in some of the apartments. We were exposed to them, and they to us.

‘I feel like I could ask you to do anything right now,’ he said, looking back at me. ‘And you’d do it. I’m right, aren’t I?’

‘Probably, yes.’

I could see the outline of an erection in his sweatpants. It was nothing new. He often had one in the dressing room after training or a match and, rather than hiding it, he flaunted it. He came over and stood before me for twenty, maybe thirty seconds, waiting for me to do something. He glanced back towards the windows. The smell of the earth was in my nostrils. A slow grin spread across his face.

‘OK,’ he said, lifting his phone from the coffee table and opening the home screen. ‘Pick a number. Any number between one and thirty-eight.’

‘Why?’

‘Just do it.’

‘Twenty-two,’ I said.

He scrolled down and sucked his breath in. ‘Oh, good call,’ he said. ‘Holly. Total slag.’

‘You list your girls by number?’ I asked.

‘It’s simpler that way. Keeps them in a neat list in my contacts. I put their names, pictures and details in after that. The best thing about Holly is—’

‘I don’t care,’ I said.

‘Bro, all I gotta do is text her and she’ll come over.’

I stood up, relieved and disappointed at the same time. Collecting my jacket, I turned towards the door.

‘Where are you going?’ he asked.

‘Home,’ I said. ‘Where else?’

‘Stay. Try something you’ve never tried before.’

‘Me, you, and number twenty-two.’

‘Yeah, what’s wrong with that?’

‘I’m not into girls.’

‘And I’m not into guys. So what? We’d both enjoy it.’ He hesitated. ‘And, you know, we could—’

‘We could what?’

‘These little slags love to be filmed.’

‘Or I could stay,’ I said. ‘And you could put the phone down. And call no one.’

‘It’s just … nah,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Me, you, and number twenty-two. That’s what I want. Just you and me? Nah. Doesn’t work’

‘Pity,’ I said, walking away.

It was the last time I would see Robbie before the night out after the QPR match, which led us to a bar, to a nightclub, to Lauren Mackintosh, back to this apartment, upstairs to his bedroom, and, ultimately, to a courtroom.

13

THE PRESS IS OUT in force this morning. They know, like we do, that the verdict is likely to be delivered today. Closing arguments have been made and, yesterday, after reminding them of their responsibilities, Judge Kerrey sent the jury out to deliberate. A tense afternoon followed before we were told to go home, but now it’s Friday, and the assumption is that they will return early, allowing the jurors to enjoy a long weekend.

The reporters scream questions at me as I make my way from the car to the courthouse, but I ignore them. Dad waves them away furiously, like a flock of pigeons, while Mum keeps her head down and strides forward, her arms wrapped around herself as if she’s back on the island, walking along the beach with the wind from the Atlantic Ocean blowing in her face.

Inside, I see Mr Armstrong in conversation with a colleague, and I glance in his direction, wondering whether he will acknowledge my presence, but even though he looks over, I could be a complete stranger for all the recognition he shows. Perhaps he’s already mentally moved on from this case to his next one. All that’s left for him, after all, is to know whether or not he’s won.

I have no idea whether we will be found guilty or not guilty. Lauren was compelling in her evidence, but, while the jury was initially sympathetic towards her, our barrister did an excellent job of destroying her character. Rafe was right in suggesting that Robbie’s arrogance and narcissism on the stand would have counted against us, and I think I came across as cagey, particularly when questions were asked about how I’d spent my time between leaving the island and beginning my career as a professional footballer. I’ve asked Catherine how long she thinks we’ll get if we’re convicted, and, while she was reluctant to speculate, she finally admitted that Robbie would likely be sent down for eight to ten years while I could expect five to seven. With good behaviour, she added, he could be out in six and I in four.

I try to imagine what it would be like to spend that amount of time in prison. My experience of jail is limited to what I’ve seen on movies and television shows, and I doubt that’s an accurate representation. Will I be raped in there? Given how I look, I imagine that’s likely. Will I be killed? No, that seems a little dramatic. Or will it just be endlessly boring, one day of tedium following another, as my muscles atrophy and my brain turns to mush? And what will I do when I get out? My football career will be over.

Perhaps I’ll get a normal job.

Perhaps I’ll move to the other side of the world.

Perhaps I’ll kill myself.

My parents and I return to the room where we gathered on the opening day. Mam sits down with a heavy sigh while Dad paces the floor like an expectant father. When the silence becomes too much, she speaks.

‘If the worst happens—’ she begins, but Dad cuts her off.

‘Don’t start with that, Maggie,’ he says.

‘If the worst happens,’ she repeats, raising her voice now and looking towards me, ‘how do you think you’ll cope?’

‘I won’t,’ I tell her, and she nods, because she knows her son.

‘You’ll just have to stay strong,’ she says.

‘Would you shut up, woman?’ shouts Dad. ‘You’re upsetting the lad. Can we not cross that bridge if we get to it?’

‘That bridge is just up ahead, Charlie,’ she replies, turning on him. ‘Can you not see it, no? Because I can. I’m looking right at it.’

‘That lot out there,’ he says, pointing towards the door, and I don’t know if he’s referring to the jury or the press, ‘know a dirty little slut when they see one. They won’t destroy everything I’ve worked for because some filthy whore can’t keep her knickers on.’

Did I hear that right? Did he say everything that he’d worked for? There’s a part of me that wants to be found guilty now, if only to spite him.

‘Jesus Christ,’ says Mam, standing up and walking as far away from him as she can. Her arms are wrapped around herself again; this is a new form of self-preservation, I realize. ‘What kind of man did I marry?’

‘One who did all the hard work and left you to bring up the child, and look where that got us.’

‘So this is all my fault?’ she asks.

‘Your problem is you know nothing of the world.’

‘My problem is I was never allowed to see any of it,’ she roars. ‘Sure, haven’t you kept me locked up in that bloody house on that godforsaken island since the day you brought me there? And all the promises you made when we were courting! The places we’d go! The things we’d see! And the only places I ever went were a few threadbare shops in a village out of the Stone Age, and the only thing I ever saw was the inside of a church. Christ Almighty, the highlight of last year was the night we went to the new pub just because Tim Devlin had repainted the walls of the snug. The excitement! I could hardly contain myself!’

‘Ah, would you shut up,’ says Dad, who can’t bear to hear anyone criticize his beloved island, the centre of his tiny universe. ‘If you hate it so much there, then you can pack your bags, for all the difference it makes to me. You wouldn’t be missed, I’ll tell you that for nothing. You think I’d be lonely without a wife? Sure, I’d get another. They’re two-a-penny.’

I bury my face in my hands, wanting to block out the sound of their arguing, the discordant music of my childhood. I wonder does Mam understand that he’s right, that she can leave any time she wants. But she won’t, I know that. She’s trapped. Everything she has is wrapped up with him, and the land is a powerful force, especially in Ireland. He’d rather cut out his heart than surrender so much as a clod of earth to her. And how is a woman in her fifties, who has lived most of her life in isolation, supposed to survive in society, where she knows no one?

‘Here they come now,’ says Dad. He’s standing by the window again, looking down at the activity below.

‘Who?’ I ask.

‘Your pal.’

‘Robbie?’

‘And those fancy posh parents of his. Do you know, I’m half-minded to have a word with them before we get into the courtroom.’

‘Leave it, Charlie,’ says Mam, and this is enough to send him towards the door. He won’t be told what to do, least of all by a woman. Maybe she knows this.

‘I’ll be back,’ he says as he marches out.

As much as I can’t stand to be in his company, the silence he’s left us with is almost impossible to bear. I haven’t been alone with Mam since all this started. In fact, I don’t think I’ve been alone with her since she walked me down to the dock on the day I left the island, when she told me to get on the boat and never to look back.

I don’t know what to say to her any more. Things have changed between us. I became a different boy than the one I was supposed to be. I wanted to be a painter. I wanted to be good. I wanted to love someone, and to be loved in return. But none of these ambitions came to be. I think, sometimes, there are people who are destined never to have anyone fall in love with them. It doesn’t matter what they look like, how they behave, how much money they have, how much kindness exists in their heart. The love of another person is simply never going to be theirs. There’s some aspect of them, something inherent, something indefinable, that makes people turn away. And I think I’m one of those people.

‘Evan,’ she says finally, her voice low. I know what she’s going to ask me, and I can’t bear it. I feel the potential for tears – mine, not hers – and fight them back. I don’t want to walk into that courtroom with red eyes. ‘It’s time to be honest with me.’

This is something she would never have said in front of Dad. He doesn’t want the truth, but she can’t go on without it.

‘I don’t mean about what happened with that poor girl, God love her,’ she says. ‘We can discuss that another day, and we will, I promise you that, when this horror show is behind us.’

‘Then what?’ I ask.

She stares at me for a long time, as if I shouldn’t have to ask.

‘Cormac Sweeney,’ she says. ‘I want to know what happened the night that you and he went into the woods together.’

I feel my entire body grow cold. Why this? Why now of all times? It’s either the best moment in our lives to ask me this question, or the worst.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I say, looking away. ‘Cormac and I were—’

‘Don’t play me for a fool!’ she shouts, slamming the palm of her hand down on the table, the sound startling me. My mother has never had a temper, and its sudden eruption startles me. ‘We might be only five minutes away from a jury sending you to jail for something you say you didn’t do—’

‘I didn’t do it,’ I insist.

‘But whatever verdict comes in, and whatever the truth is about that disgusting night, I want to know what happened between you and Cormac. Remember, I knew that boy since the day he was born. Sure, didn’t he spend half his childhood under my feet, just as you did under Joe and Siobhán’s’? I need the truth, Evan, or I swear to God, I will walk out of this room right now and march headlong into the traffic below.’

I’m shocked by this. It’s possible that she’s just being theatrical, but the expression on her face makes me realize that anything is possible. I crumble inside. She is my mother, the only person on this planet who I am certain would lay down her life for me. And she is demanding the truth. The problem is, my life, my spirit, my entire personality, has become so soiled that I can scarcely remember what that word even means any more.

‘Please, Evan,’ she says, quieter now. ‘You have to tell me.’

‘We had a thing,’ I say, too ashamed to look at her. ‘That’s all. Nothing more.’

‘A thing? What do you mean, a thing? What kind of a thing?’

‘We liked each other.’

‘You mean you liked him.’

‘Yes, I liked him.’

‘But he didn’t like you.’

‘I thought he did.’

‘But he didn’t.’

‘He was my best friend.’

‘But he didn’t like you in that way.’

‘What does it matter?’ I ask, looking up. ‘It’s ancient history.’

‘It matters to me,’ she says. ‘I need to know.’

‘But why?’

‘Because I have to understand the son that I raised,’ she tells me. ‘And my own part in all of this. Did you do something to him, Evan? To Cormac? Did you hurt him in some way?’ She pauses. ‘Or did he hurt you?’

I look down again and can feel the furrowing of my brow.

‘Cormac and I … we were so close,’ I say, so quietly that it’s almost a whisper. ‘We got drunk, that’s all. We got high. And we kissed. It happens.’

‘And then what?’

‘Nothing.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘What does it matter?’ I shout, throwing my hands up in the air. ‘Why do you care? It was nearly five years ago.’

‘Did you have sex?’

‘No.’

‘But you wanted to?’

I can’t look at her.

‘Yes.’

‘Did you try?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you force yourself on him?’

‘Jesus, no.’

‘The truth, Evan!’

‘As if I could have! The size of him.’

‘He’s no bigger than you.’

‘He’s stronger.’

‘Well, something more must have happened,’ she insists. ‘Because you were never the same after that night. It wasn’t long before you took your father’s boat out and—’

‘He was mean to me,’ I say quietly, so quietly I’m not even sure that I said it aloud.

‘What?’ she asks. ‘What did you say?’

I sit down and stare at the carpet. ‘He was mean to me,’ I repeat.

‘Mean to you? In what way?’

‘I thought we were friends.’

‘You thought Cormac Sweeney was your friend?’ she asks, raising her voice and offering a bitter laugh. ‘Sure, that boy never looked out for anyone in his life other than himself. My God, the way he treated you when you were growing up. The times I wanted to slap him for the things he said to you, only I’d have had Siobhán Sweeney down on me like a ton of bricks. What did he do?’ I remain silent. ‘Evan, for God’s sake,’ she says. ‘Tell me. What did he do?’

I have no choice. I’m exhausted by questions. So I tell her what happened. The truth, just like she asked for. When I finish, she’s looking at me with so much love on her face that I struggle to keep my emotions together.

‘Oh, Evan,’ she says. ‘They were just words. From a nasty little prick of a boy who hasn’t an ounce of goodness in him and never did. Why did you let them hurt you so much?’

‘It’s always been just words,’ I tell her, feeling the tears coming now, despite my earlier determination to keep them at bay. ‘Everything Dad said to me from as far back as I can remember was just words too. Everything Sir said—’

‘Who?’

‘But their words were right, weren’t they? Dad. Cormac. All those gallerists who turned down my work. They all told me the same thing. That I’m worthless.’

‘You’re not worthless,’ she insists. ‘You’re a kind and loving boy who’s—’

‘On trial for accessory to rape.’

This silences her for a minute or two.

‘So this girl,’ she says eventually. ‘Lauren Mackintosh. She’s lying, yes?’

‘Of course she is.’

‘Because I know you’ve been through a lot, Evan, but I can’t believe that I could bring up a son who could stand by and watch while something like that took place. I couldn’t live with myself if I knew that to be the case.’

‘I didn’t,’ I say, reaching out to her now, and she lets me bury my head on her shoulder. ‘I didn’t. I didn’t, Mam, I didn’t. It’s a lie, it’s all a lie. Whatever happened with Cormac is long ago now, but this, all of this, this is all a lie. She’s making it all up, I swear she is. We did not do what she says we did. She wanted to have sex with Robbie and she never objected to me filming it. I know that’s not great in itself, and that you must be disgusted with me for even doing that, but I swear that’s what happened. We are here, Robbie and me, because of a lie. I swear it to you, Mam. I swear it. I didn’t do it.’

She pulls herself away so she’s looking directly at me, and I swear I have never had someone stare at me with so much intensity before.

‘Just let me just get through today,’ I say, sitting back and emitting a sigh that seems to come from the very depths of my broken soul. ‘Please, Mam, just let me get through today, that’s all I ask of you. After that, we can talk. There’s so much more, so much that I’ve done that I want to tell you about. I’m … I’m rubbish.’

‘You’re not,’ she says, crying now too. ‘Never say that about yourself, Evan. You’re my son. And I love you. No matter what you’ve done.’

I look up, and I know that she means what she says. No one knows me better than her, but I don’t think anyone knows her better than me either. And I see it there, I see it in her eyes.

‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ I ask. ‘About Lauren, I mean. You think I’m lying. You think I did it.’

‘I’d forgive you if you did,’ she says. ‘I’d forgive you for anything, because that’s what mothers do for their sons. But you have to admit it. You have to be honest. With me, if not with anyone else.’

I say the next seven words as forcefully as I possibly can.

‘I. Didn’t. Do. It. She. Is. Lying.’

She looks away now, her expression one of terrible sadness, and places her hands together, as if in prayer. ‘Oh, my son,’ she says. ‘I love you, but—’

‘But what?’

‘I am so ashamed of you.’

When Catherine leads Robbie and me into the courtroom, she seems subdued, and it crosses my mind that perhaps barristers are told the verdict in advance, but it’s more likely that she, like Mr Armstrong, is already thinking about the case she’ll be arguing tomorrow, when she’s finally rid of us.

As we make our way into the dock, Robbie asks how I’m feeling, but I neither acknowledge his question nor answer it. I have nothing further to say.

Judge Kerrey enters and takes her seat before nodding towards the bailiff and, a moment later, the jury members file into their seats. I glance towards my father, who is sitting alone now. Mam is gone. She could be anywhere, I suppose. Travelling back to the island. Disappearing off into another life. Walking headlong into the traffic.

As it turns out, Juror no. 6, Dr Freya Petrus, has been elected jury foreperson, and, when invited to do so, she stands. The bailiff asks her whether they have reached a verdict on which they are all agreed.

‘We have,’ she says.

The scent of the soil is almost overwhelming now. It’s trapped in my nostrils, making it hard for me to breathe. The stench of the football pitch. The smell of the farm I grew up on. The stink of the forest where Cormac Sweeney humiliated me and broke something inside me.

He asks whether we are guilty or not guilty, and, before she can reply, I turn my eyes to the heart of the courtroom and imagine, for a moment, the life I might have enjoyed had my talents been in my hands rather than my feet. The art I might have created. The joy I might have given. The friends I might have made. The lovers I might have taken. The life I might have built. The happiness I might have felt.

And then the verdict is delivered.

14

SIX OF US WENT out that night. Robbie, me, our goalkeeper, Wes, and his brother, Lucas; one of the physios, Stephen, and his childhood friend, Kevin. Earlier that day, we’d played QPR and, somehow, had beaten them 6–1. With only three games left before the end of the season, and now in seventh position, we had no real chance of getting into the play-offs, but we were guaranteed a place in the top half of the table, so we had nothing to worry about or fight for. We could just run out the clock and look forward to the summer break. I’d already planned a month on the Greek islands and had been thinking of inviting Robbie along, liking the idea of posting pictures of the pair of us, shirtless and in swim trunks, on the beaches of Santorini, knowing that Rafe would see them online and be anxious about what I might reveal in a moment of drunkenness.

We started in one of the more exclusive pubs in the city, drinking beer, not yet ready for the shots and cocktails that would come later. Girls came over, wanting to talk, trying to flirt, demanding selfies for their social media accounts. Later, when we arrived at the nightclub, we ignored the queue and were ushered inside by a bouncer, before being brought to a VIP area where a gym rat stood guard, studying each girl who wanted to cross the divide and deciding who was hot enough to gain entry to the promised land.

One came over and sat by my side, and I wondered what her face might look like beneath the layers of make-up she wore. Her mountain of hair was arranged so it sat atop her head as if she’d just emerged from the heart of a tornado. She must have spent hours getting ready for the night, but to me, she looked like a mess. She told me her name; I wasn’t listening. There was a boy by the bar who kept looking in my direction and I wanted to talk to him instead.

‘We had it on at work,’ she told me.

‘You had what on?’ I asked, shouting to make my voice heard.

‘The game, of course!’

‘Oh, right,’ I said. I’d already forgotten about the game.

‘Congratulations on your goal. It was the best one.’

‘I wanted to be a painter.’

‘What?’ She leaned closer, putting a hand to her ear, trying to drown out the music.

‘I said thanks.’

She put a hand on my lap, close to my crotch, and moved in to kiss me, but I stopped her. Even the idea of that mush of viscous lipstick making contact with my mouth made me nauseous. I put the palm of my right hand in her face and pushed her back.

‘What the fuck?’ she asked, looking shocked.

‘Ask next time,’ I said. ‘Fucking ask.’

‘Before kissing you?’ She looked baffled. It was obvious she’d never been met with such recalcitrance.

‘Yes.’

She took a moment to rearrange her features and to pretend that this was fine. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s just I really like you.’

‘How can you possibly “really like me”? We only met two minutes ago.’

‘OK.’ I watched as she tried to process this. After a moment, her face lit up like we were old friends. ‘We could just talk, yeah?’

‘Or you could fuck off,’ I suggested, and now she stood up, pulled what there was of her dress down so it just about covered her ass, and marched away, pushing past the bouncer and returning to her friends, probably waiting for someone else who was semi-famous to come in and try it on with him instead.

I waited a while, had some more drinks. I thought about calling Wojciech, but instead made my way over to the boy at the bar. He was talking to a girl, but he turned to me when I stood next to him, introducing himself as Logan.

‘Evan,’ I said.

‘Yeah, I know,’ he said. ‘Evan Keogh, right? I recognize you. But I’ll be honest with you, I have no interest in football whatsoever. None.’

‘That makes two of us, then.’

I gave him the smile, the smile that said I’m interested, and I know you’re interested, so what now?

‘Explain the offside rule to me,’ he said, and I did, and he grinned.

‘Hot,’ he replied. ‘Although I didn’t understand a word of it.’

‘I wanted to be a painter,’ I said, my second time tonight, and, like the girl, he didn’t hear me, leaning in and asking me to repeat it. I wondered whether those words were destined to be forgotten by the universe now. People couldn’t even seem to hear them when I said them aloud.

‘I’m over here if you want to join?’ he said, nodding towards a table where three other guys were gathered, friends of his, I assumed, and I looked back towards the VIP area and saw Robbie watching me and looking angry, as if I’d deserted him. The rest of our group, and the girls who had joined them, were all talking, but he seemed removed from them, focusing solely on me. I knew I could leave with Logan right then if I wanted, but, if I did, then I wouldn’t be with Robbie.

‘Not tonight,’ I told him. ‘But give me your phone.’

He unlocked it, handed it across, and I tapped in my number.

‘Any night you want,’ I told him, feeling the beers start to hit me. ‘Except the night before a game.’

He nodded, not bothered that I’d said no. He was young, fit, good-looking, and could get any guy he wanted in any club. He had no interest in being some ridiculous male WAG. This made me even more interested in him, and, just as I was about to change my mind and say yes, I’ll join you and your friends, I’d like to be with a group of gay men who don’t give a fuck about football, Robbie came over and put his arm around me.

‘Sorry, Bum Boy,’ he said to Logan, and his voice was already leery as the alcohol did its magic. He threw an arm around my shoulder and planted a smacker of a kiss on my cheek, which had exactly the effect on me that he knew it would. ‘You can’t have this beautiful man tonight. We’ve got plans.’

‘A friend of yours?’ asked Logan, ignoring him, disdain written all over his face.

‘My best friend.’

He nodded and unlocked his phone again, scrolling to his contacts. I knew what he was doing. Deleting me.

‘Good luck with that,’ he said, picking up his drink and walking away. I watched him go. I wanted to follow. But, Robbie.

‘We’re going back to mine,’ he said.

‘It’s late,’ I said.

‘We’re going,’ he repeated. Not a suggestion. A command. ‘Now.’

As I followed the group out of the club, I saw Robbie’s right arm wrapped around the waist of a nineteen-year-old girl, his hand held low, while her left hand was tucked into the back pocket of his jeans.

An hour later, we were all in Robbie’s apartment. The six of us and at least ten girls. Music playing loudly, some people dancing, some already coupling up. On the balcony, looking back into the room and trying to catch the eye of any of the guys so they would see what was happening, Kevin was getting blown by one of the girls. He looked disappointed when I turned away rather than cheering him on.

‘You want some of that, don’t you?’ asked Robbie, coming up to me and handing me a Jack Daniels and Coke.

‘Give me a break,’ I said. ‘He looks like Shrek’s ugly brother.’

Robbie laughed and continued to move around the room, dispensing drinks and largesse. I thought of what he might let me do if I got him drunk enough. When I turned back, Robbie had moved towards the staircase and was standing with his back to the wall next to Lauren. She said something and he burst out laughing, then put his hand behind her head, his fingers inside her long hair, and pulled her closer, and they started kissing. I made my way across the floor as she took him by the hand, and they started to ascend the staircase. Before going up, he looked in my direction, giving me a grin, a wink and the thumbs-up sign.

A girl came over and told me she was Lauren’s best friend and Robbie better treat her right.

‘I’m not his keeper,’ I snapped. ‘And you’re not hers.’

‘It’s Evan, isn’t it?’ she asked, nonplussed by my rudeness, and I nodded. ‘Do you want to fuck?’ she continued, as casually as if she was asking whether I wanted a cigarette.

‘I’d rather drink bleach,’ I replied.

‘What?’ she asked, looking mystified, as if she couldn’t possibly have heard me right.

‘Just leave me alone,’ I said. She took a step back and turned on me as if I’d punched her in the stomach.

‘Fuck you,’ she said.

She walked away, and I thought about leaving. I put my drink down and looked towards the door, but, rather than walking towards it, my feet took me up the staircase, where the music was not as loud, then around the corner towards Robbie’s bedroom.

It didn’t surprise me that he’d left the door ajar. He was probably hoping I’d come up to watch the show. He’d practically invited me, after all. I pushed it open wider and looked at them. They’d turned off the main light, but a small lamp in the corner was on. Robbie’s shoes, socks and shirt were on the floor, along with her blouse. She was moaning slightly as he kissed her stomach, one of his fingers moving beneath a bra strap, but then she turned her head, opened her eyes and saw me standing there.

‘Fuck,’ she said, startled, and Robbie stopped what he was doing and looked around. He smiled at me.

‘You want some too?’ he asked. I said nothing, and he turned back to her. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘He’s harmless.’

‘Tell him to get out,’ she said.

‘No, babe, he’s fine. Let him watch.’

‘Fuck off,’ she replied, to both of us I think, but she laughed a little as she said it, as if she assumed that I’d just take the hint and leave. Instead, I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. There were just the three of us there now, and the expression on her face changed. ‘I mean it,’ she said, pulling herself up in the bed now and turning to Robbie. ‘Tell him to get out.’

Robbie groaned and sat up, his knees on either side of her waist.

‘What does it matter, babe? It’s no different than watching porn. You want a go after me?’ he asked, turning to me. ‘Something new? You might like it if you try.’

‘OK, you can both fuck off now,’ said Lauren, growing angry now and trying to pull herself out from beneath him, but he pressed his thighs against either side of her and used his hands to pin her arms to the bed.

‘Don’t. Be. A cunt,’ he said, spitting the words at her, and I saw her grow pale, frightened, recognizing what might be about to happen and her powerlessness in the moment. She looked at me.

‘Tell him to get off me,’ she said.

‘Should I?’ asked Robbie, turning to me with a broad smile on his face. ‘Should I get off her? Or should I get her off? You tell me what to do and I’ll do it. Promise.’

I stared at them both for what felt like a long time. Downstairs, ‘Starman’ was playing loud. I closed my eyes and spoke.

‘Let me make you happy,’ I said.

I took my phone from my pocket, unlocked it, and turned the camera to video.

‘Fucking sweet,’ said Robbie, his face lighting up. ‘I knew there was a reason I keep you around.’

And that’s when I started filming.

I filmed as Robbie reached down and pulled Lauren’s underwear off.

I filmed her trying to get out from underneath him, telling him no, that she wanted to leave.

I filmed Robbie pulling his jeans down, one hand struggling to keep her arms pinned to the bed above her head and then kicking off his boxer shorts.

I filmed her crying and pleading with him to stop, to please stop, that she didn’t want this.

I moved around to the side of the bed and filmed as Robbie pushed himself inside her, turning to give me a triumphant beam as she screamed, No, no, stop, no, stop.

I filmed him thrusting, and I turned the camera to her face as the tears flowed down her cheeks.

I filmed them as Robbie said, ‘What do you reckon, Evan? This is what you want, isn’t it? You’re fucking loving it, aren’t you, you sick fuck?’ and he pressed one hand against her mouth to shut her up.

I filmed them as he pulled out and jerked off on her stomach, before collapsing on the bed next to her, when they both went quiet.

I filmed her as she slowly moved away, wiped herself dry with the bed sheet, and struggled to find her underwear, her blouse, her skirt. The way she was walking reminded me of watching Bambi when I was a child, the way the little deer can’t walk at first, her legs uncertain what to do or whether they can even support the weight of her body.

I filmed as Robbie turned to Lauren, saying, ‘Give me your number, yeah? We can do this again another time?’

I filmed her wiping the tears from her cheeks and slowly getting dressed before, with quiet dignity, she opened the door of the bedroom and made her way outside, closing it softly before her.

And then I stopped filming.

Robbie lay back on the bed, naked, his hands intertwined behind his head. I put the phone down on the bedside table, took my clothes off, and lay down next to him. Neither of us moved for a long time. I moved closer to him, letting my head rest on his chest, inhaling his scent as he kissed me gently on the forehead. He fell asleep quickly, but I stayed awake, thinking about what I had been a part of. I didn’t leave the bedroom until around five o’clock the following morning, when there were still a few bodies sleeping in the living room below. Gathering my things, I left the apartment and stepped out into the cool morning air.

But before crossing the courtyard and returning home, I turned my phone off and made my way over to the flowerbeds at the corner of our development, to the ecological plot that I’d always liked, where the flowers and weeds were allowed to grow wild, unmolested, encouraging insects and bees to fly among them. Pushing my way into the left corner, I knelt down, and, using my hands, I dug a hole about two feet deep.

Then I buried the phone beneath the earth.

15

WHILE I WANT NOTHING to do with the phalanx of microphones and cameras waiting for us outside the courthouse, Robbie marches straight towards them, his parents flanking him on either side, and gives a speech that he must have been working on for weeks, describing how malevolent young women target professional footballers, then cry rape when they realize their target just wanted a good time and not a lifelong commitment. He criticizes the media for portraying him as a criminal when he, in fact, has been shown to be the real victim. When asked whether he feels any sympathy for Lauren Mackintosh, he shakes his head.

‘I know at times like this people usually say that there are no winners here,’ he says. ‘But I don’t feel that way. Evan Keogh and I are the winners here. The jury recognized that this girl was a liar who set out to destroy our lives, and they refused to sanction it. Justice has been served. We won. She lost.’

As I leave, I see my father marching towards me with his arms outstretched and a wide smile on his face, but I turn away. There’s no sign of Mam. I hail the first taxi I see and tell the driver to take me directly home and to turn off the radio. I feel no sense of victory. The last thing I see as we pull away is Rafe, standing on the courtroom steps, watching me with an inscrutable expression on his face. He will leave me alone now, I think. There will be no consequences, severe or otherwise.

The club issues a statement the following morning saying that it subscribes to the rule of law, so Robbie and I are welcome back to training and, once we’re match-fit again, we will be reinstated in the first team. It remains solid in the wake of an onslaught of negative social media commentary that condemns it for standing by us.

A march takes place in the city centre that weekend dedicated to victims of rape, following a path from the courthouse to the front of the football stadium. About two thousand people join in, all ages, both sexes, but it passes off relatively peacefully and most of them disperse to the pubs afterwards to get drunk and see what the night holds in store for them, because, in truth, they don’t really care. More worrying, however, is the rally that takes place in Dublin, where more than three times that number march from the Rape Crisis Centre to the headquarters of the Irish Football Association, holding posters of my face with a red line drawn through it, demanding that I be dropped from the national team and play no part in the upcoming World Cup qualification campaign. Unlike the club, the Irish FA announces that it has no current plans to recall me and that the player who has taken my spot during my absence is a great find who has earned his place. I feel no regret over this. I don’t want to play anyway. The pay, after all, is shit.

Dad, however, is incensed, and goes on every radio station that will have him – which is most of them – to defend my good name and his. Newspapers run articles condemning him, condemning me, condemning Mam, condemning the entire football culture. For weeks I search my name obsessively on social media, reading the abuse and the hatred, which is only marginally less disturbing than the comments of the people defending me.

Something changes in Robbie in the months after the verdict is announced. Rather than being humbled by what has taken place, he becomes even more self-assured, even more arrogant, and completely invincible on the pitch. Within six months, his game has improved so much that he’s signed by a Premier League team, finally achieving his dream of playing in the upper tier. Again, there are protests by people in that city, but they don’t last long, and, by then, the narrative has changed. New scandals have emerged to replace ours.

My form, unlike Robbie’s, doesn’t change, and when the season break comes I disappear alone to Australia’s Gold Coast, where no one has ever heard of me, and spend a quiet eight weeks there, considering my future. I think about giving up the game entirely, but I have a good ten years in me still to earn more than enough money to allow me to retire in my mid-thirties and live the life I want without ever needing to return to the island. And so that’s the decision I make.

When the new season begins, the furore dies away quickly and normal life is resumed. I score goals. We remain mid-table. Dad comes to the occasional match and berates me for missing opportunities, which I always do, deliberately, when he’s there. Since Robbie is no longer part of the team, I never have to face Rafe again. Wojciech is dropped by the reserves and goes back to Poland. This doesn’t bother me. I don’t need sex. Don’t want it. Ever again.

I am a professional footballer.

That is my life.

And one day, that will come to an end and I will be a person without any purpose in the world.

It’s almost two years later before I see Lauren Mackintosh again.

I’m in London for a few days during the Christmas break and am sitting in the corner of a pub in Covent Garden, reading a book. I’m on my second pint, but the glass of my first remains on the table with a mouthful left at its base. I hear footsteps approach and a voice asks whether she can take it away.

I glance up to say yes and realize who I’m looking at.

It takes her a few moments to recognize me in return, but then she’s seeing someone she hasn’t encountered since that last afternoon in the courtroom, when she slumped in her seat, placing her head in her hands, as Juror no. 6 announced the verdict. The moment of recognition lands and she slowly returns the empty glass to the table.

‘You,’ she says.

I stare at her, uncertain what to say.

‘What do you want?’ she asks, her voice betraying panic. ‘He’s not with you, is he?’

‘No,’ I say quickly. ‘No, I swear. I’m alone. I just came in for a drink, that’s all. I had no idea you worked here.’

She seems to accept this but glances towards the bar, where a tall, muscular man is flirting with one of his customers, as if to reassure herself that she can return to safety if she needs to.

‘I’ll go,’ I say.

‘You have a full beer. Drink it. I’m not frightened of you.’

I nod. A part of me wishes she will walk away; another part wants her to sit down and talk to me. To my complete astonishment, that’s exactly what she does. When I have the temerity to do so, I find myself looking directly into her eyes. She is as strong now as she was when she was giving evidence.

‘You moved to London, then?’ I say at last, stating the obvious.

‘You think I could stay at home?’ she asks. ‘My name was all over Twitter. Anonymous accounts, of course. I couldn’t go to uni any more because of the abuse I was getting. I had to drop out.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I say, and she laughs bitterly.

‘No you’re not.’

‘I am. It’s not what I wanted.’

‘What did you want, then?’ she asks, but I have no answer to this. She leans forward. ‘Why did you do it? Why did you lie?’

‘I had no choice.’

‘You did. A pretty simple choice. You could tell the truth, or you could lie. And you chose to lie.’

‘I would have gone to jail.’

‘You deserved to.’

‘I wouldn’t have survived there.’

‘So you destroyed my life instead.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Stop saying that. You’re not.’

I remain silent. How can I disagree?

‘It must be so easy,’ she says finally.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘Going through life without a conscience.’

I consider this. She’s not wrong.

‘Well, you got what you wanted anyway,’ she says with a sigh, looking away.

‘Did I?’

‘You’re still playing, aren’t you? Earning a fortune. While I’ve lost everything.’

‘Being a footballer was never what I wanted.’

‘No? What was it, then?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I say, shaking my head. ‘I wasn’t good enough.’

‘Well, I was,’ she says. ‘I loved history. I loved studying it. I wanted to be a teacher.’

‘You still could be.’

‘I can’t even read a history book any more,’ she tells me. ‘It’s all tied up in that time. In what you and your rapist friend did to me. You’ve caused me more pain than you can possibly imagine and have never taken responsibility for any of it.’ She takes a breath, then speaks with remarkable calm. ‘I know this sounds like a cliché, but it’s the truth: you and that friend of yours – I won’t say his name – you destroyed my life.’

I look down at the table. I don’t see it as a cliché at all. I believe her.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say for the third time, aware how useless my words are.

‘Then prove it.’

‘How?’

‘Tell the truth.’

‘Lauren, it was two years ago. It’s over. Everyone’s moved on.’

‘It’s only over because you allow it to be over,’ she says. ‘If you mean what you say, if you really are sorry, then tell the truth. There’d be a retrial. I’d be vindicated. I could get my life back. And you and that prick would pay for what you did.’

I shake my head.

‘I’m sorry,’ I tell her.

‘That’s four times you’ve said that.’

‘But I can’t.’

‘You can,’ says Lauren. ‘You just won’t.’

Then she stands up, picks up the empty glass and walks away. I follow her with my eyes as she takes out a towel and wipes down the bar, before smiling at a young woman who’s just walked in, taking her order. Throughout the rest of my time in the bar, and even when I leave, she never looks in my direction again.

I get very little sleep that night and take an early train home in the morning. When I return to my apartment, I take a long, hot shower before retrieving the easel that has been sitting in one of the spare bedrooms since I first moved in, along with my paints and brushes, and sit down to paint a picture. One last picture. It’s not much good. I can see that. I know I don’t have any talent. Not in my hands anyway. But still, during those hours, I feel more at peace than I have in a long time.

When it’s completed, I go downstairs and make my way out into the courtyard, towards the area of rough grass in the corner of the apartment block. Kneeling down, I dig my hands into the earth, and it doesn’t take long for me to retrieve the phone I buried there the morning after Robbie raped Lauren Mackintosh. It’s muddy, but even if the handset is damaged, the SIM card inside will be fine, and someone who knows about these things will be able to retrieve the footage of the video I shot that night.

Then I walk four miles to the local police station with the phone in my pocket and hand it to the officer behind the reception desk, telling her my name, giving her my address and suggesting that her colleagues examine its contents.

After that, I go home.

Which is where I am now.

For no good reason I can think of, I’m watching football on television. For the first time in my life, I find the game rather interesting.

And, waiting for the police to show up, which they will sooner or later, I realize the stench of earth has finally cleared from my nostrils.

I can breathe freely at last.

Acknowledgements

For his advice on the legal aspects of this novel, many thanks to my old friend Matt Georg.

Earth
is one of

The Elements

Read Willow’s story in

Water

Available now from Doubleday

And Freya’s story in

Fire

Published by Doubleday
in November 2024

THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING

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TRANSWORLD

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Transworld is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

First published in Great Britain in 2024 by Doubleday

Copyright © John Boyne, 2024

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Cover design by Marianne Issa El-Khoury/TW
Cover imagery © Alamy/Getty Images

This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permissions with reference to copyright material, both illustrative and quoted. We apologize for any omissions in this respect and will be pleased to make the appropriate acknowledgements in any future edition.

ISBN: 978-1-529-91650-8

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Table of Contents

- About the Author
- By the Same Author
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Chapter 1
- Chapter 2
- Chapter 3
- Chapter 4
- Chapter 5
- Chapter 6
- Chapter 7
- Chapter 8
- Chapter 9
- Chapter 10
- Chapter 11
- Chapter 12
- Chapter 13
- Chapter 14
- Chapter 15
- Acknowledgements
- Copyright