Mathias Jones.
Mathias fucking Jones.
“Told you so,” Daisy says, turning to me, her smile not quite its usual thousand-watt grin, a falter in her usually unwavering smugness.
I blink at her, lost for words.
She did. She did tell me. A few weeks ago when I signed the rental agreement. The property management company had informed us they couldn’t disclose the full details of who’d be moving into Fernbank Cottage because of privacy reasons, but that all the relevant checks had been performed.
All we were privy to was a single initial . . .M, a surname . . .Jones,a date of birth . . .13/11/1995,a gender . . .M,and that there would be no other people occupying the house. No spouse, no dependents, not even any pets.
As a first- and hopefully last-time landlord, I’d thought nothing of it. Assumed it was normal protocol. Maybe it still is. Who the fuck knows?
But Daisy had taken one look at the signature, at theMr M. Jonesin the“Print Name Here”box, and said with resolute conviction, “Oh my god, it’s Mathias Jones.”
At the time, I’d rolled my eyes in response.
Of course it wouldn’t be him. There must be hundreds of thousands of people named M. Jones in the world. Odds were National Lottery level high it wouldn’t be the one guy, who in his debut Union match, tackled me so succinctly in the seventy-eighth minute that it not only ended the game and any chance of Bath taking home the win, but also my career.
Simply a coincidence. Not even a weird one. Not even a Matrix glitch coincidence, just a very,verycommon name.
Then a week ago, when I’d all but forgotten about theMr M. Joneson my cottage’s new lease, the signing of the Cardiff Bengals’ kicker to the Centurions was officially and publicly announced.
“Fucking knew it,” Daisy had said, as she stood in front of the pub’s TV. “M. Jones. Mathias Jones. That’s who’s moving into our old house.”
“Watch your bloody language, young woman,” I’d replied. Not that I’m one of those dads who stops their kids from cussing, but there’s a time and a place for swearing. That time and place is during a match.
And sex.
Though the less I know about my eighteen-year-old and twenty-one-year-old daughters’ sex lives, the better.
But I’d still put the M. Jones moving into my cottage and the M. Jones moving to the Bath Centurions down to coincidence. Again, too many people with that name. And besides, everybody—and I mean everybody—knows I grew up in Mudford-upon-Hooke. A quick Google search of me or my pub and Mathias would have my location.
Now, I don’t know much about Mathias Jones off the pitch, but I rather got the impression he’s spent his entire rugby career avoiding me.
There was that one time about two months after the incident when the pair of us were scheduled to appear on some morning news programme to discuss what happened and the progress of my healing. Mathias was a no-show. They had to change up the segment at the last minute, keeping my interview but filling Mathias’s void with a piece about kids’ World Book Day costumes you could buy from Asda for a tenner or something.
And then there was the time somebody thought it would be hilarious to schedule us both onA Question of Sport—on opposite teams of course—but Mathias had arrived at the studio, taken one look at me, and hopped straight back in his car. The producers had a mad scramble to fill his spot. It was eventually occupied by an Olympic bronze-medal-winning gymnast.
And another time we were supposed to do a piece on BBC radio. My agent pitched it to me as this “air the laundry slash big reconciliation” thing, but again Mathias just never showed up.
Not that there was anything to reconcile. Sure, his tackle broke my fibula, but it was a legal tackle. I’d landed awkwardly. The fracture had been neat, the recovery pretty swift—once you took into consideration my age at the time. Having almost unlimited access to physio had definitely been a bonus.
And such was—is the nature of the sport. I’ve suffered many an injury during my career as a player. Broken ulna as a kid. Broken collarbone as a teenager. Broken nose—okay, that one was drink related, but the drinking had been done on a Cents’ night out, so rugby adjacent. I’ve dislocated pretty much every joint I possess. I’ve got so many scars on my face I can’t even pinpoint the origin of each one, and my cauliflower ear is so bad on the right side it barely resembles an ear any more.
After the accident, people kept asking me if I’d forgiven Mathias, but there was nothing to forgive. He’d simply been doing his job. And I’d told every reporter, every social media keyboard warrior, and every “just a concerned citizen” as much.
Still, it didn’t change how the Centurions’ supporters felt—feel about him, and that probably had quite a lot to do with the whole avoiding me for eight years deal.
And the running away from my pub just now.
“I should go after him,” I say, looking between Daisy and my dumbstruck patrons.
Daisy glances at the smashed pint glass. “I’ll get the dustpan and brush. Wait, is his pie ready? You should take it over to him. I bet he hasn’t eaten all day.”
“Ooh!” I rush back into the kitchen, pull the oven door open, and get punched in the face by the steam. “’Bout five minutes,” I say to no one.
When the food’s cooked, I plate it up, pop it on a tray with a plastic platter lid, and even though he has chips and not mash, an individual pot of gravy. As an afterthought, Daisy adds the last bowl of rhubarb and apple crumble and a jug of custard.
