He kept his gaze on the distant hillside. ‘I thought we might have a go at winning the Sherwood Forest Cup.’
‘Elliot!’ I beamed, knowing that this was about so much more than a football tournament. ‘Did you speak to the club?’
His own smile wavered. ‘The chairman phoned a few days ago, and asked me to reconsider. Officially, they were willing to offer me what he likened to a yellow card. Unofficially, most of them wished I’d smacked the Rangers manager in his nasty mouth.’ He paused to swallow. ‘I have their full support, if I decide to keep the team going.’
‘That’s amazing.’
‘It seems a lot of people whose opinion I respect think I made a mistake. And then Ibrahim turned up, with this.’
He handed me a homemade card. On the front was a picture of a man with yellow hair and a red top and shorts, his giant hands planted on another person whose face was mostly huge, angry teeth. Written in childish bubble writing across the top was ‘SUPERHERO’. Inside were nine messages, thanking Elliot for standing up to the bully and imploring him to come back.
‘“We don’t want a different manager, we want you because you’re the best and we like how you make us all see how good we are only in different ways”.’ I read out, squeezing the words past a giant lump in my throat. ‘“Before I joined the Harriers I had only one friend and now I have loads. Please come back because I really, really like having friends”.’
I shook my head. ‘How could you possibly say no to that?’
‘Well, clearly I couldn’t. So. Will you please come back and be my assistant manager?’
‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’
36
The following Monday, Wilf was with Isaac when I arrived home from work, learning how to play pool on the table now set up under a gazebo in the garden.
‘Is your mum not here?’ I asked, once they’d paused for an ice-cream break, and I’d decided it would be rude not to join them considering I’d spent over an hour that day umpiring an argument about whether someone cheated in a village cricket match. The match had been played in 1967.
‘She’s out with a friend,’ Isaac added. ‘So we’re having fish and chips here.’
‘Oh?’ I asked, feeling not the slightest prick of jealousy that Connie was out with an unknown friend and I hadn’t been invited. ‘Who’s that?’
Then Wilf spoke up, and suddenly I wasn’t the one feeling jealous.
‘Wodger’s dad,’ he said, after a careful lick of his cone. ‘Only now he’s Mum’s friend, I’m supposed to call him Martin.’
Isaac’s ice-cream came to a screeching stop half-way to his mouth.
‘Martin Bradgate?’ he choked out. ‘The shrimpy guy with long hair?’
‘He doesn’t have hair any more.’ Wilf frowned.
‘Shame.’
‘I don’t know what a shrimpy guy is. I didn’t see any fish or anything.’
‘He means that Martin is quite small,’ I said, with a glare at my brother. ‘Which he is, yes.’
‘And Connie is now…friendswith him? As in, going out for dinner friends?’
‘They’ve gone to the Rocking Horse. I thought they should go to the Crooked Arrow. That’s way more fun and definitely where I would go if I had tea with a friend, but Mum said it didn’t need to be anything fancy.’
‘Right.’ Isaac stared at his ice-cream for a long moment. A trickle of vanilla started dribbling down his thumb. ‘Did she look fancy?’
Wilf shrugged, stuffing in the last of his cone and clearly bored with the topic. ‘Not really. Can we play more pool now?’
I gave Isaac a nudge.
‘Oh, yeah. Of course. You go and rack up while I have a quick word with Jessie.’
I tried to slip past, but he snagged the back of my T-shirt as I reached the doorway.
