John Lanchester - Capital

Despite that, there were momentary wobbles. It was as if the ground was slightly unfirm under her feet; not for long, and only when she thought about Joshua and Conrad and whether or not they were missing her – how, exactly, they were missing her. She sat tight and waited for the uncertainties to pass, and so they did.

At dinner, she and Saskia got chatting to a couple at the next table, a South African lawyer and his wife whose twin daughters were gap-yearing around Latin America. Saskia was a little tiddly by this point and kept giggling and making goo-goo eyes at the husband, who had done that madly unfair thing of keeping his looks while the wife had aged much faster. Under other circumstances it would have been funny but Saskia was so blatant, there was something a little sad about it…

Saskia and her new friends – the wife looking like she was making the best of an evening she knew would be over soon – went through to the drawing room for liqueurs. Arabella knew that if she drank any more she would have a hangover and part of the point of being in this luxury spa was to go home looking and feeling fabulous, so she went to her room and read a novel set in Afghanistan until she realised she had fallen asleep twice already, and so she put the book down and turned out the light.

Boxing Day was Freddy Kamo’s first day on the bench at his new club. He knew he had been doing well in training but he was still surprised to be picked. The game was against the team who were bottom of the Premiership. The manager’s explanation had been very clear.

‘You won’t get on for long if you get on at all,’ he said through the interpreter. ‘But it will help you to get a feel of things here. This is our easiest game over the holiday and I’ll be rotating the squad. And also,’ smiling, ‘don’t forget to enjoy it.’

That was advice Freddy intended to take – but it wasn’t easy. The warm-up was OK, but when he came out of the tunnel and ran to the dugout before kick-off, everything felt completely different. The noise and drama of the ground couldn’t be prepared for: this was the real thing. He had been to the stadium many times before, but it was not the same from the bench. The sensation of being in front of the crowd, the sheer volume of it, the emotional intensity, was a physical thing, almost an assault. Freddy could feel his heart rate was up; he tried to resist the temptation to look around for his father, who he knew would be sitting in the stands beside Mickey Lipton-Miller. Then he did look round and saw Patrick, who looked back at him, not smiling, completely serious. That helped to settle Freddy. Seeing his father on edge gave him permission to relax. The translator came and sat beside Freddy, squeezing in on the bench. Freddy could smell that he had had a glass of wine with his lunch.

The referee blew for the kick-off and Freddy’s team were two goals up within twenty minutes. There wasn’t much pattern to the match that Freddy could see, but his side were generating chances more or less at will, and the striker took two of them with ease. It didn’t seem likely to stay 2-0 for long, but they relaxed a little and stopped pressing so hard. Half-time seemed to come very quickly. The manager didn’t say much, just told them to keep playing as they had been. As they were going out at the end of half-time, he tapped Freddy on the shoulder.

‘I may give you a run at the end of the half,’ he said, through the translator. ‘Just a couple of minutes.’

Freddy nodded. He wished the manager hadn’t told him; now he’d be nervous all half. It didn’t occur to him that that was part of the point, to give him a taste of expectation and pressure. Back on the bench, Freddy began to concentrate on the left-back, who would be marking him. He seemed on the slow side; Freddy was confident, and more confident still when the £20 million midfielder scored from a free kick to put them three goals ahead.

With five minutes to go, the manager told him to warm up. With two minutes to go, the manager summoned him, and waved to the linesman, who checked his studs, then waved to the referee, and then he was on. Freddy ran to the far wing. His instructions were simple: be available for the ball, and get a cross in if possible or hold it up for the midfield if not.

In the stands, Patrick had a rush of sensations he couldn’t explain to himself: frantic, scared, suddenly full of conflicting memories and emotions to do with his son’s youth, the first moment he’d held him, the day Freddy’s mother died, kicking a ball about in the dirt outside their house, watching Freddy play in his school team and score his first goals for them, holding his forehead when he was sick, taking him to games and picking him up after them and standing and watching him play hundreds, maybe even thousands of times, putting mercurochrome on his cuts, calming him when he had night terrors, his first-born child, his only son. Patrick felt his stomach turn over as he watched Freddy trot out onto the field, his awkward too-long legs looking skinnier and more elongated than ever in the huge crowded stadium, on the field with men fifteen years older than him. Patrick felt something wrong with his face. He reached up; his cheeks were soaked with tears.

The crowd roared. Most of them knew who Freddy was, though they’d never seen him play. The ball was down at the other team’s end as the opposition passed sideways and backwards looking for an opening that wasn’t there. Then the central defender and captain won a 50-50 and knocked it to the £20 million midfielder near the centre circle. He looked around and played a short ball to the holding midfielder, who hit a first-touch pass to Freddy. It was all happening very quickly, but Freddy expected that. He’d experienced this before. When a player in any sport goes up a level, the first, overwhelming impression he gets is that of increased speed. It’s not that they’re doing things he’s never seen before, it’s just that they’re doing them faster and better and more often.

The opposition left-back, whose name Freddy didn’t know, was about two metres away. At home, there was a move Freddy had done so often that, playing a kick-about game in front of his house in Linguère, it no longer worked, because all his friends, everyone in Linguère, had seen it a million times. Nobody here had seen it though, and it was a closer thing to Freddy than his own reflection in the mirror, as easy as getting out of bed. He lunged towards the ball with his left foot, but then, dummying, let it roll past and took it on his right foot instead. His weight was transferred, his direction switched, all in a second, and he was off. It was a dummy, a jink, and a burst out of the starting blocks, all in the same movement.

There had been rain that morning. The pitch was not completely dry; that probably had an effect. The left-back had no real idea who Freddy was. It was the ninetieth minute and his concentration was wavering. The result of Freddy’s move was that the defender sold himself to Freddy’s leftward jink and when he tried to adjust his balance to follow him, he lost his footing and slipped over on his backside, but slowly, windmilling his arms to try and keep himself upright as he went inexorably over. By the time he was actually on his behind, Freddy was ten metres away. One centre-back came over to close him down, Freddy hit a cross to the far post, the striker got above the other centre-back and headed it against the crossbar with a noise Freddy never forgot, a smack like an axe hitting wood. The goalie collected the rebound and booted it upfield, and then the referee blew for full time.

By midnight that night, a clip called ‘Freddy’s first touch’ was one of the ten most-viewed items on YouTube.