Chapter 24: In The Squad?

The squad announcement came on Friday afternoon.

David read it out standing at the front of the changing room after the final training session of the week, holding a sheet of paper in a way that meant it was formal and they should take it seriously. Will sat on the bench with his boots still on and his hands between his knees and listened.

His name was in it.

Not the starting eleven. The extended squad, which at this level meant the eighteen players that would travel, of which eleven would start and the rest would sit with the substitutes. It was still a squad place though. He was in.

Around him, the players who had been named in the starting eleven had the cautiously pleased expressions of people who had been expecting good news but still needed to hear it said out loud. Liam was starting on the left. Marcus was starting in midfield, which was expected. The striker, Callum, was starting through the middle. In Will’s position, the attacking mid role, it was a boy called Daniel Pryce. Daniel was sixteen, which Will found annoying in the specific way of someone who has been at the academy longer than a player who has been given the nod ahead of them.

He managed to keep the expression off his face.

"I expect a strong performance," David said. "Sheffield will press high and they will be physical. We’ve worked on playing through the press all week and I want to see it in the match. The travelling reserve players, you will get minutes. That’s a guarantee. Be ready when your chance comes."

He put the paper down. That was the end of the announcement.

Will untied his boots and put them in his bag. Around him the conversations started back up, match talk and travel logistics and complaints about the early departure time on Sunday morning. Callum was saying something to Marcus about a hotel breakfast and whether it would be worth waking up for. Two of the defenders were already on their phones. The room had the particular looseness that came after a week of work was done, the slight drop in pressure when a decision had been made and the waiting was over.

He sat quietly for a moment.

Not unhappy. Not happy exactly. Just sitting with the plain reality of it. He was in the squad and he would get minutes off the bench and this was progress, measurable progress, from where he had been two weeks ago sitting in the rain on the number two pitch at nine fifteen at night listening to a voicemail on repeat. He had replayed it four times before he accepted what it was saying. That was the version of himself he was moving away from. This was a different position to be sitting in.

He checked his credit balance before he left the changing room.

[Credit Balance: 375]

One hundred and twenty-five away from the first cap expansion. He had spent nothing yet, had been saving everything towards that single purchase, and the number was close enough now that it had stopped feeling abstract. It was the kind of close where you could start doing the arithmetic. Two more weeks of this and it would be done. He put his phone back in his pocket.

He walked out into the car park. Alex was waiting for him by the gate, hands in his pockets, watching a van reverse out of a space across the road with the focused attention of someone who had nothing else to do.

"Well?" Alex asked.

"Squad."

Alex nodded once, like that was the correct answer. "Good."

They started walking. The early evening had settled into something damp and grey, the clouds low over the ring road, the lights from the retail park on the far side of the A66 glowing orange through it. A fairly typical Middlesbrough evening. A bus went past on the main road and the sound of it lingered a moment after it had gone.

"What about you?" Will asked.

"Two more weeks on light training," Alex said. "Probably in contention for the third game of the season at the earliest."

"Annoying."

"Extremely." He shoved his hands deeper into his pockets. "What position are you covering off the bench?"

"Attacking mid. Maybe right mid if Liam has a bad game and they want a shape change."

"Pryce is sixteen," Alex said. He was not being cruel about it, just noting it. Alex was that kind of person. He said things that were true without colouring them. It was something Will had come to value about him, even when the things being said were things he would have preferred not to hear stated plainly.

"I know," Will said.

"He’s technically very good though."

"I know that too."

Alex looked at him sideways. "You’re not worried."

It wasn’t a question. It was the observation that the person he was walking next to had already processed the information and was not performing distress about it. Will thought about how to answer that. He thought about it for the length of two lampposts.

"I was," he said. "A bit. Before the training session. Then I had a good session and it went away."

Alex accepted this without comment. He had that quality too, of not needing to say anything when something had already been said well enough. They walked past the newsagent on the corner and the off licence next to it with the handwritten sign in the window and the post office that was always either shut or about to shut.

"What time are we meeting Sunday?"

"Coach leaves at seven from Rockliffe."

Alex pulled a face. "Seven."

"Seven," Will confirmed.

"That’s not a time. That’s just the middle of the night with light in it."

Will said nothing. The light would be fine at seven by now, was the thing, it was nearly August and the mornings were still decent. But he didn’t say this because Alex knew it and was just complaining, and there was no point correcting a complaint.

They walked the rest of the way without talking much. The streetlights came on as they turned onto Keswick Road and the thin orange light stretched down the pavement in both directions. A cat that had been sitting on a garden wall dropped off the back of it as they went past, wanting nothing to do with either of them. Will’s house had the kitchen light on and the faint sound of the television through the front window.

He stopped at the gate.

"Good luck Sunday," Alex said.

"I won’t need it," Will said, and walked up the path.

He half meant it as a joke. Half.

He stood at the front door a moment before he went in, not for any particular reason, just standing. The street was quiet. Somewhere down the road a car door shut. The orange light from the retail park sat on the underside of the clouds and made the sky look closer than it was.

He went inside.

A/N: Would you look at that? It’s the extra Chapter I promised! I’m sorry I couldn’t come through yesterday but it’s here now and it’s perfect.