Own Goal

by Tom Palmer

  FRIDAY

  HERO

  Danny stood on the stage in the school hall and tried to pick out Charlotte from among the faces in the crowd.

  It was the only way he could cope with the applause and – it was hard to believe – screaming that was coming from the 1,500 children in front of him.

  He did not like this. He did not want this. But the headteacher had insisted.

  ‘As we have all seen on our television screens last night, and in the newspapers today,’ the Head said, ‘we have a hero in our school.’

  More applause. More screaming. Girls waving to Danny from the crowd to catch his eye. But none of them was Charlotte.

  Where was she?

  ‘Danny has done this city – and the world – a great service,’ the Head went on.

  Danny tried to smile, to look grateful. But all he felt was embarrassed. He had never done what he did for fame or applause. He did it for football.

  ‘However,’ the Head said. ‘It stops here.’

  The hall went quiet.

  ‘From now on Danny is Danny again. From now on he is just another boy at this school. A boy who should be taking his GCSEs a bit more seriously. A boy who will not be taking on all manner of megalomaniacs around the world.’

  Danny looked at the headteacher and nodded. He wanted the Head to know that he agreed with what he was saying. Wholeheartedly.

  And then his eyes fell on Charlotte. She smiled up at him. A big, beaming, brilliant smile. Danny smiled too. Until he saw an arm snaked around the back of Charlotte’s chair. And saw whose arm it was.

  Theo Gibbs. Staring up at him, cocky as ever.

  After assembly, Danny was told to go back to class.

  He walked the long corridor from the hall, towards the stairs. And there, hanging around the sixth form entrance, was Theo Gibbs. Two mates with him, as usual.

  Gibbs started without hesitating. ‘I’ve been looking after Charlotte while you’ve been away,’ he said, smirking.

  Danny said nothing, just kept walking.

  ‘I said –’

  ‘I heard you,’ Danny snapped back. ‘Did you enjoy the match?’

  ‘Football?’ Gibbs sneered. ‘That’s for kids.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Danny answered. ‘Maybe that’s why I like it so much.’

  ‘And maybe,’ Theo said, ‘that’s why I’m seeing Charlotte and you’re not.’

  Danny knew there was nothing you could do about people like Theo Gibbs. You had to let them wash over you. You had to try not to get caught up in their weird confrontational logic.

  So he walked off.

  To silence.

  Maybe Theo had been expecting him to try to hit him.

  After English, Danny walked the back way, to avoid seeing anyone. Then he slipped down the staircase at the far end of school, down to the bottom flight, that nobody used, where he used to meet Charlotte.

  He wanted to be alone.

  He wanted not to be hassled by people who thought he was famous.

  He just wanted to be Danny Harte, City FC fan.

  He sat alone for the first five minutes of break, not really thinking. Just gazing out of the window.

  Then he heard footsteps coming down the stairs.

  And he did what he always did. Sat still. Made no noise.

  People never came down here.

  Until today.

  The footsteps became louder. But, although his heart had started beating faster, Danny was not worried. He knew whose footsteps they were.

  He looked up.

  Charlotte.

  ‘Hey,’ he said.

  ‘Hey, Mr Bigshot.’

  ‘You OK?’

  ‘Yeah, listen … Danny …’

  This was it. Charlotte’s voice had gone serious.

  ‘I’m listening,’ Danny said.

  ‘Theo Gibbs has been telling everyone that me and him are going out together now.’

  ‘I know,’ Danny said.

  ‘And what do you think of that?’ Charlotte asked.

  ‘If it’s true and if you’re happy then I’m happy,’ Danny said, weakly.

  ‘That’s not the response I was looking for,’ Charlotte replied, a cold tone to her voice.

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘In that case,’ Danny said, feeling an energy beneath his feet like something underground was going to come up and carry him off, ‘I hate it. I hate Theo Gibbs and I … don’t hate you.’

  Charlotte sat down.

  ‘That’s more like it,’ she said.

  And Danny knew instantly that he had been an idiot to think his best friend was going out with his worst enemy.

  Walking home that day, after school, Danny went through the park, passing the house where Sir Richard Gawthorpe used to live.

  He remembered when Sir Richard Gawthorpe was his worst enemy. That was where all this had started.

  His time as a football detective had been exciting.

  But Danny had made a promise to his mum and he was going to keep it.

  And when he was eighteen, he would join the police and work his way up to being a detective, so he could be like the characters in the books he had read to his dad. Men who solved crimes by finding things out, turning them over in their minds, then going to places to find more things out.

  A bit like the authors who write books, he thought.

  Then, once he was an experienced detective, he would specialize in football crime and take on the next generation of people who thought football was about making money at any cost.

  That was his ambition now.

  Because he knew what football was really about.

  THANK-YOUS

  Thank you to my wife and daughter. Without their support and love these books would never get written. This book was particularly special because they came with me on my research trip this time. You’ll find my daughter in an Italian gift shop about halfway through the novel.

  Thank you too to the Bear Cafe in Todmorden, where I wrote most of the book during the summer of 2010. If you are ever passing through Todmorden, the Bear is opposite the public library in the centre. They do very nice cakes.

  Thank you to the library, too, for getting me the books I needed to create Salvatore Fo and for feeding my family with great reading material.

  Several people read this book and helped me improve it. They were my wife Rebecca, Sophie Hannah, Dan Jones, James Nash and David Luxton. Thank you for your help!

  David is my agent. He does lots of things to make me able to ‘live my dream’ of being an author. Without him none of this would have been possible. I thank him for that and apologize for using the phrase ‘living the dream’, which is a double-edged sword for Leeds fans like he and I.

  And thank you to Ghyllgrove Junior School who test read all my books and where I am proud to say I have been an adopted author for three years.

  Thank you finally to everyone at Puffin, who do so much to get the books out there, looking so good – Alex Antscherl, Lindsey Heaven, Wendy Tse, Vanessa Godden and Lisa Hayden, to name just a few. I am, as ever, thrilled to be published by Puffin and am very grateful for all you do.

  This book is dedicated to my sister, Sarah. I based Danny’s sister, Emily, on Sarah. In the early books in this series Emily is a bit more of a handful than Sarah was to me, but Emily matures into a wonderful sibling for Danny, just like Sarah has for me.

 

 

 
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