Chapter Text
He watches the clips on the train to London, again and again. He’s tracked down the episode and watched it in bits and pieces, all six hours of it. Roy Kent and his sharp fucking eyebrows on that Sky Sports set. It’s a new thing; Jamie googled it right away, and turns out that it’s Roy’s first week on the job. He wants to believe it’s a coincidence—these things take time to arrange, don’t they?—but he bets the public fucking loved that. What a good week to get Roy Kent at a pundit desk.
Jeff Stelling says as much ten minutes in, right after Roy’s painfully awkward introduction.
“Jamie Tartt is still top news this week as he’s set to start against Arsenal later this afternoon…” There, George fucking scoffs. Roy’s face is like stone. “…And we’re lucky enough to have not one but two guests today who have good reason to have formed strong opinions first-hand. Isn’t that right, Roy?”
They show footage from the fucking Watford game then, Roy shoving him on the pitch. When that mess had gone down, Jamie had only been thinking of Richmond, of Lasso, if he’d been thinking at all. He hadn’t considered anything else: his teammates back home, Mummy watching the highlights on TV. He’s felt like cringing out of his skin every time he’s seen it since, but Roy-on-telly remains impassive. He’s always impassive on that screen except when he gets fired up, making bone-dry sarcastic remarks, and, yeah, Jamie can see why Twitter went mental for him.
The first clip Jamie saw, the one he watched from his bedroom floor, nerves gnawing at his insides, picks up right then. The guests’ chuckles still ebbing in the studio, George fucking Cartrick rolling his eyes.
“Roy, any thoughts?”
“Jamie Tartt is insufferable. Complete and utter prick. It’s his second-best talent.”
That gets him expectant looks from the rest of the panel, all waiting for a follow-up, but Roy just sits there like a scowling stone carving up until Chris nudges him.
“Well, we’re waiting! What’s the best talent?”
“Have you seen his right foot?
The first time Jamie watched the clip, he nearly dropped his mobile right then. It wasn’t an answer anyone else in the studio expected, either, going by the surprised looks Roy gets, Cartrick’s chime of incredulous laughter.
“Insufferable but good right foot, is that your judgement, Roy?”
“Can’t say I know him as well as you do, but this sounds about right.”
“No, the prick has a fucking excellent right foot.” Roy looks mortally offended at having to admit this. Jamie feels like he’s floating, as Roy Kent says, about him, “Great dribbling. I’ve seen him pick up the ball in the worst spots and just fucking drive at the defence and score before anyone knew what happened. And then he had to go and be a fucking diva about it. Solid decision-making on the pitch when he’s not being a shit to his teammates, so not very often, but who knows. He’s young, maybe he can grow a brain.”
The clip ends there. The first time, Jamie had to replay it immediately, confused and sort of buzzing, because that was more praise than he’d got from Roy the whole seven months he was on loan, and he almost couldn’t believe it. Then he looked at the replies. Then he just had to watch the whole episode.
There’s more where that came from, especially once the matches got going, and Jamie’s name comes up plenty more times. He’s never cared for pundit talks before—the only feedback he’d take came from coaches, at least the halfway decent ones—but somehow he finds that he wants to know what Roy thought.
Some is surprisingly fair. Some of it is pointed barbs, but it’s Roy; Jamie wasn’t expecting him to go all nice suddenly. Clearly, just the thought of Jamie gives him a toothache, but that somehow makes the praise more rewarding, like when a cheat meal feels really great after a week of sticking to the meal plan.
Just as obviously, Roy gets his rocks off needling George. It’s fun to watch, and Jamie understands the urge. He laughs a few times, even, and listens to what Roy has to say about Newcastle losing to United and Chelsea only managing a draw with Southampton. In the Championship, Richmond also drew against Cardiff. Jamie hasn’t been keeping up with their season, not properly, but he’s got time to kill on the train and he’s not so pathetic that all he wants to do is listen to Roy Kent, so he decides to man up and actually fucking reply to the people he was a dick to but still took time to seek him out.
Maybe not Ted, though. Not yet.
He starts with Colin instead, who texted him three times. Jamie opens the thread and squints. He didn’t expect the message to be so long.
[26/08] Hey, Jamie, it really fucking blows that ur private shit is all over the news like that. Do u remember when my hometown paper asked u for quotes when they did a profile on me last season? you called me a worm. I found out from my mam who bought the paper just to read the piece, and I felt like shit about it but I reckon you’re feeling even worse now. So take it from me. Even with the shit you pulled. You really didn’t deserve any of that
[26/08] anyway. just wanted u to know that I’m around if u ever need someone to talk to
[31/08] how are u?
That’s surprisingly thoughtful of Colin. Jamie isn’t sure how to feel about it: he remembers vaguely the interview Colin is talking about, and what he said, but he doesn’t remember why he did it. A lot of the things that felt funny last year aren’t really funny at all if he stops to think about it, and he might have been a massive cunt but Colin had been right alongside him being a cunt right back. Maybe he’d made a mess out of his loan but Ted, for all his talks about being one of eleven, sure seemed to think Jamie was the only one who mattered when it came to why the team sucked so hard.
Anyway, Colin’s a good lad. He texts back: Sound. Down in LDN for a couple days. And then after thinking about it: Thanks mate. really.
He fucks around on his phone some more, buying himself time while he works up the nerve to check a few more of the texts. Most of the City first team are away on international duty, a few of them for England, all of them posting about it. Except Hendrick, who’s home with his ankle on a pillow. Jamie leaves a handful of supportive comments—he means it, he truly does, but he wants to be in their place, too. Even Colin got a call-up, and now he’s back in Wales before the team fly out to play Morocco—he’ll reply to Jamie at some point, or he won’t. He thinks about maybe hitting up some of the Richmond lads he got on with, Jeff and Isaac and O’Brien, just to clear the air. There’s still some of that vague guilt—he said some shitty things leading up to their last match last season, but that was just the game. They still had some good times together, hadn’t they?
Uri’s agency put him up in a hotel in Hammersmith, not far from their offices in Shepherd’s Bush. Jamie wonders what happened to the house he rented last season, if it’s still on the market or if someone moved in already, maybe even another footballer new to London. He’s been thinking a lot about when he first arrived at Richmond, even though it’s been more than a year, and replaying it in his mind won’t change anything.
He’s got a couple of interviews scheduled he’s sort of nervous about—he’s done loads of press since this whole thing started, mostly by phone, but it’s one thing to send in a soundbite to Talksport and something entirely different to schedule a lengthy proper sit-down piece with the fucking Telegraph, who came with a photographer and everything. Trent Crimm, who called Ted Lasso a fucking joke in Lasso’s very first presser, seems very keen to talk to him too, and Jamie’s a bit afraid Crimm is going to try to make him look like a joke, too. He’s got a four-page spread on GQ—the photos were taken just last week, and someone must’ve got shafted to make room for him.
Uri got him a spot on This Morning, which is cool and all that, but Jamie can’t shake the thought that Dad and his mates are a lot more likely to catch him on the telly than to read print interviews, and he remembers what Dad said, that he feels ashamed.
There’s a car waiting for him when he leaves the This Morning studio in Wood Lane; Uri is waiting for Jamie in his office, where he pats him on the back and tells him he’s looking very well. He looks all chuffed until halfway through the meeting, when his computer chimes with the sound of an incoming email. Jamie watches him read it. Watches him take out his phone, and sigh.
“Jamie,” Uri says. “Did you post that from the car just now?”
That is a reply to the tweet promoting his This Morning appearance. @ThisMorningITV ask the tartt how many cocks he’s sucked somebody said, and Jamie shared the screenshot to his Insta story—handle redacted because he isn’t a complete dickhead—with the caption loads, u jealous?
“Jamie.”
“I mean, he did ask.”
Uri says, “I thought we agreed you weren’t going to post without approval.”
Jamie tries to explain that he didn’t think an Insta story counted as a post, when the truth is that he forgot. He deletes it, but there’s probably a whole Mail article about it already.
“Hey, look,” he says. “I’m up at six million followers already.”
He’s made plans to meet with Keeley over her lunch break, but he calls beforehand to ask if he could come by her house after work instead.
“Just like, we’d get papped if we go out in public, right? Shouldn’t be anything too bad, but dunno if it’s the best idea this week.” He doesn’t ask her to come to his hotel because that’d just be worse. He just wants some quiet and, for once, distance from anyone who knows what Jamie Tartt looks like. “So I thought, if I could come over—really just to talk, swear down—”
She laughs, “I know, Jamie. Tell you what, is half past six alright with you? We can have a chat, get dinner.”
“Sound, yeah.” Then he remembers the last time he rang the doorbell at Keeley’s and the fucking surprise he got. “Uh, is Roy going to be there?”
“It’s Wednesday, so he won’t.”
Thank fuck. Jamie exhales, and some of the tension leaves him. He feels a bit like he’s in a spy flick, getting a car to Keeley’s neighbourhood, telling the driver to drop him off some way off just in case. He takes his time down Cholmondeley Walk and looks at the river for a bit. He debates getting Keeley coffee this time, too, but he’s trying to be stealthy and it’s way too late in the day for that, besides. Maybe he’s overdoing it with all of this secrecy—he’s in London, full of properly famous people, and he’s dressed in drab blacks, just minding his business, and probably nobody would care. But he still doesn’t want to risk it.
When he gets to Keeley’s house, she hugs him for a long time, soft and small in his arms. It makes Jamie realise how much he missed her and that he was sort of an idiot about the whole thing; he hugs her back, tight. They end up sitting on Keeley’s comfy sofa surrounded by all her pink fuzzy pillows that are exactly like he remembers, and there’s a part of him that wants to look around, see if he can catch any hints that Roy spends time there, too.
He doesn’t know how to break the silence until Keeley shoves one of the pillows at him—she swats him with it, more like it. “You disappeared!”
“Yeah, yeah. Didn’t think you’d wanna talk to me.” There’s also the part where she kissed him goodbye the night after the West Ham match and the next time he came over—invited, with plenty of warning—Roy fucking Kent answered the door in his pants and he felt like a fucking fool. So he went and deleted her number and all her texts, but she called him the morning the news broke and wouldn’t let it go.
“It was a lot, yeah? It’s been a shitty summer.” He doesn’t know how to explain. He never told Keeley about Dad. “Can I tell you a secret?”
“Of course.”
“About the pictures. So, they got out on Twitter, yeah? I didn’t know about it. But the thing is…” He speaks fast like he’s going to be interrupted, but there’s none of that. Keeley’s a good listener, always was. “I sorta knew it would happen. I stopped being careful about, you know, everything. I went to clubs, I took men home, kissed ’em in public and shit. It was like I wanted it to come out.”
There’s a bit of a pause. Then she says, “That’s a bad thing?”
He shrugs. “Dunno.” I wanted Dad to leave me the fuck alone. “But I can’t take it back now, right? It’s there. I haven’t gone anywhere since it happened unless it’s for work, and it feels like everybody’s staring at me.”
“Babe,” Keeley says gently. “They are staring, I bet. You are, like, way famous now.”
“I did three photoshoots this week.”
“Yeah, Jamie, that’s what I meant. Is that something that’s bothering you?” she asks carefully. “That it’s all so public? ’Cos you can just ride it out, you know, if you don’t want to…”
“I’m not bothered. It’s just…” He doesn’t know how to say it. “If people are talking about me, I want to be in on it, right? Not like I mind attention. But I wanna get it for being good at football, not just because...” He shrugs. “So, who knows, maybe I fucked up. Should’ve kept my head down and waited to make waves. And I’m sorry I’m telling this to you, I don’t really know who else—I mean…”
He’s probably going to talk to Mummy at some point, too, but he’s kept so much from her about the last year. The lads from the team back in Manchester are right out—Jamie had only one full season with them before getting loaned out, and he’d always kept Dad away from them. There’s Paddy, he supposes, or Hendrick; maybe they’ll get it. And all his other friends from the academy and even earlier, it’d feel strange to complain about his situation with them.
“You’re murdering that pillow, Jamie,” Keeley says, and Jamie looks down to see he’s clenching and stretching Keeley’s bright pink pillow so violently it’s no longer quite as fluffy. He raises his head ready to apologise, but she laughs and says, “Don’t worry, you’re fine. So, do you want a cuppa? I think that’ll help. Then we can talk more.”
She’s brilliant he tells her so, fervently. She laughs and says, “Yes, I am,” and while she’s busy fussing with the kettle and taking out two mugs, Jamie asks if she really meant it about taking him on as a publicist.
“Cos my agent, he does some of that too, but I met with the PR people at his firm today and just—nah.” The one Uri suggested, Stacey, had a lot of ideas that would’ve got him benched by Pep for life. Keeley always got him plenty of good deals when he was at Richmond, so he bets she could turn out something better now, too.
“If you’ve got time, that’s it. You’re still working for Richmond, right? If you feel like telling me about it,” he adds. “Bet I’m not very popular there, so.”
“I’ve got time,” she says, slowly. “Yeah, I could do that. Love to. You know I love a challenge.” Her eyes gleam with possibilities. “Yeah, I’m at Richmond. I think I’m doing pretty well there, the work is fun, and I like to be busy. Doing freelance work on the side, too.”
She doesn’t answer the question about how much the Richmond lads hate him, so Jamie doesn’t ask again. Good riddance, whatever. “I’m really happy for you, Keels.” Back when they were together she told him about some of the shit that she hated about modelling, the lights and the bad last-minute fits and all the waiting around, the rude directors who maybe wouldn’t fuck with her but had no qualms to act like petty tyrants to younger girls who were just coming up. How it could be fun, but lately it was mostly boring, and sometimes she wanted to be the one calling the shots.
“Really happy,” he says again, and he means it.
“I am happy you came to see me!” she says, smile bright, and stands up to hug him again. “So, we’re getting dinner, right? What’d you want?”
They end up ordering Japanese from an old favourite place—they used to eat there almost once a week when they were going out, and Jamie is surprised when Keeley says she hasn’t had ramen in forever.
“Roy cooks a lot,” she says, then stops herself. Looks at him. “Sorry, is that weird?”
“You’re fine.” He doesn’t know if it’s fine exactly, but he wants to know. He’s thought about it way too much since last May, how it happened, what they’re like together. If they ever talk about him. Would Keeley say something if Roy insulted Jamie in front of her? Does he even care enough to do it? Does she feel like she upgraded? It’s been eating him alive.
So now he listens to his ex, the only girl he ever said I love you to, talk about her new boyfriend, who called Jamie shit on telly last weekend but also said more positive shit about him than he ever did for over six months as Jamie’s captain.
“He fucked his knee, yeah? Like, properly fucked, and my place has got fewer stairs than his does, so he’s been around a lot. It was nice to get back home and find homemade dinner every night, but it was—” She stops like she remembered who he’s talking to.
“I’m not gonna tell anyone, Keels.”
“I know that! It’s not about that, it’s just, he wouldn’t want me to tell. He reminds me of you a bit, you know? You’re both fucking stubborn and Roy wouldn’t tell anyone if he had shit going on, just acts like a prat to everyone around him.” She drums her fingers over her knee. “I’ll just say this, it was rough for a while. Roy’s rubbish at being retired. Now he’s got that Sky job and threw himself into it, and I guess it’s hit me how much less I’ve seen of him. I don’t mind it, you know I like my spaces, but I hadn’t cooked for myself in like, two months. It’s strange.”
Now it’s Jamie’s turn to fiddle with his fingers and look away. He’d thought about reaching out to Roy after the Richmond match—it’s just the polite thing to do, sportsmanship and that, but he didn’t want to deal with an angry Roy saying something mean. He’d dithered, putting it off until it was too late.
He doesn’t say anything now either. They move the conversation to the shoot he did the other day for GQ; he tells her about the Telegraph piece and Trent Crimm’s email, and Keeley says he should go for it. She sees Trent around a lot and she thinks he’d do a good job.
“He’s written some fucking great pieces, yeah? The one he did for Roy’s retirement made me cry a bit, and you know I don’t even follow football, I didn’t know half the matches he was talking about there. Just fucking poetry.”
Jamie suspects he’d know every match of Roy’s that Trent Crimm may have written about. Doesn’t know if he wants to read it.
“Yeah, okay, I’ll call him. Thanks, Keels.”
He leaves Keeley’s feeling optimistic and maybe a bit tipsy, enough that he does something fucking stupid. He takes out his phone and calls Isaac.
It rings three times. Then Isaac’s voice says, “Yeah?” and Jamie almost drops his phone, surprised.
“It’s me, mate. Uh, Jamie. Tartt.” Like Isaac hasn’t got his number. Isaac texted him last week, for fuck’s sake. “Uh, I got your message the other day when, you know, and I wanted to say thanks.” Still not reply, so he says, “I’m not gonna keep you if this is a bad time.”
“Not gonna keep me if it’s a bad time. Bruv. Since when do you fucking care ‘bout that?”
“Oh, fuck off,” Jamie says, relieved. “Were just being nice.”
For a moment there, it’s like they’re still mates. Then Isaac says that it is a bad time, actually, as he’s got some of the Richmond lads over, and they’re not really keen on Jamie. Especially Sam.
Fair enough. Besides, it’s not like Jamie cares about Sam Obisanya anyway. “D’you wanna get drinks tomorrow?” he asks instead, and he’s surprised when Isaac says yes.
“You’re paying.” It’s the first thing Isaac says when he sees him, the next day. “Since you got us fucking relegated, you fucking prat.”
“Was only doing me job,” Jamie says, but he sorta gets it. He’d made it personal, talking shit about Lasso and that; no shit Isaac took it badly.
“You’re still paying,” Isaac says, again, and Jamie nods.
“Sure, yeah. Hey, you wanna start with shots?”
After that, it’s easier. They can pretend it’s still last year; Jamie asks Isaac how his girlfriend is doing—at a hen do, as it happens—and Isaac compliments Jamie’s fit.
“Ta’. It’s new.” He went to the Stone Island store on Brewer Street just this morning, squeezed in between the Puma shoot and talking to Trent Crimm. If he’s going to get stopped all the time for pictures, at least he’s looking great. “Another round?”
The waiter, Jamie’s pretty sure, totally recognised them; they’re at a cocktail bar in Richmond not far from Isaac’s house, and footballers aren’t very common in the area. But he doesn’t say anything, just brings over two more rounds of shots.
In between, Isaac tells Jamie about the going-ons at Richmond and their new signing, Jan Maas.
“And everybody else’s still on the team?” Jamie asks, surprised. “Nobody got sold?”
That’s usually the first thing that happens when clubs get relegated, players moving sides to stay in the Prem.
“Dawkins left. And Canterbury,” Isaac says, “but that’s all. Ms Welton is really keen on us going straight back up.” He makes a disgusted face over his Jammy Doughnut. “We got six points from six games, so.”
“That’s rubbish,” Jamie says sympathetically. “Who you playing next?”
“Wigan. Cheers.”
“Cheers.”
“So, Richmond,” Jamie says, after shot number three. “They’re really letting anybody be captain these days, innit?”
Isaac squints at him. “What about it?”
“I’m just asking, lad.” It’s better to ask Isaac questions than the other way around. He doesn’t want to talk about Manchester. “Did Lasso pick you? How did that go?”
Isaac shakes his head. “It was Roy. Was ’cos I got angry at you, actually.”
Jamie snorts. “Fucking typical.” At least Isaac can’t be as big of a twat as Roy was. He says as much. “Besides, all you ever do is talk. That’s, like, half the job.” He’s thinking about Roy again, and Toni. “Talk to the refs, talk to the lads, that’s all a captain does.”
Isaac squints at him. “You’re being less of a prick than usual.”
“Thanks, lad.” Jamie doesn’t examine how the words lodge somewhere beneath his chest. “Now go tell Colin that, would you? He’s still pissed off at me ‘cos I called him a worm that one time.”
Colin still hasn’t texted him back, which Jamie has been trying not to take personally. But Isaac shakes his head, and says, “He’s not really angry anymore. Not with you.”
Jamie straightens up. “Yeah?”
“He got proper angry,” Isaac says, after a pause. “When… you know. Said all the journos should leave you alone. He was all cross about it.”
That’s the first time all evening they’ve come close to talking about what’s really going on with Jamie. He swallows, and it feels like a hand is gripping his throat. He doesn’t know what to do with Colin being all livid on his behalf; he’s not sure he wants it. It almost sounds like Colin feels bad for him. Colin Hughes. He’s not sure he likes that.
“Hey,” he tells Isaac. “You wanna go somewhere with music?”
The rest of the night is a blur. They go clubbing the way they used to last year, when everything was simpler and Jamie was just another face in a crowd. People look at him, and Jamie doesn’t know if it’s because he’s fit or because he was on telly yesterday. He dances with three different girls, gets a lazy snog in, and thinks very hard about nothing at all. He posts two videos to his Insta stories before remembering that he’d promised Uri he’d stay off it for a while; he deletes them but too late—there are already a couple dozen messages asking where he’s at. His head is thumping in time with the bass.
When they leave, in the car, Isaac says, “So. if you’re pulling, now. D’you pull, like, girls or blokes or what?”
Jamie looks at him. It’s late, and the cab driver can hear every word. “I could pull anyone.” He means it. He’s Jamie Tartt, and he can have anybody he wants. There’s no reason at all for Colin to feel sorry for him.
Isaac doesn’t look very impressed. “Sure, bruv,” he says, and Jamie flips him off.
The cab leaves him at the hotel before taking Isaac back to Richmond; it’s late, and Jamie wants a shower and to sleep. Maybe not in that order.
He strips and gets into the hotel bathrobe, splayed on the bed in that haze between consciousness and sleep. His mouth tastes like toothpaste. His fingers tap the screen of his phone without even thinking about it. A familiar voice fills the air.
“Great dribbling,” Roy Kent says. “Solid decision-making on the pitch.”
He plays it again. “Great dribbling. Solid decision-making. Fucking excellent right foot.”
“Great dribbling.” Again. “Great dribbling. Fucking excellent—”
He turns off the video. It’s late. Earlier today, Jamie saw Keeley again, now that she’s agreed to take him on as a client, all official. They signed some stuff and Jamie remembers wondering if she’d told Roy about him at all, if Roy would even care. He finds the contact, taps on the thread. There are only three messages there. His thumb types.
[To: Roy Kent]
thought you’d be a way more shit pundit considering who they have you next to
but I guess you were kinda fair
are you dying or summat
He falls asleep like that, waiting.