Chapter Text
May
Rebecca’s not expecting to see Ted the morning after Richmond’s ignominious defeat. Yes, he’d seemed all right when he left her office the night before, but she still would have expected his blood to be ninety percent alcohol this morning. Yet here he is, biscuits in hand.
“You look . . .” She’s about to say “surprisingly good” but then she peers at him a bit, sees the shadows under his eyes and the lines cutting deeper than usual. “Not too awful,” she amends.
“If you don’t mind me saying, you look like you just got back from a spa weekend,” he says as he takes a seat in front of her desk. “That’s just not fair.”
“I did actually wake up this morning feeling remarkably well-rested,” she says. “I’ve been trying to recall precisely how much scotch I drank last night because it seems to have been the exact right amount. That, or else the crushing defeat was in some way cathartic and allowed me to channel all the pain and humiliation of the last year, and let it be subsumed in the collective grief.” Seeing his wide-eyed expression, she adds, “But the scotch will be easier to recreate.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Wow.”
She shrugs. “It’s been an introspective week.”
“Guess we could all say that.” He folds his hands on top of his crossed knees and says, “So. Lay it on me, boss. Where do we start?”
“With a lot of paperwork.” She’s never been through relegation before, but she’s watched it happen to enough other teams that she knows the drill. “And when we’re through with that – more paperwork.”
“Great,” Ted says. “Because you know that’s why I chose to become a professional athletic coach. On account of how much I love paperwork.”
He’s smiling gamely, though.
* * *
June
He left Rebecca with a pretty good biscuit supply, but just this first Monday – well, still sort of Sunday to him – he feels like that’s not enough. It takes a nap, a late night out with some old college buddies, and then a cup of hotel room coffee and a few reruns of The Big Bang Theory, but he manages to call her on FaceTime right at his usual biscuit delivery time.
She looks politely horrified as she accepts the request. “Ted? What on earth are you doing? Is everything all right? It must be . . . two o’clock in the morning there?”
“Three,” he corrects. “And I’m not gonna do this every day.”
“Please don’t,” she says emphatically.
“I just wanted to check in with you, you know,” he says, smiling harder, because smiling sort of massages the place high on his forehead where he’s getting a headache. “First time I can’t be there in person.”
“That’s very sweet, Ted,” she says, in that way she has that means “I almost understand why you did this, and thank you for the thought, but it’s weird.” Then her face shifts into something more like a normal friendly expression, like they actually know each other, and she asks, “The trip was all right?”
“Oh yeah, yeah. Fine. Kind of weird to hear so many American accents.”
“And Henry?”
“He’s great,” Ted nods. “Saw him today – well, yesterday, for you – and he’s still got school but I’m gonna pick him up tomorrow – today – and bring him to his Little League practice so I can watch him play.”
“Sounds nice,” she says with a smile.
“Yeah, I’m looking forward to watching a sport I actually understand.”
Her smile widens to acknowledge the joke, but there’s concern laced all through it. “And you’re all right?” she asks.
“Oh sure, I’m fine. Body’s still kind of on two different clocks, but I’m planning to nap the hell out of tomorrow and try to catch it up.” He rubs his forehead, tries to make it look casual.
“Ted,” Rebecca says gently, leaning closer to the screen. “Thank you for calling. Go take a paracetamol and go to bed.”
“Well, I don’t have any of that but I think there is some Tylenol in my suitcase.”
“I never know when you’re joking,” Rebecca mutters, then says, “If you like – perhaps call sometime when you’re awake.”
“I don’t want to bother you at home,” he says automatically.
“My home is now an extension of my office,” she laughs. “All I do there is read contracts. I promise the interruption will be welcome.”
“Okay then,” he says quietly. “‘Night, boss. Or – morning. You know what, I’m just going to sleep till I’m sure which it is.”
He goes to bed feeling warm but disconnected and discombobulated, picturing Rebecca and the team starting their day over there.
* * *
July
Ted comes back from his two weeks in the States with a tan, a kind of manic energy she hasn’t seen from him since after Liverpool, and a drawing Henry did for her. It’s a robot playing football, and she carefully props it against the cactus Keeley once gave her.
“Now, I got a little inspired while I was back home, and I went kinda nuts,” he says as he passes over the box of biscuits. “I’m not gonna mess with success too much, but I thought just this one time.”
Curious, she sniffs and then takes a small taste. “Is that – peanut butter?”
“Yep.” His face suddenly goes slack and he asks, “Wait, you’re not allergic, are you?”
“The time to ask that definitely would have been thirty seconds ago,” she says, “but no.” She takes another bite, considering. It’s not terrible but she will look forward to having normal ones back.
“You know Henry’s whole class was peanut-free this year?” He sits down, backpack in his lap, as if he’s forgotten how to be there. It really hasn’t been that long. “Apparently for the first couple months he was in such withdrawal from not getting to have his usual PB and J for lunch that he refused to eat anything without peanut butter in it on the weekend.”
Rebecca wants to ask the right thing, the thing that will get at why he feels so strange and on edge, but she doesn’t have his gift. She has to think for a length of time that is probably awkward. “Any idea when he’ll be able to come over and visit?” she asks finally.
Ted kind of pauses before he answers, his hands wrapped over his backpack. “It’s all kind of – any kind of actual custody arrangement is on hold, you know, because of me being here. The lawyer I talked to said I could have pushed for something – some order to make it so he’d be here half the year or something. But I don’t know. That’s a lot of upheaval at his age.”
She feels a little uncomfortable with this topic too, and realizes it’s because she’s afraid of when he inevitably decides to leave Richmond and move back home to be with his son. And because she knows she’d be a horrible person to want to interfere with that. “So for the foreseeable future he just lives with his mum and she has to agree for him to visit you?”
“I chose to come here,” he says. “I have to weigh that against – how right it would be for me to start making demands.” She sort of wants to push back on that, but he’s standing and waving off any further discussion. “Anyway. Thanks for listening, boss. I’ve got to get down and see the team.”
She nods to let him off the hook. “Yes. I’m sure everyone’s anxious to have you back.”
“I’m glad to be back,” he says sincerely. Which is a relief. Even if he sounds kind of sad about it.
* * *
August
The first danger notes sound in August but they don’t realize it, mostly because what’s actually happening sucks enough on its own.
Not August itself – August in England is beautiful. It’s warm in the daytime but not Kansas-hot, the sky is incredible when it’s not raining, and at night it’s cool but stays light for so long. Ted finds himself spending every second he can outside – standing outside at the pub with his pint, lingering on the pitch in the evening, hanging out near the green when he’s not at work.
But August being so nice means it’s good for weddings, and that’s why Ted comes in one morning to see Rebecca and finds her deep-breathing over an issue of the Sun on her desk that’s not only printed a bunch of pictures of Rupert’s wedding, but actually dredged up thirteen-year-old photos from his and Rebecca’s wedding and put them side by side.
It’s rare that Ted has completely no idea what to say, but this time he’s just too stuck between stunned and angry to know what the right thing is. He has to look over Rebecca’s shoulder at the spread for a minute before he comes up with it.
“Well,” he says. “You wore it better.”
She gives a sardonic half-laugh, because of course the Sun’s point is that Rupert basically had the same wedding twice. It’s not the same location, but his suit and the bride’s gown and the flowers and even the way they’re walking out of the church are echoes of each other. Not exactly the same, but nowhere near different enough.
Rebecca flips to the front page so he can read the headline. RUPERT’S REPRISE.
“That’s creepy,” Ted says. “This is creepy. Not the article – no actually, that’s creepy too. But this is like the first act of a horror movie. Like we should be going back to the ‘80s and looking for the first Rebecca.”
“I’m only ninety percent sure there wasn’t one,” Rebecca says, flipping back to the photo spread. “You know, in a way I’m glad. Sometimes I wonder if he really was that controlling, or if I just went along with it all on my own. But this is . . .” Her hands flex out in the air over the paper. “Very creepy validation.”
“She doesn’t look pregnant,” Ted says, and the minute the words are out of his mouth he wants to take them back.
Rebecca seems okay, though. She just shakes her head and says, “She’s only five months. It might not show much. I only hope she isn’t squashing its little head with shapewear.”
“That’s nice of you.”
“Yes, I’m a bloody humanitarian.”
Ted finally spots the difference in . . . tone, maybe it is, between the photos. Bex is glowing and he doesn’t think it’s just the pregnancy. She’s the image of a satisfied bride – pleased with herself, even a little smug. Rebecca, his Rebecca – original Rebecca, that is – looks uncomfortable with the attention. Even on her wedding day, walking out of the church, there’s a tightness around her eyes that he recognizes. She’s self-conscious. Bex looks as if she owns Rupert; Rebecca looks at him like he’s a stranger helping her down the steps.
Ted reaches over and around Rebecca with both hands, closes the paper, and takes it from the desk. “Don’t look at that all day,” he says. “Come out and watch training. You haven’t seen the new kids in action yet.”
“I might do that,” she says, looking up to meet his eye.
He pats her on the shoulder and says, “Good,” but he also takes the paper with him.
It’s only the beginning.
* * *
September
They’re riding a little wave – having started the season with two wins in a row, followed by two ties, another win, two more ties, and only one loss – and that should make everyone feel a bit calmer but it seems to be having the opposite effect. Not on the fans; the fan buzz was rough on them in the summer but now they’re on side. People seem to be taking an optimistic view of the season.
Everyone inside the clubhouse, on the other hand, is waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Ted has so many new approaches to training that it feels like he’s just throwing darts at a wall and going with whatever they land on. And not throwing them well, either, despite the fact that Rebecca knows he can, so maybe that’s the wrong metaphor.
He seems torn between wanting to tell her all about everything he’s trying, and not wanting to bother her with those details, so their meetings involve a lot of excited, half-completed sentences and then nervous detours into stories about the time he got lost in a corn field, or the camping trip when his shoes were stolen by raccoons, or why Kenny Rogers never should have opened a restaurant chain. Rebecca has long abandoned any hope of actually stemming the flow of this tide of words, so she mostly just eats her biscuits and waits for it to stop. But the tension he’s building up has her nerves jangling too, and she doesn’t usually need help with that.
So finally one morning when he bursts into her office, she cuts him off in the middle of a digression about trout fishing and stands up, saying, “We’re not doing this. Come on.”
It’s at least effective as an interruption, because he blinks in slightly wounded confusion for a second before asking, “Something wrong?”
“We’re not doing this,” she repeats to clarify, drawing a circle with one finger to encompass the office. “We’re taking a walk.”
“We are?” He hustles after her though, hoisting his backpack back onto both shoulders.
“Leave that.” She hooks her finger in the loop at the top of his bag, tugs it off his shoulders, and deposits it on the floor. He doesn’t need the extra weight.
She leads him out onto the pitch where Will is already setting up cones for the day’s training exercises, and starts a path around the sidelines. Ted’s apparently too confused to keep up his usual stream of chatter; it takes them a quarter of the length of the pitch before he says, “Uh, boss?”
“Thought this might help,” she says. “Are you always this stressed out at the beginning of a season?”
He’s taken aback; it’s a while again before he answers. “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t think so. But this is different.”
“I know we’re all working for promotion,” she says. “But I think you’ve got to find that Ted who didn’t care so much about winning and losing. Before you snap and take me with you.”
“That Ted got us relegated,” he points out.
“He had a lot of help.” She elbows him gently as they walk. “Last season you couldn’t really show what you’re capable of. You walked into a shit situation of other people’s making. This season is yours.”
“Yeah,” he says, heavily.
“Right, so maybe that’s the scary part. But still. You’ve got to – I don’t know, tell me how I can help take the edge off.” She immediately blanches and adds, “Let’s pretend that came out sounding less like a proposition.”
“Deal,” he says, looking at her sideways.
“Our lawyers thank you.” She takes a moment to clear her throat. “But I mean – I want to support you any way I can so that this process doesn’t drive you completely insane. And so you don’t drive me completely insane. Just tell me what to do, because I don’t know.”
And that’s the truth – she doesn’t. She knows the papers that have to be signed and the contracts initialed and the cheques cut, and she knows where everyone has to be, and how much money has to be raised at what time; but she’s not a manager of people. She doesn’t know what they need, she doesn’t know how to inspire them, and she doesn’t know how to get them to trust her. Ted’s been doing all that for her since he arrived.
“Just give me a clue,” she asks softly. “Because you would know how to help you, but since it is you, I have to be you, and I’m not very good at it.”
He laughs, which is the only appropriate response to whatever she thought she was saying there. Then his smile sort of twists a bit, and he says, “Think you might have just done it.”
That was – too easy?
* * *
October
The way Ted finds out that the shit has really hit the fan is that one morning he stops in his office and Colin and Isaac immediately pop in, like they’ve been waiting for him.
“You been to see the boss yet?” Colin asks. He’s nervy. Something’s definitely up.
“Not yet,” Ted says slowly. “Why?”
“We think you should go now,” Isaac says.
“Like – go fast,” Colin chimes in.
Ted frowns, wondering what they’ve destroyed. “Why?”
They exchange looks, and Colin pulls out a copy of the Daily Mail. “They ran this article about Rupert and his new baby on the way, you know now that she’s so pregnant you can actually tell.”
“Okay,” Ted says. This definitely sucks, but he’s not sure it sucks as bad as they’re implying?
“They quote him,” Colin says, looking increasingly awkward and pained. “All about how sad he always was that he couldn’t have any kids in his first marriage. Implying, like.”
“That she was an evil bitch,” Isaac chimes in.
They can’t possibly know how exactly the opposite of true this is – well, unless Rebecca also got drunk with them one night after an away game and spilled the whole thing, which he doubts – but they can clearly smell bullshit when they see it. Yeah, this is bad all right.
“And,” Colin says, and he and Isaac look at each other again, and Ted realizes there’s something so bad they don’t even want to say it.
After a beat, Isaac just grabs the paper out of Colin’s hands and shoves it at Ted. “Just look, innit,” he says.
Wishing he were literally anywhere else, Ted pages through the paper and looks. He doesn’t see much before the words “anonymous sources” and “abortion centre” pop out at him and then his vision goes blurry.
“Seriously, Coach. Go,” Colin says, and Ted goes.
Rebecca’s desk is clear when he bursts into her office, but there’s no way she hasn’t seen the article. She’s stark white and staring aimlessly at the window, even when he comes closer.
“I don’t know what I did to that man that was so awful,” she says as her only acknowledgment that Ted is there.
“Sure you do,” Ted says evenly, although he can hear his own voice shaking with anger underneath. “You fucked up his plans.”
She nods slowly at this, and when she finally looks at him he sees the shine of tears in her eyes and knows the first shock is passing. “I don’t know who they would have found to . . .” she says helplessly. “It’s not – none of this is true.”
“I’d be on your side whether it was or not,” he says, and she takes a really deep breath like she’s trying to stay in control. He takes her hand and her shoulder and gently pulls her up to her feet – making her stand up is probably a shaky idea at this point, but he can’t hug her well enough while she’s sitting down. Though what he’s doing now is less a hug than trying to wrap himself between her and the world like a human shield.
They just stand there like that, him rubbing her back, her leaning against him. Higgins comes in; Ted gives him a little head shake and he silently goes back out again, looking grateful to do so.
Against Ted’s shoulder Rebecca says, “I don’t know what to do. I thought it was bad before, when the things they made up were just stupid, and the things that were true made me look like a fool but not – now they’re saying what everyone was always thinking out loud, because that’s what people are always thinking when a woman doesn’t have children, that she’s selfish or vain or just mean and I don’t know how to walk down the street knowing that’s what everyone is saying.” She pulls away a little and starts swiping at the tears with her fingertips. “I’ve had three calls already this morning from people wanting me to take a public stand in support of women who’ve had abortions, and it’s not that I don’t think they deserve support, but all this is predicated on thinking I’ve had one, or several, and it’s one of those things that once someone’s said it you don’t want to deny it because then you sound like you’re judging. Like when they say you’re gay and there’s never a good enough way to express that it’s great to be gay but you personally just don’t want to sleep with Liv Tyler.”
Ted honestly doesn’t mean to make a joke right now, but the “really?” comes out of him mostly because he can’t actually imagine not wanting to sleep with Liv Tyler.
Rebecca waves this off. “You’re right, of course. Bad example.”
He’s relieved to see there’s still a sense of humor under there, but her color isn’t any better and she looks like she’s only managed to stop crying for the moment. He’s about to pull her back into a hug when her eyes widen and she says, “Fuck, I’ve just realized.”
“What?” he asks, alarmed all over again.
She rubs her forehead. “I bet you anything they probably do have ‘anonymous sources’ who can say quite honestly that they’re aware of an abortion that Rupert Mannion arranged.”
It takes him a second to go through the same thought process she just did. “Shit.”
“Charming, right?”
He rubs her arms and says, “Want to hear something that’ll make you feel a little better?”
She looks doubtful that such a thing exists, but says, “Okay?”
“Know who made sure I knew about that article, told me to run up and take care of you?”
There’s something a little less broken in her expression when she hears those last words, but she just shakes her head.
“Isaac and Colin.”
“No.”
“Yup.” He smiles, trying to get her to smile back. It only works a little. “They’ve got your back,” he says.
The tears are welling up again, so he does pull her back into his arms. He’s waiting until he can’t hear the shudder in her breathing anymore, murmuring over and over again that it’s okay, it’s going to be okay, and then he figures out how. He kisses her temple and says, “I have an idea.”
After a deep breath, with her hand on his chest, she says, “I appreciate the thought, Ted, but you can’t white knight every situation.”
“No but I think I can this one. Do you trust me?”
“Yes,” she says without thinking about it, which is nice.
“This was only in the Mail, right?”
“Right,” she says, her brow furrowing.
He brushes her hair back from her face and rubs at a few tear tracks with his thumbs while he’s talking. “I’m going to invite Trent Crimm out to lunch. And then I want to offer him a full access pass all day tomorrow, while we’re getting ready for the match with Watford. Let him do an exclusive profile and tell him everyone‘ll answer anything he wants to ask. Including you.”
He watches her think about it. Of course this also requires that she trust Trent Crimm, but Ted does – he’s seen enough of the man’s standards – so maybe it’s still Ted she’s trusting after all.
“He’ll get to malign the competition,” she says. “I can see that appealing to him.”
“He’s got a good sense for when people are telling the truth.”
She nods, and then the door to her office flies open and Keeley comes in waving a copy of the Mail and shouting, “What the fuck is this?” She stomps across the office and flings herself into one of the chairs. “I swear, this time we’re doing it. Ted will help hide the body, won’t you, Ted?”
Ted gives Rebecca’s shoulders one last squeeze, says, “I think you’re in good hands here,” and goes off to call Trent.
When they meet for lunch, Ted doesn’t mention the article. He just makes the same pitch to Trent that he’d described to Rebecca. An all-access exclusive on Richmond’s pursuit of promotion. Total cooperation. From everyone. When he adds, “Including Rebecca,” he sees the flicker in Trent’s eyes.
Trent reaches for the salt and says, “This wouldn’t have anything to do with the Mail?”
Ted shrugs. “That kind of thing is really just a distraction we don’t need right now, you know. We’re all focused on the season. But she’s not going to make any kind of public statement about it. If she’s going to say anything at all, it’ll be to you.”
“I think I see,” Trent says. “She wants to set the record straight without directly acknowledging it.”
“I’m not here to tell you how to do your job,” Ted says. “Just here to make an offer. I know your journalistic principles and I trust you to represent the truth of where the team is right now.”
Trent wipes his fingers on a napkin and says, “You don’t have to persuade me. That piece in the Mail was slimy, I felt bad about myself for reading it. You’ve got a deal.”
It’s clear the team mostly likes Trent. He spends the day on the pitch and in the locker room and everywhere else and they joke with him and answer his questions and even include him in their passing drills, although that might have been a slip of the ball. Rebecca never tells Ted what they talked about or what he asked her, but when the piece comes out, there’s a paragraph right in the middle:
In their quest to earn back their place in the Premier League, Richmond cannot afford to be distracted by irrelevancies such as the recent insinuations about club owner Rebecca Welton. When asked directly, Ms. Welton is candid about the pain they have caused, and quite clear on the fact that she has never been pregnant and that this was not by her own choice. Whether attacking the owner on a sensitive personal issue is intended to affect the team at this critical time no one can say, but she has the full support of her players. In fact, the only thing team captain Isaac McAdoo would say about the press is, “You come for the boss, you come for us.”
It’s barely two sentences, and it doesn’t quote Rebecca directly, but it lets people see her pain in a way that lets her have her dignity as well. All in all it seems pretty deftly done; Ted just hopes Rebecca feels that way. It also doesn’t call Rupert out directly, which is probably for the best. Rebecca’s finally in a place where she’s moving on and trying to live her life without doing everything as a “fuck you” to Rupert, but it’s clear he isn’t done with her.
When Ted goes to see Rebecca that morning, she takes his hand in both of hers over the desk, her elbows resting on its surface, and just leans her forehead on their hands for a while without saying anything. He knows it’s been a rough two days for her, knows that Keeley’s been staying with her so she has someone to run the paparazzi gauntlet outside her house with, knows how she’s been avoiding public places. The Mail Online had posted a photo of her and Keeley ducking into the house with a caption about “avoiding the press,” but that’s all anyone’s gotten and after Trent’s article it will look mostly like an attempt to drum up interest in the Mail’s discredited rumors.
“Know what we’re going to do today?” Ted asks.
Rebecca lifts her head and shakes it.
“You and me are going to go and have lunch in the pub.” Her eyes widen, but Ted squeezes her hand and says, “Time to show everybody you don’t have anything to be ashamed of.”
“Ted . . .”
“Rupert did this because he thought it would break you,” he says, quietly but firmly. “I’m sorry but you’re going to have to decide not to let it.”
She drops her forehead back onto their clasped hands and mutters, “Fuck you just a little bit for that.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“You’re right.”
“I know.”
(The pub goes quiet for maybe a second when they step in, but then someone yells, “Wanker!” in a friendly kind of way and the normal buzz resumes. Mae brings Rebecca a glass of wine without asking, and Ted has to pretend not to notice when an elderly woman nods in his direction and tells Rebecca, “you traded up!”
(They walk back to the clubhouse with their shoulders brushing, and Rebecca keeps her head up.)