Chapter Text
Here’s how it all falls apart; Jamie was sitting alone in the treatment room at Richmond, and he couldn’t fucking breathe. It should’ve been a good moment. City had won against Richmond; Jamie had been instrumental in that. He had played brilliantly, been told as much by his team and his coach and all the people that mattered. Except for his fucking dad.
Except for his fucking dad, who came blustering into the locker room drunk and angry. Except for his fucking dad, who Jamie had to hide away in the nearest empty room just so no one would hear him shouting. Except for his fucking dad, who threw a fucking boot at his head for having the nerve to win the wrong way.
Jamie should have been celebrating with the rest of his team, and instead he was holding his hand to his chest while his heart pounded and his ears rang and he couldn’t fucking breathe. His dad had left, finished his screaming and wandered off the find somewhere to have a drink and drown the embarrassment of having Jamie for a son. Ted had seen, and walked away.
It hurt more than Jamie wanted to admit, but he should have seen it coming. He didn’t even blame Ted. Jamie had been shit to him, shit to everyone for months. He didn’t even know why. The voice of his dad whispering in his ear telling him not to be soft, the memories of knuckles ghosting against his jaw urging him to listen. Ted had tried so hard, to pull Jamie from that abyss he’d been drowning in, and what had Jamie done with the hand extended to him? Bitten at it like some kind of feral dog until it pulled away. He deserved it, in the end, to be given up on. This person that Jamie was now, it was someone he hated just as much as Ted, or Roy, or anyone else he’d met and fucked over for no reason would. It still fucking hurt.
Here’s how it all falls apart; Ted gives him a little green army man. Puts it in a paper envelope with a nice note about Jamie’s pass and has Beard of all people deliver it to him. Jamie makes a joke about it being a love letter, and Beard doesn’t say a word. Jamie had never thought much about Beard, but the man unsettled him. It felt nice, to know that he had done something right in Ted’s eyes, but not for long.
Because then, Jamie remembers that Ted had seen, and Ted had walked away. Because it didn’t fucking matter how good of a player Jamie was if he was still a shit person who wasn’t worth the effort. Which he was, and he knew it.
He knew he wasn’t a good person; knew he said stupid mean shit and did stupid mean things just for the sake of making everyone around him feel just as fucking awful as he did on the inside all the time. He used to be, once upon a time when it was just him and mummy and football was still just a game, they played together on the street using rubbish bins as goals.
He hadn’t called his mum once, since arriving at Richmond. She called him, and he would answer. They’d talk for a minute or two before the guilt would turn Jamie’s tongue to acid and he’d hang up before he could before he could say something stupid and mean to her too. He didn’t even visit once he went back to Manchester, too afraid to come face to face with the one person Jamie hadn’t managed to spit poison and vitriol at. Holding that little green army man in his hands, Jamie realised maybe that was just as bad.
Here’s how it all falls apart; preseason was starting, and Jamie felt like he was going to fucking die.
Every time he thought about putting on his kit, or stepping on the field, he felt like someone was holding a hand to his throat and squeezing. His dad kept texting him, wanting to know if he could have tickets to games that were months away, wanting to know if Jamie had a grand or two to spare so he could go on the piss, wanting to know if Jamie could bail him out of the drunk tank when he blew through that grand or two on whiskey shots or gambling and got into a bar fight. Jamie still hadn’t visited his mum. The little green army man sat on the windowsill in his kitchen, staring at Jamie all judgemental like every time he tried to eat his cereal in peace.
His agent tells him about some fucking reality show, a love island rip off that wanted Jamie as a contestant and Jamie finds himself thinking about it. Thinking about what would happen, if he just didn’t play this season. If he bought out his contract and fucked off to an island to have a bunch of sex on tv for money.
His dad would be furious, Jamie could already imagine it. It wouldn’t be a shoe thrown at his dead this time; it would be a fucking bottle. And what would Jamie get? probably nothing but a few embarrassing memories immortalised in digital forever. So, he told his agent no to the love island rip off, but the thought stuck in his mind like a fly caught in honey.
What if he didn’t play this season? what if he didn’t put on his kit or step onto the field? What if that invisible hand that wrapped it’s fingers tight around his throat and squeezed each time Jamie thought about crowds cheering his name or the wind whistling in his ears just let go, and Jamie could finally fucking breathe again?
He didn’t know when football stopped being just a game he played with his mummy, when it became some dreadful fucking prison that turned Jamie cruel and viscous just so he could survive. All he knew was that he wanted it to end.
Here’s how it all falls apart; Jamie quits Man City and doesn’t look back.
Jamie stopped going around his mummy’s house when he was 16, when his dad got piss drunk after a match and threatened to kill her. It had just been one of those days, where James was mad about anything and everything, and it had just been topped off by man city losing. He’d already been angry, when he’d gotten home from whatever pub he was at and found Jamie on his way out to see his mum for the weekend. Dad lived closer to the academy, dad cared more about Jamie’s future in football, dad did shit like threaten to beat him senseless when Jamie didn’t come around often enough, so it was just easier to stay with him. Jamie still visited, whenever he got the chance.
He was supposed to be meeting his mummy’s new boyfriend that weekend, some twat named John, and then they were going to make a day of going to the art market like they used to when Jamie was a wee thing. But then James had come home drunk and angry, taken Jamie’s bag of clothes right from his hands and thrown them right out the window of their third story walk up flat, gotten in his face about being an ungrateful bitch of a kid with an ungrateful whore of a mother. Jamie had gotten angry right back, because he hadn’t learnt his lesson yet. It ended with Jamie on the floor, his nose bloody and his dads hand fisted in his hair as whiskey slurred voice promised if Jamie walked out that fucking door, James would follow and then Jamie and Georgie would really be in some fucking trouble.
Jamie called his mum that night, tucked into the corner of his room in his dads flat with a cloth pressed to his nose, and he picked a fight. His hands shook, and his voice was thick, and he shouted down the reciver like he was reading from a fucking script calling her all sorts of nasty things he didn’t believe. He ended up making her cry and he ended up making himself sick when he hung up on her pleading with him to just tell her what was wrong and how she could fix it.
After that, Jamie stopped coming round her house on the weekends, and he stopped answering the phone when she called. It was for his own benefit as much as it was for hers. He didn’t want her to see him, and know that he was a broken down, rusted version of the person she raised him to be with shattered windows and serrated edges. Didn’t want to contend with the fact it was his own fault, that he wasn’t who she thought he was.
She tried, she tried so fucking hard and Jamie just kept ignoring her. Felt like he had too, with his dad following Jamie around like a fucking storm cloud, casting a torrential downpour of rain on anything good and nice in his life, leaving it to drown in the floods it wrought. It wasn’t fair, for his mummy to have to deal with James just because she’d had the unfortunate luck to get knocked up by him when she was 18 and didn’t know any better.
Jamie didn’t want to drag her back into the life she’d tried so hard to get away from, but it wasn’t like he could untether himself for the deadweight of his father, couldn’t outrun the storm or the floods. It was like he had weights on his ankles, keeping him locked into place while the water rose around him. His mummy though, all he had to do to keep her from drowning along with him was let go of her hand.
The day he quits man city, the first place he goes is home.
Home was just the same, right down to the empty plant pot beside the front door that had the spare key hidden under it. Once upon a time, there had been some flowers growing in there, but his mummy was a shit gardener, and it had just been a pot full of dirt for as long as he could remember. He didn’t use the spare key, even knowing it was there. He knocked, like a polite person who hadn’t been around in years would.
and didn’t that fucking sting? Jamie hadn’t set foot in the house he grew up in, in six years. Hadn’t seen his mummy’s face in at least three. Hadn’t heard her voice for more than a minute at a time in just as long. And it was all his own fucking fault. Just like Ted sending him back to man city, just like Keeley breaking up with him, just like Roy hating his fucking guts. It was just what Jamie did. He took good things and he casted them away before they had the chance to be caught up in the wreckage of the flood. It was always his own fucking fault that he was alone.
When the door opened, Jamie felt a bit like he’d been taken out at the knees.
His mummy was just the same too, right down to the smear of paint on her jeans and the golden necklace she wore everyday that Jamie got her for mothers day when he was eleven. He’d gone around mowing his neighbours lawns and babysitting their kids for weeks to save up enough money for it, and she hadn’t taken it off since she’d opened the box all those years ago.
At the very least, the wobbly knee feeling seemed to be mutual, because his mummy looked a bit like she was going to fall down when she realised who it was that was standing on her front porch in the middle of the night.
“Jamie?” she asked, whispered it so quietly he almost hadn’t heard her. She looked a bit like she was seeing a ghost, staring at Jamie in the dim light of the porch. Jamie didn’t blame her. He would probably feel the same, if he were in her place.
“Hi mummy,” He replied, his voice shaking. He didn’t know what else to say. That didn’t seem to matter to his mummy though, who upon realising that the person in front of her wasn’t truly a memory come to life to haunt her, didn’t waste a second before she was pulling Jamie out of the doorway and into a hug. Jamie was taller than her now, had been since he was 13 and hit his growth spurt, but she stood on her toes and wrapped her arms around his neck, enveloping him just the same as she used to when he was five and only reached her hip. Jamie buried his face in the crook of her neck just the same as he did then too.
“I missed you so fucking much,” Was the first thing she said, before pressing a kiss to the side of his face. She was squeezing him so tightly he felt like she was trying to squeeze the air right out of him, but he didn’t mind it. It felt nice. “what are you doing here Jam?”
“Missed you too.” He mumbled, voice quiet and raw, carefully avoiding her question. He wasn’t crying, not yet, but god he was close to it. “Can I stay with you for a while?”
“Of course, you can.” mummy said, pulling away to cup Jamie’s face in her hands. She didn’t call him out for dodging her question. Her eyes were teary, but determined as she searched Jamie’s face, looking for any signs of bumps or scrapes the same way she used to when he came back from afterschool care with mud on his knees and grass stains in his shirt. He felt like he was going to fall apart right there on the porch, but he thinks it would be okay. She would hold him together for as long as he needed. “You can stay with me whenever you like.”
There was a lump in his throat and an ache in his chest, and his mummy was standing in front of him, hugging him so tightly it almost hurt and for the first time in years Jamie felt like he could breathe again.
They don’t talk about it for a while. They sit in relative silence drinking tea and catching up with each other in a stilted, awkward kind of way because they both know it never should have gotten to the point where Jamie had ask his mummy what she was doing for work (”got a job in a nursing home doing the laundry a couple years ago” she said) and his mummy had to ask Jamie if he was seeing anyone (”not since my last girlfriend dumped me or being a twat a few months back” he told her). They should have just known those things about each other, and it felt like salt in the wound to be sitting at a table, having to muddle through small talk like they were strangers.
Eventually though, because his mummy wasn’t one to put up with bullshit for long, once their tea was finished and the mugs they held in their palms were just for show, she asked again “What’s going on Jam?”
Jamie tensed; ears hiked up to his shoulder as a million different thoughts run through his head at top speed. He didn’t know how to explain himself, didn’t think he wanted too either. Whatever image of himself his mum had her mind, the version of Jamie that she had built up in his absence would be gone, once he told her the truth, and maybe she wouldn’t want him anymore either then. But, Georgie had always been talented at getting Jamie to spill all his secrets with a pointed look, and the years hadn’t seemed to change that. It didn’t take long before he slumped forward, pulling the sleeves of his hoodie over his hands so he could twist the fabric between his fingers.
“It’s all shit mummy,” he said, no other words for it. It was all shit. Football was shit, his dad was shit, man city was shit, Jamie was shit. He’d managed to fuck up everything good in his life thanks to his dad pulling at Jamie’s strings like he was that fucking puppet bitch from the stories. The one that wanted to be a real boy, but couldn’t help lying and cheating and being a feral little monster until he’d ruined everything and gotten himself swallowed by a whale.
“Why’s it shit?” mummy asked, leaning over to take his hand in her own, carefully extracting it from where he had wrapped in the material on his sleeve. She’d got rings on, a bunch of shiny ones with rough gems in them that he could smooth his hands over. Mummy had a phase, when Jamie was just a baby, where she got very into wearing lots of jewellery and wearing lacy, flowy skirts that always felt nice for him to rub between his hands when he was sitting at her feet doing baby things while she was sat on the couch doing mum things. She’d since ditched the lace skirts, but she kept the jewellery habit up, and Jamie was grateful for something to do with his hands as he twisted the rings on her fingers.
Jamie didn’t know how to tell her that he feels like there’s some kind of rot inside him, hollowing him out from the inside. Like he’s a stupid fucking puppet boy, being tugged around and made to dance by his dads clumsy hands. Do this, say that, don’t be fucking soft ringing ever present in his head, roaring in his ears each time someone offered him kindness or friendship or even apathy. Instead, he said “I quit city this morning.”
If mummy was surprised, she didn’t say it. She blinks a bit, like she might have something in her eye making her lashes flutter, she looks at him with her eyebrows furrowed, she even mumbles a little “oh,” but she doesn’t say she’s surprised. In fact, she doesn’t say much of anything at all. Which is good, since he starts spilling his guts all over the place.
“I can’t do it anymore,” Jamie mumbled, twisting the hem of his mum’s shirt into his fist. She doesn’t tell him off for it. “feel like I’m fucking drowning, every time I think about playing. Feels like it’s killing me.”
“You don’t have to play,” his mummy said eventually, cupping his face and forcing him to look at her. She’s got her serious face on, the same face she wore when she gave him the talk and when she told him he should stop seeing his dad for the first time. He wishes he listened to her, but he’d been 13 and stupid. “you don’t have to play if it’s not making you happy Jamie.”
“I’m a shit person now, did you know?” Jamie asked, because he couldn’t keep it a secret anymore. Couldn’t sit here and accept his mum’s love and comfort until she knew exactly who she was giving it too. “I’m fucking cruel to people, all cause I wanna be the best. I never used to be like this, did I?”
“No Jam,” his mum murmured gently, stroking his cheek “you aren’t cruel, you never were.”
“I hate who I am,” Jamie said, less to his mum and just because it had to be said out loud, like a repentance or a confession. “I don’t want to be like him, but I am. I don’t know how to play, and not be like him. He’s in my fucking head, all the time mummy, I don’t know how to get him out.”
“you’re not like him.” his mummy promised, serious face still on, looking at him with blue watery eyes.
“I am,” Jamie insisted. His mummy shook her head, a tear dripping down her cheek and making her eyelashes clump together. Even if she didn’t believe it, Jamie knew it was true. He was going to do better though. For his mum, for Ted, for Keeley, for fucking Sam and Roy and all the other people who didn’t deserve to be made to feel small just so Jamie could feel big again. He didn’t want to be Jamie Fucking Tartt anymore, not if it meant when he looked in the mirror it was his dad’s reflection staring back at him.
When the news breaks, the world ends for about a week. He watches the sky sports segment back on youtube in the dark of his childhood bedroom hidden under the covers with his mums’ tablet, listens to everyone speculate about where he’s going to go next and what a loss it was for city and what the fuck he was thinking quitting right before the start of the season. Cartrick says some nasty shit, like he wasn’t the one praising Jamie as god’s gift to football a year ago back when he was still the gaffer at Richmond. They end the segment wishing him and his talent the best, telling the audience they eagerly await to see where he ends up and Jamie’s chest pounds at the thought of joining some other club and starting over there.
He reckons he could go crawling back to Richmond, reckons Ted would have him back if he begged and grovelled enough. Even when he knew Jamie didn’t deserve one, Ted would probably give him a second chance. If not because he thought Jamie could change, because they needed Jamie’s talent if they wanted to get back to the premier league.
That was how it went really. Jamie could be a prick, he could be the absolute worst version of himself again and again and again, his dads voice echoing with his own as he spat vile shit at the people around him. People would keep him around because he was useful. He could score goals, he could run fast, he could win them leagues. That was all Jamie was good for. It didn’t feel like enough anymore.
His mummy helped. She didn’t talk to him about football, or his dad, or what his plan was now that he’d blown up his own life. She was just there, kissing Jamie’s forehead on her way out like he were still a little kid and chiding him to go outside every once in a while, instead of just sitting on the couch wallowing. Gave him a list of chores to do, if he was going to be moping about her house for the foreseeable future. It was all the same shit he used to do for pocket money. Take the rubbish bins out, wash the dishes, help her with the groceries. It was better than just sitting around twiddling his thumbs like a twat.
He fixed things around the house like the broken tile in the laundry or the creaky door hinges in the upstairs, he tried his hand at cooking some of the recipes in his mums tattered cookbook that he remembered from childhood, he cleaned up the garden; mowing the lawn and pulling up all the weeds. His mum would come home from work, and they would eat together, watch that silly reality show that Jamie was asked to go one together and judge the contestants (because honestly what the fuck kind of a name was Danthony). It was nice, to just be.
He can’t hide from it forever of course. Jamie turns his phone back on three weeks after the news breaks, and if his mummy asked, he would say it was because he was getting really fucking bored of Netflix and soap operas. But he needed to know what the damage was, needed to know how often he should be looking over his shoulder each time he left the house. He could make an educated guess, but he wouldn’t know until he finally turned his phone back on and checked.
The first thing Jamie is greeted by is a wall of texts from his dad, a full voicemail and 99+ missed calls, and in an astounding show of impulse as a result, he chucked it directly in the sink full of soapy water he’d been standing beside.
Then he panics about it for a while, curled on the tiles on the kitchen floor with his back pressed against the cabinets. The texts were par the course for his dad, bullshit about how Jamie was a bitch and an embarrassment, running out on his team like a fucking coward. One was a particularly colourful threat about how once James got his hands on him, he’d give Jamie a real reason to be fucking hiding.
No one else had called him, or texted him. It didn’t surprise him, because Jamie was awful to the people around him and he was half convinced they celebrated with fucking champagne at the news they’d finally be rid of him. He would’ve, if he was in their place. An upside to burning all of his bridges, he supposed, was that there was no one standing on the other side of one calling his name.
Once he picked himself up off the floor, phone scarified to the gods of dirty dish water, he figured it was time to sort his shit out. He couldn’t hide at his mums’ house forever, lazing about like he was a fucking house cat. His mummy didn’t need her grown up son hanging about like some kind of loser and Jamie didn’t need James showing up on his mummy’s front porch looking for him.
He hadn’t been back to his place in weeks, probably needed to clean out his fridge and open a fucking window. He’d left in a rush, and had been too caught up in the illusion of comfort to go back and deal with the consequences of his actions.
His house in Manchester, much like his house in Richmond, was impersonal and expensive. He hired some pretentious twat to decorate them for him, and never cared enough to change anything about them. He was never home if he could help it. Home was big and empty and lonely. At Richmond, he stayed with Keeley more often than not, in Manchester he made a habit of falling into bed with anyone that would have him for the night. It felt like walking into a tomb, when he arrived. Not just because the door was busted open and his windows were smashed in.
He probably should have expected his dad to pay him a visit. James had probably blustered his way over to Jamie house from whatever pub he’d been rotting in the second the news broke, with angry fists and clumsy words. He’d probably been furious, when he knocked and Jamie didn’t answer. It probably got worse when he broke to door open and Jamie was nowhere to be seen.
He couldn’t find it within himself to care, that his dad had taken all of his cutlery and upended it from its drawer or that he’d smashed all of his plates against the hardwood floors. There were empty liquor bottles strewn around, some shattered against walls. Something sticky and wet was sloshed across the floors. The state-of-the-art security system Jamie had sat useless by the door, because he had forgotten to set it.
It felt a bit like walking through a dream, like it wasn’t really Jamie’s house or Jamie’s things that had been destroyed by his pissant dad in a fit of rage about Jamie’s desperate, clawing attempts to escape him. Like he was walking through the aftermath of someone else’s disaster. The only thing Jamie really had the presence of mind to think was thank god his dad had fucking left already.
Jamie leaves as quickly as he arrives. He’d hire a cleaning service and contact his real estate agent once he got himself a new phone with a new number that his dad didn’t have, then he’d get himself a new address that his dad didn’t know. Maybe then, Jamie could pretend for just a little longer that he was safe and things were going to be okay.
Jamie used to think his last name was Baker. Right up until he was five years old and they started teaching them how to spell their own names in school. He thought it was Baker like his mummy, and poor Mrs Robinson had the unfortunate luck to have to comfort an inconsolable Jamie when she’d explained that his last name was actually Tartt, because Jamie had thought that meant his mummy wasn’t actually his mummy and that he’d be taken away by the police. He didn’t know why he thought the police would come get him, but he was five, it seemed reasonable at the time.
They’d had to call his mum to pick him up early, he’d been that upset. Mummy had taken him out for ice cream and a nice walk in the park to calm him down, and she had explained that he had his daddy’s last name.
First, Jamie had been upset about it because he wanted to have the same name as his mummy, then excited about it because his dad was still a foreign concept that was new and fun. He had come full circle back to being upset about it in adulthood. It felt like a fucking curse, having Tartt tacked onto the end of his name.
“Why did you give me dads last name and not yours?” He asked his mummy, when they were in the kitchen together. He was sat on the counter, and his mummy was trying out a recipe for chocolate chip cookies that some mysterious friend Jamie had never met before gave her. Jamie claimed he was helping, but really, he was just stealing handfuls of chocolate chips from the bag whenever she wasn’t looking. She paused what she was doing, sticky dough in her hands as she considered what he said.
His mummy made this face, whenever Jamie asked questions she didn’t want to answer. Her brows would pinch and she’d chew the inside of her cheek. Jamie had gotten used to seeing that face whenever he mentioned his dad.
“I don’t know,” she said eventually, crease smoothing as she took a deep breath and continued rolling the ball of dough between her hands. Jamie was pretty sure she needed to add more flour. “I guess I thought we were going to be a family, that your dad would shape up once you actually arrived and we’d get married and things would be alright.”
“Nice thought,” Jamie mumbled. He’d thought the same, each time his dad would come around acting like some kind of changed man wanting his mum back or seats at Jamie’s next game.
“why do you ask?” mummy asked, setting the misshapen dough ball on her baking pan and looking at Jamie with a different familiar look. This was the look she’d get when she was trying to figure out what secret Jamie was keeping, like breaking their neighbours window or if he’d snuck out to go drinking with his mates when he was decidedly not old enough to be doing so.
“dunno,” Jamie mumbled, sneaking more chocolate chips into his mouth and earning a light smack to his fingers for it. “just been thinking about it.”
“I wish I hadn’t” She admitted, wiping her hands on a tea towel and taking Jamie’s in her own, squeezing it lightly. “I wish I’d never let him fucking near you.”
Jamie wished the same thing a lot growing up. He never told her that, because it seemed like a mean thing to say. Telling your mum that they have shit taste in men and should’ve raised their standards felt a bit uncalled for when that shit taste and poor standards were why you existed in the first place.
There were a lot of things James Tartt had ruined for Jamie over the course of his life. fairy floss, poker, Amsterdam, football and now even his fucking name. Jamie was honestly getting kind of sick of having his life ruined by the cunt who wasn’t even there half the time.
“I could get it changed. So it’s not the same as his anymore, be kind of like starting over.” Jamie suggested as casually as he could pretend to be, not looking at his mum as he did, keeping his attention on the chipped away nail polish that coated her hands. Part of him was afraid his mum would laugh at the thought, tell him that it was a stupid thing to do and that he was stuck with that bastard’s legacy and just had to live with it.
“I think that’s a great idea baby,” she said softly instead, petting his hair gently and pulling him into a tight hug.
Jamie doesn’t tell his mum about his dad breaking into his house. He didn’t see the point, it wasn’t her problem. All it would do was upset her, and probably piss her off enough to try hunting James Tartt down with the cricket bat she kept under her bed in the event someone tried to break in and Jamie didn’t want that. Instead, he tells her he’s looking for a new place because he wants a change.
New house to go with his new name, that he gets officially changed not long after his old house gets put on the market. It isn’t as difficult of a process as he assumed it would be, the lady at the place barely sparing him a glance beyond checking he had all the right paperwork and wasn’t trying to commit identity fraud of some kind.
His mummy takes him out to lunch to celebrate the day his new ID comes, insisting that she pays despite the fact Jamie’s got more money than he knows what to do with. They go into town, to an old fish and chip shop they used to frequent on birthdays and holidays when Jamie was still a tiny thing and nothing bad had happened yet.
They eat their greasy, salty fish and chips that Jamie would never in a million years have gotten to really enjoy had he still been playing, sat together outside in the sunshine with their knees bumping under the table and mummy asks him.
“So, what’s next for Jamie Baker?” She’s smilingly giddily when she says it, and Jamie thinks she might be more excited that they finally share a name than he is, which is saying a lot since Jamie had been bouncing all the balls of his feet the entire morning.
“Dunno,” Jamie mumbled, licking the salt of his fingers and getting a napkin pointedly tossed in his face in response. “didn’t really think this far ahead, ‘m not good for much, ‘cept for football.”
“that’s not true,” His mum refuted immediately. It was true though, because Jamie had never given any thought to anything but football before in his life. He’d been convinced since he first learnt what the sport was, that it was what he was made to do. he’d thrown everything he had into it, and it had ruined him. It was his mummy’s job to defend him though, so she wrinkled her nose and told him otherwise, “there’s lots of things you’d be good for, you just have to find something that’d be good for you too.”
“yeah, maybe.” Jamie agreed quietly. Honestly, Jamie didn’t need to work again, if he didn’t want too. He’d been smart with his money, once he’d finished his first round of teenaged idiocy with it, had it put away into investments and savings accounts and shit like that, but Jamie was not someone who was meant to be idle. He was shit at it, he used to drive his mum up the wall during school holidays when he had nothing to occupy his time with. She’d chase him out of the house and have him run laps around the garden just so he’d stop running laps of the living room.
After lunch, they wander through town for a bit arm in arm. He buys his mummy some flowers while she disappears into a clothes shop he couldn’t care less about, and she laughs all bright and sparkly when he hands them to her the same way she used to laugh when he’d bring her flowers he picked as a kid. Eventually they wander into a bookstore, his mummy searching for a cook book her mysterious friend she won’t tell Jamie anything about recommended her.
Jamie meanders through the aisles, leaving his mummy to her cook book hunt. Contrary to popular belief, Jamie had actually been a big reader as a kid. He was a slow one, but he’d loved it. When he’d been a wee little thing, and used to spend his afternoons in after school care waiting for his mummy to finish her shifts at the grocery store to come pick him up, he used to sit with Ms Kate, the uni student that volunteered at the school, and she would help him make his way through whatever book he could get his hands on at the school library. Ms Kate never minded that Jamie had to sound words out and follow along the page with his finger.
Jamie, honestly, didn’t even know when he’d stopped reading for fun. Maybe the first time a classmate had called him stupid, for stuttering over the paragraph he was supposed to be reading aloud to the class. Maybe the first time his dad had ripped a book from his hand and thrown it right in the rubbish because Jamie had missed a goal, and he didn’t have any time to be wasting reading fairy fucking nonsense if he didn’t want to be such a fucking embarrassment.
The bookstore is divided by genre, and Jamie finds himself tracing the spines of all the books he passes. He hears his mummy on the other side of the store, talking quietly with the workers trying to see if they’ve got the cook book in stock. Jamie makes his way through the young adult section, the spiritual section, the crime and thriller section, before settling in a corner proclaiming itself the home of the classics.
Sitting innocently on the shelf, tucked between the great Gatsby and 1984 is the same book that Ted had gifted Jamie all those months ago. At the time, Jamie hadn’t given the book a second thought before he’d trashed it. It was a dumb gift, some kind of fucking mind game of the gaffer’s part. All presumptuous and shit, because even if Jamie did like reading, The Beautiful and The Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald wasn’t the kind of book he tended towards. He hadn’t even given it a chance.
Thinking about it made his chest feel tight, like a cord cinching around the muscle as it beat against the wire. It was a dick move, just chucking it out while Ted was there to see. He’d always been taught to be grateful for gifts, even if you didn’t like them. Smile and say thank you, and if you really really hated it you could get rid of it once they were gone. But Jamie had also been taught to be weary of kindness without cost, and Jamie didn’t trust Ted. Maybe he should have given the book a chance. Maybe whatever lesson Ted was trying to teach him would’ve come in handy and he wouldn’t be standing in a bookstore staring at the spine of it like he was looking down the barrel of a gun, his life in ruins behind him.
He takes it off the shelf before he has a chance to change his mind, and goes to find his mummy.
Jamie makes an effort to avoid football. At first, it’s just to avoid any mention of him. The season starts and all anyone can talk about is what team he’s moving too, speculating about the silence on his socials, a rumour pops up that he fucking died, which they find out when their neighbour pops around to offer his mummy condolences for her loss.
The season continues, and people stop caring about him. It hurts as much as it helps. There’s more exciting news going on with the season underway, and once it becomes clear that Jamie is going to be a no show people move on. Or at least Jamie does.
Tries too anyway. He gets a new phone, makes new accounts for everything right down to his fucking email, doesn’t use a picture of himself as his icon in anything just in case, makes sure everything is as locked down as he can possibly get it, mutes any mention of man city or Jamie Tartt in all of his feeds. If people still cared about Jamie Tartt, Jamie Baker didn’t want to hear anything about it.
Nothing is ever that fucking easy though. Jamie was famous, and being famous meant people knew what he looked like, and liked to take fucking pictures of him or with him when he was just trying to exist in the grocery store in peace. He was an idiot, thinking he could just change his name and pretend everything was different now. He was Jamie fucking Tartt, and each reminder felt like a knife twisting between his ribs, scraping against the bone and cartilage and whatever the fuck else was in there.
It happened the most that first month, when Jamie’s sudden exit from the league was still the biggest news around. People would stop him when he was getting groceries for his mum, or at the nursery looking for something to plant in the garden bed he’d just weeded. It felt wrong, to have some starstruck kid or overly enthusiastic adult point at him and ask if he were really Jamie Tartt. Each time he said yes felt like a lie, the word chalky and dry on his tongue.
He didn’t feel like Jamie fucking Tartt anymore, didn’t fucking want too either. He didn’t want people to look at him, and think of that person. Talented, so fucking talented, but cruel and arrogant and so many other things that drove that knife deeper into his ribcage. He didn’t want people to stop him in grocery stores or garden shops with stars in their eyes. It felt like a trick. Like he was handing out those fucking lollies you’d always get warned about having razors stashed in them as a little kid.
The first time he ever says no, it’s to a little girl. She’s about 12, and wearing a man city shirt. They run into each other at the petrol station. Jamie is paying for the tank he’d just filled up, and she is running through the shop with all the unabashed chaos of a 12-year-old unsupervised.
“Are you Jamie Tartt?” she asked, nose scrunched and head tilted like maybe it’s just a trick of the light. Her hands were full of chocolate bars and fizzy drinks.
“Nah,” Jamie replied, and it didn’t feel like a lie the same way saying yes would have. “Just look a bit like him.”
“Oh,” she had mumbled, crestfallen for just a moment before she remembered she was loaded with sweets and didn’t actually give a shit about a random man at the petrol station. After that, Jamie pays for his petrol, and she pays for her sweets, and they go their separate ways.
Jamie, predictably, got bored of sitting at home on his own pretty fast. The house ran out of repairs that needed to be done, and the garden was looking better than it ever had before in Jamie’s life, he even finished the book that Ted had gotten him in record speed. He hated it, and he still couldn’t figure out what fucking lesson Ted was trying to teach him with it. He’d resolved to read it again and think harder about it.
There was something ironic, reading a book condemning idleness while he milled about doing nothing all day. Sure, he had little routines, he’d jog in the mornings, sometimes in the evenings too when he had too much restless energy built up. He’d clean the house and cook dinner for his mum, but mostly he did nothing, wiling away the hours flicking through channels on the telly or wandering aimlessly around the block because he was too afraid to leave the relative safety of his neighbourhood just in case his dad was prowling around looking to finish what he started trashing Jamie’s old house.
His mum had taken it upon herself to try and help Jamie figure out what exactly he wanted to do with the rest of his life by just listing various professions at him whenever she thought of a new one. She’d recommended he become a tour guide, a circus performer and a zoo keeper with various degrees of seriousness.
“carpenter? plumber? mechanic? electrician?” his mummy listed, hanging upside down off the coach reading off a pamphlet she’d picked up somewhere or another for trade schools. Jamie was beside her in the same position, tracing the patterns in the carpet with his finger. the tv was on, playing some home renovation show that he was half watching.
“Those sound boring,” Jamie replied with a wrinkled nose.
“you could be a firefighter, those are exciting,” his mum suggested, flicking through the pamphlet some more. She was kicking at the wall in time with Jamie’s own swaying feet.
“you really want me walking through fire as a career?” Jamie asked, raising a brow at his mum.
“hmm, no.” She decided after a moment, tossing the pamphlet away and clicking her tongue in thought. She and Jamie had been going back and forth for hours, even days, trying to find anything Jamie could occupy his time with that wasn’t hanging around his mum’s house. She shifted after a moment, sitting up properly and shaking her head out from the headrush. Jamie followed suit. “you know when you were little, you wanted to be a teacher?”
“really?” he asked. He couldn’t imagine it, because all of his memories were memories of football. Every school assignment demanding he plan out his future, every counsellor asking where he saw himself in 10 years’ time, the answer was always football as far back as Jamie could remember.
“Yeah, when you were a tiny little thing.” His mummy explained, smiling all nostalgic like she did whenever she told stories about Jamie as a baby. “You had this game you’d play, where you’d make me sit at the table with all of your toys and you’d pretend you were teaching us things. Mostly the alphabet, because that’s what you were learning.”
“Don’t think I’d be a good teacher,” Jamie mumbled, looking up at the ceiling as the thought raced through his mind. He was good with kids, he liked hanging out with them and talking to them. Kids seemed to like him too, or at the very least they liked Jamie Tartt the famous football star. But teaching them would be a lot different to signing a ball for ‘em. Jamie didn’t remember most of his teachers, but he knew he wasn’t anything like them. Teachers were all proper and stern like. Jamie couldn’t picture being anything like that.
“You can think about it,” his mummy replied sagely, smoothing a finger over Jamie’s scrunched up eyebrows and resting her palm on his cheek, warm and comforting. “you don’t have to have it all figured out Jam,”
That was good, Jamie thought, because he didn’t have a single fucking thing figured out.
Here’s how it all falls apart; Jamie runs into his dad in a fucking Tesco car park. Jamie hadn’t seen his dad in months. Not since before quitting city, and throwing his phone in a sink full of dirty dishes, and changing his name, and selling his house. That was by design of course. Not really Jamie’s, but fate or the universe or what the fuck have you. It was dominos falling down one by one, pushed over by a little green army man, knocking James Tartt out of Jamie’s life as best they could. Jamie wanted to be happy, or at least he wanted to not be a miserable bastard, and he couldn’t do that if his dad was around. It had been a breath of fresh fucking air, not having him crowing in Jamie’s ear constantly.
Then Jamie was choking all over again, standing there in his fucking pyjamas because it was almost midnight and he’d just wanted some shitty store-bought donuts and hadn’t bothered getting dressed before he left the house to go get them. Smog and fucking cigarette smoke were filling his lungs and making his brain go fuzzy. His dad wasn’t supposed to be in a random Tesco’s car park at midnight. He wasn’t supposed to show up when Jamie’s guard was finally lowered, but Jamie supposed that was just how things fucking went sometimes. Life was designed to fuck you.
He leaves Tesco, shitty store-bought donuts in hand, and someone starts shouting. Jamie can’t what he feels about it all, but once the shouting starts his brain seem to shut off. It always had. It was easier that way, to lose himself to numbness until it ran it’s course. The shouting starts, and it’s slurred. Jamie doesn’t turn around until he’s wrenched by the shoulder.
his dad was the same as ever. Red cheeked from liquor, beard scruffy and clothes dishevelled. He’s got a split lip, like he’d been in a fight recently. Probably had. Jamie’s dad liked fighting, he never really cared who it was as long as he was landing punches. Made him feel big and tough.
“there he is.” dad crows, chipper and saccharine. He’s glaring at Jamie, even as he’s grinning at him all wide and toothy. It’s a bit like a predator bearing it’s teeth dads grin is, “you’ve been avoiding me son.”
Jamie doesn’t say anything. Knows better. You just have to let dad have it out, when he’s in a mood. Mummy’d taught him that. Keep your head down and your mouth shut Jam, you’ll just make it worse. I don’t need you sticking up for me. That’s what she used to say. Jamie never got it, until suddenly he did. He kept his head down and his mouth shut.
“I always knew you were fucking soft in the head.” James hums, clicking his tongue in mocking sympathy as he staggers towards Jamie, two hard fingers coming to tap at Jamie’s forehead. “I mean quitting city? Everything we fucking worked for, and you threw it out like an ungrateful little bitch.”
Jamie just stands there. Knows he should probably move, defend himself or something, but he doesn’t. He’s far away, hiding in his head until the danger passes. Better to deal with the aftermath than the event.
He broke Jamie’s ribs once. Pushed him hard into a wall and pinned him there until it cracked. Jamie got mouthy, told him to take his fatherly advice and shove it up his arse. Jamie didn’t get mouthy again after that.
“Where’ve you been hiding then?” Dad sneers, pushing Jamie’s head again. “not that fancy fucking mansion of yours. Saw you put it up on the market after I paid you a visit.”
Jamie says something. When dad asks a question, you’re supposed to answer. He can’t hear what he says though, blood rushing too loud in his ears. Whatever he says makes dad laugh. Jamie feels far away from his own body. That’s probably a good thing, given the circumstances. Dad laughs, and then he shoves Jamie back hard enough he drops his shitty store-bought donuts.
“Fucking useless.” Dad hisses “just like that precious mummy of yours. This has got that bitches name all over it. Is that where you’ve been then? Clinging to mummy’s fucking skirt like a snivelling little bastard. She tell you to quit then? Soft bitch, you are, listening to her like she knows a fucking thing. I raised you fucking better, lad.”
Jamie snaps back into his own body quick all of a sudden, dads hand on his shoulder shaking him about like he’s a fucking rag doll, spitting vitriol about Jamie’s mummy.
“Don’t fucking talk about her like that.” Jamie snaps, shoving his dad right back for once in his life. James stumbles back with the force of it, unprepared and unsteady on his feet. Jamie is expecting the punch. He sees his dads hand curl into a fist, and his lip pull back into a snarl. James’ ring catches on Jamie’s lip, and he tastes metal in his mouth. A split lip of his own, to match his dads.
“You need to learn some fucking respect son.” James growls. Jamie should have kept his head down, and his fucking mouth shut.
Here’s how it all falls apart; Jamie goes home with a broken wrist and a split lip. His mummy cries, and drives him right to A&E while swearing up and down she’ll kill James for real this fucking time. They’re in the hospital until well past sunrise, Jamie getting poked and prodded, telling the doctors and the nurses he got mugged when they ask their well-meaning, concerned questions. Jamie manages to talk his mummy down from homicide by the time he’s got a cast on, but the bubble has burst.
There’s no going back to pretending everything was fine, hiding away at his mummy’s house like nothing bad could get him. Mummy knew it too, when she and Jamie sat around the kitchen table together, their knees knocking together and cups of tea sitting untouched in front of them.
“You can’t stay here Jam,” Mummy sighs, stirring her tea. She’d made them mostly so she’d have something to do with her hands. Jamie’s had long since gone cold. “it’s not safe, not while he’s just fucking- out and about.”
“where else am I supposed to go mummy?” Jamie shrugs, tired. So fucking tired. He feels like he’s been running in place for months, waiting for the worst to come.
“Anywhere else.” Mummy says “anywhere you’ll be safe.”
and that’s that really. Jamie can’t stay in Manchester any more than he could keep playing football if he really wanted to be fucking free. He still had his house in Richmond. He’d never sold it, he didn’t know why. He liked to think he just never got around to it, but there was probably something else under the surface of that Jamie didn’t want to think about. So, Jamie packs his bags back up, and takes a train to Richmond.
Richmond feels like a fucking ghost town, except instead of Jamie being the one getting haunted, he was the one doing the haunting. It makes him paranoid, that he’ll run into someone from the team when he’s just trying to do his groceries in peace. He makes a deliberate effort to avoid all the places he used to go, and all the places he remembers the team frequenting. He even starts looking for a new house, something smaller, that no one that used to know him would know exists. Partly because Jamie’s only got so much money these days, and partly because he doesn’t want to be found. But football is inescapable sometimes, not matter how much of an effort Jamie makes to avoid it like the bloody plague.
He goes to a pub, after another afternoon of looking at one bedroom town houses with tiny fenced in backyards, and there’s a match playing on the tv. Jamie tries not to pay attention to it, and just focus on his fish and chips, but it’s hard not to tune in when everybody is cheering and jeering. It was odd, seeing everybody again.
Roy was a coach now apparently, standing on the sidelines with Ted and Beard and even fucking Nate, who was apparently also a coach now. Dani was playing in Jamie’s old position, O’Brien had been replaced with Zoreaux in the goal, there was a new guy on the starting line-up Jamie didn’t know named Jan Maas.
Richmond was winning, 1-nil, and they were playing wonderfully. From what Jamie could gather from the commentary, they had a decent shot of being promoted again. It twisted something in his gut, to think about football again, made his head swim with tactics and shame and plays and anger.
If he thought too much about Roy, standing on the sidelines instead of playing on the field all because he tried to fucking tackle Jamie and fucked his knee in the process, it made something heavy settle in his chest and his airways feel tight.
If he thought too much about Ted, about being told he was one in eleven, about being left alone in the treatment room, about the army man and the book and yelling in his face because he was being a fuckhead and deserved it even if Ted never yelled or got angry at any one else, it made him feel pathetic. Thinking too much about any of his time at Richmond made him feel pathetic really, so Jamie tried his best to block it from his mind. It was hard, when they were all racing across his tv screen like it was exactly where they belonged. With him on one side of it, and them on the other.
He wondered what they’d think of him now. Jamie spent so long acting like he was better than all of them, like he was god’s gift to football and they were beneath him, and now here he was back with the masses watching them on free to air cable, separated from it all by a screen. Jamie didn’t think it was karma if it was a self-imposed exile, but he’s sure they’d have a laugh about it anyway. It was a little bit funny, in a sad, uncomfortable sort of way. It didn’t upset him, as much as he thought it would.
Here’s how it all comes together; Jamie accidentally joins a campus tour. He doesn’t mean too, honestly, he was just going on a fucking walk through what he thought was a park, because he’d been moping in his house all day trying to decide what to keep and what to sell before he moved to his new townhouse in a much cheaper part of town and needed some fresh air, but then he’d gotten all turned around and couldn’t figure out for the life of him how to get back out of the park. Then he’d seen the tour guide, and figured they wouldn’t mind having a tag-along at least until he found an exit.
He wasn’t planning on actually paying attention, but when in Rome right? so he’d listened as the tour guide prattled on about the different programs and opportunities and pathways to study, all the benefits of the campus, and he thinks about his mummy telling him he wanted to be a teacher, once upon a time before football had ever been his dream.
Jamie had never considered anything but football, once he’d gone to school proper. He’d always been so insistent, never gave his teachers anything else to work with. He’d had one, a nice lady named Mrs Leighton who tried to get Jamie to consider university. She hadn’t even wanted him to think about it for real, just tried to get him to consider it. Jamie wasn’t dumb. He never had been. He’d gotten good marks in school, didn’t even have too many discipline issues on record. He’d actually liked school a fair bit too. Jamie loved to learn, he absorbed facts like a sponge. She wanted him to know he had options, if he ever changed his mind about football or washed out of the academy. Told him he was a bright young man, and if he ever wanted too, he’d be a shoe in for it, especially on a sports scholarship.
Felt a bit like dominos again, didn’t it? wandering around a campus he’d stumbled onto in Richmond. Jamie had already lived out one dream, but maybe the tiny toddler Jamie that his mummy remembered trying to teach his stuffed animals how to spell had the better idea.
Here’s how it all comes together; Jamie applies for a teaching degree at that same university in the next semester, and he gets in.