"There is more. The money I had on day one is now half the money I had on day one. The brewery. The rates. The insurance. A kit supplier I did not by the Friday know existed. I cannot pay you what I had planned to pay you when I shook your hands in the Premier Inn. Not yet. By Christmas, all of it. Plus the bonuses. Plus a written-down clause on next summer’s contracts. Between now and Christmas, the best I have for you is sixty a week, plus twenty a match-day, plus expenses."

I took a breath.

"If you walk today, no one in this room thinks less of you. You signed forms a fortnight ago for the man you had hoped I was going to be, and I am not yet that man, and I am asking you to wait while I become him. If that is too much to ask, you have my number. Ring me by Friday lunchtime, I will write you a reference in the morning, I will buy you a pint on the way out. There will be no hard feelings, on either side, ever. But I need to know by Friday."

The room did not move.

I had practised, in front of the bathroom mirror at half past four, for thirty different reactions. I had practised for Baz tipping back on his chair and saying Sam, mate, you know I love you, but I am thirty-five.

I had practised for Mooney looking at his trainers and not looking up again. I had practised for the young keeper next to Sid, half-buried in Sid’s shadow on the back bench, waiting to take the temperature off whichever of the lads spoke first. I had not, in any of the thirty, practised for silence.

Lenny Marsh broke it.

He did not stand up. He did not need to. The scaffolder’s hand went palm-down flat on the wood, and he said, in the voice of a man stating a fact about the weather:

"Sixty a week, match-day twenty, Christmas. We’re in, gaffer."

"Lenny."

"All of us. In."

Sid put his cap back on.

The gap-toothed grin came back across his face slow, the way the dawn comes back across a pitch in February, and he reached across and put a big paw flat next to Lenny’s on the wood. Stan, at the back, gave the smallest of nods.

Mooney lifted his head off the bench and held my eye, and the small pilot light I had been waiting to see in there since the first afternoon I had stood on the touchline of the rec and watched him drag a half-chance a yard wide and swear up at the sky was lit.

The young keeper next to Sid did the same nod a second after Sid, sharper, copying. Bailey Quinn, on a folded-up gym mat against the wall because there had been no chair left when he came in, all knees and elbows in a training top three sizes too big, drew his knees up under his chin and grinned at his own trainers like a boy at the school disco who has just been let in.

Baz Tucker tipped back on his chair.

"Sam."

"Baz."

"You realise, mate, that I had a chair in this room when I came in, and now Bailey is on a gym mat."

"...Yes, Baz."

"We are going to need to do something about the chairs, gaffer, if we are going to be doing more of these."

"Yes, Baz."

"All right then."

He tipped forward. The chair came back to the floor on four legs. Thump. That, in the end, was the chairs sorted, and that was Baz Tucker, who was, in another life, going to moan his way to four hundred appearances at Tilbrook Town Football Club, and who had today, by the look on his face, set himself up to moan his way to four hundred appearances at it in this life an’ all.

Lenny leaned forward over his palm on the wood.

"Gaffer."

"Lenny."

"The press."

"Tomorrow afternoon on the wire. Wednesday morning in every paper, on every kit-board on the Sky News ticker. Your missus reads it. Your kid comes home from school and asks about it. Your old man rings at half-five on the dot to tell you about it as though you didn’t already know."

A small ripple went round the table. Mooney’s jaw shifted. Baz did not, at this moment, complain about anything.

"You tell them what I just told you. We’re in. The number is thirteen wins by April. Twelve if we get lucky. You hold that number in your head and you do not, on any account, let anybody convince you it is bigger than that. Thirteen. Wins. By April. That’s the entire conversation. Anyone asks you anything more complicated than that, you point them at this office and you walk on by."

Lenny nodded once.

"Thirteen."

"Thirteen, Lenny."

"Right you are, gaffer."

I shook every hand on the way out at twenty past six. Lenny was last. He held mine for half a second longer than the rest, took a small in-breath through his nose, said gaffer once more in the same dry voice he had used at the Premier Inn, and went off into the long blue dusk to walk home along Marsh Road with his hands in his pockets.

I walked home myself at ten past seven with the FA letter folded in my inside pocket, streetlights coming on one at a time, tk... tk... tk..., the way they had every July evening since I was eight, and the wonky T at the gable end of the Main Stand leaning white against the dark sky the way it had been leaning since before my dad had been thought of.

Past Erol’s hatch where the smell of the chip oil was just starting to come out into the evening. He waved through the steam. I waved back. He clocked the face on me and did not ask. He was getting an instinct about me.

I let myself into the flat.

I sat at the kitchen table without taking my coat off.

I took the FA letter out of my inside pocket. I unfolded it. I laid it flat on the Formica, blue ink up, FA crest at the top, deduction of ten points in the third paragraph in a font no bigger than the words around it.

I took the Sportskit till receipt off the fridge from under the Eiffel Tower magnet.

I picked up the biro.

I clicked the lid off with my teeth and spat the lid onto the Formica, tk.

I wrote three words across the top of the receipt in capitals, the same blocky biro capitals my old man had used in the margin of his scrapbook in 1991, PROUD AS OWT, on the page where he had stuck the ticket stub for my one and only youth-team goal.

WATCH THE SPACE.

I underlined them. I turned the receipt over. I wrote, on the back side, in the same blocky capitals, a single number.

13.

I drew a line down the receipt under the number. I started the list.

[SYSTEM] Watch the space, Samuel.

"Watching it."

Right then. Let’s go to work.