Chapter 1: First Impressions on Frozen Turf
The cold was a physical thing. It bit through Roz’s wool coat and seeped into the bones of her feet, which were going numb inside her impractical boots. Murrayfield’s training pitch stretched before her, a vast, frost-tipped carpet of green under a low, steel-wool sky. The air smelled of wet earth, cut grass, and the sharp, clean scent of winter. From the imposing stone bowl of the stadium itself came the ghostly echo of a shout, bouncing around empty seats.
“Just this way, Roz. Deep breath. They’re louder than they are scary, I promise.”
Jenni from the SRU’s PR team flashed a professional smile, her heels sinking slightly into the turf as she led the way. Roz’s grip on her leather portfolio case was tight enough to turn her knuckles white. Inside were her preliminary sketches, her statement of intent. It felt absurdly light, a child’s school project, not the key to the biggest commission of her life.
The team was a knot of concentrated energy in the centre of the pitch. Men built like brick walls were slamming into tackle bags, their breath pluming in aggressive bursts. The rhythmic thud of boots, the grunts of effort, the coach’s voice slicing through it all—it was a language Roz didn’t speak. She felt microscopic.
“Gather up!” the coach yelled, clapping his hands. “Meet our artist.”
The activity bled into a loose semi-circle. Thirty pairs of eyes, curious, assessing, bored, swung to her. Roz felt a flush start at her collarbones, a hot creep she knew would betray her. She hated that about herself, the way her skin advertised every flicker of discomfort.
“This is Roz MacDonald,” Jenni announced, voice bright. “She’ll be shadowing some sessions, doing studies for the official team portrait. Be nice.”
A few nods. Someone muttered, “Cool.” Most just looked impatient to get back to work.
Roz managed a small, tight smile. “Hello. I’m really just here to observe. I won’t get in the way.”
Her voice sounded thin, swallowed by the vast open air.
“Observe away, hen,” one of the larger players said with a grin. He had a round, friendly face and shoulders that strained his training jersey. “Just don’t draw my bad side.”
A ripple of laughter. It was gentle, mostly. Roz’s smile became a fraction more real.
She opened her portfolio, pulling out a large sketchpad and a charcoal pencil, just to have something to do with her hands. The focus began to dissipate, players turning back to their drills. As she lifted her gaze, trying to decide where to start, her eyes met a pair across the circle.
He was taller than most, dark hair damp with sweat at the temples. He wasn’t smiling. He was just watching her, his blue eyes intent, as if he were solving a problem. It wasn’t the usual lazy once-over she’d learned to deflect. This was different, a direct and unnerving focus. She looked away first, the flush on her cheeks renewing its campaign.
She heard the friendly-faced player, Gregor, joke to the man beside him, “Better get your good side out, Ally. Artist’s eye is on you.”
So his name was Ally. She risked another glance. He’d broken his stare, now listening to Gregor with a look of amused tolerance.
Then Gregor’s voice, lowered but not enough, carried on the brittle air. “Seriously, though. Look at the size of that pad. Bet she paints as slow as she blushes.”
The words landed with the dull thud of a dropped weight. A few snickers. The heat in Roz’s face became a roaring furnace. She fixed her eyes on a blade of grass near her boot, vision blurring. The familiar cocktail of shame and anger bubbled in her throat, useless. This was their world, not hers. She was the interloper, the delicate thing to be commented on.
The crunch of cleats on frozen ground was sudden, decisive. Ally Fraser took two sharp steps forward, closing the distance between himself and Gregor. The easy tolerance was gone, replaced by a hard, clean anger that seemed to change the air pressure around them.
“Shut it,” Ally said, his voice low but carrying perfectly. “Or I’ll paint the pitch with your face, Grezza. See how funny you find that.”
The snickers died instantly. The coach’s head whipped around. “Fraser! McTavish! You’re here to train, not audition for a pantomime. Focus, or you’ll be doing shuttle runs until you’re sick.”
Gregor held his hands up, his face a mask of bewildered innocence. “Whoa, easy, big man. It was a joke.”
“It was shite,” Ally replied, not taking his eyes off his teammate. The intensity was still there, a live wire. After a beat, he turned, not back to his place, but towards Roz.
He walked right up to her. She could smell the sweat and grass on him, see the fine lines of concentration around his eyes up close. He wasn’t just handsome; he was vividly, almost alarmingly present.
“Ignore him,” Ally said, his voice quieter now, for her alone. “His brain’s had one too many scrums. Your work’s brilliant. I saw the piece you did of the old seafront. The one in the rain.”
Roz could only stare. The anger that had been for her, the defense, and now this… a specific, knowing compliment. It short-circuited her shyness, leaving pure, stunned surprise.
“You… you know that piece?”
“My mum has a print. It’s her favourite.” He gave a slight, one-shouldered shrug, as if embarrassed by his own admission. “Sorry about… that.” He jerked his head towards Gregor.
“Okay!” the coach barked, clapping his hands again. “Enough drama. Fraser, get on the sled. Everyone else, line drills. Miss MacDonald, you’re welcome to set up over by the benches.”
The moment broke. Ally gave her one last, quick nod before jogging away, seamlessly merging back into the rhythm of the session.
Roz slowly exhaled, a breath she felt like she’d been holding for minutes. Her cheeks still burned, but the reason had transformed. It wasn’t humiliation now; it was a strange, effervescent shock.
She walked on unsteady legs towards the benches, her mind replaying the low, firm threat in Ally’s voice, the way he’d stepped forward without hesitation. She fumbled with her charcoal, her fingers clumsy with cold and adrenaline.
Setting her pad on her knees, she looked out at the field. Her eyes found him immediately. He was driving a heavy training sled backwards, the muscles in his legs and back corded with the strain, his breath streaming in a continuous cloud. The earlier thoughtful intensity was gone, replaced by pure, grinding physical effort.
Roz’s hand began to move across the paper almost of its own accord. Not a careful, detailed study. Just quick, sure lines—the angle of a jaw, the set of a shoulder, the powerful curve of a spine in motion. She captured the force, the intent, the surprising grace within the brute strength.
The cold faded from her awareness. The noise of training became a distant backdrop. There was only the scratch of charcoal on paper, and the compelling figure in the middle of the frosty pitch, who had seen her work, and who had, for a few fierce seconds, fought her battle for her. She didn’t know what it meant. But for the first time since arriving, she wasn’t thinking about her own fear. She was thinking about the translation of force onto paper, about the story in a tensed neck, and about the intriguing, complicated man who was currently covered in mud and looking nothing at all like a spokesperson.
The sketch was more feeling than form. It was all motion and strain, the charcoal smudged where she’d dragged the heel of her hand across the page, trying to capture the sweat, the cold, the effort. She’d drawn Ally as a series of forces, not just a man. It was raw, and it was good.
A sharp whistle split the air, signaling the end of the drill. The tight knot of players unraveled into panting, sprawled individuals. Roz quickly flipped the page over, a surge of proprietary shyness sealing the drawing away.
“Getting anything useful?”
Jenni appeared beside the bench, her PR smile still perfectly in place despite the cold.
“A lot,” Roz said, which was true. Just not in the way Jenni probably meant.
“Good. They’re a great bunch. Bit loud. But their hearts are in the right place.” Jenni’s eyes followed the players trudging towards the indoor facilities. “Most of them, anyway. Don’t let Grezza get to you. Wind-up merchant.”
Roz nodded, tucking her materials back into the portfolio. The memory of Ally’s intervention replayed, a warm counterpoint to the chill. “It’s fine. Really.”
“So,” Jenni said, clicking her pen. “Next steps. You’ll have a few more of these observational sessions. Then the real work starts. The Committee was very clear. They don’t want another stiff, formal line-up. No clichés. No heroic poses staring into the middle distance. They want the… the grit, I think was the word they used. The reality of it. The mud, the fatigue, the camaraderie. Something that shows the cost of the jersey, not just the glory.”
They had told her they wanted something different from her paintings and she was beginning to think about how to capture all of this without being clichéd. The problem was, everything felt like a cliché until you lived inside it. The mud was just mud until you saw the weight of it on a man’s shoulders. The camaraderie was just a word until you witnessed the silent, head-to-head lean of two exhausted players, communicating without speech.
“I understand,” Roz said, though the task felt more immense than the stadium looming above them.
“And,” Jenni added, her tone shifting to something breezier that didn’t match the news, “part of accessing that ‘grit’ is the wellbeing access. You’re on the list for the workshops. Starts next week. Wednesday evenings.”
Roz’s stomach dropped. She was also supposed to do workshops with them as part of the wellbeing programme. She was dreading it. The idea of standing in front of these men, trying to guide them through some therapeutic art exercise while they likely mocked her or, worse, stared blankly, was a special kind of torture. It was one thing to observe them as a ghost. It was another to have to perform.
“What exactly does that entail?” Roz asked, trying to keep her voice light.
“Oh, you know. Mindfulness through creativity. Team bonding. A chance for them to express themselves off the pitch. Your brief is to participate and, you know, subtly gather more material. Kill two birds.” Jenni gave a final, decisive click of her pen. “Right. I’ll email you the details. Great start today!”
Jenni walked away, her heels leaving precise little divots in the turf.
Roz sat for a moment longer, the noise of the city a dull rumble beyond the stadium walls. The players had vanished inside. The pitch was empty, a battered, beautiful battlefield. She looked down at her portfolio. The committee wanted the cost. She had just drawn a man paying it in real time. Maybe that was the way in. Not the grand moment, but the relentless, accumulating price.
She stood, her joints stiff with cold, and began to walk around the perimeter of the pitch, her boots silent on the damp track. She watched the ground staff already beginning their work, repairing the brutal scars left by the scrums. This was part of it, too. The constant cycle of destruction and repair.
“Hey.”
The voice came from a gate up ahead. Ally Fraser stood there, showered and changed into dark jeans and a simple grey jumper, a sports bag slung over his shoulder. He’d shaved, and the clean lines of his jaw were even more pronounced. He looked like the spokesperson again, but the intensity in his eyes was the same as the player on the pitch.
“Hi,” Roz said, stopping a few feet away.
“Heading out?”
“Yeah. Got a lot to process.”
He fell into step beside her, his stride effortlessly matching her shorter one. “Sorry again about Grezza. He’s an idiot, but he’s not malicious. Just… thick.”
“It’s okay. I’m used to it. The ‘fragile artist’ thing.” She surprised herself by saying it.
He glanced at her. “You didn’t seem fragile. You seemed… patient. Like you were waiting for him to finish so you could get back to the important stuff.”
His perception was a laser. It was unnerving. “Is that what I was doing?”
“I think so.” He paused as they reached the player’s car park. “The workshops. You’re doing them, right?”
The dread coiled tight in her chest. “Yes. Apparently.”
A faint smile touched his mouth. “Don’t look so thrilled. They’re not that bad. Last season we had a guy try to teach us pottery. I made a truly tragic ashtray. It’s basically just an hour where we’re not allowed to hit each other.”
His tone was light, teasing almost, and it loosened something in her. “So your wellbeing is preserved through enforced creativity?”
“Something like that. I’ll be there.” He said it like a promise, or maybe a warning. “Might need some expert advice. Stop me from producing another ashtray.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” she said, and found she meant it.
He nodded, digging his keys from his pocket. “Good. Drive safe, Roz MacDonald.”
He walked towards a sensible, dark SUV. Not the flash car she might have expected. She watched him go, the earlier sketch feeling alive in her portfolio. They wanted the cost. The grit. As Ally reversed the car and gave her a brief, casual wave, she wondered if the biggest cost was letting someone like her, with her charcoal and her quiet eyes, get close enough to see it. And she wondered, with a jolt that was equal parts fear and excitement, what it would cost her in return.
And she wondered, with a jolt that was equal parts fear and excitement, what it would cost her in return.
The heavy glass door of the stadium’s admin wing swung shut behind her, muffling the last echoes of the inner sanctum. The city’s noise rushed in to fill the void—tires on wet asphalt, the distant beep of a horn, a cyclist swearing as they cut through the chill. Roz pulled her coat tighter, the portfolio case a familiar weight against her leg. The adrenaline that had sharpened everything—Ally’s voice, the crunch of frost, the lines of her own drawing—began to seep away, leaving a hollow, trembling fatigue in its place.
She trudged towards the bus stop, thinking about her flatmates and what to cook for dinner, and how her father had never been so excited as when she told him about the commission. Phone me if you actually talk to them, he’d said, his voice crackling down the line from Kirkcaldy. He’d meant the players. To him, they were distant legends, titans in thistle blue. He’d recited stats. He’d asked if she’d met Stuart Hogg. She hadn’t the heart to tell him Hogg had retired years ago, that her father’s rugby world was frozen in a 2005 Grand Slam. His excitement was pure, uncomplicated by the reality of Gregor McTavish’s comments or the disconcerting intensity in Ally Fraser’s eyes. Her father saw a pinnacle. She felt like she was balancing on a crumbling ledge.
The bus shelter was a Perspex coffin smelling of damp concrete and regret. She leaned against it, watching the traffic lights cycle through their meaningless routine. A group of teenagers jostled each other on the opposite corner, their laughter explosive and transient.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. A text from Mo, one of her flatmates: Pasta disaster. My carbonara is cement. Bring wine?
Roz typed back: Red or white?
Whatever’s cheap, came the immediate reply, followed by, How was the lion’s den?
Loud. Cold. One lion was nice. One was a dick.
Standard. See you soon.
The bus arrived with a diesel sigh. She climbed on, flashed her pass, and took a seat near the back, resting the portfolio on her knees. Through the grimy window, Edinburgh passed in a blur of sandstone and neon. The city felt different now. It contained Murrayfield. It contained that pitch, and the complicated human machinery that lived on it.
She let her head fall back against the seat. The sketch she’d drawn of Ally felt like a secret, a live coal in the dark of her bag. It wasn’t a portrait for the commission. It was something else, something stolen and personal. She’d captured the strain, yes, but also the strange solitude she’d seen in him for a moment, even surrounded by his team. The cost. That’s what she’d drawn. The price of being that kind of asset.
Her stop came too quickly. The walk to the flat was a climb through cobbled streets slick with a fine, freezing mist. Her building was a tall, thin stone finger sandwiched between a charity shop and a kebab place. The hallway smelled of yesterday’s cooking and damp wool.
Inside the flat, warmth and chaos hit her simultaneously. Music pulsed from Mo’s room—bass-heavy hip-hop. The smell of burnt pancetta hung in the air. Daria, their other flatmate, was on the sofa, legs tucked under her, scowling at a spreadsheet on her laptop.
“The artist returns,” Daria said, not looking up. “Mo has declared culinary bankruptcy. I ordered pizza.”
“I brought wine,” Roz said, holding up the bottle of Chilean red she’d grabbed from the corner shop.
“You are a saint among women. How was it?”
Roz dumped her bag and coat, pouring herself a generous glass before answering. “Weird. Really weird. One of them made a comment. About me blushing.”
Daria finally looked up, her analyst’s eyes sharp. “Charming.”
“Another one told him to shut up. Threatened to paint the pitch with his face.”
Daria’s eyebrows lifted. “Dramatic. And which one are you going to fall in love with?”
“Piss off.”
“I’m just saying. It’s always the defensive ones. They have a saviour complex. It’s problematic but compelling.” Daria took a sip of the wine Roz handed her. “So, did you get anything good?”
Roz thought of the hidden sketch. “Maybe. It’s a start.”
Mo emerged from her room, her hair piled in a chaotic bun, wearing paint-splattered overalls. “I have failed us as a household. I embrace the pizza. Tell me everything. Were they monstrous?”
They ate pizza straight from the box, and Roz gave them the edited highlights. She made Gregor’s comment sound more foolish than cruel, and Ally’s defense more casual than it felt. She turned it into an anecdote, smoothing the jarring edges off until it was safe for consumption. It was a habit. Her real work happened in silence, in the private space of her studio upstairs. The feelings belonged there, not here at the sticky table.
Later, in the narrow room under the eaves she used as a studio, she finally opened the portfolio. The sketch of Ally was on top. In the calm, yellow light of her anglepoise lamp, it was better than she remembered. The lines were urgent, smeared in places where her hand had flown. It wasn’t careful. It was true.
She pinned it to the corkboard beside her desk, alongside a photo of the rainy seafront her father liked, and a postcard of a Francis Bacon triptych. The board was a map of her mind. The sketch of Ally looked like it belonged, a new and unsettled territory.
Her phone rang. Her father’s picture flashed on the screen—him holding a massive haddock on a pier, grinning.
“Hi, Dad.”
“Well?” His voice was eager, barely contained. “How did it go? Did you get in amongst it?”
“I did. I met them all. The coach introduced me.”
A sharp intake of breath. “And? What are they like? In the flesh?”
She looked at the sketch on the board. The powerful, solitary figure driving into the gloom. “They’re… human. Big. Loud. Focused.”
“But what about them? The personalities?”
One asked if I had a boyfriend. One implied I was incompetent. One defended me and then knew my work. “A real mix, Dad. It’ll take time to figure them out.”
“But you’ll see them again?”
“Every week. I’m even doing some… wellbeing workshops with them.”
“Workshops?” He sounded puzzled.
“Art stuff. To help them bond or decompress or something.”
He laughed, a warm, rolling sound. “Right. Well, you’ll be brilliant. Just remember, you’re the professional. You’re there to do a job. Don’t let them intimidate you.”
“I won’t.”
“Phone me,” he said, his tone softening, “if you actually talk to them. Properly, I mean. I want to hear what they’re really like.”
“I will, Dad. Love you.”
She hung up and stared at the board. You’re the professional. He was right. This wasn’t about Ally Fraser’s piercing eyes or his unexpected kindness. It was about the commission. The grit. The cost.
She turned to a fresh page in her sketchbook, picking up a finer pencil. She wouldn’t draw Ally again. She needed to understand the machine, not one intriguing component. She began to map out compositions in quick, clinical boxes. The scrum, a knot of forces. A lineout, bodies suspended in fragile geometry. A mud-smeared face in repose, staring at nothing.
But every few strokes, her gaze flicked back to the pinned sketch. The human cost. It kept pulling her back in. The workshop was on Wednesday. He’d said he’d be there. The professional in her knew it was another chance to observe. The rest of her, the part that burned with a quiet, defiant thrill, wondered what he’d say next, and what she might dare to draw when he did.