Chapter 6: Under the stadium lights
The hospital smell had lingered in her clothes for days, a sterile ghost in her studio. But now, a week later, the air rushing past the train window smelled of damp earth and distant sea. Roz sat opposite Ally, his long legs angled awkwardly into the aisle, the bulky black brace on his knee a stark, modern contraption against the worn cloth seats. Crutches lay across the empty seat beside him.
“You didn’t have to do this,” he said again, for the third time since Edinburgh Waverley. He was watching the grey-green fields blur past. “It’s a physio appointment. Incredibly boring. They’re just going to bend my leg and make me cry in front of a very serious woman named Fiona.”
“And miss that?” Roz said, sipping her too-hot tea from a paper cup. “Besides, you’re a terrible patient. You need a minder.”
He’d been home for four days. She’d visited twice, finding him propped on his sofa in a cloud of frustration, surrounded by sports biographies he wasn’t reading. The sharp, calculating pain from the training ground had settled into a dull, constant throb of irritation. His phone, once buzzing constantly with team banter and media requests, had gone quiet. The silence was louder than any crowd.
“I’m fine,” he muttered, the phrase becoming his reflexive, meaningless tic.
“You’re not,” she said simply. “But you will be.”
He glanced at her then, a flicker of the old wryness in his eyes. “When did you get so annoyingly sure of things?”
“When you drew in my sketchbook.” She held his gaze. “It was a good drawing. You got the perspective all wrong, but the intention was right.”
A faint smile touched his lips. He looked back out the window. “The stadium’s going to feel weird. Like visiting a school you’ve been expelled from.”
The train clattered over points, the rhythmic sound filling the space. Roz watched him. He’d lost the vibrant, contained energy that seemed to hum in his muscles. Now he was still in a different way, a coiled tension of inactivity. She saw the way his hand absently massaged his thigh above the brace, the subconscious dialogue with a body that had betrayed him.
“What did the surgeon say again? The exact timeline?”
“Graft from my hamstring. Screws. Six weeks on crutches, then the real fun begins. Building the muscle back from nothing. Learning to trust it.” He recited it flatly, a medical mantra. “Nine to twelve months before I’m back on a pitch. If. The big if.” He knocked his knuckles against the plastic of the brace. “This thing is my new best friend. And my prison warden.”
“It’s a line,” Roz said.
“What?”
“On the map. A new, unwanted border. But it’s just a line. You cross back over it. It just takes time.”
He was quiet for a long moment. “You and your maps,” he finally said, but his tone was softer.
They lapsed into silence. Roz pulled out her current sketchbook—a new one, dedicated to this. She’d started a series she called ‘Convalescence’. Not of him, but of the spaces around him: the empty, expectant sofa; the discarded ice pack melting into a towel; the precise arrangement of pills on a kitchen counter. She’d shown him a few. He’d called them ‘depressing as hell,’ but he’d looked at them for a long time.
“Can I?” he asked, nodding at the book.
She handed it over. He flipped through pages filled with the quiet drama of recovery. A single, sunlit floorboard where he’d practiced a cautious step. The grimace of concentration she’d captured from a distance as he navigated the single step into his garden. It was the ‘gossip’ of injury, the unseen truth.
“You make my boredom look profound,” he said, closing it gently.
“It is profound. It’s a fight where the enemy is stillness.”
The train began to slow, the outskirts of the city giving way to the looming, familiar bulk of the Ghillie’s Dhu. It looked different from this approach, not a temple of excitement, but a fortress of routine. Ally’s jaw tightened as he gathered his crutches, the movement practiced but still alien. He hated them. She could see the humiliation in the set of his shoulders.
The station was a short, awkward taxi ride from the stadium. He insisted on paying, fumbling with his wallet while balancing on one leg. Roz didn’t help. She understood now that letting him struggle was a kind of respect.
The players’ entrance was at the back, a nondescript door next to the giant bins. Ally buzzed, gave his name. The click of the lock was loud. The corridor inside was a shock of warmth and familiar smell: deep heat, laundry detergent, concrete. The sounds of the stadium were muffled here, a distant, hollow murmur.
“Fraser! In here, mate.” A head popped out of a doorway. It was Grezza. His usual brashness was tempered, replaced by a careful, almost solemn heartiness. “How’s the peg leg?”
“Still attached,” Ally said, maneuvering his crutches forward. “Just about.”
Grezza’s eyes flicked to Roz, standing a step behind. He gave a short, respectful nod. “Artist.” It wasn’t a tease. It was an acknowledgment. The dynamic had shifted in the crucible of the injury.
The physio room was a bright, clinical space lined with machines that looked like instruments of torture. Fiona, the serious woman, was indeed serious. She had a kind smile, but eyes that missed nothing. “Right, Ally. Let’s have a look at what we’re working with. You can wait outside, love,” she said to Roz.
“She stays,” Ally said, the words leaving no room for argument. He didn’t look at Roz. He was already focused on the plinth, lowering himself onto it with a grunt.
Fiona shrugged, unbothered. “Suit yourself.”
What followed was an intimate, brutal ballet. Fiona’s hands were strong and clinical as she removed the brace. The knee beneath was swollen, discoloured, a landscape of purple and yellow. The scar from the surgery was a neat, angry line of stitches. Roz didn’t look away. She watched Ally’s face. He stared at a point on the ceiling, his breathing controlled as Fiona began to manipulate the joint, measuring the angle of bend.
“Good, good,” Fiona murmured. “Pain?”
“Yeah.”
“On a scale of one to ten?”
“A solid, cheerful seven.”
“Push against my hand. Gently.”
Roz saw the tremor in his thigh, the sheer neurological effort of firing a muscle that had been severed and reattached. Sweat beaded on his temple. It was a Herculean effort to achieve the movement of a child. The vulnerability was absolute. This was the star player, the warrior, reduced to the trembling basics of movement. It was more visceral than any tackle.
“Enough,” Fiona said finally, helping him re-secure the brace. “You’re ahead of schedule, actually. The graft’s strong. Your job now is patience. And the exercises. No skipping.”
Ally nodded, breathing heavily, his face pale. Roz handed him his water bottle without a word. His fingers brushed hers, cold and damp.
As they were leaving, a roar echoed from deep within the stadium—a crowd reaction from a tour group, or maybe the reserves training on the main pitch. Ally froze mid-swing of his crutch, his head turning instinctively towards the sound. For a split second, his whole body yearned towards it, a plant straining for light. Then he closed down, his expression going flat.
“Come on,” he said, his voice rough. “Let’s go.”
They didn’t take a taxi back to the station. “Walk with me,” he said. “It’s slow. But I need the air.”
They moved through the backstreets, the rhythm of his crutches a slow, metallic tap-tap against the cobbles. The weight of the stadium, of the appointment, began to lift incrementally with each awkward, hard-won step.
“It’s not as bad as I feared,” he said abruptly, as they crossed a small bridge over a canal.
“The knee?”
“All of it. Going back there. Being in that room. Having you see… that.” He kept his eyes on the path ahead. “I thought it would feel like a funeral. But it just felt like a different kind of work.”
“It is work,” she said. “The hardest you’ll ever do.”
He stopped, leaning on his crutches, looking at the murky green water below. “The worst part isn’t the pain. It’s the noise in my head. The ‘what ifs.’ They’re louder than any coach.”
Roz leaned on the railing beside him. “So give them a shape.”
“What?”
“The ‘what ifs.’ Draw them. Write them down. Give them a form outside your head. Then you can look at them. And maybe they’ll seem smaller.”
He let out a long, slow breath. “You have an answer for everything, don’t you?”
“No,” she said. “Just for the things I’m afraid of, too.”
He looked at her then, really looked, his blue eyes clear in the overcast light. “The dinner is next Friday. I’ll be on these bloody sticks. It’ll be a circus. You can still back out. No one would blame you.”
“I’m not backing out,” she said. “I bought a dress. It’s very… un-depressing.”
A genuine laugh escaped him, startling them both. It was the first real one she’d heard since the injury. “Okay,” he said, shaking his head. “Okay. Just… prepare yourself. There will be photos. And people will talk.”
“Let them,” Roz said, pushing off from the railing. “It’s just gossip. And we know what to do with that.”
The walk to the station was slow, filled with an easier silence. The tap-tap of his crutches was no longer just a sound of limitation; it was a rhythm of progress, however small. He bought their return tickets, managing his wallet and his balance with less fumbling this time.
On the train, as the city receded, he reached across the small table and took her hand. His palm was calloused, his grip firm. He didn’t say anything. He just held it, his thumb moving slowly over her knuckles, a silent, steady pulse against her skin. She turned her hand over, laced her fingers with his, and watched the world stream by the window, a blur of colour and motion.
The map was being redrawn in real-time, not with bold, confident strokes, but with these small, tentative, vital connections. The line of the injury was there, stark and undeniable. But other lines were being drawn now, too, fainter but just as strong, weaving a different kind of support, a new and unexpected geography.
The train swayed, a gentle rhythmic click against the tracks that matched the steady pressure of his thumb on her skin. She didn’t pull away. The contact was a quiet, shocking warmth in the cool compartment. He stared at their joined hands as if it were a foreign object, a complex piece of equipment he wasn’t sure he was operating correctly.
“This is nice,” he said finally, the words gruff.
“Yeah,” she said. It was all she could manage.
He let go only to gather his crutches as they pulled into Waverley, the spell broken by the jarring halt and screeching brakes. The platform was a chaos of evening commuters, a rushing current they had to navigate against. He moved with a new, grim determination, his body a battering ram of polite “sorry”s and swinging aluminum. Roz followed in his wake, a keeper of his space.
Outside, the Edinburgh evening was crisp, a halogen-lit dusk. “I’m starving,” he announced. “And I’m sick of my own cooking. There’s a place near me. If you’re not… you know. Done with the cripple escort duty.”
“I’m on duty until you’re horizontal again,” she said, falling into step beside him. “Lead on.”
The restaurant was a small Italian place tucked down a Stockbridge side street, all warm light and checkered cloths. The owner, a stout man named Luigi, knew Ally. His smile faltered only for a second at the sight of the crutches before booming, “Fraser! You break the other team, not yourself, yes?” He seated them in a quiet corner, away from the bustling bar.
Ally maneuvered into the chair with a practiced heave, propping the crutches against the stone wall. He let out a long breath, the day’s tension finally leaving his shoulders. A candle flickered between them, painting his face in shifting amber and shadow.
“I feel like I’ve played eighty minutes,” he admitted, picking up the menu.
“You have. A different kind of game.”
Luigi brought a carafe of house red without asking. Ally poured them both a large glass. “To Fiona,” he said, clinking Roz’s glass. “And her sadistic, wonderful hands.”
The wine was cheap and smooth. It unspooled something in Roz, a nervous coil that had been tight since the stadium. She watched him over the rim of her glass. “What does it actually feel like? The knee.”
He chewed the inside of his cheek, considering. “Like it’s not mine. Like it’s a… a poorly made prosthetic someone bolted on while I was asleep. The connection is fuzzy. Wrong.” He took a drink. “The physio is about forcing the conversation between my brain and the joint. It’s a shouting match.”
“And the pain?”
“Constant. But it’s changed. It’s less of a ‘something is torn’ scream and more of a ‘something is being rebuilt’ ache. Which is marginally more philosophical.”
Their food arrived, steaming plates of pasta. For a while, they just ate. The simple, garlic-heavy taste was an anchor. Roz realized how little she’d eaten that day, lost in her own studio thoughts.
“Your series,” he said, twirling spaghetti. “The ‘Convalescence’ one. Will you show it? Ever?”
She shrugged, pushing olives around her plate. “Maybe. It feels intrusive. It’s your landscape, not mine.”
“But you’re in it now,” he said simply. “So it’s ours.”
The statement hung there, undeniable. She felt a flush creep up her neck. He just took another bite, as if he’d commented on the weather.
“The team dinner,” he said, changing the subject. “It’s black tie. At the Balmoral. They’re giving me some ‘Spirit of the Lion’ award.” He made a vague, dismissive gesture with his fork. “A pity prize for getting wrecked.”
“It’s not pity,” she said.
“It is, a bit. But I have to go. Smile. Be inspiring.” He put his fork down. “I don’t feel inspiring. I feel pissed off and scared.”
The raw honesty was a physical thing in the cozy space. Roz reached across the table, her fingers covering his. “Then don’t be inspiring. Just be there. On your sticks. Let them see the work.”
He turned his hand over, gripping hers. His palm was damp. “Will you be my date? Not my minder. My date.”
She’d already said yes days ago, but this was a different question. This was a line, redrawn. “Yes.”
He nodded, a quick, tight movement. “Good. Okay.” He released her hand, the moment passing. “We should get the bill. I need to ice this thing before it balloons.”
The walk to his flat was short. The night had turned cold, a sharp wind cutting up from the Water of Leith. He fumbled with his keys at the door of a handsome Georgian conversion. Inside, it was neat, modern, surprisingly minimalist. A huge framed photograph of the Ghillie’s Dhu at sunrise dominated one wall. It felt more like a show home than a lived-in space.
“Make yourself useful,” he said, collapsing onto the sofa with a groan. “Freezer. Peas. Please.”
She found the bag of frozen peas, wrapped it in a tea towel. He took it, positioned it on his knee with a hiss. The domesticity of the act was staggering. She stood there, unsure.
“Sit,” he said, nodding to the armchair opposite. “You don’t have to bolt.”
She sat. The silence here was different, charged with the day’s accumulated intimacy. The only light came from a streetlamp outside, casting long, angular shadows.
“Can I see it?” she asked quietly.
“The leg? You already did.”
“No. The drawing. The one you did in my book.”
He was still for a long moment. Then he pointed a crutch towards a drawer in a sleek sideboard. “In there. Don’t… don’t judge it too hard.”
She retrieved the sketchbook. It felt heavy. She found the page, the one with his rough, urgent lines over her initial sketch of the stadium. She’d only glimpsed it that day in the hospital cafe. Now, in the half-light, she really looked.
He hadn’t just defaced it. He’d transformed it. Over her precise architecture, he’d drawn figures—not the players as giants, but as stick-men, fragile and small, being swallowed by the vastness of the stands. And in the centre, a single figure, detailed, was on the ground. A crudely drawn knee was circled over and over in frantic, dark graphite, a black hole of focus.
It was a map of fear.
“It’s the best thing in the book,” she whispered.
“It’s a mess.”
“It’s honest.” She closed it, holding it to her chest. “This is what I’m trying to paint. This feeling. Not the glory.”
He leaned his head back against the sofa, eyes closed. The pea pack shifted on his knee. “Take it,” he murmured. “Use it.”
“Ally—”
“I’m tired, Roz.” The words were stripped bare. “I’m so tired of holding it all in. The fear. The anger. The sheer fucking boredom. So if my mess can be part of your work… use it. Make it mean something.”
She crossed the room. She didn’t think, she just moved. She knelt on the floor beside the sofa, the sketchbook pressed between them. He opened his eyes, looking down at her. She saw the exhaustion, the vulnerability, the raw nerve.
“It already means something,” she said.
She reached up, her hand hesitating for a second before she brushed a lock of hair from his forehead. His breath caught. He brought his own hand up, his fingers curling around her wrist. Not to move it, just to hold it there, to feel the contact.
The doorbell rang.
They froze. The shrill sound was a splash of cold water. Ally’s expression shuttered, his professional mask slamming down. “Probably Grezza,” he muttered, dropping her hand. “Left my playbook in his car.”
Roz stood up, smoothing her jeans, her heart hammering against her ribs. The moment shattered around them, lying in pieces on the polished floor.
“You should get that,” she said, her voice strangely calm.
He grabbed his crutches, pushing himself up. As he swung towards the intercom, he paused, looking back at her. The mask had a crack. “Stay,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
She heard him buzz the door open, heard the distant clatter of footsteps on the stair. She picked up the sketchbook, holding the evidence of his insides against her own. From the hallway, she heard Grezza’s loud, concerned voice. “You alive, mate? Brought you a curry.”
Roz slipped the sketchbook into her bag. She stood in the living room, a visitor again, the new geography between her and Ally already being colonized by the old world. She took a deep breath, readying herself to smile, to be polite, to become just the artist in the background once more. But the map had changed. She could feel it, a tectonic shift deep beneath her feet.
She could feel it, a tectonic shift deep beneath her feet.
Grezza’s entrance was a whirlwind of brown paper bags and loud concern, the sharp, spicy scent of curry immediately colonizing the clean, quiet air. “Figured you’d be eating sad toast,” he boomed, kicking the door shut behind him. He stopped short, clocking Roz standing by the sofa. “Oh. Hey. Didn’t know you had company.”
“Roz was just leaving,” Ally said, his voice a careful, neutral pitch. He was leaning heavily on one crutch, his free hand gesturing vaguely towards the kitchen. “Thanks for this, mate. Really.”
“No bother.” Grezza’s eyes darted between them, sensing a charge in the room he’d just fractured. He held up the bags. “Extra naan. You need the carbs.”
Roz forced a smile, her bag with the sketchbook heavy on her shoulder. “I should go. Let you two… strategize.”
“You don’t have to,” Ally said, but it was automatic, a polite reflex. The space between them was now crowded, public.
“It’s fine,” she said, already moving towards the door. “I’ve got an early start. Glazing a canvas.”
She passed Grezza, who gave her an awkward, friendly nod. Ally swung after her, his crutches thumping on the hardwood. At the door, she turned. He was close, his body a wall of frustrated energy.
“Friday,” he said, low, for her alone.
“Friday,” she confirmed. She wanted to say something else, to reclaim the thread they’d been holding, but Grezza was whistling in the kitchen, clattering plates. The moment was gone, buried under the mundane. “Eat your curry. Ice your knee.”
His smile was tight, not reaching his eyes. “Yes, boss.”
The stairwell was cold and echoey. She didn’t breathe properly until she was outside, the night air sharp in her lungs. She walked fast, without direction, the energy from his flat buzzing uselessly in her veins. The sketchbook in her bag felt like a stolen artifact, a piece of a secret history.
Her own flat was a silent contrast, smelling of turpentine and dust. She didn’t turn on the main light. She went straight to her worktable, under the glow of a single angled lamp, and took the book out.
She stared at his drawing. The frantic, dark circle around the knee. The fragile stick-men. It wasn’t art. It was a fossilized panic attack. She opened her own ‘Convalescence’ journal, the pages filled with her careful, observational studies. They were silent, respectful, distant. His was a scream.
For hours, she worked. She didn’t paint. She drew, with charcoal, getting her hands black. She tried to merge their two languages—her precise lines, his chaotic urgency. She started a new, large sheet of paper. She drew the stadium from memory, but this time from the inside, the cavernous belly of the stands. In the centre, she drew a figure, not quite Ally, not quite a stick-man, caught in the act of falling. The lines around the suggested knee were layered, a storm of graphite.
It was a mess. A beautiful, honest mess. Her heart hammered with a strange, illicit thrill. This was the gossip translated into truth.
Her phone buzzed on the table, startling her. A text from an unknown number. It’s Fiona from physio. Ally gave me your number. Hope that’s okay. He said you’re doing a project. I have some images—scan results, biomechanical maps. Thought they might be interesting. Clinical gossip. Attached was a black-and-white MRI scan, the ghostly bone and the delicate, reattached tendon a surreal landscape.
Roz stared at the alien image on her screen. It was the ultimate interior, the map beneath the map. She typed back, her fingers clumsy. Thank you. It’s perfect.
Friday arrived with a brittle, clear cold. The dress, a simple column of deep emerald silk, felt alien hanging on her studio door. She’d only ever worn paint-stained jeans and sweaters to formal things. She stood before it now, holding the scrap of fabric she’d used to wipe her charcoal-dusted hands. It was smudged with grey fingerprints.
She pressed one deliberately onto the silk hem, a faint, grey ghost. A signature. Then she got dressed.
The taxi dropped her at the Balmoral. The hotel was a monument of sandstone and gleaming brass, a world away from stadium corridors and frozen peas. She saw the photographers first, a small scrum near the doors, their lenses like insect eyes catching the light. Her stomach tightened.
She spotted him immediately. He was standing just inside the grand foyer, leaning on his crutches, surrounded by three teammates in tuxedos. He looked carved from stone himself, his jaw set, laughing at something someone said. The laugh didn’t touch his eyes. He wore the black tie with an easy grace, but the bulk of the knee brace distorted the line of his trousers, an unavoidable statement.
Then he saw her. His gaze cut through the crowd, the practiced smile fading into something real and apprehensive. He muttered something to the guys and began the slow, clunky procession towards her. The room seemed to hush, or maybe that was just the blood rushing in her ears. Every step of his crutches echoed.
He stopped in front of her. His eyes swept from her face down the length of the dress and back up. “You,” he said, his voice rough. “You look…”
“I have a dress,” she finished for him, her own voice thin.
“Yeah.” He swallowed. “You do.” He looked helpless for a second, a man on crutches with no free hands. “I can’t even… hold a door. Or get you a drink.”
“I don’t need a door held.” She reached out and adjusted his already-perfect bow tie, her fingers brushing his neck. It was a possessive, intimate gesture, performed in the glaring public light. A signal. She saw the flash from a photographer’s camera out of the corner of her eye. Let them see.
“Alright, Fraser,” a booming voice called. It was the team captain, a grizzled giant clapping Ally on the back, making him sway. “Time to face the music. And the crowd.” The captain nodded at Roz, a look of genuine curiosity in his eyes. “Miss MacDonald.”
They were swept into the grand ballroom, a sea of black tie and sequins, the air rich with perfume and the clink of glass. Ally was pulled away almost immediately, ushered towards the top table. Roz was shown to a seat at a round table nearby, next to a player’s wife who immediately asked what she did.
“I’m painting him,” Roz said, nodding towards Ally, who was shaking hands with a sponsor.
“The portrait? For the SRU?” The woman’s interest was sharp, evaluative.
“Yes. And… other things.” Roz took a sip of water, her eyes never leaving Ally. She watched him perform. The charming smile, the self-deprecating shrug when someone gestured to his crutches, the easy nod. She saw the slight tremor in his hand as he reached for his water glass. She saw the way his eyes, in a quiet moment between well-wishers, scanned the room until they found her. The connection was a taut, invisible wire.
Dinner was a blur of speeches. Then the chairman took the podium. “And now,” he said, “for a player who embodies the heart of this team. A spirit that isn’t dimmed by adversity…”
The award. Ally maneuvered himself to the stage, the awkward climb with his crutches a silent, powerful spectacle. He accepted the ugly crystal lion, holding it up with a grin that looked genuine until you saw the tightness at the corners of his eyes. The room erupted in applause, a standing ovation. He was a statue up there, bathed in light, perfect and stranded.
His speech was short, funny, gracious. He thanked the medics, the team, the fans. He said he’d be back. He said it with utter conviction. Roz felt her throat close. It was a magnificent lie.
He finished. The applause swelled again. He looked out, his blue eyes finding hers in the crowd. The grin faded, just for her. In that split second, she saw the exhaustion, the fear, the boy in the physio room. He gave a tiny, almost imperceptible shake of his head. None of this is real.
Then the mask was back. He was waving, descending the steps carefully, being swallowed by backslaps and congratulations.
The music started, a bland, swinging band. Roz remained at the table, a still point in the swirling room. He finally broke free, coming to her side. The noise was too loud for talk.
“Dance with me,” he said, his mouth close to her ear.
“You can’t dance.”
“I can stand,” he said. “And you can move. Come on.”
He led her to the edge of the dance floor, leaving his crutches leaning against a pillar. He put his hands on her waist, his balance precarious. She slid her arms around his neck, feeling the solid, familiar tension in his shoulders. They didn’t really dance. They swayed, a small, tight orbit, his braced leg a stiff anchor.
His forehead rested against hers. Their breathing synced. The glittering room, the noise, the cameras, it all dissolved into a blur of light and colour around the dark, still centre of them.
“This is the map,” he murmured, his lips brushing her temple. “Right here.”
She held on tighter. The gossips could have their photos, their stories. They could have the brave smile on the stage, the crystal trophy. This, the unsteady, silent sway in the middle of the fake celebration, was the territory. And for now, it was theirs.