Sunday roasts with Liz were as close as Tony got to going to church. He applied a rigorous, religious zeal to the weekly dinners with his neighbour, who accounted for the majority of his social commitments outside club affairs. However, yesterday’s victory had resulted in a flurry of last-minute interview requests as well as a carb-filled team dinner to rally the troops. Caught up in the atmosphere, Tony had completely forgotten about his weekly ritual and it wasn’t until he resuscitated his battery-depleted phone that he remembered what he had forgotten.
But Liz told him not to worry about it, and that they would shop at Sainsbury’s together and enjoy each other’s company for dinner on Monday. She was a good sport. She understood Tony, and Tony was grateful.
Their relationship dated back to decades ago when Liz and Emma had been flatmates. Liz was two years older than Emma, although that still meant she had seen the world a decade less than Tony. But in Tony’s eyes, Liz was much more farsighted than he; she was very aware, exhibiting remarkable patience and compassion beyond her years. It was true that these qualities had made her very attractive in his eyes, both then and now.
He recalled with clarity their first meeting. It wasn’t a face-to-face meeting but a brief exchange - rather embarrassing he might add - over the telephone, New Year’s Eve, 1999. Struggling with a niggling groin strain, out of the first team, and rocky waters with Emma. The two had decided to attend a party thrown by one of Emma’s psychedelic rocker friends. Not having much to say between the two of them, they toiled through the night with help from substantial doses of alcohol. When Tony’s eyelids grew heavy, Emma accused him of the wandering eye and picked out a scantily clad female specimen rattling her overexposed jugs to the music, which Tony’s eyes had been ‘pathetically ogling.’ A short-lived tussle ensued and within moments Tony was jogging in six inches of snow trying to catch up with Emma. She slammed the door in his face, and he slipped backwards but caught the banister just in time to save himself from a season-ending injury. He waded through more snow and locked himself into the nearest phone box he could find. After three rings she picked up.
‘Darling, you must hear me out. I’m sorry. My god I’m sorry. But listen, I wasn’t ogling anyone. Especially not anyone’s…breasts. Not when I’ve got you! You’ve got the most beautiful, voluptuous tits in all of England!’
There was an ominous pause, then bright laughter at the other end.
‘Well, I’m an A cup but I suppose I’ve got an H cup heart. Let me put Emma on.’
Following the end of that season Tony proposed to Emma. Liz went away - for reasons he couldn’t remember but he always wondered whether she had been somewhat hurt by the fact that he chose Emma over her - and he’d lost contact with her until last year when, by sheer coincidence, she happened to move in next door.
Despite not having seen each other for nearly a quarter of a century the two immediately warmed up to each other. Liz was as radiant and compassionate as ever, and the two often reminisced about the distant past. She was very upset when Tony informed her of his diagnosis, and she took care of him with all her heart - much more heart than Emma had shown in their final years together. Her home cooking rejuvenated Tony like magical potions and her occasional interventions in interior decorating gave Tony’s flat a much needed feminine touch. A void had been filled, and Tony no longer felt abandoned.
He ascribed her warmth to her artistic sensitivity. Elizabeth Boye was the director of a smart private art gallery on Cork Street and had also enjoyed a modestly successful career as a painter who, though some ways away from holding retrospectives at the Tate, made a comfortable living selling her works at smaller galleries. Her subject matter was the animal kingdom juxtaposed with concrete forests of the metropolis, which she had explained was the result of a sojourn into sub-Saharan Africa. Liz showed an uncanny knack for expressing emotions on the canvas and Tony was sure that such expressive sensitivity was mirrored by an equally impressive sensitivity of perception that enabled her deep empathy.
So Tony began his neighbourly relationship. She moved into the building toward the end of last season, months after Emma’s death and Tony’s promotion. She preferred to work from home as much as possible and was therefore around to lend an ear to Tony’s despondent soliloquies. When Tony shared the nightmares that kept him awake at night she told him iron was good for keeping you asleep through the night and prepared for him a ferrous diet. Such attention offered the stability Tony needed to get on with his job, and he credited her with the remarkable season he was having.
Sometimes when he was alone reclining in his office divan, Tony pondered about Liz’s intentions. It was clear she had a favourable opinion of him, but did she share his feelings? Perhaps artists were innately overflowing with empathy, and such doubts dissuaded Tony from making any advances each time he toyed with the idea. In part it had something to do with the spectre of Emma that still loomed large. Though he was more conscious of it than she, it provided a never-ending subtext that found its way into the footnotes of all their conversations. Then there was the small matter of his Alzheimer’s. Since the turn of the year, Tony had started to perceive more mistakes - small slip-ups here and there. On one occasion the results of a game that took place only days ago escaped him during a staff meeting. There was every chance the same thing would happen with Liz. He was turning into a forgetful, irritable old man unworthy of a twilight flame.
Best not to stir things up, Tony concluded. He took a bite of Liz’s shepherd pie and looked across the table into her green eyes.
‘I saw something earlier today,’ Tony blurted out.
‘Oh, and you haven’t forgotten it yet!’ Liz teased affectionately. Tony chuckled. The humour calmed him and he appreciated that.
‘It has -- I think -- I saw something earlier.’ He struggled to get it out. It wasn’t easy talking about Emma to Liz, because he sensed there had been some falling out between the two ages ago. He also didn’t want her to think he was still hung up on Emma.
‘Go on.’
‘Well I was speaking to Mateo, and -- well I couldn’t help but notice he had on a gold pendant. And this pendant. It was a gold lotus. It was something I had given Emma long ago. Before we got married.’
‘Aha,’ Liz dropped her head back down toward the plate as if to signal her readiness to drop the subject.
‘So you think one of your players has Emma’s necklace?’
‘I know it sounds stupid but this is where it gets spooky. I turned over the necklace and on the back of the lotus I saw half-erased initials. They looked like E.R., and that was what I had engraved on the pendant I gave Emma!’
Liz frowned, but it was hard to discern whether this indicated interest or ennui.
‘Dear Tony, don’t take this the wrong way but are you sure of what you saw?’
‘Yes! Yes Liz, bloody yes.’
‘How could that be?’
‘I mean, the first letter - if that looked anything like an M then I admit it could have been M.C. and that would have been Mateo’s initials. But the first letter had traces of three strokes, three horizontal lines like a B or an E.’
‘Let’s say they are the initials E.R. It doesn’t mean they have to be Emma’s.’
‘I know,’ Tony admitted. ‘But, if the pendant is indeed Emma’s, how in the world could it have gotten there?’
‘I don’t know Tony, maybe she sold it.’
‘Why?’
‘Maybe you should ask Mateo.’
And for what seemed to be a very long pause, Tony sat there and weighed her reply. She was right; there was no point in discussing this with her. He had to ask Mateo first thing in the morning tomorrow at the training ground. Tony believed that, despite all the possibilities otherwise, the pendant he saw was indeed the gift he had presented to his wife the year of his FA cup triumph. He wasn’t quite sure when he had bought it, but he knew it was sometime during the 99-00 season. After walking out of Harrod’s with the necklace he had carried it with him for months because he couldn’t find the right moment to present it to Emma, who had been growing more distant. But once he’d won the cup and ended the season on a high, things got hot again with Emma. Weeks after he’d finally offloaded the necklace, they made their vows. He didn’t know when she stopped wearing it but she had it on for years. Tony had seen enough of it to be sure that the one he saw this morning was the same. No man could tell him otherwise.