Knowledge Is Money

Chapter 9: Winning

So I did what I always did.

What old Sam would’ve done.

What, let’s be honest, I am genuinely world-class at. I looked, I admired, I noted the Determination of 18 and thought good for you, love, and then I kept it firmly in my running shorts, said absolutely nothing, and jogged on.

You gotta admit it, I’m pretty pathetic guy.

And the next night I came back and did the whole thing again. Told myself it was for the cardio.

It was about sixty percent for the cardio.

Because a man needs a reason to lace the trainers up of an evening, and "get fit" and "save a football club" will get you out the door four nights out of seven.

But on that fifth night, when your legs are jelly and it’s drizzling and the sofa’s singing your name, sometimes the thing that gets you off your backside is knowing there’s a woman with a ponytail and a Determination of 18 doing sprints by the bandstand who is going to see you give up.

I never said one word to her. Course I didn’t. Some things don’t change overnight, not even with a magic football panel and a second go at the entire universe. But I kept running. And, all right, I started doing my stretches a bit nearer the bandstand.

The hardest part wasn’t Dean, though. It wasn’t the running, or even the waiting.

It was me mum.

I went round hers on the Sunday, like always, the little terrace off the high street, telly up too loud, blare, the good biscuits out on a plate because it was me coming. And there she was. My mum. Alive.

Fifty-one and fussing, click, roar of the kettle, on at me about the sports shop and when was I going to learn a proper trade and find a nice girl and settle down.

And I had to sit on that sofa and drink my tea and not fling my arms round her neck and sob into her cardigan, because in the other life I’d lost her in 2019, and I had spent seven long years not being able to tell her one more time that I loved her.

"You’re quiet," she said, eyes narrowing at me over the teapot. "You in some kind of trouble, Samuel? You’ve not got a girl in trouble or pregnant?"

"No, Mum."

"You’d tell me."

"I’d tell you." I wouldn’t. Obviously. Mum, I’m forty, I died on the A13, a magic football app sent me back. "I’ve just... I’ve got a plan, that’s all. A big one. You’ll think I’m daft."

She snorted and slid the good biscuits across the table. "Your father had a plan once an’ all. Spent our honeymoon money on a season ticket and a pie." But she was smiling when she said it, soft, somewhere far away. "Go on then, daft lad. Tell your mother."

And God, I wanted to.

I wanted to tell her everything. But some things you can’t say out loud yet, not till you’ve gone and done them.

So I just had another custard cream and let her fuss over me, and I banked it, every single second of it, because this time round I knew exactly how precious that ordinary little front room was.

Raj thought I’d lost the plot, obviously.

"You’re running now? You?" He was driving me home from a shift, the inside of his Vauxhall smelling of pine air freshener and other people’s Friday nights. "You hate running. You once got a taxi to a five-a-side."

"People change, Raj."

"People don’t change that fast, mate. What’s going on with you? You’ve been weird since Tuesday. Weirder. You keep, like, smiling at stuff. You smiled at a parking meter yesterday."

I couldn’t tell him. That was the lonely bit, the bit nobody warns you about with this kind of gift.

I had the secrets of the universe rattling round my skull and the one person I’d trust with my life would have me sectioned if I breathed a word of it.

Raj, mate, I’m forty. I died. A magic football app sent me back. Also, buy a thing called Bitcoin.

Yeah. Lovely. They’d lock me up and lose the key.

So I just said, "Switzerland, Raj. Sixteenth of June. That’s what’s going on with me."

He groaned and thumped his head off the steering wheel. Parp went the horn, by accident, and a bloke at a bus stop swore at us. "Not the Switzerland thing again. I’ve told the lads, you know. They think you’re cracked an’ all."

"Bet’s still on?"

"My tenner’s still on, you maniac. Against my better judgement and my mum’s advice."

"Then we’re golden."

And then, finally, after the longest sixteen days of either of my lives, it was the sixteenth of June, and I was wedged into the back corner of the Crown and Anchor with Raj and about nine of his mates, a warm lager going flat in my hand, watching Spain line up against Switzerland on a big screen with the picture slightly green.

Here’s the thing nobody tells you about knowing the future. You still bottle it.

I knew. I knew it stone cold. Switzerland 1, Spain 0, Gelson Fernandes, second half, a scrappy bundled thing off a goalmouth scramble.

I’d have bet my life on it. I literally had bet everything I owned on it. And yet when that match kicked off and Spain started doing what Spain do, tiki-taka, pass, pass, pass, knocking it round these poor Swiss lads like men against boys, twenty passes, thirty, the whole pub going "olé" and laughing at me, I felt my stomach climb right up into my throat.

"Easy money, this," said one of Raj’s mates, Bald Tony. "For Spain, like. Your boy’s done his forty quid, Raj. Tell him."

"He knows," said Raj, not looking at me. "He knows."

First half, nothing. Spain everywhere. Xavi, Iniesta, the lot, carving it up. 0-0 at the break and my shirt was stuck to my back. Raj leaned over. "Sam," he said, quiet, under the noise. "It’s fine if you got it wrong. We’ll laugh about it. I’m not arsed about a tenner."

"Watch the second half," I croaked.

Fifty-second minute.

A long ball.

A scramble in the Spanish box, keeper flapping, bodies everywhere, the ball pinging about like a pinball, and then a Swiss boot, Gelson Fernandes, poking it, scuffing it, the ugliest goal you have ever seen in your life dribbling over the line, and the away end going up like a bomb.

SWITZERLAND 1, SPAIN 0.

The Crown and Anchor went dead silent.

Every single head in that pub turned. Slowly. And looked at me.

"...No," said Bald Tony.

"Hold on," I said. "Spain miss about four good chances from here. They throw everything at it. It stays one-nil. Trust me."

And it did.

Thirty-eight agonising minutes, Spain laying siege, hitting the post, the lot, and that scruffy ugly one-nil just would not break.

When the final whistle went, PEEEEP, the whole pub erupted, not because anyone in Essex cares about Switzerland, but because a skint shelf-stacker in a borrowed shirt had stood up two weeks ago and told them the impossible was nailed on. The impossible had just gone and happened right in front of their eyes.

Raj had me by the shoulders. He was shaking me. His face was about three inches from mine and he was doing this high-pitched thing that wasn’t quite words.

"HOW. HOW. Sam. HOW DID YOU..."

"Correct score, Raj," I said, and I started to laugh, and once I started I couldn’t stop. "Switzerland. One. Nil. I had it on correct score."

Bald Tony actually sat down on the floor.

"...What’s correct score pay?" Raj whispered.

I’d checked the slip about four hundred times. Sixteen to one.

"Forty quid," I said, "at sixteen to one."

The maths went round the table in a wave, lips moving, and then Raj made a noise like a kettle reaching the boil and grabbed me again.

Six hundred and eighty pounds.

It doesn’t sound like much, does it, when you say it now. Six hundred and eighty quid. But sat in that pub, with the future humming in my head and my whole body shaking and nine grown men staring at me like I’d parted the sea, it wasn’t six hundred and eighty quid.

It was the first brick.

It was proof. It was real. It was the down payment on a dead football club and a thing called Bitcoin and a life that, this time, I was not going to waste.

"Right," I said, when I could finally breathe. I necked the flat warm lager in one. "Who’s coming to the bookies?"

***

Thank you for Reading.