by Chris Harris
Catherine Brown had a tough life. Because for fifteen years she was a full time cleaner, scrubbing to make ends meet, providing for herself and her two sons. Their father had bolted shortly after they were born, and she took a vow to avoid men until the boys were grown up, having realised she wasn’t very good with them.
You might spot her up early in the mornings or late at night, walking around the village with her little trolley, going to the various houses and businesses in the village. She knew everybody, and everybody knew her.
A sudden windfall from her landlady and friend led her to set up a little coffee shop in the village, Heaven is a Percolator. It failed at first, but she eventually got to grips and made a huge success with it. It became a real activity in the village.
That was when Charlie Edwards, who had an unfashionable and slightly dire garden centre on the outskirts of Denham, decided that a way to bring business in was to bring the charm and the energy of Catherine Brown. They agreed that she would set up a little branch within the garden centre.
It turned out to be one of the only good business decisions he had ever made, and it was all thanks to Catherine Brown.
Charlie was kind and understanding, first flush of romance and all that. He understood her reluctance to be in a relationship and made sure that, as he pursued her, he put no pressure on her at all. Having been single since her late teens. Once they became an item, Catherine didn’t really have the skills or confidence to manage a grown-up relationship. Cracks began to show earlier than either of them would have liked to admit.
Catherine Brown lived above the shop in a lovely flat with the boys, and she was very reticent about Charlie getting involved with them or spending time there. Seeing her downstairs in the coffee shop was fine, but upstairs she had limits. Charlie found this difficult. It made him wonder whether there were other things going on. Being with someone and not being allowed into their home was hard for him.
What nobody knew was that he would sometimes sit outside her house all night, staring up at the window, looking for any sign that someone else might be in there. If she wanted somebody else, that was fine by him, but he needed to know, for his own reasons.
Getting involved with the football club was something close to Catherine’s heart. She used to go to Lewes FC to watch the women’s team, and she was genuinely passionate about it.
So when Greg Lyons approached her to get involved with Denham Phoenix FC, it was an opportunity she was more than happy to take, a way of giving something back to the local community that had always been so kind to her. She knew, deep down, that she might be overreaching. After skivvying around for so long, running two businesses and then taking on another responsibility felt like too much to ask of herself. But what she had come to realise was that she was actually a bloody good businesswoman.
It was a funny contrast. While she had been scrubbing out toilets, Greg Lyons had been lording it around like a playboy, flash cars and lifestyle. There couldn’t have been a bigger social and financial divide within the village than Greg and Catherine Brown. Being naïve, it took Catherine Brown a long time before it clicked that this hotshot businessman, this local star, was enamoured with her. And it appeared he was very, very enamoured.
The only reason Charlie joined the board at the Phoenix was to keep an eye on Catherine and make sure she never strayed. Catherine never would have strayed. She wasn’t that sort of person, and perhaps Charlie should have known that. But he picked up on Greg’s crush long before Catherine ever did, and he worked on the basis of keeping your enemy close.
The more she was drawn into the role of director at the Phoenix , the more independent Catherine began to feel. Charlie had arrived at a moment when she’d tasted independence for the first time in her life, and he immediately cut across it with his ruthless charm. She couldn’t quite believe her luck. A local, handsome charmer had taken such an interest in her, and she’d been swept off her feet.
But as the season began to take shape, the more she became involved with the football club, especially as it started to become a bigger part of her life, the more she became herself again, independent, empowered, and increasingly separate from Charlie. And the more that happened, the more Charlie felt the status quo beginning to crack, and the more he sensed everything he’d built with her, which actually wan not very much, was about to implode.
All of the other directors had begun to notice it too. Catherine’s lovely smile was becoming a frown more and more these days. Although she was a strong person, Catherine still wasn’t confident with social etiquette and the unspoken rules of a room full of directors. So it was only the more observant board members who occasionally noticed the flare ups, the rushed conversations, the slightly raised voices between Catherine and Charlie.
Charlie warned her about becoming a licensee, telling her she was taking on too much and that the extra work being piled onto her was unnecessary. But she was having none of it. It was what she wanted to do. And as she said to him, it would be valuable for her, a lesson in learning how to cope with life, people, pressure, all of it. Besides, as the club grew and more and more people came to Denham, it could only be good for business. The garden centre would benefit, and so would her coffee shop, with people milling around on matchdays and staying for drinks.
It was around this time that Catherine also started plotting something of her own, setting up the Denham Phoenix FC Women. She found a couple of local women who wanted their daughters to do something beyond sitting at home scrolling on their phones, and they offered to help her get it off the ground. But it didn’t stop Charlie’s mind from working overtime.
Essentially stalking outside her house, he saw two attractive women turning up and, although it might have looked completely innocent to anyone else, Charlie’s paranoia began to twist it into something darker. Even though Catherine explained that the women were simply helping her, once paranoia sets in, it grows, and in Charlie’s case it grew fast. His mind, and his Google search history, began to reflect the spiral. He started searching for lesbian threesomes. I mean what else could it be? He began to imagine things that weren’t there, and once he had imagined them, he couldn’t un imagine them.
It became a problem for Catherine. The absolute kindness and sheer peacefulness of her relationship with Greg Lyons only highlighted the difference. Charlie wasn’t the man Catherine had once thought he was. And Catherine, for all her strength, didn’t yet have the confidence, knowledge, or experience to work out how to escape a relationship in which she was beginning to feel more and more intimidated and controlled.
She wasn’t leading Greg Lyons on. She just really liked him, knew he wanted to be with her, but hadn’t a clue what to do especially a the trio were all directors together. Those occasional smiles, the warmth, the gentle squeezes of encouragement, that was simply Catherine’s lovely personality coming to the surface. She wasn’t plotting anything. She was hoping, without knowing how, that her situation might somehow change, that something would just happen to free her.
Meanwhile, on the pitch, Denham Phoenix were flying. Top of the table with nine points and no goals conceded, they went into the first round of the Sussex Senior Cup against Arundel full of confidence. It would have taken a brave man to bet on Arundel getting anything out of the game.
The crowd was small, around 150. If this had been last season it would have been considered a very good turnout. Catherine and Charlie were going to do the bar themselves, with the other board members dotted around inside the clubhouse. What was immediately obvious, though, was that Catherine and Charlie were hardly talking to each other. Greg smirked to himself. Trouble in paradise, maybe?
But as soon as the match began, everything else stopped mattering. Denham Phoenix played some of the best attacking football any of the directors had ever seen. They piled in eight goals in a riveting display, aggressive, fearless, and yet beautiful to watch. Arundel offered no threat at all, so there was no need to park the bus.
But the fact that he was now clearly experimenting, and proving he could get expansive, attractive football out of this team was truly inspiring as well as surprising to the watching directors. It didn’t take a particularly thorough observer to see it. Seven wins on the trot in pre season, no goals conceded, and now this relatively meaningless cup game where Stevens demonstrated he could make them play thrilling, front foot football. The potential was there. And frankly, Denham Phoenix absolutely stormed it.
Economical Tony reminded everyone, though, that building a good non league team was never the hardest part. Keeping them together, and warding off the disasters, that was the difficult bit. Because in non league football, disasters arrived far more often than the good things ever did.
Big Mal had drawn a blank in his quest to discover the identity of Mr Dribble. He’d pretty much spoken to everyone who went on the away trip to Potters Bar. “You could tell by their eyes that none of them were lying.” Maybe he’d heard about the now controversial round of drinks by word of mouth, but somehow Greg doubted that.
Meanwhile, all of Dean’s social media work was growing followers. What was becoming an incredibly successful footballing project, surrounded by a huge ground development, was easy to augment into a very good social media campaign. His popular Premier League videos were stuffed with as many links to Denham FC as he could. The social media coverage was growing exponentially, to the degree that Mr Dribble’s rather pathetic pro board efforts had been drowned into insignificance to absolutely everybody except Greg Lyons.
It was back to the league campaign against Billericay on Saturday. This was a big game. The Dickies were second in the division and they always brought big support. They already knew by two o’clock that the wildest hopes and estimates for the attendance were going to be surpassed. Realistically, the ground had been graded as a somewhere that could safely hold a maximum of 1,200 people. They weren’t going to get anywhere near that today, but they hoped 500 would be possible, which would be huge for a Welex Waste Products Division 3 match.
Catherine had made all sorts of extra arrangements and brought in extra staff, including her friend Lottie, and she was really looking forward to it. She loved the challenge. She was stressed, of course, but it was a good stress. She had left fewer staff in her shop and closed early, leaving at 10:30 to go to the garden centre to meet Charlie. But as she was leaving the shop, Charlie texted her to say he’d already left. He had so much to do to the pitch before kick off.
She was a bit annoyed because she’d left extra plastic glasses and beakers at the garden centre, and other things she needed to collect from the shop up there. Charlie’s office was based behind Heaven is a Percolator 2. And as she passed, she could see he’d left his computer on. She went in to turn it off.
And her eyes almost fell out of her head.
She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. There on a Pro Boards admin page, which only Charlie would have had access to, was the identity of Mr Dribble. He’d just posted a thread “I wonder what’s going to go wrong today. Hopefully no more hospitalisations.”
It was midday.
All the directors were up there, and other staff too, ready to help for the day, all lolling around outside the clubhouse. Then all of a sudden they saw a woman sprinting across the pitch, screaming at Charlie Egham, who was hosing part of the pitch.
Inexplicably, to them, Charlie stormed off, straight out of the ground.
Catherine, face like thunder, approached the assembled group. And as soon as she got within listening distance, she pointed at the departing Charlie and shouted that’s your Mr fucking Dribble, and burst into tears.
Greg didn’t know how to respond. He wasn’t a man who liked scenes in front of others. Big Mal, who else, rose to occasion, putting his arms around Catherine Brown and consoling her whilst simultaneously sorting out service, with one man down.
Catherine wiped away her tears and composed herself. Economical Tony chipped in, I don’t mind doing the bar, because that’s helpful and productive, but I haven’t got a clue how to work the till, but I can pull a pint. I’ll have to pull pints all day and someone else can do the till.
Big Mal had roving duties that day, making sure everything ran smoothly, and he told Greg, “You do the roving duties, I’ll do the bar as well.”
Seeing everyone pull together made Catherine cry again.
Big Mal took her over to one of the pub benches, sat her down, and explained again that Charlie wasn’t worth a spit. Nobody liked him anyway. She could do better. All the right messages, the kind of thing you always say to someone when they’ve been hurt, but it was still nice to hear.
Ed Stevens, was ready with another dampener too. The swagger Denham FC had shown against Arundel disappeared as he collected and parked the bus in front of the goal. This time not nicking the traditional goal. After valiant attempts by the Dickies to break them down, a 0 0 draw ensued, which wasn’t fully deserved, but thankfully, for such an appalling display of negative football, they took the point.
The clubhouse closed at eight o’clock. They drifted away from the ground to the Red Lion.
Big Mal spoke to Greg during the short walk to the pub. “Just do the hundred percent sympathy thing, Greg. Nothing more. Don’t behave like a shark. She won’t like it. From what I can work out, it was her first boyfriend in nearly twenty years. She’s not going to rush into someone else. She needs to lick her wounds, and you need to be there with the sympathy. Don’t try anything. Please.”
Martin knew there would be a bit of a crowd in the Red Lion that night. A big crowd, at least. Football always meant the drinkers, once the clubhouse closed at eight, would head up to the Red Lion, and he’d laid on some karaoke.
As usual, Economical Tony went home. But all the other directors, and unusually Ed Stevens as well, along with some of the players, went up. Much drinking ensued. Eventually Greg managed to talk to Catherine, who was knocking them back more than anyone else and was very jovial. The deceit had been awful, but the release of getting out of a relationship with Charlie was immense.
There were lots of apologetic texts from him, all of which received the strongest rebuttals. She kept pulling her arms around Greg and telling him how sorry she was. Greg did the gentlemanly thing, consoling her, and waitedto be rescued by Big Mal lest his more immoral instincts kick in.
At closing time, Big Mal took Catherine home , and then left her to sit and bitch with her friend Lottie. The conversation was a heavy mix of how much of a bastard Charlie was, and how maybe this was the time for Catherine to consider Greg Lyons.
It was like an open goal for Greg, who sadly, you guessed it, ballsed it up. Months of careful plotting and best behaviour, even agreeing to the new eco stand, were surely about to pay off?
There had been trouble in paradise for Lucy as well, who had dumped her boyfriend. Catherine Brown, when she got herself together in the morning and had got the boys up, read the text from Lucy and read n dismay, “did Greg again last night.”
Now not only was Catherine Brown single, she was single with no prospects.
Lottie came round again and discussed the situation with great seriousness. Greg was single, so was Lucy. He hadn’t done anything wrong. There had been no indication Catherine was interested in him. Everyone knew Lucy was there for the taking. But that wasn’t how Catherine’s mind worked.
She knew about Greg’s desire to be with her, and she also knew that the night she’d split up with Charlie was not the time for the potential suitor to disappear off with another girl. In all honesty, she felt she’d been betrayed by Greg. She saw no restraint. And nothing anyone said to her would make her change her mind on that.
Greg had no idea Catherine would have known. Both he and Lucy considered their dalliance a throwaway physical occasion, so he thought nothing of contacting Catherine Brown and telling her he was so sorry about everything that had happened with Charlie, and that if she ever wanted to talk, he was there. The starting pistol to a great future together.
He awaited her reply, expecting Catherine to come and confide in him.
The reply was curt. “I’ll be alright, thanks.”
That was all it said.
What had looked like the beginning of something beautiful and the demise of Mr Dribble should have left Greg humming with joy, just left to pick his moment. He instinctively knew she must have found out about Lucy and was just left bewildered by his own stupidity, realising too he had invested a lot of responsibility with the football club to Catherine Brown and wondering if she’d walk out. He may have the most talked about up and coming non league football club, possibly in Britain, but he couldn’t land the girl.
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Welcome to Denham nr Lewes 