I'll Be With You

By Author: pangsiyan
Total Articles: 130
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It's Monday 12 June 2000. The Football Association had organized everything as they always do for all England away games2 : a chartered plane3 from Stansted to Brussels, then a coach to Eindhoven. The driver parked in some backstreet, so we'd had to walk twenty minutes to the stadium. But we'd still got there two hours before kick-off4. Our seats were about five rows from the front, in the middle, opposite the tunnel where the players come out and when people saw me sitting there like a bloody lemon, out came the cameras. Some of them were press: Sky zooming in on my face. Some were just ordinary people, taking a snap5 to show their friends. Show them what? A moody cow with a baseball cap pulled down over her eyes. I felt a complete idiot, just sitting there with hardly anyone else about. Wasn't there somewhere we could go until kick-off, I asked my security. I mean, what were we supposed to do for two hours. Read the program?

It was then that we heard about the VIP lounge6. We asked Ted and Sandra, David's parents, who were in the row behind if they wanted to come along, but they said no thank you , they'd rather stay.

It ...
... was the other side of the pitch7 , but as the place was practically empty get-ting there had only taken five minutes. They'd got us champagne and we'd been so busy chatting with Doreen , my mum's friend who was over from Ath-ens and had never been to a football match in her life, we hadn't noticed the stadium filling up. Now" with only ten minutes to go the place was absolutely rammed8. Thank God I'd decided not to bring Brooklyn. He was safely back at my mum's house in London with my sister Louise.

I'd never wanted to come to Eindhove

London all week, working on my solo album9. Everybody was expecting so much from David that I thought it better not to go. It's like when he takes an important free kick, or a penalty10, sometimes I think it's better not to look.

And David was already out there, kicking the ball around, as they always do before a game. I'd seen him as I walked down the steps into this nightmare. Even without my glasses I can pick him out on the field just by the way he moves even if I can't see the big number 7 on his back. But he hadn't seen me. He'd been looking the other way, across the pitch where the wives and families are always put. He always looks for me. It calms him down knowing I'm there, he says. I knew he'd be worried now, not seeing me. I shouldn't have come. I should just be sitting at home, with Brooklyn watching his Dad-dy on television. Then at least David would know his family was safe. You have to have been to a football match to know what the noise does to you. I'd seen football on television before I went near a stadium and what you hear on television is nothing, even in those pubs with big screens and wraparound sound". Mark, my first boyfriend, would sometimes take me to watch foot¬ball in pubs, with his friends-his idea of an evening out. Funnily enough, I'd watched the semi-final against Germany in Euro 1996 in a pub in Enfield; that time when Gareth Southgate missed the penalty. If anyone had told me then I'd be married to a footballer I wouldn't have believed him or her. It's the noise that's as frightening as an express train when you're standing on a plat¬form.

It engulfs12you. It's a noise that makes you want to scream. Dress down'3, David had said. I knew all the other wives would be in their Away-Day best"-first England match in Euro 2000 and all that. And bring security. My dad and a bodyguard that would be enough, he'd said. But it wasn't.

It was the Friday before that the Daily Mail'5found out my name wasn't on the list and said I was behaving coldly toward the other England wives and girl-friends by not going. It was broadcast by the radio. I heard them talking about it on Capital as I drove into work. They were talking as if my going would make the difference as to whether England won or lost. Phil Neville's wife wasn't going, nor Gary Neville's girlfriend. No one said anything about them. Just went on about how I thought I should be treated differently.

But didn't they understand, I was treated differently. Were the other wives having fingers poked'6at them now? No. Even if they were dressed up in their England-Expects best17, nobody knew who they were. But Posh Spice who everyone knows wants to take their precious Golden Boy(Beckham) away from Manchester United, everyone knows who she is. The most hated woman in England, that's what I've been called.