Better Together (2 page)

Sheridan Gray had grown up in a sports-mad family. Sitting down in front of
Match of the Day
,
Sportsnight
and
Grandstand
was practically mandatory in the Gray household (as had been the daily purchase of the
City Scope
, widely regarded as the paper with the most authoritative sports section in the country). Sheridan’s father and her two older brothers played both soccer and Gaelic football, and her mum was a PE teacher. But Sheridan wasn’t obsessed in the same way as her parents
and her brothers, and (being perfectly honest about it, although she wouldn’t dream of saying so out loud) she disliked competing against other people. This was in contrast to everyone else in the family, who didn’t believe that it was the taking part and not the winning that counted; as far as they were concerned, winning was the most important thing of all.

Sheridan didn’t know why the competitive gene that ran so strongly through her parents and her brothers had passed her by, but the truth was that her favourite sporting activity was simply running by herself, not trying to beat anyone, not even the clock. She enjoyed jogging, which she found relaxing, and she needed relaxation because the Gray household, caught up as it always was with matches that the others were involved in, was rarely a relaxing place to be.

For most of her childhood it had been a given that she would spend weekends with her mother, Alice, on the sidelines of a pitch, wrapped up in a quilted anorak, warm gloves and knitted hat against the biting cold, while shouting encouragement at the men in her family. Afterwards there would be endless, sometimes heated, discussions about the match. The coach’s selections were analysed, as was the team’s performance, the opposition’s tactics and even the level of support that both teams received. Sheridan would listen to the conversation without taking part. As far as she was concerned she’d done her bit by screaming until her throat was sore.

Matt and Con, her brothers, were picked to play for the Dublin Gaelic football team when they were old enough, which was the pinnacle of success as far as everyone in the family was concerned. They threw a huge party the day the announcement was made and Alice (not normally known for her baking
skills) produced an enormous rectangular cake, which she’d decorated to look like a football pitch. Plastic figures wearing green shirts were placed in each goal mouth to represent Matt and Con, while a referee in the middle took the place of their father, Pat.

It was unfortunate, Sheridan thought, that her brothers’ time with the Dublin team had also coincided with a slump in its fortunes, otherwise there would have been even bigger and better parties to celebrate more success. However, the Gray boys, as they were known, were always given high praise by the media for their unstinting efforts on behalf of their county, and indeed for their local club too, which regularly won the league, more often than not due to a spectacular shot from one or other of the boys.

It was when these reports (always from the
City Scope
) were being solemnly read out that Sheridan felt both proud of and yet disconnected from the rest of her family. She couldn’t understand why being beaten totally devastated Matt and Con, and left them stomping around the house, slamming doors and impossible to talk to. Both Alice and Pat seemed to think that this was perfectly normal behaviour, but Sheridan asked herself why on earth they didn’t just get over it. She was used to hearing people say ‘it’s only a game’, but as far as the Grays were concerned, it seemed to be so much more than that.

As she grew older, she became impatient with their obsessions. She wished that she lived in a house where she didn’t fall over football boots as soon as she walked in the door, and wasn’t greeted by a forest of drying sports shirts in the kitchen every day. She longed to have discussions on hair and make-up from time to time (something she knew woefully
little about) instead of listening to constant arguments about disallowed penalties and professional fouls. But there was nobody to have these discussions with. Alice wasn’t the sort of person who devoted much time to hair and beauty. She was a tall, trim woman who kept her greying hair short and whose main beauty product was an industrial-sized jar of Pond’s moisturiser which she kept on the bathroom shelf, between the cans of Lynx and tubs of Brylcreem. And the truth was that Sheridan couldn’t categorise herself as the kind of girl who knew a lot about beauty either. Despite her weekly jogs, she didn’t have the lean, wiry build of a runner. She was as sturdy as her brothers, broad shouldered and statuesque rather than thin and elegant, and infinitely more comfortable in jeans and jumpers than dresses and high heels. From time to time she went on a blitz of fashion shopping with some of her friends, but more often than not the micro miniskirts or tight boots that had seemed like a good idea at the time ended up unworn in the back of her wardrobe, a testament to the fact that her thighs were the body feature she disliked the most.

Her relationship with the opposite sex was, in many ways, as comfortable as the clothes she preferred to wear. Unlike many of her female friends, she didn’t get tongue-tied in the presence of a boy she’d never met before, because she was accustomed to a constant stream of beefy soccer and GAA players traipsing in and out of the house, and she was perfectly at ease talking to any of them – especially as their conversation was generally about their matches, and she’d been to most of them. She knew that men weren’t mysterious creatures who would magically change your life. She knew that they could get anxious and worried just like girls – although,
in fairness, usually about different things. Matt and Con were rarely anxious about their dates; they were more concerned about their matches. Nevertheless, when Con was stressing about where to bring the lovely Bevanne Dickinson the first time they were going out together, Sheridan was the one to suggest that taking her to see
Jerry Maguire
in the warmth of the cinema would probably be better fun for her than standing on the terraces in the rain watching a League of Ireland match; and when Matt was at a loss to know what to get for his girlfriend’s eighteenth birthday, she told him firmly that Melissa would prefer a dainty watch to the bulky thing with multiple functions and two different timers he was considering. The boys were always surprised when she came up with girlie tips but always grateful for what was generally the right advice. In turn, they steered her away from men they regarded as messers and not good enough for her (even though she didn’t always agree with them and didn’t solely judge prospective boyfriends on their footballing prowess).

In the end, most of the guys she eventually dated were people she’d met at one sporting fixture or another. They generally knew her parents and her brothers, and seemed to regard her as more of a friend than a girlfriend. They usually brought her to rugby matches (which she enjoyed) or to dark and gloomy bars (which she didn’t quite as much – she preferred the trend for bright, modern gastro-pubs that was beginning to hit the country). Most of them, at some point or another, would tell her that it was great to go out with someone like her, a decent sort who liked a laugh, could talk soccer, rugby and GAA and could get ready for a date in less than ten minutes.

Sheridan wasn’t insulted by being regarded as a decent sort rather than a sex symbol. After all, she didn’t think her body could ever be regarded as sexy, and her interest in make-up and clothes was fairly minimal. She didn’t mind a dash of lip gloss before she went out, but the idea of spending absolutely hours in front of the mirror, like some of the girls she knew, bored her beyond belief. Besides, she couldn’t help thinking that it was far better to be someone that men felt comfortable talking to, and who got on with them all (even if most of her relationships petered out after a couple of months), rather than one of the group of air-headed, giggling women who seemed to regard them as creatures that they would never understand and who were a prize to be won if they only knew how. Sheridan felt that she had a lot to be thankful for in that respect and was glad that the opposite sex wasn’t a mystery to her; in fact there were times she felt that she knew far too much about them and their interests. However, there were also times when she felt a bit of an outsider among her friends because she was never at ease participating in breathless conversations about fanciable guys. She wondered if she’d ever meet someone who would fill her every waking thought, or turn her legs to jelly, or make her think that an evening spent waxing her legs and plucking her eyebrows was worth the pain. Somehow she doubted it.

That feeling of being an outsider extended to her home life too, although the reasons were different. But she couldn’t help feeling distant from the rest of her family whenever she looked at Matt and Con’s trophies, the symbols of their success, which were proudly displayed in the huge walnut cabinet in the corner of the room, and totally dwarfed the only award she’d ever won. This was a plastic medal for
the under-10s girls’ five-a-side football tournament (which wasn’t a proper tournament at all but was designed to give the girls the chance to kick the ball around and wear themselves out, while their mothers sat in the clubhouse for a cup of tea and a chat, and for which all of the young participants had received a medal).

She didn’t want to be an airhead but she didn’t always want to be the fallback girl that men dated when they couldn’t get anyone else either. (Matt’s friends in particular used her as a last-minute date whenever they needed someone, knowing that she’d enter into the spirit of whatever the occasion was.) She didn’t need to be a winner but nor did she want to be the perennial loser in her testosterone-filled family home. Most of the time she was comfortable in her own skin, but occasionally it was hard to be the one who simply didn’t match up, no matter how hard she tried.

Matt and Con both went to college after school, choosing to study business while hoping to get jobs that would allow them plenty of time to devote to playing for their football club. Sheridan knew that she didn’t have a business brain and wanted a job that could become a career. Alice suggested that she follow in her footsteps and become a PE teacher (you mightn’t be all that good at competing yourself, she told Sheridan, but you know how it should be done). Sheridan had scotched that idea immediately. She wanted to do something dramatically different from the rest of the family. She needed to break out on her own.

She decided to study journalism on a whim, mainly because one of her teachers complimented her on a report she’d done on the school fashion show. Miss Kavanagh said that it had
been a vivid piece of writing that had brought the show to life for anyone who read the piece. Was Sheridan very interested in fashion? she asked.

It was a question that reduced Sheridan to fits of laughter, and Miss Kavanagh, realising that designer dresses were intended for women who looked like a half-decent puff of wind would blow them over rather than well-built girls like Sheridan, looked suitably embarrassed. Sheridan told her not to worry, that she’d enjoyed writing the piece because it was about something so alien to her, which led Miss Kavanagh to sigh with relief; although then Sheridan remarked that nobody would take seriously as a fashion journalist a woman who liked her food and had never been on a crash diet. Miss Kavanagh tried to convince her otherwise but Sheridan knew that she was wasting her time. All the same, she thought, maybe she could become an investigative reporter and one day have her name in big print beneath a story that could be added to the enormous file of cuttings that Alice kept documenting Con and Matt’s successes on the playing field. And maybe then she’d finally feel like a success in her own right too.

By the time she qualified, however, the economy was sluggish and jobs were hard to come by. Instead of going straight on to a busy news desk as she’d hoped, she’d ended up in the classifieds section of a daily newspaper, looking after the personal notices that covered births, marriages and deaths. She didn’t need a college qualification to take down funeral details, but she did always wonder about the person concerned, the life they’d led and the people they’d left behind. She liked the birth notices best, amusing herself by guessing what
kind of life the baby would have based on the name chosen by its parents. Samanthas, she decided, would be blonde and beautiful, and marry for money. Kates had to be groomed, businesslike and destined for success. Jackies would be sporty. If Pat and Alice had called her Jackie, then she might have fulfilled whatever sporting dream they had for her.

In fact they’d chosen to name her after Martin Sheridan, a five-time Olympic gold-medallist. Born Bohola, County Mayo, in 1881, Martin had also won three silvers and a bronze representing the USA in the discus, shot putt, high jump and long jump. Pat and Alice had clearly believed that he’d be someone for Sheridan to live up to, but all that had happened was that she’d been teased mercilessly for having two surnames (she’d once suggested that simply tacking on an ‘a’ to his first name would have saved her a lot of grief, but Alice had shaken her head and told her that Sheridans were tougher than Martinas).

When she’d seen the ad for a junior reporter for the
City Scope
sports desk she almost hadn’t bothered replying. She wanted to do hard news, to report on politics and crime, not football matches. But she was going steadily crazy in classifieds and she thought that getting any reporter’s job would be better than nothing.

It surprised her, when she was offered it, at how pleased she was. It surprised her even more how much she enjoyed it.

She’d never thought that all the times she’d spent cheering on Con and Matt would be good for anything. Or that she’d learned so much from the after-match debates at home. Or that she knew as much as she did about the winners and runners-up in so many different events. It was her
encyclopaedic knowledge of All-Ireland football winners that had stunned Martyn Powell when he interviewed her. But it was her analysis of a recent Republic of Ireland soccer match that had convinced him that she was the best person for the job.