The Footballer's Wife

Contents

Cover

About the Book

About the Author

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Copyright

On the surface of it glamour girl Charly Metcalfe finally has it all. She's officially a W.A.G, having bagged premiership footballer Joel Baldy to be her boyfriend – and she has the lifestyle to go along with the title. She lives in a million-pound penthouse. She gets invited to the most glamorous parties, and Joel will buy her anything she wants.

But behind closed doors, life as a footballer's other half isn't as perfect as it seems. Joel has a temper and when he and Charly argue he lets his fists do the talking. Charly knows she should get out but there's one problem… she loves him. In fact she loves him enough to marry him in spite of their problems – and her own family's objections. But having married in haste, is Charly going to regret her decision all too quickly…?

Kerry was born in Warrington in 1980. She came into the limelight when she joined the hugely successful band Atomic Kitten, but left in 2001 when her first daughter was born. As well as winning
I'm A Celebrity . . . Get Me Out Of Here!
she has been a regular presenter on
Loose Women
, starred in the successful Irish TV series
Show Band
, and has been the subject of a prime time ITV documentary,
My Fair Kerry
. Most recently she and her husband Mark have starred in
Crazy in Love
on MTV. Her memoir
Too Much, Too Young
was a
Sunday Times
Top Ten bestseller.

CHARLY METCALFE ASKED
her driver to drop her as near as possible to Harvey Nicks in the centre of Manchester. He pointed out that it was pedestrianised but lately she did what she always did when someone gave her an objection – she offered him money. Flashing a fifty pound note in his direction she said, ‘Here you go, Terry. Just see how far you can get, don't worry if it's not to the door.'

‘Put your bloody money away. What d'you think I am, a lap dancer?' Terry chided. Charly smiled. Terry wasn't into taking money from her, but she still offered; she thought it rude not to.

Charly checked her reflection in her compact; her MAC make-up was perfectly applied to her sunkissed skin. Her green eyes were framed with the slightest hint of mascara and her cheekbones had a dash of pink blusher. Charly didn't need much
more to enhance her features; she was naturally pretty. Terry drove around the back of the cathedral and up towards the giant, flower-shaped windmills in the Triangle. ‘This is as far as I can get you without carrying you in.'

Charly smiled. ‘Thank you.'

Terry raised an eyebrow in his rearview mirror and shook his head.

‘What?' Charly asked with a cheeky smile. She knew
what
. She was pushing her luck, as always, but she knew that Terry liked her and that he'd drive her to the counter if he could. Charly and Terry got on well. It was as if they both knew how lucky she was. He liked her cheekiness and seemed to appreciate her kindness – not her financial kindness, he wasn't buying any of that – but her thoughtfulness; she would often buy him little gifts from town or cook for him. Charly liked Terry because of his humour and warmth. A lot of people who worked for Charly's boyfriend didn't seem to notice her but Terry did. She was glad to have him around. The fact that Charly had a driver at all wasn't lost on her. Only a year ago she had been living on the Bolingbroke council estate wondering where her next pair of fake Rock & Republic jeans were going to come from. And
now she was living the life that she, and thousands of other girls like her, could have only dreamed of. Well, almost. She and her footballer boyfriend Joel Baldy had been arguing a lot lately but Charly just told herself that it went with the territory. They had recently decided to move from their Cheshire home into their Manchester penthouse to see if a change of scenery would improve things. If nothing else, Charly thought, Terry wouldn't have to drive her to Harvey Nicks. She could walk the 100 yards from the apartment to the store herself.

Charly stepped out of the Lincoln Navigator, throwing her Balenciaga bag over her shoulder, and headed for her favourite shop. The doorman tipped his hat and said, ‘Hello, madam,' as he did every Thursday when Charly came shopping. The first area of the shop was the bag section. The woman serving at one of the well-known designer bag counters gave Charly a tight smile as she perused the wares.

‘Hello, Ms Metcalfe, can I get you anything today?'

Charly picked up a little blue number that was priced at one thousand and fifty pounds. ‘No, I think I'm just looking,' Charly said, smiling back
disingenuously. She was enjoying herself. This was the woman who, on Charly's first trip to the shop, had obviously taken her for a chav-on-tour and asked her to put the merchandise down if she had no intention of buying it. Charly had dropped the bag she was holding at the time and walked over to the Mulberry counter across the way and, in full view of the rude shop assistant, had spent in excess of five thousand pounds on three bags. She had given two of them away to her younger twin cousins, Anita and Tanita, and told them to sell them on eBay if they had any sense. Charly hadn't had any more
Pretty Woman
moments since. She knew she must be one of Harvey Nicks' best customers and that that particular shop assistant was wishing she had never been snotty with her.

Charly knew she'd get used to having money, but she hadn't realised how quickly. She thought nothing of spending two thousand pounds on a dress that would be worn once and cast to the back of the wardrobe. She didn't have much of a moral problem with spending Joel's money. She brought in enough money modelling and being in the occasional magazine to pass whatever she spent off as her own. Although she was doing less modelling these days – she wasn't a great fan of getting her top
off in cold rooms and being told to look sexy. Glamour modelling needed renaming in Charly's opinion.

Joel was paid a fortune. He earned more in one week than most people earned in a year, two years even, as Charly had reminded him when his new contract was signed. He gave her money because he didn't know what to do with it and she spent it accordingly, but always made sure that whatever she spent on herself she spent the same on Joel.

Today she was going to buy Joel something special. But as she walked around the shop nothing grabbed her. Everything in here was something he could walk in and buy for himself. Charly slipped her shades on, popped her hair in a ponytail and ventured out into the street. Not that she was constantly mobbed by the press – she wasn't arrogant enough to place herself in the same league as Victoria Beckham – but she was often recognised, and she found it slightly disconcerting. She walked across to St Anne's Square and was contemplating buying something from the Disney Store when she saw a stall in the middle of the square selling hand-carved toys and door plaques. Charly smiled to herself, knowing that she had found Joel's ideal present.

A few hours later Charly let herself into the large detached house in Hale Barns that she shared with Joel. Charly had never quite got used to this place. It wasn't the house so much as the isolation she felt when they were there. It wasn't isolated in the strictest sense: they lived on a tree-lined street with other huge houses set back in their own grounds, but Charly was used to living shoulder to shoulder with her neighbours and here, nobody gave her the time of day. She was sure that she'd seen the snooty woman next door cross herself when she and Joel moved in.

There were a number of boxes and suitcases scattered around the entrance hall. The move to the Manchester apartment was taking place tomorrow and Gina, a woman from Manchester Rovers who seemed to help the players with anything they needed, was standing in the middle of Charly and Joel's belongings, checking each item off on a clipboard.

‘Where's Joel?' Charly asked.

‘Putting his feet up,' Gina said, nodding towards the dining room.

Charly wandered through to find her boyfriend
sitting engrossed in his XBox 360 game. She kissed him on the cheek but he didn't react, his gaze firmly on the soldier on the screen who was spinning round in a room, shooting into thin air.

‘I've got you a present,' Charly said gently. When she and Joel had first become an item he had told her that as a child he'd always wanted a plaque for his door but because at the time his had been an unusual name he'd never had one. He was jealous of his school mate John who had his name plastered all over everything. Joel didn't take his eyes off the screen as Charly began to unwrap the paper bag containing the wooden room sign.
Joel's Games Room. Do Not Disturb
, the hand-carved sign said in bright letters.

‘Here you go,' Charly said gently. Joel shut his eyes with rage and threw the control to the floor.

‘I've just fucked that up now!' he shouted angrily.

‘I've got you a present,' Charly said quietly. She heard the front door softly close. It was obvious that Gina thought it necessary to make herself scarce.

Joel's jaw set angrily. ‘What?'

‘It's a plaque for the spare room in the flat. You said you always wanted one when you were a kid.'

Joel looked down at the gift his girlfriend was cradling. ‘Well, I'm not a kid now, am I? I'm a
grown fucking man.' He stood up and walked out of the room.

Charly looked on after him, heartbroken. ‘Where are you going?'

‘Somewhere I can get some peace and quiet,' Joel said over his shoulder. Charly sat staring at the small gift; she felt foolish for even thinking of buying it now. She wrapped it back up in the tissue paper and put it in her bag. A door at the opposite end of the house slammed, and Charly stood up, determined not to cry. She walked into the hall and began to sort through hers and Joel's belongings; anything to distract herself from the feeling of foreboding that had crept over her.

*

Tracy Crompton was sitting flicking through the last-minute holidays on Teletext. Her blonde hair was scraped back harshly from her face, and her figure, which considering the sedentary life she led was still in great shape, was hidden from view by the stained towelling dressing gown she insisted on wearing around the house. She was due a break, she thought. It had been nearly a year since her ill-fated attempt to have the holiday of a lifetime in
the Dominican Republic. And if that stroppy mare of an air hostess hadn't thought it necessary to wrestle her to the ground, sit on her back and have the plane diverted and Tracy arrested for being drunk and disorderly then she might have spent her two weeks on a white sandy beach rather than sharing a cell with a dangerous American lesbian called Brenda with Meatloaf's face tattooed on her arm.

This year she was doing things differently. She and Kent were going to get themselves to the Costa Del Whatever's the Cheapest, and she was going to lay off the rum until they were safely in their apartment. She heard Kent rustling around behind her. ‘There's a week here in Magaluf, ninety nine pounds each. That's bugger all. What d'you reckon?' she shouted over her shoulder.

‘Ninety nine quid? It'll be a rat-hole,' Kent said, his voice straining. Tracy turned around to see what he was doing. He was standing by the breakfast bar trying with all his might to zip up a white, rhinestone-studded, all-in-one Elvis suit that was easily three sizes too small. He managed to get the zip as far as his belly button while simultaneously trapping his chest hairs. His eyes nearly popped out of his head with pain.