Free Fan by Danny Rhodes

north through the patchwork. Heading to the old town. Kelly’s screams in his head. The two of them in the bedroom. That cutting tongue of hers. Her in that towel. Fresh out of the shower. Her naked shoulders. Her wet skin. Her wrists slipping from his grip.
    The two of them in the bedroom, wrestling, grappling, fighting.
    Truly fighting.
    The same piece of track. Sunday, 9th April 1989. Heading home from Wembley. League Cup Winners. First trophy in a decade. With the boys all the way, Chester, Coventry, Leicester, QPR, Bristol fucking City, a sun-drenched Sunday in London town, stuffing the holders, stuffing the Hatters.
    Psycho in his little white hat.
    Forest on a fucking roll. Confidence soaring. Tearing all and sundry to shreds. Seventeen wins in twenty-two games.
    Cloughie clasping his hands, punching the air. A lone figure on the dog track, skirting the celebrations, slipping down the tunnel and away.
    One job done.
    They’d criticised him, the daft bastards, for sloping off like that, but they didn’t fucking understand. They didn’t see the bigger picture. Let the players have their fifteen minutes, then get on with things. There was so much more. There was Hills-borough for fuck’s sake, the FA Cup.
    One big job left to do.
    Kelly naked on the bed, the towel at her feet, her head buried in the pillow. Him breathless in the doorway, shocked at himself.
    Lads on the 19.00 out of King’s Cross, revelling in it, the stuff of dreams. Spilling into the aisle, dancing the miles away. Conga up and down the carriages, blokes joining blokes, strangers united, five, ten, twenty deep, up the train and back again. Even the fucking guard joining in, the rest of the passengers laughing along, a party on the 19.00 King’s Cross to Leeds.
    Sunday evening. 9th April 1989.
    Party time.
    ‘Let’s all have a disco, La la la la La la la la…’
    And they did.
    Fifteen fucking years. He could see them all, half expected the door to slide open, the lads to come barrelling down thecarriage, lads and lads and lads and lads, each in their colours, loving the crack.
    He could see them all.
    A train full of ghosts.
    A movie reel beyond the window. Lights flashing by. The train thundering onward. A tin of lager at his lips.
    The bittersweet taste of what once was and what is.
    Invisible death looming on a black horizon.
    A perpetual shadow.
    Then and now.
    Now and then.
    And in another dark corner, their bedroom door shut fast. Him on the dark landing, retreating down the stairs, leaving it behind.
    Leaving Kelly behind.
    The landscape gathered itself in. Familiar villages he recognised by patterns of street lights, the meandering river somewhere in the darkness, the red warning lights on the waterworks, the old factories convulsing in their death throes, the glow of halogen spotlights protecting the asset strippers’ bounty from the pilfering hands of the discarded and forgotten. Rows and rows of dark terraced houses beyond the window on his side of the train, well-lit commuter estates beyond the other.
    Polarised fucking opposites.
    The old town.
    Dismantling the bedrock. Burying its foundations. A twenty-year process of decay, of living and dying … and dying … and dying.
    A legacy of ruin in the manufacturing heartlands.
    A mirror to the soul.
    He walked out of the station, down the incline and into the old town, his footsteps leading the way, the rest of him following, straight to the hotel, straight to his hotel room, his hotel bed, exhausted from his journey, from his week, from the news about Stimmo, from all that had happened with Kelly.
    He stroked the scratches on his forearms.
    He winced with pain.
    You’re fifteen years old. You are travelling to Leicester. You have a ticket to the biggest derby game of the season.
    And there’s no fucking love lost either.
    It’s a nasty day to watch a football match. It’s a nasty fucking place.
    And it will rain burning toilet rolls.
    Off the stinking train, out of the