Page 5 of After the Siren

Cunningham’s aviators had slid down to the bridge of his nose. He took them off and hooked them on the neck of his singlet. ‘Hey, roomie,’ he said as Theo stopped in front of him. Which still definitely wasn’t ‘sorry’.

‘Hi. Kat said you knew the way?’

‘I do.’ Cunningham swung a duffel bag over each shoulder. He gave Theo’s free arm a speculative look. ‘Give me a hand with the board?’

Theo couldn’t find words for a moment. Then he found ‘sure’, which wasn’t the word he wanted, but was the only sensible option. He hoped Cunningham couldn’t hear in his voice that he was gritting his teeth.

‘Oval in thirty,’ Kat yelled after them.

Theo unzipped his suitcase and extracted the packing cube with his training gear in it.

Cunningham had tossed both his duffel bags onto one of the beds (the only one with a bedside lamp, Theo noticed) and vanished into the hallway.

The muffled sounds of combat from the room next door suggested he’d gone to visit Riley and Xenos.

The room was pleasant, if a little faded.

It was wide enough that there was a decent amount of space between the twin beds, and there was a desk under the window.

The navy curtains billowed gently in the sea breeze.

Theo changed quickly, pulling on shorts and one of his new training singlets.

That done, he flopped back onto the bed and texted Priya to let her know he’d made it.

A couple of other friends had messaged. His parents hadn’t.

Priya responded within seconds.

Priya

How’s it going? Any ab updates?

He sent her a thumbs up. She hated that.

Priya

Sharing a room?

Theo

Yeah. The theory is it helps with team bonding

Priya

Who’s your roommate?

Theo

Guess

Priya

not your nemesis?

Theo

Nemesis is a strong word

Priya

Idk seems fitting.

They texted back and forth until the door bounced open and Cunningham re-entered. Was he constitutionally incapable of moving through the world without making it a performance?

‘We’ve got another ten minutes, right?’ Cunningham said, unzipping one of the duffel bags.

‘Yeah.’ Ten minutes you could use to apologise.

‘Sweet.’

Cunningham pulled off his singlet and shoved his shorts down.

He was wearing yellow boxer briefs covered in pink flamingos.

He opened the other bag and began excavating the contents, item by item.

A couple of lip balms rolled across the floor and Theo stopped one with his foot. Watermelon flavoured.

Cunningham unearthed some shorts and a training singlet. He made a sound of satisfaction, then started tossing individual football boots out of the second bag.

He didn’t seem to be in a hurry to put clothes on. Theo got a good look at a tattoo on back of his left thigh: a pelican with a footy in its mouth. It looked like the sort of tattoo you got in the golden haze of a grand-final victory.

Theo decided to take the opportunity to assert entitlement to the desk. Cunningham didn’t seem likely to use it for its intended purpose, but it did seem likely that he would spread his shit all over it.

Theo unpacked a couple of Law textbooks, his laptop and a box of stationery.

Studying during development camp hadn’t been the plan, but the inconvenient thing about a mental-health crisis was that it tended to derail your plans.

He’d gotten academic accommodations so he could finish his subjects, but that was going to involve grinding out some assignments over the course of pre-season.

‘You studying?’ Cunningham asked from behind him, and Theo turned. Cunningham still hadn’t put his shorts on. The tattoo on his hip was of a 1950s pin-up-style mermaid.

That tracked.

‘Yeah.’ He couldn’t be rude to Cunningham. The last thing he needed was to get a reputation for being a problem with the other players. But that didn’t mean he had to be chatty.

‘Cool, what’re you doing?’

‘Law.’

‘Nice.’ Cunningham prodded Introduction to Torts . ‘I thought a tort was a cake.’

He was close enough that Theo could smell his cologne. Or, more likely, his body spray.

Someone banged on the door. ‘Come on,’ Xenos called, saving Theo from having to reply.

‘On our way!’ Jake yelled back.

‘Bestavros, with me.’

Theo peeled off from the other players – running warm-up drills in groups – and jogged over to Kat. She’d changed into compression tights and a Falcons t-shirt. The muscles in her thighs could have crushed a person’s head like a melon.

‘Let’s jog and talk,’ she said, gesturing to the track around the edge of the oval. They fell into an easy pace, skirting the boundary line.

‘Don’t worry,’ she told him. ‘I’m going to pull each of the players out for a chat. You’re just first in the alphabet.’

‘Good to know I’m not in trouble.’

‘Have you done anything that you should be in trouble for?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Just don’t fall under Cunningham’s malign influence. He loves a prank.’

No danger of that. ‘Noted.’

Kat waited until they were out of earshot and passing the expanse of purple wisteria that coated the side of the gym before she continued. ‘I know when we last talked you had good reason to be a bit guarded about your time with the Sharks,’ she said. ‘But I’d like to hear more about it.’

‘Sure.’ Theo tried to sound relaxed. Professional.

‘How did you find Gary Hunt as a coach?’

‘I have a lot of respect for him. He’s a very experienced and capable coach.’ Theo didn’t look across at Kat, although he could see from the corner of his eye that she was looking at him.

‘True,’ she said. ‘But not the answer to my question.’

‘Sorry, I might have misunderstood.’

She looked across at him, eyebrows sceptical, but didn’t call bullshit. ‘Do you feel like his coaching made you a better player?’

Theo watched the aerial acrobatics of a seagull as it circled the goal posts.

He and Priya had toasted to new beginnings, but what did that mean?

He was here to do a job. Kat didn’t know him and he didn’t know her; he didn’t have any way to gauge the potential cost of honesty.

The trade had been her idea (she’d copped it enough in the media for him to be sure of that), so she clearly saw something in him.

Was that enough? Except, her first loyalty had to be to the team.

She wasn’t his friend, or his mentor. She had no reason to cut him any slack.

They jogged on in silence and Theo knew he should answer. Kat spoke again before he’d made up his mind. ‘You know, a coach like Gary Hunt nearly made me give up footy.’

‘I can’t imagine you giving up anything.’

She laughed and nodded towards the cluster of players in the goal square. ‘Players like Cunningham and Ryan, if you give them a real tune-up and tell them “this isn’t good enough”, they’ll go out with a fire under their arse to prove you wrong. Because they think they’re the best.’

As they watched, Tommy flicked a ball up from the ground with his foot, then spun in a circle, executing some sort of roundhouse kick. The ball thumped into the netting behind the goals and Cunningham hooted with glee.

‘I wasn’t like that, though,’ Kat continued.

They veered around a smattering of balls and cones spilling out of a bag on the boundary line.

‘When my coach said “this isn’t good enough”, what I heard was, “you’re not good enough”.

And I guess that’s what I believed, deep down.

So every time he said it, I believed it a bit more, until it was true.

I wasn’t playing well. I dropped marks, made mistakes – and the more he tried to make me stand tall, the smaller I got. ’

‘What happened?’ It was hard for Theo to force the words out past the lump in his throat and the tightness in his chest.

‘I quit. Threw in the towel after the first AFLW season. Went back to full-time teaching – taught Cunningham, actually.’

That startled a laugh out of Theo. ‘Model student?’

She snorted. ‘What do you think?’

They came around behind the other goals and Theo ducked a ball as it sailed between the posts.

Once they were out of the danger zone, Theo asked, ‘And then?’

‘I went away with some mates and some mates of mates. I hadn’t touched a footy for nine months.

But we were just stuffing around on this country oval – taking pot shots at goal, playing nines – and I forgot about everything that had happened.

I started having fun again. Took the best hanger of my life.

’ She grinned. ‘One of the mates of mates was Cindy Johnson, the new Geelong coach that year. One night we all had a few beers, and I found myself talking to her about it. Spilled my guts, really. She convinced me to give it another shot at Geelong.’

‘Bet you’re glad you met her.’

‘For lots of reasons.’ She glanced across at Theo and grinned even brighter. ‘We’re married now.’

Theo winced. ‘Sorry. I should know these things, but I’ve never really followed all the footy news. Poor form, I know.’

‘Nah, to be honest I think it’s better. Easier to ignore the garbage if you’re not tuned in all the time.’

They ran another half lap in silence. Theo had always found running meditative: the thud of his footsteps, the rhythm of his own breathing.

It had always helped him think. But this time it didn’t bring him any closer to making a decision.

His instincts told him he could trust Kat.

He wanted to trust her. But he hadn’t talked to anyone about this, not really.

Not someone who would understand the messy guts of it.

‘Let’s stretch,’ she said, slowing to a walk and then resting a hand on the boundary fence.

Theo dropped into a deep lunge. ‘You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.

But I’ll be able to coach you better if I know what’s on your mind.

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that you were having a shit time. I don’t want you carrying that.’

Priya would have told him to ‘talk, goddammit’, but she’d be biased because Kat was her type.

‘I think I had a panic attack.’ He hurried the words out and almost stumbled over them. ‘When I lined up to take that shot. I don’t think I was ... in a good place.’ Saying it felt good, for a second, and then the worry ate in at the edges. He looked across at Kat, trying to read her face.

She nodded, looking thoughtful. ‘Have you had panic attacks before?’

‘I don’t think so. I’ve gotten nervous but ... it was different.’

‘That must have been horrible.’ The empathy in her voice was so palpable and unexpected it almost knocked the breath out of him.

‘Yeah.’ He managed to keep his voice steady. ‘I guess ... I guess I knew it was my shot. Do or die.’

‘That’s a lot of pressure.’

‘That’s just the game, right?’

‘Well, yes and no. Most players don’t line up for a goal after the siren thinking their career is on the line.’

‘Plenty of other players would have slotted it.’ He tried not to glance towards Cunningham.

She looked at him levelly. He had the uncomfortable sense that he’d given away more than he’d meant to. ‘Maybe. But maybe not.’

Theo switched legs, reaching one arm up and feeling the pull up his side. ‘Bet you’ll think twice about giving me a game now.’ He tried for a joking tone.

Kat’s eyebrows formed an unimpressed V (they were expressive eyebrows).

‘I’m not going to send you out there if you’re not in the right headspace, that’s right.

But you wouldn’t have made that joke if we were talking a niggly hamstring or a sprain that hadn’t come good.

As far as I’m concerned, there’s no difference here.

What happened to you in the past means that there’s something getting between you and your best footy.

I’ll do everything I can to give you the tools to manage it.

All I expect from you is for you to work with them. ’

He nodded, half convinced.

‘You boys are all the same,’ she told him, shaking her head. ‘You think you’re the first person in the world to need some help. You’re not, trust me. Not the first, won’t be the last.’

Theo rose to his feet and moved into a quad stretch, holding the fence so he had a reason to turn away. He wasn’t quite ready to meet her eyes. ‘So what do I do?’

‘Well, all our players see one of our club psychs. I’d like to send you to Jenny, if that’s alright with you.

She’s worked with lots of players around anxiety.

She has a background with performers of all kinds – I think after opera singers, footballers are easy.

But if you’d rather talk to a bloke, Mick is also great. ’

‘Jenny sounds good.’ Priya would be delighted. She could stop sending him links to psychologists based in Melbourne.

Kat dropped into a pigeon pose and Theo followed suit.

‘I’m not going to grill you about how you ended up in a bad place. Jenny’s the one who’s qualified to help you unpack that. But remember that you can always talk to me. If something’s going on, if you’re having trouble, come and say something.’ She reached out a hand. ‘Deal?’

He took it. ‘Deal.’

He wasn’t sure if he felt better, but something had changed. Had unravelled, or at least loosened. The anxiety was still there, waiting behind his ribs, but it had receded.

Kat got to her feet. ‘Have you ever played on the wing?’

Back to business, then. ‘A bit, not for a while.’

‘I want to try you out there.’ She gave him the type of look he usually saw on the faces of women in Birkenstocks sizing up produce at the farmers’ market. ‘Not necessarily forever, but I think it might suit you.’

On the one hand, playing on the wing put him a comfortable distance from the big sticks. On the other, it tasted a bit too much like failure. He’d always played forward, always kicked goals.

‘Sounds good,’ he said.

Kat clambered to her feet. ‘It will mean playing a more defensive role, but you’ll adjust. If you manage to shut down Jaze or Tommy, you’ll be ready for anyone. Just don’t hit them too hard. We need them.’

‘I’ll do my best.’