Substitute

Ellie took a deep breath; she knew what she needed to do. She was way past nervous, her mind and emotions numbed whilst every cell in her body vibrated with an intensity that bordered on painful. Her limbs did not feel like they belonged to her and every movement required conscious effort. Oh, not now, struck by a sudden urge to vomit, she leaned against the wall of the tunnel, pressing her head against the cool brickwork. The change of focus brought unexpected resolution and, oblivious to the looks and shouts from her astonished team-mates, she turned and faced back towards the changing room.

At the age of twenty-five Ellie Brighton was about to live the moment she had been working towards for as long as she could remember. She was captaining the England women's national football team as they played in the World Cup final. This was her destiny. Ellie told people she was lucky to have always known her destiny. She had never had to suffer indecision or uncertainty, never had to consider options or wrestle with potentially pivotal life choices. She had even been spared the bittersweet agonies that she had witnessed her contemporaries succumb to. As they practised falling in and out of love, testing boundaries and breaking rules, Ellie practised only within the painted white lines, carefully sidestepping so much as a yellow card.   

It was impossible to pinpoint when her future had become apparent. Maybe from the moment she was able to walk, or perhaps when she first kicked a ball. Not for her dolls, jigsaws, colouring books, or any of the diversions offered to other children. Ellie had footballs, goal posts and subscriptions to football magazines. Her evenings and weekends were consumed with training and matches. There was no time for other activities, but as the years went on her friends became more distant and the invitations less frequent. That was ok, she needed to focus and there was no place for distractions.

Nobody was surprised when Ellie excelled at football, she put in the work and it was in the blood. Dad had been a promising player, later blaming his early transition into parenthood with its onslaught of responsibilities for his missed opportunities. But he was able to channel his frustrated abilities and abandoned dreams into his firstborn, Ellie’s brother Kane, ten years her senior, and her hero. Kane was a true football natural, destined for great sporting achievements. Dad could see that Kane was going to live the life that he had been forced to forgo. Setting the template for Ellie’s experience years later, Kane was brought up to be a soccer star.

Whilst he was blessed with at least as much footballing talent as Ellie, Kane was not blessed with her amenable personality and desire to please. For him, the process of being moulded into the vision his dad had already created for himself was a source of tension, a constriction causing an ever-increasing pressure within. Lacking the skills or the opportunity to recognise and name his building distress, Kane took the only option available to him and developed alternative outlets. At the age of four years he started urinating behind his bed, he didn’t know why, and was unable to explain himself to his furious parents. His dad could barely look at him as they trained that evening.

There followed a series of protest behaviours over the years, each as hopeless as the last. Fighting at school was written off as youthful energy, unwillingness to complete homework accepted as part of a focus on a footballing career, and isolating from friends created more space for what was really important. Infrequent interjections from school suggesting that there may be an issue requiring address were side-lined. Dad knew what he was doing. But the tension continued to intensify and, as Kane grew older, the range of available outlet options became wider and more detrimental. His early escapes into self-harm were quickly detected and met with such scornful disgust that he stopped immediately. Or so dad thought. But Ellie knew he hadn’t stopped. She adored her big brother and football for her was a way to be close to him. She might have only just started school but she knew enough to understand that Kane hadn’t stopped the damage, he had just become more creative and skilful at hiding it.

Time did little to ease the frequency and fervency with which Ellie constructed a version of reality in which she had been able to share her childlike insight, to raise the alarm and prevent the tragedy. She carried burden of that knowledge, heavy and blunt, excruciating to the point of nauseating, through the remainder of her shattered childhood and into her fraudulently successful adulthood. She had become Kane’s substitute, and she provided dad with the vicarious football career he craved. Fuelled by the heat from her burden, which never abated no matter how hard she worked or how much she achieved, Ellie did what Kane could not.

But now, standing here, about to lead her team into the most important game of their careers, the most important moment of their lives, Ellie experienced a new sensation. The boulder-like burden lightened and rose upward within her. It expanded within her chest giving rise to a feeling that she had never before associated with playing football, suddenly she was filled with doubt. There was no uncertainty about her ability, that was not in question. Rather, Ellie had seemingly selected this, the most poignant moment in her career, her life, to lose her belief. What was she doing? How had she ended up here?

The noise from the stands faded, her teammates drifted from her awareness and Ellie was five years old standing beside her beloved brother’s bed. Kane wouldn’t answer her and she couldn’t wake him up. The confusion and rage, two decades stored, seared through her. Then came the grief and, with it, an unforeseen clarity. Kane hadn’t wanted the life that had been so precisely prescribed for him, and neither did she. Unable to truly free himself, Kane had escaped the only way he knew how. Unquestioningly, grounded by the weight of her innocent guilt, Ellie had taken his place. But it wasn’t Kane’s place and now it wasn’t hers. She had trained all her life for this moment, and now she walked away from the pitch and towards a different future.