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of friend he was. He came to visit you when everyone in the club told him to stay away.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ I said to the guy in the mirror, wishing it was Drenno. ‘I am so, so sorry.’
    Being sorry won’t bring him back, you bastard. One of the finest, most naturally skilled midfielders this country has ever produced – certainly the best you ever played with – and now he’s gone, aged just thirty-eight years old. What a fucking waste.
    ‘I’m sorry, Matt,’ I said and started crying again.
    ‘What’s wrong?’
    I turned to see Sonja standing in the doorway. She was naked. In the bathroom mirror she looked as perfect as a woman can look and if I’d had a golden apple I’d certainly have given it to her. I felt like Caliban standing next to Miranda. Or something callous and ugly, anyway.
    ‘It’s Matt,’ I said. ‘He’s hanged himself.’
    ‘Oh, my God, Scott. I’m so sorry.’
    She hugged me for a second and then sat down on the toilet.
    ‘That’s awful.’
    ‘He was just thirty-eight,’ I said, as if somehow that made it worse.
    ‘You mustn’t blame yourself,’ she said.
    ‘But I do blame myself. He needed help. That’s obviously why he came here the other night. Because – because he had nowhere else to go.’
    ‘Yes, he did need help but the help he needed was the professional kind. Frankly, I’ve been expecting this for a while. He was ill. He should have been in a hospital. His family should have had him sectioned a long time ago. And you know, I think we’ll find out that it wasn’t just depression that he couldn’t play football any more that caused him to kill himself. I’m sure there was something deeper that lay at the bottom of all his psychological issues. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we find that Matt’s childhood was marked by instability and tragedy. Perhaps even the suicide of someone who was close to him.’
    ‘Thanks.’ I nodded. ‘And you’re right, actually. His brother killed himself – threw himself in front of a train when he was fifteen. And there was some other stuff, too, that he didn’t like speaking about. Like when his best friend and drinking buddy, Mackie, cleared off and joined the army; Drenno was always rather lost without Mackie there to share his exploits. He’s been fucked up all his life, one way or the other.’
    ‘Come back to bed,’ she said. ‘And let me take care of you.’
    ‘I will in a while.’
    She kept hold of me for a minute. ‘You’re a good man,’ she said. ‘A decent man. That’s why Drenno came here. Because you’re the kind of decent man a man like him needed to cling onto.’
    ‘I still find that hard to believe. I mean, after everything that’s happened in my life.’
    ‘Believe it,’ she said. ‘Because it’s true.’
    I nodded. ‘Yeah, well if it is, it’s mostly down to you, Sonja. You make me a better person.’
    I went into my study, turned on my computer and then switched my phone to mute when it started ringing again: someone from the Sun I didn’t want to speak to. Then I logged on and spent an hour writing something kind but probably anodyne about Matt on Twitter – how could you describe a great character like Drenno in 140 characters? – and composing an email to the Arsenal press office with a quote for the Gunners website. A few minutes later I got a text from Maurice with the name and number of the police officer dealing with the inquiry into Drennan’s death: Detective Inspector Louise Considine LLB from Brent Police, 020 8733 3709. On the BBC News website there was a famous picture of Drenno celebrating after scoring a goal for Arsenal against Aston Villa in 1998, but the sole fact beyond what I already knew was that when he’d hanged himself he’d been wearing his white number eight England shirt – probably the only one he hadn’t yet sold on eBay.
    Sonja was right, of course; it was less of a surprise that Drennan had killed himself than that players like Gary Speed or