Capital

in her own daughters, and in the years after Shimé’s death he grew very close to his father.
    Patrick Kamo was two people: a stern and unforgiving man at his work, and a soft, gentle, anxious parent. He was sometimes taken aback by how much he loved Freddy, but did his best to hide it from everyone except the boy himself. He worried about his son, a lot, especially as Freddy seemed to be such a dreamer, such a drifter, lacking the hardness the world demands. He was slow in his lessons and disliked school. All he ever wanted to do was play football. He was admittedly very good at football – or at least that’s what he was, right from the start, at about the age of five. As he got older, things changed. Football became the only thing Freddy ever spoke or thought about, and it became clear that he wasn’t merely good at football, but something else altogether. Patrick realised that Freddy was touched with something a long way beyond mere talent.
    Today, Freddy was seventeen, and even people with no interest in football, even people who had never been to a proper football match, even people who actively disliked the game, could see something special about Freddy Kamo with a ball at his feet. This wasn’t because Freddy looked at his ease with the ball; on the contrary. Even at the best of times Freddy looked awkward, clumsy, and as if he were about to trip over, with the gangly, jangling awkwardness of a teenage boy who has recently had a big growth spurt and hasn’t yet got used to the new disposition of his own limbs. He knocked things over and spilled things. He splashed Coke on himself and bumped into doorways.
    With a football at Freddy’s feet, it was much, much worse. On a football field, he just looked wrong. Shorts made his skinny legs look not only long and awkward, but also as if they were a telescopic implement with one segment too many, like an overextended radio aerial. His upper body, in a football jersey, was slope-shouldered and narrow-chested. His head was large, which made everything else look even more out of proportion than it already was. When he ran with the ball he looked as if he would at any moment step on it and fall over, or stumble as he tried to catch up with it, or trip over his own feet, or let it get away from him, or bounce it off his shin or knee or ankle. His arms flailed sideways as he ran so that he looked like a windmilling, falling, catastrophically ill-coordinated kid, or an octopus, or a vaudeville routine. But then, as he ran with the ball, and if the spectators kept looking, after about five seconds they might notice something, which was that the ball did not get away from him. The ball looked as if it was always about to be out of his reach – but it never did get out of his reach. He did not trip or stumble or miskick, even though he always seemed on the verge of doing so. By now, in a football match, at least one defender would have lunged at the ball, usually at the point when it was furthest out of Freddy’s reach, but he would somehow, magically, have got to the ball just before them, as if his telescopic legs had extended themselves, and he would have slalomed past the now immobile defender, awkwardly, but easily too. Then another opponent would appear in front of him and he would do the same thing, always about to trip and fall and flail and lose the ball, but never actually doing so. And then he would do it again, and again, and the person watching would realise that this weird-looking boy was not just a not-bad football player, not just a good or even very good football player, but a prodigy, a miracle of balance and timing and speed and coordination, a dancer, an athlete, a natural.
    Freddy had his big growth spurt at thirteen. He had always had the skill but now the size and speed came too. Before that, other kids would get bored of having him go round them as if they weren’t there and would simply kick or push him off the ball. Then it all changed. When Freddy was only fourteen, playing a game of football near his home at Linguère, a mother pushing her pram past the kickabout would stop to watch him. A bus driver would lose concentration and miss the change of lights. Other kids would stop their game and come over to watch. The effect on people who did know about football was more pronounced still. They would blink, wonder if they could quite believe what they were seeing, rub their eyes. The scout who spotted Freddy was rung by a contact who had