03 Bend It Like Beckham

Ex­tract from Chap­ter 1 from Bend It Like Be­ck­ham



”I couldn’t un­der­stand why my brain see­med to work a hundred times fas­ter when I was play­ing foot­ball. I just loved the fact that it did.

Loo­king frus­tra­ted, Taz lun­ged at me again from the side. He slid in and took my an­kles from un­der­ne­ath me. Free kick.

‘Does she think she’s Be­ck­ham or what?’ Gary grum­bled. For­get se­xu­al equa­li­ty. Boys still hate being be­a­ten by girls.

‘Yeah, can you chest it like him, Jess?’ Sonny snig­ge­red, grab­bing his bare chest. None of the boys were wea­ring shirts. ‘Y’know, give it some boun­ce?’

Taz grab­bed his own chest, pre­ten­ding he had boobs. ‘Go on, Jess, chest it!’

I fli­cked the ball into the air with my heels, caught it, strol­led over to them and pu­shed it into Taz’s nuts. He yel­led in pain and dou­bled over, and the other boys fell about laug­hing. Smi­ling to mys­elf, I grab­bed the car­ri­er bag, and hea­ded for home.

‘It’s not fair.’ I lay with my head at the foot of my bed, sta­ring up at Be­ck­ham. ‘I could’ve car­ri­ed on play­ing all night. The boys never have to come home and help …’

I’d run all the way home, but Mum had still com­plai­ned that I’d been too long. She’d taken one look at my muddy trai­ners, and gues­sed I’d been play­ing foot­ball in the park too. That al­ways put her in a bad mood.

‘I won­der,’ I went on thought­ful­ly, ‘if I had an ar­ran­ged mar­ri­a­ge, would I get so­me­o­ne who’d let me play foot­ball whe­ne­ver I wan­ted?’

The door ope­ned, and I jum­ped.

‘Putar, who are you tal­king to?’ my dad asked, loo­king puz­zled. He’d just got back from work, and he was still in his se­cu­ri­ty guard’s uni­form.

‘No-​one,’ I said quick­ly.

Dad came in and sat down on the bed. ‘You know Biji and her grand­son will be stay­ing in here when they ar­ri­ve for the wed­ding.’ He sta­red around the room. ‘Putar, why don’t you put up some nice pic­tures of beau­ti­ful sce­nery in­s­tead of this bald man?’‘Dad!’ I gro­aned. He smiled at me and stro­ked my hair. ‘OK, I’m going to chan­ge. Then come and help me out­si­de.’

I rol­led off the bed. We had a whole load of fairy lights to put on the out­si­de of the house, ready for the en­ga­ge­ment party, and I bet Mum had ple­nty of last-​minute jobs lined up for me too. No chan­ce of a game to­mor­row then …”