She looked at me. She looked at the boxes. She looked at me again. Then she picked up the first one the smallest, a cream-coloured box with a silk ribbon and carried it inside.
I had started this in November, after the Wembley match, when the commercial advances had begun to make clear that money was no longer a structural problem in my life. I had asked Jessica's assistant, a sharp-eyed woman named Priya, who knew everything about London and everyone in it to help me put together a list.
Not obvious gifts. Not diamonds or designer handbags, the kind of gifts that said I don't know my girlfriend well enough to buy her something specific.
Things. Specific things. Things I had noticed Emma pausing in front of in shop windows, things she had mentioned once and forgotten she had mentioned, things I had filed away in the months and years we had been together with the quiet, patient attention of a man who was in love and was paying attention.
