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you to meet Victoria.’

      I could feel little beads of sweat starting to roll down my forehead. Suddenly it was very hot indeed in that lounge. She came over. I didn’t have a speech ready, so all I could manage was:

      ‘Hello, I’m David.’

      Victoria seemed pretty relaxed. I think she and Mel had had a glass of wine or two. In the game I’d scored with a volley, which I hoped might have impressed her, until I found out she hadn’t been wearing her glasses. The truth was Victoria didn’t really have a clue what had been going on during the match. She was looking at me and, I guessed, didn’t have the faintest idea who I was. Man United? Chelsea? Were you even playing today? Later, someone reminded her that she’d picked my picture out of an album of football stickers when the Girls had been doing a photo shoot in team strips a few days before. Knowing nothing about football, she’d been the only one who hadn’t made up her mind whose kit to wear. Looking at those pictures had been part of trying to decide which team she was going to pretend to support. Right then, though, that picture wasn’t doing me any good at all.

      ‘I’m Victoria.’

      And that was that. I couldn’t think what to say next. Simon Fuller rattled on for a bit about the game: I can’t say I remember a word of it. She went back into her corner with Melanie. I went back to where my mum and dad were standing. I looked across the room at Victoria. Stared, in fact: I couldn’t take my eyes off her. And I could see Victoria was looking back at me. I should be trying to get her number, at least trying to say something else to her. But I didn’t. She left. I left. That was it; I’d blown my big chance. I got back on the coach and it was all I could do not to start banging my head against the back of the seat in front in frustration.

      During the course of the following week, once I’d got over feeling sorry for myself, I found out a little more about the Girl of my dreams. Despite the missed opportunity, meeting her had only made me more certain about her. I saw the piece in 90 Minutes magazine featuring the Spice Girls in their football kit, Victoria in a United strip and a caption saying she liked the look of David Beckham. I didn’t know how these things worked; that the quote from her might have just been made up. No: made up was what I was. And for the next home game, there she was at Old Trafford.

      This time, it had been the full works. Victoria had been wined and dined before the match by Martin Edwards, the United Chairman. She and Melanie had gone out on the pitch to do the half-time scores. And now she was in the players’ lounge after the game, in the middle of another glass of champagne. I walked in and went over to say hello to Mum and Dad. And, because we’d met before – briefly, nervously – it was easier this time to say hello to Victoria. She looked fantastic in tight combat trousers and a little khaki top, cut quite low; an unbelievable figure. I remember hoping she wouldn’t get the wrong idea about me and her cleavage: there was a tiny blemish, like a freckle, at the top of her breastbone that I just couldn’t stop staring at.

      Deciding what to say next wasn’t exactly obvious. This is it. You’re the one. That was in my head. But you can’t really make that sort of declaration to someone you’ve only ever said three words to, especially with your mum and dad and your team-mates within earshot. Joanne was there and she and Victoria seemed to be doing better on the small talk than I was. My sister, at least, had some idea of how I was feeling. I did the bloke thing and went off to the bar to get in a round of drinks. The next moment, Victoria was there beside me. It wasn’t like we knew what we wanted to say. How do you start? What’s it like being a pop star? What’s it like playing football for a living? But I think we both knew that we needed to be speaking to each other and once we started talking – at last – neither of us wanted to stop. Next time I was aware of where I was, I was looking around the room and thinking: Where’s everybody gone?

      Mum and Dad were still there. Oh, no. Not a Spice Girl they were probably muttering to themselves. And one or two other people were just sort of lingering, as if they were waiting to see what was going to happen. I remember Victoria going off to the ladies and me having this big now-or-never moment with myself. When she came back, I gabbled out an invitation to dinner. I didn’t have any sort of plan. I hadn’t thought about where we might go. It was just instinctive: I didn’t want her to leave. Victoria said she had to go back to London, as the Spice Girls were flying off to America on the Monday. But she asked me for my phone number. Without missing a beat, I did the reckoning up. What? So you can forget you’ve got it? Or lose it? Or decide not to call?

      ‘No, Victoria. I’ll take your number.’

      She scrabbled around in her bag and pulled out her boarding card from the flight up to Manchester that morning. She wrote down her mobile number, then scratched that out and gave me her number at home at her parents’ instead. I still have that precious little slip of card. It was like treasure and I was never likely to lose it. But as soon as I got home, I wrote the number down on about half a dozen other bits of paper and left them in different rooms, just in case.

      It usually takes me ages to get off to sleep the night after a game: the adrenalin’s still pumping five or six hours later. That particular night, I was buzzing with having met Victoria properly too. I must have slept because I remember waking up late. At about eleven, I picked up The Number and dialled. The voice at the other end sounded just like her but, because I couldn’t be sure, I decided to be polite as I could:

      ‘Is Victoria there?’

      Just as well I hadn’t ploughed straight in. It was her sister, Louise.

      ‘No. She’s at the gym. Who is this? I’ll get her to give you a call.’

      Everybody’s been a teenager. A teenager in love. And I’m sure there are plenty of people, like me, who were still getting a bit melodramatic about it all well into their twenties. She’s out at the gym? Well, that’s it then: that’s the brush off, isn’t it? Getting her sister to answer the phone and say she’s out. I didn’t actually go and lie down and beat the floor with my fists, but that’s what it felt like. I knew Victoria and me had to happen. But maybe she didn’t and now it wasn’t going to. I just sat on the bed, staring at the phone. Half an hour? An hour? It felt like a week. And then the thing rang.

      ‘David? It’s Victoria.’

      We picked up where we’d left off at Old Trafford the evening before. I got the feeling we were both talking away, trying to find the nerve to actually say what we meant. I’d already asked once, in Manchester, and eventually I got round to asking again:

      ‘What are you doing later?’

      ‘Nothing.’

      ‘I’m in Manchester but I’ll drive down. We could go out.’

      Five hours later I was at the car wash in Chingford. First things first: the car had to look its best. I wasn’t to know whether Victoria would be impressed with the new one, a blue BMW M3 convertible, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I scrubbed it, hoovered it and by the time I got to my mum’s I was looking in worse nick than the car had after the drive down. Mum knew I’d got Victoria’s number at Old Trafford and I think she knew what was going on when I turned up on the doorstep. She wasn’t too sure about the whole Spice Girls thing at all but she knew me better than to try talking me out of it: I’m as soft as she is but, when I get my heart set on something, I’m as stubborn as my dad.

      ‘All right, David. It’s up to you.’

      She knew perfectly well she’d have no chance of changing my mind. On went clean clothes: a white t-shirt, a beige jacket, Timberlands and a pair of Versace jeans. It was like putting on my costume for the most important show ever. I rang the co-star and we arranged to meet – very swish setting – at a bus stop outside the Castle, a pub we both knew in Woodford. We worked out later that we’d been in that pub at exactly the same time as each other in the past but without realising it.

      She pulled up in her car, a purple-coloured MG, and I went over. I climbed in the passenger seat. I was so nervous. What should I do? Kiss her on the cheek? Shake hands? With a little wobble in my voice, I mumbled:

      ‘All

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