Mr Cleansheets. Adrian Deans

realise now what’s important and I’m coming home.”

      “Right.”

      Desperate to get that tired sarcasm out of her voice, I said, “Have you looked at any houses yet … to buy?”

      “Oh, yes I have,” she said, perking up a little. “I had a look at a place in Waitara. It’s not quite what I wanted, but it’s better than Hornsby.”

      She proceeded to give the full rundown on the new house as I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small silver key with K242 inscribed on it.

      I had never seen the key in my life.

      I just stared at the key for a few moments and, playing back the tape in my head, I dimly recalled fingers probing at my pocket in the terminal at Bangkok, just before I threw up. That angry-looking fuckwit from first class had been there. It must have been him, but why had he given me a key?

      “… and quite a good back yard,” finished Shona.

      “Yeah, well, I’ll be tryin’ to get on a plane tomorrow, so I’ll see you in a couple of days.”

      “I’ll believe it when I see it,” yawned Shona, the spark draining out of her voice again. “You’ll come home when you’re ready. You always have, you always will.”

      * * *

      Notwithstanding Shona’s lack of confidence in my prodigality, I managed to book a flight for the very next day (economy class - it occurred to me that Shona would appreciate me saving money), and it was with only the thinnest regret that I boarded the tube for Heathrow and started heading out over the teeming tenements and factories of South-West London, here and there punctuated by green oases with goalposts at either end.

      An hour’s journey later and I heaved my swag out of the train and found myself battling once again the characteristic queues of international travel. The departures hall at Heathrow was the biggest in the world and it took me half an hour just to find the queue, let alone start waiting in it.

      It’s probably my imagination but it seemed like the entire place was suffused in a morbid gloom, as though no-one really wanted to leave England. Like me, they were all being rejected and we stood silent like cattle in long lines - waiting to be processed.

      After 45 minutes I was checked in - no window seat. And I wasn’t allowed into the Qantas Club this time, although that was just as well when you considered how dangerous it was.

      The large double doorway into customs reared before me, like a portal from Heaven into purgatory. I swallowed the last scraps of my ambition and pride and strode towards my once and future life.

      But just as I got to the door (and another queue) I saw a book shop and decided to avail myself of some reading matter (I had no more stomach for Sir Ally’s biography). And then, on a newspaper hoarding, I saw the seven words that changed everything:

      DANNY MALONE NEAR DEATH AFTER HOME INVASION

      THE INCONCEIVABLE FORCE MEETS THE UNDERSTANDABLE OBJECT

      There are moments in our lives when, all of a sudden, entirely out of the blue, the planets line up. The inconceivable force meets the understandable object, and we see everything - our lives, our actions, our purpose - clearly. For one shining moment we shake our heads free of all our petty wants, needs and motivations and absolutely understand why we were put on this earth.

      On some deep and visceral level, I knew this headline concerned me. I seemed to hear some kind of momentous, personal fanfare and I strolled in time towards the piles of newspapers and didn’t bat an eyelid when I saw my picture on the front cover.

      Not my picture, but so alike - maybe a little thinner of face.

      The former Manchester United and Northern Ireland goalkeeper, Danny Malone, is fighting for his life in a North London emergency ward after a brutal home invasion yesterday.

      I’d heard the name Danny Malone so many times in the last couple of days, and as I played back the tape, I remembered the skinheads in the Qantas Club. When they kicked open the toilet door, one of them had said, “‘Ullo, Danny.”

      The United legend sustained multiple fractures and internal injuries after being set upon by several masked men. CCTV footage shows the cowardly scum beating Malone to within a whisker of death and then turning his Hampstead home upside down in an apparent search for cash and other valuables.

      Despite it seeming an inconceivably long bow, I knew, without question, that I’d been mistaken for Danny Malone, and that the bashing he’d received was meant for me.

      In a last ditch effort to save the former goalkeeper’s life, doctors have him in a medically-induced coma until his condition stabilises.

      Last night a vigil was set up outside the Mercy Hospital in West Hampstead and also at Old Trafford, where hundreds of well-wishers lit candles and deposited scarves and posters of Danny in his heyday. Eleven year old Micah Wilding from Ladbroke Grove expressed the feelings of all when he said, “I was too young to ever see Danny play. I don’t know who he was really, but I follow United and I just hope he pulls through.”

      My duty was clear.

      * * *

      The young Australian nurse was thin-lipped and tired - at the end of both her double shift and her tether. She didn’t believe I was Danny Malone’s brother when I was unable to produce appropriate ID.

      “Look at this!” I said, brandishing the paper and holding it up against my own face. That’s a picture of Danny. Need I say more?”

      She still looked skeptical, and then she cornered me with a slightly tricky question: “If you’re Danny Malone’s brother, how come you talk with an Aussie accent? Aren’t you from Belfast?”

      “Erm … did I say brother? He’s my cousin, but he’s been like a brother. We’re very close.”

      “Sorry mate, immediate family only.”

      Another rejection! But as I turned away I was face-to-face with a wiry little man who looked at me like he’d seen a ghost.

      “Jayzus fock! An’ who’s this lookin’ loik the spit outta moy Danny’s mouth?”

      The nurse replied: “He claims to be one of your Australian relatives, Mr Malone. He’s been trying to see Danny but I wouldn’t let him in. Tabloids, you know.”

      The little man stood very close and squinted at me through thick spectacles.

      “Australian relatives? Didn’ know we ‘ad none.”

      “Are you Danny’s father?” I asked him, ignoring the nurse.

      “Oy ‘ave that honour,” he replied.

      “Look, can we talk privately? I think I have some information which Danny needs.”

      * * *

      We sat in the cafeteria. Bernie Malone was initially suspicious, then skeptical, then downright amazed as I told my story (commencing with the attack in the Qantas Club).

      “The Blue Fury,” he muttered. “What would dem bastards want with the loiks o’ you?”

      “Don’t know. Revenge, I guess.”

      I hadn’t told him about the ringleader’s face in the unflushed toilet. It had happened so quickly, and it wasn’t my fault. But on reflection, it seemed that the incident, coupled with the bashing I’d handed out, was more than requisite provocation to hunt me down.

      “Revenge on moy Danny,” considered Bernie. “I’d not believe such a tall story if’n I’d not seen the uncanny resemblance. Yer do look loik ‘im, it can’t be denied. An’ he telt me this morn that the attackers had said to ‘im: “Danny, have a nice time in Ozzieland? We thought ‘e wuz delirious.”

      “So