The air that hit us as we stepped out of the terminal at Heathrow was the first thing that told me we were home. It was six in the morning, the sky a uniform, unforgiving grey, and the air was cool and damp and smelled of jet fuel and wet tarmac.
After two weeks in the thick, floral humidity of Singapore, it felt like stepping into a refrigerator. I saw Chilwell, who had been half-asleep for the entire fourteen-hour flight, physically flinch.
Zaha, who had been holding court at the back of the plane for most of the journey, pulled the hood of his tracksuit up over his head and shoved his hands deep into his pockets, his face a mask of quiet disgust.
The bus journey to Beckenham was a study in silence. The M25 was already beginning to thicken with the morning commute, a slow-moving river of red tail-lights under a sky the colour of old concrete.
