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I'd been going out with Martine for several weeks before I invited her to a night out with the lads – I mean the guys I played with in the soccer team – partly because we usually went to the pub, and I knew she didn't drink but also because I was afraid of the kind of reception she'd receive. My ex, Angela, had been pretty well liked – not only by teammates (she was blonde, friendly and easy on the eye) but also by the girlfriends, fiancés and in some cases wives of the other players. When I'd told her I'd met someone else, she'd been pretty cut up about it and although she didn't go whining to the other women and asking for sympathy, I knew a lot of them did feel sorry for her. We had been planning to marry but the moment I set eyes on Martine in the weights room at the gym where I worked out on Wednesdays those plans were forgotten. She was a 'strapping lass' as someone said (5' 10" and built!) with straight black hair she wore in a pageboy cut and a ruddy complexion, struggling, she said, with a weight problem but so successfully she came not far short of perfection. When I asked her out, to the cinema, she accepted at once and in the back row in the dark I could hardly keep my hands off her. I'd told Angela I was working late so we went back to the flat Martine was sharing with two other girls, radiotherapy students like herself, and I phoned Angela from there to tell her it was over. "What's she like? Describe her!" Martine said as I put down the phone. She wanted to visualize the woman whose life she'd just wrecked. "She was crying, wasn't she? I could hear her," she said, snuggling up close and nibbling my ear happily. "Christ! I've got a cruel one here," I found myself thinking, but by then it was too late. I'd swallowed the hook and it was tearing at my insides.

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"When are we going to meet her, then?" asked Dave, our Welsh playmaker, from the shower furthest from mine. All heads turned. "Who?" I asked, knowing full well who he meant. "Your new bird," he said. "Angela told Mary you'd met someone else. That was weeks ago. Where are you hiding her? Or has she ditched you already?" "I'm not hiding her. She just doesn't drink and …" "And what?" "Well, I just wasn't sure what kind of reception… I mean, I know you all liked Angela." "No worries here, mate," said Jim, our goalkeeper, who was still struggling with the knots of his boots. It had rained throughout the game and the laces were slimy with mud. "All's fair in love and war." This reassured and … somehow … excited me. I felt myself getting a hard-on and stepped smartly out of the showers and grabbed my towel, before anyone noticed and jumped to the wrong conclusions. "Yeah, Angela was nice," agreed Alex, " – too nice for you, in fact. She could do better for herself." "With you, I suppose?" I said. "Could do worse." he said, grinning. "Could do a lot worse." So Alex fancied Angela, did he? Well, it was over with us, so why not? "It was more how the girls would take to her I was worried about," I said, returning to my theme. "Fuck 'em," said Dave. "It's none of their business, is it? If they don't like her, they don't like her. Too bad. Women are always bitching among themselves." "He's right," said Mickey, our captain. "If you like her, you bring her. It's no concern of the other women. As long as it doesn't lead to problems between any of us – I mean members of the team – you can all do what you like, as far as I'm concerned, and the women can sort out their own problems."

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That Saturday evening it was the pub again. We'd been playing our arch-rivals in the league, Stoke Green, and we shafted them - 4:1! I got one and Wayne scored a hat-trick. Martine had one of her posh schoolfriends up visiting from Surrey (I hated her and she didn't think much of me either) and they went for a meal somewhere. The rest of us got thoroughly wasted and I ended up missing the bus back and slept on the couch at Dave's house.

The following Saturday, though, we'd hired a back room at the working men's club, and I decided it was a good moment to introduce Martine to the others. I did warn her we didn't tend to dress up for things like birthday parties, but she had a new dress she wanted to wear, and I have to admit, she did look great in it. It was dark red ("Burgundy" she told me), below the knee but low-cut at the top to show off her boobs, and the boys all took to her at once. It didn't hurt that she was a good dancer. Well, when you don't drink…

She had no problems with the girls that I was aware of but when I asked her in the car (she had a car!) on the way home what she thought of my friends, she said they were all very nice "except for that girl with the northern accent".
"Who, Sheila?"
"Yes, her – where does she come from anyway?"
"Burnley," I told her.
"Oh, Burrenleh" said Martine, mimicking, or attempting to mimic, Sheila's accent.
"And what did she do to upset you?" I asked.
"Nothing, it was the just the way she was looking at me."
"Well, I did warn you we don't usually dress up."
"She was just jealous, that's all!"
"I doubt that, somehow," I told her. I hardly knew Sheila. She was Wayne's girlfriend and they'd only been going out for a couple of weeks, but she was a stunner and sexy as hell in those tight jeans.
"Don't tell me you fancy her!" said Martine, rising to the bait.
"I didn't say that, but I don't see her being the jealous type."
"And I am, I suppose?" said Martine getting more and more annoyed.
"I didn't say that either". (No, but I meant it …).

That Wednesday, it was the newly inaugurated Awards Dinner, modelled on the Ballon d'Or held every year in Paris. It was a ridiculous event for an amateur league in a run-down city in the West Midlands but an idea the Lord Mayor was very keen on, and they'd hired a ballroom in a big hotel in the city centre. With all seven men's divisions, three ladies', the Under-19s, Under-14s, Under-11s … and their parents, there must have been 800 people there. This time we did all dress up, so Martine didn't look out of place. I watched with interest to see what Sheila would wear. Instead of the lacy top that left her midriff bare and the tight jeans that accentuated her fantastic bum, she wore a black dress, a tight one, and yes, turns out she had a nice pair of boobs too. Wayne and I, believe-it-or-not, had been voted Best in the City in our respective positions, so we had to go onto the stage for the presentation. Funnier still, Wayne was voted Male Player of the Year so he had to dance with the girl who'd won Female Player of the Year, a pretty blonde thing who can't have been much more than 16. That left Sheila, who was sitting opposite us at a table for 12, on her tod, and Martine took it into her head to provoke her by calling across to her in what she thought was a Burnley accent  "You'd better watch for that one. She'll have him off you before you can say 'By gum!" One or two people laughed. Sheila went bright red but said nothing. "That was out of order!" I told Martine, quietly, not wanting to humiliate her in front of everyone, but then realised that the way I'd leant over to whisper it, almost, into her ear may have looked to Sheila as though I too was making fun of her. Anxious to dispel that idea, I looked across the table and said: "You look gorgeous, Sheils. Pay no attention." Now Martine really was mad. Fighting mad. And we had to separate them on the dancefloor later when they 'accidentally' collided. Sheila, too, as it happens, was an amazing dancer. Mickey, who'd seen everything, told me to take Martine home before things got any worse. He asked Wayne to take Sheila home too ("I know it wasn't her fault, but just so it doesn't look like anyone's taking sides").

"What the fuck was that all about?" I asked Martine as soon as we were safely in the car.
"I just can't stand her, that's all!"
"Why?"
"She's common."
"Because her dad's not a stockbroker like yours?"
"Her dad's probably on universal credit," replied Martine, "if he isn't in prison, that is."

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We didn't have a game that Saturday, and the following Saturday Martine was visiting her parents in Esher – not that she'd have come anyway, since it was a pub night. Sheila seemed disappointed when I turned up on my own.

"Decided to stay away did she?" she asked.
"She's visiting her parents."
"In the Home Counties, I suppose," she asked, snarkily.
I smiled. "In Surrey, yes."
She was sitting between me and Wayne on a large almost circular bench in one of the large alcoves lining the wall by the window of the large pub we used to go to on Saturdays after the game. There were four or five people on either side of us. Dave, Jim, their better halves and I forget who else. We were packed in so tight, I could smell her perfume. Our legs touched. She was wearing those jeans again.
"I'll have her, you know," she said, looking me directly in the eye. She had beautiful, sapphire blue eyes and they didn't waver. I could tell she wasn't joking. "If she so much as touches me again, I'll have her. You tell her."
I looked at her, my heart racing, and for the first time pictured her and Martine in a real fight. I don't mean a bit of hairpulling and kicking of shins. I mean a fight. On the ground and everything, with no one breaking it up until there was a winner. Martine was bigger. Not much but definitely bigger and I knew she was strong because I'd seen her lifting weights, but looking now more closely at Sheila in her tight, dark blue t-shirt with its short sleeves, I noticed there was no sign of fat on her arms and even a rather sexy hint of bicep. She wasn't wearing a bra either. She let me look at her and she knew what I was thinking.
"I mean it," she said.
Wayne had noticed the pair of us looking one another in the eye but said nothing.
"I'll tell her," I said, and the conversation passed to other matters.

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"How was the film?" I asked, when I got back that evening. Angela had moved out by this time, and Martine and I were living together, but she and her friends from the hospital had taken to going the cinema or for a curry most Friday or Saturday evenings when she wasn't in Esher visiting her parents.

"So, so," she said. "How was your game?"

"Shit," I told her. "We dropped two points against just about the worst team in the league."

I blamed her for it, in fact.

Angela had come round in the morning to pick up the last of her things, and Martine had opened the door to her in her negligée. I could tell Angela had been crying, and the cruel smirk on Martine's face as she watched the woman whose fiancé she'd pinched gathering her mugs and saucepans from the kitchen before creeping out with a mumbled apology for interrupting us would have cost her the few friends she had among the WAGS in our circle if they'd seen it.

As it happened, we hadn't been making love when Angela rang so she hadn't interrupted anything – it was a match day and I hate having sex in the morning on match days – but it pained me that she should humble herself in that way. Who was she apologising to, anyway? To Martine?? To the woman who'd taken me from her? Surely not. To me then? I should have been the one apologising to her! 

Unless Jim was right, of course, and all really is fair in love and war. "Nice has nothing to do with it, mate" he'd replied, when I'd said Angela deserved better treatment than I'd given her. "It's the survival of the fittest. The strongest – or the sexiest, whatever – win out, and they're the ones who get to breed. The rest? Well, it's cruel but that's Nature's way. And look on the bright side: it means women will go on getting stronger and sexier from now until the end of time."

I found that analysis a little sickening. And applied to Angela, it was wildly overstating the case. She was bound to find someone else. She hadn't yet, obviously, but she would. She was anything but unattractive.

She wasn't in Martine's class, though. That was the problem. And I couldn't pretend it boiled down to anything other than sex appeal because I'd dumped Angela before I'd even had time to get to know Martine.

So Jim was right, essentially, in my case, at least. It really was the law of the jungle.

That was certainly the way Martine saw it. After watching Angela carrying the last cardboard box full of kitchen utensils to the door, with her head bowed (though that was probably because the box was too full and she was holding down the coffee percolator with her chin to stop it falling), pulling the door open with her foot, laying the box down again in the landing so she could close the door quietly and slip away like a chambermaid fearful of a caning, Martine stood up brisky, turned, peeled off her negligée and tossed it over her head, towards the door through which her rival had just fled like a wuss without even a fight.

"I need a fuck!" she said. It sounded less like a statement than a command. Drawn up to her full height, all five foot ten of her, buck naked,  her nipples standing out proudly, her eyes her shining with triumph, Martine was glowing, incandescent, with health, with youth, with beauty. Against genes like hers, Angela hadn't stood a chance. Match day or no match day, she was irresistible. So much so that I came within about twenty seconds of entry, apologized and hard to start again. Twenty minutes later, we did it a third time. No wonder I played like shit.

"So you drowned your sorrows in the pub, then, did you?" said Martine, smelling the beer on my breath. "Pooh! Get away from me."

She was only half serious, and I took her point. I hate kissing girls who smoke. She didn't drink. It was only natural she should hate the smell of alcohol.

"I'll brush my teeth," I told her.

"That won't help. Was she there?"

"Who?" I asked, as if I didn't know.

"The northern slapper: Miss Burrenleh." Again, the crude stab at a Burnley accent.

"What's wrong with her accent?"

"It's common as muck. That's what's wrong with it."

"I think it's a beautiful accent. I suppose you think my accent's common too."

"Well, I've always known you were common," she said, sauntering over with a seductive swing of the hips, and put her hands on my shoulders. "But with you, there are compensations."

I leant in to kiss her, but as soon as she smelt my breath, she turned away again, fanning the beery fug skywards with her hand. "Pooh! Get away from me."

I hadn't been going to tell her, because I knew it would only lead to further trouble, but now I did:

"By the way, I have a message for you."

"What? From her?"

"Who else?"

"Do tell!" Beer breath or no beer breath, this interested her; she took me again in her arms, and kissed me, on the side of the cheek, then again, on the side of my throat, just under the ear, before adding in an almost breathless whisper. "What did she say? What did the little cxnt say? I'm just so interested." The last bit, dripping with sarcasm and disdain.

Sheila's threat sounded lame after a build-up like that, which was no doubt the effect Martine intended. I delivered the message all the same.

"Well, you tell her from me: if she wants a fight, I'll give her one, and I'll squish her like a bug! In the meantime, I'll go where I want and do what I want. No northern slapper gives me orders."

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As if to make her point, she turned up at the game the following Saturday – something she'd never shown any interest in doing previously – and the sight of her on the touchline, even though she didn't make much noise, brought out the best in all of us. I played a blinder. So did Wayne. The presence of a stunner like Martine on the touchline even inspired our opponents to run their hearts out. Not that it helped them: we still won 5:2.

"If they're going to play like this every time you turn up, you must come more often," Mick told her.

I liked the "they". At 26, he was the oldest member of the team, which was why he was the captain, but he'd played better that day, too, than I'd ever seen him before, and he was a married man.

"Don't any of the other girls come?" asked Martine.

"They do, but it doesn't have the same effect," said Dave gallantly. It was the compliment she was expecting.

"Sheila can't, she has to work on Saturdays," said Wayne, excluding his own girlfriend – quite rightly – from the set of wives and girlfriends whose presence on the touchline would inspire no one.

"Oh. What does she do then?" asked Martine.

"She works at Togs & Clogs."

The name meant nothing to Martine, since she did all her shopping in London, but it's a trendy boutique in the city centre selling women's fashion. Not Bond Street perhaps, but about as close as we ever get in the Midlands to chic. Outside Solihull, that is.

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We were changing for the match the following Saturday when one of the lads let slip that there'd been a birthday party the previous evening to which we – Mark and I – hadn't been invited. There was an embarrassed silence and he and I looked at one other, nonplussed. To invite some members of the team and not others was unheard of. We never did that.

"It was Marie," Davy explained, sheepishly. (Marie was his girlfriend). "It was at her parent's house, and she was afraid if Martine and Sheila turned up they'd start fighting and break something."

So it had come to that? We were being ostracized, now, were we?

"I say let 'em fight it out," added Davy. "There'll be no peace between them until there's a winner. Put 'em in a squash court, just the two of them …"

"Why not a paddling pool filled with mud?" suggested Noel, and everyone laughed.

"No, I'm serious," continued Davy. "Better still, give them each a pair of boxing gloves, and let them sort it out between themselves. They'll probably be best friends afterwards."

I shook my head. Nice idea. But utterly barbaric.

"No, I've seen that with other girls at school," insisted Davy. "For years, they can't stand the sight of one another. Then one day they fight, and after that, they're inseparable."

I'm sure I went red and it seemed to me that Wayne did too. As if the idea of them fighting wasn't enough, the thought of them kissing and making up afterwards … But, no, it was out of the question. I'd seen Martine lifting weights. She may not have been all veins and bulges like a bodybuilder – her body was ultra-feminine – but one thing she wasn't was weak. With the gloves on, she'd knock Sheila out. If she knew how to throw a punch, that is. And how to take one. Sheila could. I was sure of that. I knew this notion that northern girls were tougher than southerners was all crap, but Sheila, I could tell just from her demeanour, did have guts, and she wasn't that much smaller than Martine.

Suddenly the image flashed into my mind of Martine turning her back on her in surrender, crying and shaking her head, after only the first punch. The humiliation didn't bear thinking about! And how would I face the other guys afterwards? It was too much of a risk.

I could see the same kind of doubts, though, were going through Wayne's head. Neither of us said anything, either in favour of, or against, the idea. We weren't happy, though, that they'd held a party without inviting us and we'd only found out by accident.