Prologue: "There's a Number 5"
Rebecca Welton sat in her office overlooking the pitch at Nelson Road Stadium, home to the A.F.C. Richmond football club. She was dressed in a dark expensive business suit, her hair cut in an expensive style that her stylist claimed was en vogue in Paris that season. On her desk were her iMac Pro and a small pink cardboard box of biscuits that she had delivered every morning from the bakery in town. They tasted delicious, but she'd only eaten two of the six in the box.
Six months ago, Rebecca had tried to guess the recipe when she first approached the bakery with the proposition of having them deliver the biscuits each day, six in a small pink box, the way Ted used to bring her when he managed her club, but it wasn't exactly the same. Back then, she devoured all of them by the end of the workday. At the time, Ted had only been gone three weeks and the biscuits on her desk each morning filled the void left when Ted Lasso went home to be with his son.
A few months later, she'd only eat four, giving the rest to whoever came into her office during the day.
Some time after that, she'd only eat half the biscuits. Leslie Higgins, her director of operations, would take the rest home to his wife.
Now, like at the end of most workdays, she stared at the box. Rebecca felt like she'd eaten too many. Her stomach felt like a lead ingot.
Rebecca stood up straight and tall and walked to the oversized window. The team was training at a facility a few miles away as the stadium was being refurbished. The infusion of cash from the sale of stock in the club had allowed Rebecca to modernize the stadium. She'd been considering renaming the stadium in honor of her friend Ted, but in her head, she heard his voice with that mid-American twang she'd once found so irritating.
Boss, you wouldn't want to do a thing like that. I mean, think about it. Lasso Stadium? I mean, that sounds more like where you'd take your kids to a monster truck rally or a bull riding rodeo. You don't have those over in England, 'cause if you did, I would've found them and you'd've had to drag me away from them with a lasso like a regular Dale Evans.
Until Rebecca had met Ted, she had no idea what monster trucks or bull riding were except silly American pastimes. Rebecca exhaled. Until that moment, she hadn't even known she'd been holding her breath.
She checked her watch. It was already six o'clock. She'd promised to call Niels, her partner, during his layover in Athens. As a commercial pilot, KLM Airlines kept him especially busy the last two weeks, having him flying across the continent during the holiday season. She couldn't believe that after six months she'd still be this happy with a man whose name she didn't even know when they'd first met, but Niels was amazing.
Rebecca Welton was a woman who had it all.
Well, almost.
She looked at her box of uneaten biscuits. They were still good, but they just didn't taste the same.
