Chapter Three #2
‘I’m writing a profile piece on a tennis player,’ I reluctantly imparted. ‘He’s playing a tournament in Monte Carlo, so I’m going to shadow him for a few days, do an interview, meet his team, that sort of thing.’
She made the same gurgling sound again.
‘Mum, are you all right?’ I asked, suddenly concerned that there was actually something wrong with her and I was missing all the cues.
‘Course I’m all right! I’m just a bit taken aback, that’s all.
I don’t think I’ll mention this to Cassie – she’s a bit fragile at the moment, what with the girls in her office being all cliquey.
She thinks they all hate her, and I don’t think it would help to hear that you’re full of the joys of spring and gallivanting around the south of France. Actually, where even is Monte Carlo?’
Gallivanting? There was no acknowledgement of the fact that a) I’d be working and b) I’d just broken up with my long-term boyfriend and therefore maybe some joy in my life would be a welcome addition.
I bit my tongue – I didn’t want to get into any sort of conflict when I was about to embark on what might just be the most luxurious few hours of my life.
‘It’s practically the south of France – between there and Italy. I’m flying to Nice,’ I explained.
I didn’t think I’d risk telling her I’d been upgraded to business.
‘But what do you know about tennis?’ asked Mum, clearly as perplexed as I was about this fortuitous turn of events.
I heard a scuffle in the background; the low rumble of Dad’s voice.
There was some sort of tussle on the other end of the line, involving Mum saying something like No, Winston, she doesn’t want to speak to you, she’s working, and Dad saying Pass me the phone now, please, I want to speak to my daughter.
‘Anyway, lovely as this is, I’ve got a few things to do before my flight,’ I said pointlessly, because they were both too busy bickering to hear me. ‘Hello? Mum?’
There was a rustle on the end of the line.
‘Ava? It’s Dad.’
I signalled to the barman for another champagne. May as well.
‘Hi, Dad.’
I could hear Mum grumbling in the background – clearly, Dad had had to force the handset out of her grasp.
‘Mum said something about tennis. What’s going on, then?’ he asked.
‘I’m flying to Monte Carlo for some tournament,’ I said, checking the departures screen to see how long I’d have left in the lounge to enjoy myself once I’d got off the phone to these two. ‘In one hour and twenty minutes.’
‘You’re going to the Rolex Monte-Carlo Masters?!’ he said, sounding uncharacteristically impressed.
‘Oh right, you’ve heard of it, have you? I’m interviewing a player called Marcus Taylor,’ I said, perking up. This was the most interested my dad had been in my job ever.
‘What, that Brit who’s always breaking his racquets on people’s heads?’ he asked, seemingly incredulous.
‘I don’t think it’s on people’s heads, Dad,’ I said. I was a stickler for getting my facts straight and my dad had clearly been sucked in by the sensationalised headlines.
‘His game is excellent, but he hasn’t lived up to his potential and he can’t seem to keep his temper in check. He’s a disgrace. A wasted talent. He should be ashamed of himself!’ said Dad with passion.
‘That’s quite an extreme reaction . . .’ I said, weirdly feeling as though I needed to defend Marcus Taylor, a man I’d never met.
Sure, I’d seen the Deuce footage and, okay, his behaviour wasn’t great, but the show had probably been edited to make it look worse than it was.
Anyway, I liked to keep an open mind going into an interview – after all, my job was to bring out the light and the shade; paint a three-dimensional picture of whomever I was profiling, not judge them before we’d even had a chance to speak.
‘Look, Dad, I have to go.’
‘Well, don’t let me stop you,’ he said, even though he and Mum had actually been stopping me for the last ten minutes.
I ended the call and opened up the articles about Marcus I’d saved on my phone, which were mostly newspaper reports with straplines like Racquet Man Crashes Out of Wimbledon!
and Stroppy Marcus Loses It Again! Blimey, the press hated him, didn’t they?
There were also a ton of stories about his love life, involving him partying in glamorous locations with a string of drop-dead-gorgeous models who all seemed to be clinging to him adoringly.
What a player! I bet it killed him that instead of his phenomenal tennis, his biggest draws were his romantic pursuits and his propensity to kick off when a shot didn’t go his way.
One article gave a blow-by-blow account of a match at something called Indian Wells (I made a mental note to look up this mysterious-sounding thing/place), and I wondered why Marcus always seemed to be on the edge of something – teetering on the precipice of being either brilliant or mediocre, of winning or losing, of keeping it together or going completely off his head.
Nobody had ever published a fully fledged profile on him before and it didn’t entirely surprise me – he seemed like the kind of guy who assumed everyone was out to get him.
Which they sort of were. But that didn’t explain why he’d agreed to do this interview.
Was he going to bail at the last minute again, like he had all those times before?
Business class on board wasn’t quite as lovely as the lounge, but it did have roomy seats, pre-take-off champagne (yep, more of the stuff) and unusually attentive air stewards.
I had the disturbing thought that now I’d had a taste of the high life, I was going to find it very difficult to go back to Economy, although clearly I was going to have to.
And the best thing about Business, in my opinion, was that I would only have one person sitting next to me and was not destined to be sandwiched between a snoring stranger and a screaming baby.
Or at least, I presumed I would have somebody sitting next to me – probably one of the corporate hounds I’d seen drinking espressos and scrolling manically through their phones in the lounge, although they were cutting it very fine to board.
I pulled down my table and set up my laptop, bringing up an interesting article about Grand Slam tournaments and why they were so important to players (big prize money, prestige and points – points for what, I wasn’t yet sure).
Last year, Marcus had reached the third round of Roland-Garros, also known as the French Open, but had he won the whole thing, he would have netted himself over two million dollars in prize money.
I’d had no idea tennis was so lucrative, and never mind the sponsorships on top of that.
You heard so much about footballers and their extortionate wages, and I got that tennis players weren’t earning that amount every week, but I was shocked to learn that even those making it through to the second round of Wimbledon stood to earn around a hundred thousand dollars!
Just as the engines started up, somebody threw themself into the seat next to me, almost trampolining me out of mine.
I wasn’t sure why I’d thought people in Business would be any more civilised – money most definitely did not buy class.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see that this person – a man, judging by his size – was wearing silky black tracksuit bottoms and some sort of expensive-looking cream-coloured chunky knit.
I also couldn’t help but notice his quite considerable thigh muscles, which were straining against the thin fabric of his trousers as though they were about to burst right through them.
Not that I wanted to give him the satisfaction of looking up, but his face was bound to be a disappointment in comparison. You couldn’t have it all, could you?
‘Oh, great.’
The person next to me had spoken, but I wasn’t sure whether it was to himself, to somebody on the other side of him, or to me.
It couldn’t be me he’d been addressing, because what would he be ‘oh-greating’ me about?
I tried to focus on my article and not on his voice, which sounded vaguely familiar – deep, resonant, a very slight northern twang.
‘Stalking me, or something, are you?’
This definitely sounded like it was aimed in my direction. I looked up, only to be met by the chiselled cheekbones and dead eyes of none other than Marcus Taylor.