Chapter Six
I’d found a seat on one of the slouchy orange sofas in the grounds of the hotel, carefully avoiding the rock-hard stools Dean and Marcus had gravitated towards the night before.
In the light of day, and with blue skies already soaring overhead, the beach looked even more enticing with its crystal-clear water and luxurious sunbeds laid out for anyone who wasn’t going to the tennis to relax on.
Carved into the cliffside were several wooden bungalow-style rooms with floor-to-ceiling windows, each with its own set of rickety steps down into the water – I wondered if Marcus was staying in one of those, or if his room was housed in the main building of the hotel.
I made a mental note to ask whether tennis players always travelled in luxury.
Did they pay for accommodation themselves or did the tournament put them up?
And was the size of their room in direct proportion to their world ranking?
By the time I looked up from my note-making, the hotel was suddenly about three times busier than it had been half an hour before when I’d first arrived.
There seemed to be lots of early-morning meetings going on, with laptops out, phone calls in progress, and very little of the relaxing holiday vibes I would have expected from a beachside hotel.
I wondered if these people were all part of one of the tennis teams, meaning this was a working day for them, just like it was – in a way – for me.
There wasn’t even a single person in the pool.
And I supposed the flurry of activity made sense because apparently the proper tournament started today, with the qualifying rounds (for some of the lower-ranked players who hadn’t been given automatic entry) having started the day before yesterday.
There was a buzz of excitement as everyone grabbed coffee and breakfast before heading to the venue, many of them, like me, going with a bit of a tennis theme – perhaps a sweater wrapped casually around their shoulders, or a white linen shift dress paired with a chic designer bag.
Outfits that, with a bit of tweaking, could almost have been worn on court at one of the exclusive tennis clubs they were no doubt all members of.
The temperature was hotting up and I was going to have to take my jumper off at this rate – hopefully, it would stay that way, as I was planning to watch Marcus’s first match tomorrow and I didn’t want it to be rained off because then everything would get pushed back.
I was staying until the end of the week as things stood, hoping that Marcus would make it to the final, or at least the semis.
But of course there were no guarantees, and if he was knocked out in round one, I supposed it wouldn’t make sense for me to hang around.
When my phone rang with the trill of a video call, I was so into my prep that I assumed it was my mum gushing about the photo of the beach I’d sent her and answered it immediately, without thinking.
It wasn’t my mum, however: it was Charlie.
My pulse hammered in what felt like every cell of my body.
‘Hey,’ said Charlie, chewing on his thumbnail. He did that when he was nervous. I’d always found it adorable.
For a few delightful seconds, I thought he was about to tell me how much he’d missed me.
Was going to declare his undying love for me after all and admit that he’d gone mad for a minute there and that it was me he wanted, not his freedom, not anyone else, not to experiment, just me.
If that was the case, I was going to have to pretend to make him work for it, obviously.
‘Hello, Charlie,’ I said. Even saying his name out loud felt strange now.
Other than my mum with her incessant Heard from Charlie? queries, everyone had stopped mentioning him, possibly hoping that by not talking about him, I’d somehow miraculously move on. I hadn’t, needless to say, and sometimes it felt as though the pain of the break-up was getting worse, not better.
‘It’s good to see you,’ he said.
I drank in the sight of him, happy to see his face in real time rather than only in my imagination.
He looked exactly the same – a little tired, maybe – and was wearing one of his extensive collection of fine-wool polo necks.
If I was honest, this burgundy one clashed with his hair, but clearly he thought he could pull it off, so who was I to judge?
‘How’s everything?’ I asked, secretly wanting to hear that his life was terrible now. Did that make me an awful person?
‘Fine. Good. Mum sends her love. She said to tell you she’s been thinking of you.’
Not enough to reach out to me, though, clearly.
He squinted at his screen. ‘Where are you, by the way?’
I closed my notebook, keeping half an eye on the time. It was past eight-thirty – I couldn’t get stuck on this call and be late for Marcus, he’d never let me forget it. Charlie always did have impeccable timing.
‘Monte Carlo. I’m working, so I haven’t got long.’
‘Working?’
‘Tennis. I’m writing a piece on a player.’
‘That’s great!’ he said.
I bit my lip. He’d always been so invested in my career, so encouraging; my own personal cheerleader. Now I was going to have to do it all by myself again, like I had before I met him.
‘Zoe blagged it for me. It’s a four-page spread for Luxe.’
‘Wow. Fantastic, Ava, really well done. Good that you’re back out there, anyway, because I’d heard you weren’t . . .’
He trailed off, his voice faltering to a halt.
I put my chin casually in the heel of my hand. ‘Heard I wasn’t what?’
‘Doesn’t matter.’
‘Go on,’ I insisted.
‘Quite yourself . . . ?’ he said, looking at me with sympathy.
‘And who did you hear that from?’ I asked, dearly wishing I could vehemently deny it and tell him he was deluded.
I was a bit miserable at times, but so what? Being broken up with out of the blue was hardly cause for celebration, was it? And if I was worried about anything it was likely to be money, thanks to him leaving me in the lurch with bills.
‘It was nothing,’ lied Charlie. ‘I can’t remember who mentioned it.’
‘Sure.’
He cleared his throat. Good, I was making him squirm.
‘Did you call for a reason?’ I asked, determined to regain some small semblance of control over proceedings.
I flickered my eyes to the time at the top of my phone: 8.
34. I was cutting this very fine, and immediately hooked my foot into the straps of my bag and dragged it along the ground towards me.
Then, without breaking eye contact with Charlie, I slid my notebook and pen into it.
‘I wanted to know when I could pick up the rest of my stuff?’ he asked, having the good grace to look sheepish.
After four years together, this was what had prompted him to contact me? There was no hope he was calling to ask me to get back with him, then.
‘Well, as I said, I’m away,’ I told him. ‘So it’ll have to wait.’
‘When are you back?’ he asked.
‘Not sure,’ I said, being deliberately vague. ‘It depends when Marcus gets knocked out.’
‘Who’s Marcus?’
‘The tennis player I’m profiling. Who I’m supposed to be meeting in about thirty seconds. Sorry, Charlie, I’m going to have to go.’
He’d managed to go this long without the one remaining bag he’d left at ours/mine, which, as far as I knew, consisted of winter jumpers and a pile of ancient DVDs. Surely another week wouldn’t make any difference?
‘It’s just, I’ve got a trip coming up,’ he said. ‘So I could have done with some of my warmer stuff.’
‘Sorry. Not much I can do,’ I said, aware that I was now dangerously close to welling up.
Because he was clearly enjoying his freedom to the max and wasn’t cut up about losing me at all.
And who exactly was he going away with? Because if it was a friend or his dad or something, he would have just said, wouldn’t he?
My mind was working overtime now – was it possible he’d met somebody else already?
Or even that this someone else was the reason he’d ended things with me in the first place?
‘Fine. Let me know when you’re back and I’ll send an Uber to collect it,’ he said.
Great. He couldn’t even be bothered to come and get it himself. Was the prospect of seeing me really that unbearable for him?
‘Take care, Ava,’ he said, moving his face closer to the screen. ‘And I really am sorry. I hope you’ll find a way to be okay.’
‘I’ll be fine, Charlie. I’m not going to fall apart just because we’re not together anymore.’
‘Oh I know,’ he said. ‘I know. That came out wrong. I just meant—’
‘I’ll see you around.’
He waved at me sadly until I forced myself to end the call because otherwise I was probably going to cry.
For some bizarre reason, I ran my fingertips across the now-empty screen.
It had been better when I’d made myself forget he’d ever existed, because his call had totally made me relapse.
Which I did not have time for because it was now Eight Forty-Four!
I launched my phone into my bag, scrambled up and power-walked around the pool, feeling nauseous and tearful and not at all in the mood for Marcus bloody Taylor.
He was already in the lobby waiting, of course, standing next to a huge oval table housing the most gigantic vase of fresh flowers I’d seen in my entire life.
He was wearing a pale-blue tracksuit with navy trim and a Lacoste logo on the chest. Perhaps he was sponsored by them, and I made a mental note to ask, and also to find out what they thought of his despicable on-court antics.
‘Afternoon,’ said Marcus sarcastically, picking up his racquet bag and hoisting it over his shoulder.
‘Oh, I’m sorry, did we not say eight forty-five?’ I snapped, plucking my phone out of my bag and waving it in his direction.
‘I think you’ll find you’re late,’ he said.
‘What, by one minute?’ This guy needed to lighten up. What difference was sixty seconds going to make. ‘Shall we go, then?’
‘Oh! Now you want to go?’ said Marcus.