Chapter Twelve #3
Marcus, who had been preparing to receive Rambetti’s serve, stood up straight.
‘What?!’ he said to the umpire, approaching his chair. ‘For what?’
I felt slightly sick. I really wasn’t a fan of confrontation, and yet here was Marcus wading right in and asking for it, with an audience of braying Italians watching his every move.
Aware that there might be a camera lurking somewhere, I tried to keep my face neutral, like I’d seen the real WAGS do.
‘Because you told the crowd to be quiet and made a rude gesture,’ said the umpire.
Marcus wasn’t having any of it. ‘How is what I did rude? If I’d sworn at them – which, honestly, they deserved – fine, I’d accept the violation, but this makes no sense!’
‘Violation stands, Forty-Fifteen,’ said the umpire, clearly unable to go back on his decision now, even if he’d wanted to.
‘This is fucking ridiculous!’ said Marcus, shaking his head and stomping back to his place.
‘He will get another one if he does not stay quiet,’ said Patrick.
‘Marcus, come on, man!’ shouted Dean.
To be honest, I felt like going down there myself and telling Marcus to stop. What was he doing? What was he hoping to achieve? He had one measly point left to turn this game around – did he really think he could play his absolute best tennis now?
Marcus took his place for Rambetti’s serve, but you could tell his heart wasn’t in it, and Rambetti outplayed him.
Game, Set and Match, Federico Rambetti.
I clapped half-heartedly as Marcus shook hands with Rambetti at the net.
I felt bad for him but also thrown by witnessing his racquet smashing play out live and in real time.
Perhaps the fear of losing helped some players to dig deep and pull something spectacular out of the bag, but for Marcus it seemed that thinking he’d blown it sent him spiralling off in a dark direction he was always going to struggle to come back from.
At some point I would ask him what was going through his head at times like that, but I was definitely going to have to pick my moment with extreme caution.
A disappointed silence hung over our box as Marcus packed up his stuff and disappeared into the tunnel, and the cameras were set up for Rambetti’s interview.
‘Has he always lost his temper like that?’ I asked Patrick.
Patrick shook his head. ‘When he was younger, no. I’d say the last seven years.
Since the year after he won the Australian Open – he went into the tournament a favourite and got knocked out in the first round by a guy ranked two hundred and fourth in the world.
After that his mood and his confidence deteriorated more and more, although of course I was not coaching him then. ’
‘Why do you think he hasn’t won a Grand Slam again?’
‘It is a lot of things combined,’ said Patrick, standing up wearily. ‘And this attitude of his does nothing to help.’
As we left our seats to return to the players’ area, Dean turned to me with a grim expression on his face.
‘Ava, I’m gonna need you on board. We’ve got some fucking damage control to do.’
The ‘damage control’ apparently consisted of me leaving the grounds with Marcus in the hope that media speculation about our relationship would supersede the negative press about his on-court meltdown.
I agreed to do it because I couldn’t think of a good enough reason not to, and also I thought it might be useful for the article to be alone in a car with him minutes after he’d crashed out of a tournament far earlier than expected.
I knew clay wasn’t his best surface, but it was clear he’d been hoping to get to the semis at the very least. I doubted he’d want to talk about it, but maybe I could pick something up that I could build on later.
I waited for him in the players’ area while he had his ice bath and post-match talk with Patrick, who hadn’t looked happy either. I wasn’t sure if it was the tennis or the behaviour that hadn’t pleased him, but I had the feeling he was going to tell Marcus exactly what he thought either way.
After a considerable amount of time, during which I took advantage of the free hot drinks in the players’ lounge by ordering not one but two cappuccinos, Marcus finally appeared, his hair wet from the shower, his Lacoste tracksuit zipped up to the neck, his white Monte-Carlo Country Club cap pulled down so that it was hiding a large portion of his face, his expression darker than dark.
The racquet bag, as ever, was on his shoulder and his water bottle was clutched in his hand, since presumably his body was in desperate need of rehydration.
I’d read that apparently tennis was one of the most physical sports because you used almost every muscle in your body and also because the games could go on for so damn long.
I was already dreading Roland-Garros, where I might have to watch a five-hour extravaganza.
Just as well I was understanding the game a little more, and was just the tiniest bit more invested in Marcus winning.
After all, he was far more likely to be an amenable interviewee if he was in a good mood, wasn’t he?
‘Hey,’ I said to him, giving him a half-smile.
He nodded at me, barely making eye contact. ‘Ready to go?’
He’d clearly already been briefed on what was going to need to happen – we’d be accompanied by two members of the tournament security team as we walked through the grounds to exit number 4 where a black Lexus with the registration number ending DHN would be waiting to whisk us the (no word of a lie) third of a mile back to Marcus’s hotel.
I got it – I didn’t suppose you’d want to walk after that, what with the fans and the haters (more of those) swarming around, plus I had no idea if he’d be in any kind of physical pain after a match like that.
‘Ready,’ I said, more confidently than I felt.
We left the building together, with me scuttling along beside him.
It might have been my own paranoia, but I sensed that all eyes were on us as I tested my own shockingly bad fitness to the absolute max by attempting to match him step for step as he motored through the grounds.
He clearly had one goal: to get the hell out of here as quickly as possible.
‘How are you doing?’ I asked him, gasping for breath.
‘How do you think?’ he answered coldly.
Heads swivelled from all directions as we entered the main hub of the tournament and made our way down what felt like endless flights of steps, past pop-up shops selling tennis merchandise and some of the posher-looking bars linked to the hospitality suites.
‘Dean said we had to—’
‘I know,’ said Marcus, taking my hand.
It was actually easier to keep my speed up now that he was half propelling me along.
His hand was hotter than when I’d held it at the restaurant, and his grip was harder, as though he was scared he’d lose me in the crowd if he loosened it.
I kept my head down because I couldn’t bear watching everyone watching us, and also I was acutely aware that there were some steep slopes and I could very easy stack it, which although embarrassing for me might actually work very well for Marcus in terms of highly distracting media coverage.
I wasn’t aware of any paparazzi taking photos, although they were probably dotted about inconspicuously with their mega-long lenses, lurking behind bushes and up high hanging out of windows.
When I saw our car, I squeezed Marcus’s hand.
‘That’s us,’ I said.
On the short journey back to the hotel, we barely spoke. I understood that he didn’t want to and at least he managed a goodbye as he got out at the Monte-Carlo Bay, leaving me to travel on to my own hotel.
Since I had a few hours to myself, I set up a workspace on my desk in my hotel room and began trying to piece together a timeline of Marcus’s game.
He first appeared in the national newspapers in June 2012 when he was a finalist in the Boys’ Junior Wimbledon competition.
One of the papers had reported on it in their sports round-up: So Near and yet so Far – 17-Year-Old Brit Boy Close to Snagging Junior Wimbledon Title.
Wow, he was practically a child at the time and even then journalists were giving him a hard time – what was wrong with celebrating him having made the final instead of criticising him for not actually winning it?
I peered at a photo of Marcus with the eventual winner, a Bulgarian player I didn’t recognise – I wondered if he was still on the circuit?
There was another photo of Marcus’s mum, looking much younger than she had in the other photo I’d seen of her – she was beautiful, and she was clapping proudly with tears in her eyes.
Marcus Makes Mum Blub was the classy headline.