Chapter Twelve #4
The next newspaper report I found was from 2017, which I thought was the year before he won the Australian Open.
A specialist tennis magazine had run a profile on him in their Rising Talent section – Marcus was twenty-two at the time and there was a photo of him smiling to camera, then another one of him with his arm around his mum.
Their eyes were exactly the same, brown and bright with long doe-like lashes.
The article talked mostly about his game stats – apparently, he was known for his fast first serves, his impressive physicality and his ability to switch his game so that it was impossible for his opponents to predict what he might do next.
I flicked back at my notes – that was what Patrick had said about him, so clearly this was one thing that hadn’t changed over the years.
I got as far as researching tournaments in 2018 before I had to start getting ready for dinner, and it had got off to a phenomenal start with Marcus winning the Australian Open in January of that year.
G’day to Britain’s Newest Tennis Star! ran one headline.
Brit Marcus Taylor Pulls it out of The Bag in OZ proclaimed another.
I zoomed in on all the photos I could find.
There were lots of Marcus smiling, of him running to the players’ box to hug his then-coach, Marcus waving happily to his fans in a way he never did now.
But there was not a single shot of his mum.
Had something happened, then, between 2017 and 2018?
Had they fallen out, and if so, had it got anything to do with his tennis?
From what I could tell, she’d been cheering him on from the sidelines since he was a junior, so why on earth wouldn’t she have been there in Australia to see him win his one and only major title?
I made a note on my pad and circled it. Find Out Why Marcus and His Mum Fell Out.
Dean had insisted on taking Marcus and me out that evening as part of Operation Distract the Press, and as I busied myself choosing a cocktail from the extensive – and expensive – drinks menu, Dean appeared to have cheered up considerably.
Our hand-holding exit from the tournament had seemingly had the desired effect; a few pictures of the two of us had popped up online already and had even made it to some of the American gossip sites.
He showed me a couple of photos of the two of us walking through the grounds, and of course they’d caught the one time I’d looked up at Marcus so that my face was on full display.
According to Zoe, I was still the talk of the Luxe office, but nobody else I knew seemed to be aware.
Unless I’d jinxed it, because when my phone pinged with a message from my mum saying Call me!
! I had an inkling that it was all about to come out.
Dad was probably following the tournament results, and if he’d googled those, a story about Marcus having been knocked out might organically have led to these rather incriminating shots of Marcus and I clutching each other’s hands as though our lives depended on it.
I tapped back a message, delaying the inevitable: At a work dinner.
Call you tomorrow. This wouldn’t please her, but I hadn’t had time to work out exactly how to play it with my family given their delicate dispositions, and I couldn’t think about it now because I wanted to at least try to enjoy the stunning views over the famous marina, which I’d seen only on TV.
‘The footage of you and Ava is great, but level with me, Marcus. What the fuck happened out there today? I thought we were on the same page here? I’ve already had Lacoste on the line,’ said Dean.
Marcus didn’t reply and when I dared to peep over my menu, I saw that he was sitting in a sort of deadly, simmering silence.
‘I don’t need to explain myself to Lacoste. If I had my way, I wouldn’t be wearing them at all. They do not own me and unless they want to get out there and play at the level I do, they can keep their comments to themselves as far as I’m concerned.’
Dean tried a change of tack. ‘We’re just trying to help you out, here. Right, Ava?’
Huh? What was he dragging me into this for, I was just sitting there quietly choosing something to drink and had no intention of getting in the middle of whatever was going on there.
Surely Dean had seen him behave like that myriad times before, so why was he getting so irate about it this time?
Presumably, it was the losing of sponsorship deals that had done it, of which his agency WCG no doubt took a rather hefty percentage.
‘What’s Ava got to do with any of this?’ asked Marcus.
‘Yeah, I have to say, I don’t think it’s my place to—’
‘This is precisely why you’re here,’ Dean said to me. ‘To show your readers what goes on inside Marcus’s head. And unfortunately, that doesn’t include only the moments in which he’s level-headed and winning, it means reporting on the more difficult times, too. Doesn’t it?’
‘Of course,’ I said, getting fed up with Dean myself now. ‘But if Marcus isn’t ready to talk about it . . .’
I caught his eye. In my experience, you couldn’t force things out of people. You had to gain their trust, let them know you were on their side (or at least let them think you were). Dean going in like a bulldozer wasn’t helping anyone.
‘You know what, guys? I think I’ll leave you to it. Marcus, when you’re ready to talk, you know where I am,’ said Dean, throwing his napkin down.
‘What an enticing prospect,’ said Marcus.
‘Oh, and next time I set up what is supposed to be a romantic tennis game for you, try not to totally thrash your date? Spoiler alert: you don’t look like the good guy in this scenario,’ said Dean, jabbing his finger on his phone.
Mine and Marcus’s phones pinged simultaneously.
With a sigh, I opened the message Dean had sent, an article from an American gossip site with the unfortunate title: Cruel Taylor Fails to Let Girlfriend Win a Single Point!
Aaargh. That wasn’t good on any level, not least because I hardly looked my best with sweat sprouting out of every pore and a pissed-off expression on my face. On the other hand, the photos of us by the fence looked hot.
‘Nice pics,’ said Marcus, clearly on a mission to wind Dean up.
‘Shame about the fucking strapline,’ said Dean, pushing back his chair and stalking off.
We were currently seven floors up, sitting out on the terrace of one of the most beautiful rooftop restaurants I’d ever seen and I was craving my battered old sofa again, where thankfully the drama was usually confined to what I chose to watch on screen, and where I could change channels if it all got too much.
Mind you, perhaps I should be careful what I wished for – since Marcus was out of the tournament and heading to Spain the following day to prepare for the Madrid Open, I’d asked Ruby to change my flights and I’d be back in London the following evening.
I realised that living alone and barely seeing anyone from one day to the next was going to feel like quite the anticlimax.
Marcus cleared his throat. ‘Sorry about that. It wasn’t fair of us to have that discussion in front of you.’
He poured me a glass of water.
‘Do you often clash like that?’ I asked.
‘Sometimes,’ he said. ‘He’s hot-headed like me. I disappointed him, I get it. The problem is, it’s impossible for people to understand where I’m coming from when I don’t know how to explain it myself half the time.’
A waiter came to take our order – I went for a margarita and a Caesar salad in the end and Marcus asked for a burger, fries and a pint of beer.
‘What happened to the clean eating?’ I teased gently as the very polite French waiter scuttled off to the kitchen.
‘I call it a commiseration dinner,’ he said. ‘It’s a ritual of mine. If I lose a match, I eat and drink whatever I want for one night only, guilt free.’
‘What happens if you win?’
‘I rest and I drink water and I get an early night. It’s nowhere near as much fun.’
I nodded. I supposed you couldn’t properly celebrate unless you won the entire tournament, could you, and the chances of that were pretty low. I’d read somewhere that 128 male players were entered into the US Open, so essentially that meant one celebration and 127 commiseration dinners.
‘Beautiful views,’ I said, looking down at the marina below.
Yachts of all shapes and sizes were bobbing on the water, lit up against the dusky sky.
When our drinks arrived, Marcus was quick to take a mouthful of beer, seemingly savouring the taste.
‘Sometimes it’s worth losing just for this,’ he said.
I ran my fingertip around the rim of my cocktail glass, enjoying the way it kept snagging on the salty crust around the edge.
‘Do you want to talk about earlier? About the match?’ I asked, fiddling with the stem of my glass now. Why did being alone with Marcus make me so nervous?
He chewed his lip; I could practically see his mind ticking over. Should he? Would it help? Could he trust me?
‘I’m not really a talker,’ he said.
‘Neither am I, as it happens,’ I ventured, gauging his reaction.
Often, celebrities didn’t want to talk about anyone but themselves, and the private life of the person interviewing them was of absolutely no interest. I had an inkling, though, that Marcus might feel differently.
‘That surprises me. Tell me more,’ said Marcus, taking another mouthful of beer, this time leaving a line of white froth that I wanted to reach across and wipe off with my thumb. He licked his lips before I had the chance.
‘I feel bad, sometimes, asking interviewees all these personal details about their lives. About their difficult childhoods, or their first heartbreak or their career failures, or whatever it is. Because I’m expecting them to open up to me in a way that I could never do myself,’ I said, keeping my tone light, my voice barely audible.
Marcus looked confused. ‘You had no problem telling me that your ex had left you.’