Chapter 60
Sam screeches to a halt outside my house. I perform the quickest change possible, into the first mismatched items I can lay my hands on, a lemon-coloured top and red leggings, before heading down my path looking like Ronald McDonald on his day off.
Rose meets me at the gates of the club. ‘Am I glad to see you,’ she says urgently. ‘Let’s talk team tactics as we walk.’
We head to the clubhouse, watching as Lisa serves on court one, and Mandy and Samira pause for a water break on court two. Rose talks quickly, telling me that we’ve encountered the couple we’re about to play against before.
‘It’s the tall woman with the big serve.’
‘Oh God. They beat us 6–4, 6–2 didn’t they?’
‘Yes, but that was at the start of the season. We’ve had more practice since then.’
I don’t point out that they inevitably have too.
We head straight onto the court and introduce ourselves. ‘We’re going to need to skip a warm-up, I’m afraid,’ says one of our opponents. ‘We’re fighting against fading light now so the priority is to have enough time to finish the match.’
‘Of course. Absolutely,’ I say, though Rose flashes me a private glance and rolls her eyes.
My lack of warm-up shows immediately. I stand on the baseline with my heart racing, telling myself that I don’t need to do anything special today. I just need to do what I’ve been doing all season.
Show up. Hit the ball. Relax.
I am single-handedly responsible for us losing three points in a row after repeatedly hitting long. The first game goes to them when I’ve barely had the chance to blink, and this is rapidly followed by another three.
By the time we’ve been on court for just fifteen minutes, they are already winning four games to zero. It’s completely my fault. Rose is playing well and has saved me from several clangers by scooping up the ball and keeping it in play. But it’s not enough. She can’t carry this match alone.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say in a mortified whisper, as she picks up the ball to go and serve.
‘Hey, don’t worry about it.’ She gives me an encouraging smile.
I take a deep breath and nod.
Then we touch racquets and go to stand at the net.
Over the next two games, I pick up slightly, but we still lose the whole set by a humiliating 6–1.
As we swap ends, I feel myself sinking into a fug of anger and frustration, beginning to spiral, cursing the fact that Barbara isn’t here instead.
I am standing on a precipice, about to single-handedly lose not merely this match but the whole season.
Rose seems to read my mind as we prepare to start the next set and takes me to one side.
‘Listen to me, Jules,’ she says, intently. ‘You’re doing great.’
‘I’m really not.’
‘You just came in cold, that’s all. That last game could have gone either way.’
But it didn’t. And I’m worried the next one won’t either, that I’m going to throw the whole thing away because I couldn’t get my act together.
After the first set, one of the opposition players asks for a break so she can go to the bathroom.
I don’t really need it but I decide to go anyway.
I pick up my bag and head to the toilet and, after I’ve been, I glance at my phone.
There’s a message from Frankie. She and her new Dutch boyfriend, who’s called Bram, are pictured at the top of a mountain, arms around each other.
And as I look at the huge smile on her face, I realise that what I said when she first left was totally true. Ed would have been proud of her. But not as proud as I am.
My daughter is amazing. Nothing less. She’s travelled around Europe, stayed solvent, safe, alive.
She’s looked after her friend, grasped every opportunity that came her way and done it all without a shred of fear.
I click off the picture and put my phone away.
And maybe that’s all it takes, the realisation that sometimes it wouldn’t do any harm if I could Be More Frankie.
Whatever it is, as we start the next game, somehow, some way, I find my fire.
I can’t say the opposition’s standard dips in the second set.
The transformation is not in them. It’s in us.
Oddly, the platitudes that usually run through my head at times like this – you can do this, you are a tennis player, a winner – are completely absent.
I don’t need to persuade myself of their viability.
I don’t just merely believe we can win.
I know it.
Everything becomes easy, to the extent that it’s impossible to fathom how I ever found this game so hard.
I feel like I am on a moving walkway at an airport, carried along faster than everyone else.
My shots are fluid and powerful. Even when I miss or stumble, it feels inconsequential, little more than a blip.
We win the second set 7–5. The scoreline is closer than it felt, because we and the opposition both know that we dominated. But now, at one set all, we’re even – and this whole thing is going to be decided on a tiebreak.
I become vaguely aware that the other matches have finished but I can’t allow myself to think about them, or the scores.
We might well have lost our position in the league already.
I also can’t look at the crowd on the clubhouse terrace, watching with bated breath.
As Rose comes towards me on the baseline, she seems more nervous than I’ve ever seen her, as she articulates my thoughts precisely.
‘A tiebreak. Just what we needed, eh?’
‘What was it Nora said last time we had one? That we just need to play one point at a time?’
‘Did she? My mind has gone totally blank.’
I want to say something wise and encouraging, but my mouth is dry and there’s no time anyway. We just need to step up and get this job done.
The winner will be the first to ten, with two clear points.
But over the next few minutes, it feels like time itself has been elongated and stretched to an agonising degree.
It’s testament to how close this match is that for every point they win, we take the next – and vice versa, over and over again.
We make several stupid mistakes: a double fault by me, a return by Rose so wild that it flies onto the next court. But the clangers they make suggest they’re just as nervous. Until . . . by some miracle, we end up at match point.
The score is 12–11 to us.
One more point. That’s all we need.
One.
Only my legs are like jelly and I feel like I’ve forgotten how to breathe, let alone run.
I serve the ball. Fault on the first. I go again. And we’re in play.
The rally is one of the longest in the match.
There are volleys, drop shots, ground strokes that fly high over the net and others that land like the crack of a whip.
But when one of their players attempts to lob the ball over my head – and fails to get it high enough – I have my opportunity.
An overhead smash is the only way to go.
I do exactly what Nora said. Hand in the air, ball above my head, get the timing just right and . . .
I swing haphazardly and miss.
I fucking miss. Again.
I want to scream. To shout and cry.
But I become aware of a scramble and look up to see that Rose has swept in behind me and got her racquet to the ball. It clips the edge of the frame, the most inelegant of shots, if you can even call it that. But the contact is enough to make it float over the net . . . and onto the opposing side.
Only the roar from the terrace makes me fully register what just happened.
Rose drops her racquet. Slams her hand over her mouth.
Walks towards me.
‘Come here, you.’
She slams her arms around me and squeezes me so tight that my lungs almost complain. This was not a brilliant victory. We made a mess of much of it. But none of that matters. Only one thing does.
We won.
We tear ourselves apart and shake hands with the other team, before inviting them in to join us for tea in the clubhouse. Rose leads them towards the terrace, but I find myself walking towards my water bottle, still slightly shaky as I savour my last moments on court.
‘I think you’ve earned this. Unless you want to go straight for the strong stuff.’ Sam is walking towards me across the court, an ice-cold glass of lemonade in his hand.
‘This is perfect,’ I say, taking it from him to take a sip. ‘God, that’s good.’
‘You were brilliant.’
‘You obviously didn’t see the first half of the match. It wasn’t pretty.’
‘Whatever you did, it was enough to win. That’s all that counts.’
‘But do we know about the other team yet? And whether we’ll get to stay up next year and still play in the league?’
‘Someone got a text about thirty minutes ago,’ he tells me. ‘They lost. So thanks to the win by you and Rose, Roebury Women’s B team will get to play another day next year.’
Tiny explosions of some unknown emotion sweep over my skin and, embarrassingly, I feel slightly tearful.
‘On the basis of your performance I think they’ll miss you, Jules,’ he says.
I take another mouthful of lemonade and lower the cup. ‘Actually . . . I’m sort of hoping they’ll have me next year too.’
He freezes and narrows his eyes. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m staying here in Roebury.’
His mouth parts. ‘Since when?’
‘Since this afternoon. I talked to my bosses after the presentation. Told them I could no longer make the move to London work and that I was tied to Roebury “for personal reasons”.’
I kept the last part vague and I don’t know what they imagined – elderly parents who need round-the-clock care, or young children of school age.
I don’t have any such ties, but the statement is still completely true.
The reason I can’t leave is not down to anyone else. It’s me.
Because I have found something here that’s too good to let go of.
I’ll always love London for more reasons than I can count, not least the memories.
But Roebury has something that London doesn’t anymore.
The people I love. Here, I feel like a part of something, and have a sense of belonging that is more precious to me than any of the alternatives.
‘I thought they might offer to let me stay with some kind of working-from-home arrangement, but both parties agreed that voluntary redundancy would be the best option.’
‘But . . . haven’t you been panicking about that very thing?’
‘Oh yes,’ I laugh, because in truth I’m still sort of panicking. I am officially going to be unemployed for the first time in my life, not to mention homeless. ‘But that was before I had an idea.’
He raises his eyebrows. ‘Which is?’
I hesitate. ‘How about . . . I tell you about it over a drink sometime?’
As his expression wavers, I feel like a schoolgirl about to have her heart crushed by a boy she adores. Before he gets a chance to answer, I add: ‘I’m really sorry.’
He brushes away the apology. ‘What for?’
‘For making you feel like second best.’
His expression softens. He shakes his head. ‘You don’t need to say sorry, Jules.’
‘Sam. I am making this apology and I would very much like you to accept it.’
A smile filters on to his face. ‘Okay.’
‘I want you to know that you have made me happier than I have been for a long time. Since Ed died, actually. And that weighed heavily on me. I felt like I was betraying him, even though Ed himself wouldn’t have thought that.’
‘No?’
I feel the spring of tears and shake my head. ‘He’d have liked you. In fact, I think you’d have got on like a house on fire. I think he’d say that if I was going to fall in love with another man, I’d better make it a good one.’
There’s a flicker of something in Sam’s eyes. ‘What?’ he says softly.
I look up, feeling something hot in my throat.
‘What did you say?’ he repeats.
I swallow. ‘That he’d have liked you. And that I felt like I was betraying him, but I wasn’t. And—’
‘No, no. The other bit.’
I obviously know the word he’s talking about. The one that slipped out. I hadn’t actually meant to say it because quite honestly until this moment I don’t think it had even crystallised in my head.
Yet now that it’s out there, hovering in the air between us, nothing has ever felt more true. And I wonder how it could have taken me so long not to see it with the shimmering clarity I can now.
‘You mean the bit about falling in love?’
‘Yes. That.’
‘Too much?’ Blood is thrashing in my ears as he holds my gaze and shakes his head.
‘Not even slightly.’
A smile filters onto his lips as we stand together, under a pink suburban sky, somewhere in the middle of court two. And, just when I thought I couldn’t feel anymore elated, he cups his hands around my face and draws me into a kiss.