Chapter Thirty-Two
ADELE
One week later, Adele sat down in one of the armchairs in her living room across from Jonathan Rutherford.
A huge light box shone down on her from its spindly metal legs, and a large camera faced her and Jonathan from the back of the room.
Wires and clunky equipment were everywhere, and it was hot as hell.
“Can we open a window?” she asked.
“Sorry, ma’am,” a young man in a charcoal suit replied as he adjusted the two large microphones. “We can’t risk picking up any outside noise.”
“Mon Dieu,” Adele mumbled under her breath, dabbing at her forehead, which caused the young makeup woman to rush forward with a powder puff. “Can we just get this over with?” Adele added impatiently.
“We’re about to get started,” Jonathan said, setting an unlit cigarette and a box of matches on the table next to him.
“You can’t smoke in here,” Adele told him. “It’s too hot, and I can’t stand the smell.”
“A French woman who doesn’t smoke?” he said. “You used to be known for always having a cigarette in your hand after your matches.”
“I quit years ago.”
“All right,” he replied, handing them to one of the camera crew. “I usually light one as a prop, but I don’t have to.”
“Good.” She eyed him. She’d tried to prepare for the interview, for every imaginable invasive and personal question he might ask, but she had no idea how much he knew about that awful day.
There were far too many people crammed into her tiny living room.
Sylvia and Milly had been relegated to the kitchen out of view, but they could still hear what was going on, and just having them there was a comfort.
Adele rubbed her hands together and realized her palms were sweating.
The director announced something to get everyone’s attention, then called out, “And we’re on in five, four, three, two… ” and he mouthed “one.”
“Good evening, and welcome to Lives you play as if you’ve never picked up a racket,” he snarled in a rage.
“What is wrong with you? Where is your power, your drive? Watching you is an embarrassment. And to think the king of England is here, watching this pathetic spectacle.” Spit fired from his mouth as he hurled insults at her. “Qu’est-ce qui ne va pas chez toi?”
Adele looked down at the ground, holding back tears. She was ashamed, humiliated; reporters were everywhere, watching. She knew she could play better than this, but the panic, the thumping in her chest, the fear of losing and facing her father afterward was paralyzing.
Her confidence shattered, Adele lost the first game in the second set.
She never suffered losses like this. She had to do something to turn it around.
She didn’t dare look up to the stands to see the disappointment in her father’s face again, so she began to yell at the umpire in his tall wooden chair.
“That was a bad call,” she shouted, pointing to her last ball, which had landed just outside the white line.
“It was in.” It had been close, possibly in, but more likely out, but Adele didn’t know what else to do.
The umpire gave her a warning, and when Adele looked up to her father for guidance, he was gone.
She looked around the stands to see if he was there, pacing—she knew this was as stressful for him as it was for her—but he was nowhere to be found, and her mother, who looked so small and insignificant sitting there alone, had turned her face away from the court, as if she couldn’t bear to watch.
Margery took a step toward the umpire’s chair to defend the call that Adele’s ball was out, but the sight of this woman, about to beat her, exhilarated and on her feet despite the crushed pill, only terrified and enraged Adele further.
“It was in; it was clearly in,” Adele screamed, throwing her racket with all the power she could muster toward the spot where her ball had hit the court.
But by now Margery was inexplicably charging toward the umpire, equally passionate in her defense, and at that very moment the racket spun upward and hit her in the face, hard.
There was a yelp as Margery cupped her hands over her left eye and collapsed to the ground.
“Mon Dieu,” Adele gasped, hurrying toward her. There was blood trickling though Margery’s fingers.
“Get away from me,” Margery cried out. “You’re a monster!”
“Adele?” Rutherford’s voice jolted her out of her thoughts. “Adele, can you tell us about that day?” She looked up at him and caught his concerned expression. She wondered how long she’d been sitting there, eyes closed, reliving it all. Had it been seconds, minutes, longer?
She nodded. “Yes.” Her throat was suddenly dry.
As she reached for her water and gulped down a few sips, she realized what a heavy weight she’d been carrying on her shoulders for so long, a secret that only she could know.
She realized now how she desperately wanted to be free from it. She looked up at Rutherford.
“I regret that day deeply,” she began. “If you are interested in the truth, then I will give you the whole truth,” Adele said.
Rutherford nodded eagerly. He wanted viewers, he wanted ratings. Fine, she thought, she’d give him what he so desperately wanted.
“The truth is, I drugged her.”
There was a gasp. Adele didn’t know if it had come from Rutherford or one of the camera crew or from her friends in the kitchen, but she couldn’t stop now and she didn’t want to.
The words poured out of her. She explained everything that had happened before the match, including the crumbled pieces of a sleeping pill that she had sprinkled into Margery’s drink.