Chapter Nine
That afternoon, I perched on the end of a sun lounger on the private beach of Marcus’s hotel, which I was ninety per cent sure was where we’d arranged to meet, but now I was wondering if I’d misheard because he was ten minutes late already and clearly timekeeping was of the essence for Marcus Taylor.
Control freak, much? If I’d been in a different mood, I might have pulled him up on it, but the fact was, I didn’t feel like doing anything at all now, except perhaps lying in a darkened room watching endless hours of Friends, my go-to TV choice when I was in emotional distress.
Maybe after this I’d go back to my hotel and order myself a bottle of wine and finish it all in one sitting, along with not one but two desserts.
Then again, I’d seen on the room service menu that they cost nearly thirty euros each, so perhaps I should refrain.
I checked my messages for about the thirty-fifth time that day, heartened to see another rousing vote of confidence from Zoe.
He’s an idiot. You’re well out of it – let this new girl deal with him!
When I looked up, Marcus was jogging along the beach in my direction in a matching grey marl sweatpants and top combo, expensive-looking trainers and a cap that I suspected he’d been gifted by the tournament. I waved. He waved back and upped his pace.
‘Apologies,’ he mumbled, flinging himself on to the lounger next to me. He didn’t seem out of breath, despite the run that would probably have had most mere mortals gasping for air. ‘We trained longer than I’d thought we would. Had to keep bashing out serves until I got them back on track.’
‘They looked fine to me,’ I said.
‘They weren’t, I was way off. I wasn’t hitting the spot I wanted. Too many missed first serves, and my second serve was passable at best.’
I’d hardly call his second serve ‘passable’. And according to the stats I’d looked up after the match, Marcus had only given away two double faults as compared to Griffiths’ seven.
‘Go on then, pull me up on being late, I know you’re dying to,’ said Marcus.
‘I’m not, actually,’ I lied.
‘Even though I called you out for it yesterday?’
‘Some of us aren’t bothered by trivial things such as somebody being a few minutes later than they said they’d be,’ I said breezily.
A waiter delivered the drinks I’d ordered, a freshly squeezed orange juice for me and a coffee for Marcus. He looked at it, pulling the cup and saucer towards him.
‘I grabbed you a cortado,’ I said, having picked up on the fact he liked them.
‘Clocking my hot beverage of choice. Nice touch,’ he said.
‘I’m nothing if not observant.’
‘What was your take on the match, then?’ he asked, putting me on the spot.
I wanted to get my notes out, to see what I’d jotted down during the one hour and thirteen minutes Marcus had been on court, but I also wanted to keep it casual and conversational.
Marcus had a knack of making me feel like I was the one being interviewed – if I wasn’t reeling off the details of my CV, I was warding off completely irrelevant questions about myself.
Was this some kind of test? If I failed, or overstepped the mark, or said the wrong thing (whatever that was), would Marcus decide to share even less of his life with me?
‘I thought you looked very focused,’ I said carefully, keeping it vague. ‘And I liked the way you dominated him from the off. It felt like he never really had a chance.’
‘How do you imagine I dominated him?’ asked Marcus, taking a sip of his coffee.
I looked at him quizzically. ‘Are you testing my tennis knowledge again or something? Because I can tell you right now, it’s utterly non-existent.’
‘It’s not a test, Ava. I’m interested to know what you thought,’ he said, placing his cup back on its saucer and leaning back on the lounger.
I ran through the game in my head. What had stood out to me? What were my honest first impressions of his game, and could I say them? I pictured his stiff posture, his tight jaw, his grim expression throughout.
‘I noticed that there was no real fun in your game,’ I said.
I could bombard him with compliments, of course I could, he’d won easily, he’d been brilliant, there was no denying it.
He’d been consistent, solid, not a trace of the temper I’d read about and had witnessed on TV.
Every shot he’d played from the back of the court had looked to be going long, but when I’d watched it land, expecting it to be called out, it had pinged on to the clay just inside the baseline.
But even though Marcus said this wasn’t a test, it felt like it was, and my instinct told me that what he really wanted to hear was the stuff that hadn’t been quite perfect.
To see if I had the guts to stand up to him, I supposed, to tell him the things he didn’t want to hear.
Although why he thought that was my job, I had no clue. Wasn’t that what Patrick was for?
‘No fun?’ he said, nodding to himself as he mulled it over, and then sitting forward in his seat. ‘Expand.’
I looked out at the last vestiges of the day’s sunlight glittering on the surface of the water, taking a moment to think about what I was going to say before turning back to him.
‘It’s just an opinion,’ I said. ‘But it didn’t look as though you were enjoying it. You seemed tense. As though you had this huge pressure weighing on you. Like you might have had if this was the final and not round one, playing someone you must have known you could easily beat.’
‘I see,’ he said, reaching for his coffee again.
‘Feel free to disagree,’ I said. ‘You could have been having a whale of a time, for all I know. Maybe this is actually your happy face,’ I said, making a circular motion in the air with my finger.
Silence hung dangerously between us. There was a good chance I’d offended him, that I’d gone in too hard too soon. Mind you, he didn’t have one of his really dark looks on, so it could have been worse.
‘You’re right, actually,’ he said.
I swallowed the huge mouthful of orange juice I’d just sipped with a gulp so loud I was sure he must have heard me. Should I press him more?
‘Why didn’t you enjoy it?’ I asked him.
He crinkled up his brow, as though he was trying to put his feelings into words, something I suspected he didn’t do very often.
‘I’m thirty-one,’ he said. ‘Which I presume you know from your research?’
‘Of course.’
‘Which means I’m nearing the end of my tennis career. Seems crazy, doesn’t it, that everything you’ve worked for your entire life lasts the sum total of a little more than a decade. Just as mentally you feel like you’ve hit your peak, your body goes and gives up on you.’
‘You’ve got a good few years, surely?’ I said. ‘Didn’t Serena Williams play into her forties?’
‘We’re not all Serena. Realistically, I’ve got until I’m thirty-five, thirty-six at a push.’
‘Okay. So let’s say you’ve got five more years playing at this level. What’s the pressure about? You’re world number twelve. I’m presuming you want to go higher?’
‘I want another Grand Slam win. And I think I can get it.’
This made sense. He’d been in finals and semi-finals of the big tournaments a few times since his Australian Open win eight years ago, but he’d never won another.
I was going to have to do some research on why not – whether it was true what they were all saying, that it had been a fluke, that the British public couldn’t rely on him to win anything.
‘So that’s your goal for this year?’
‘Yes. Which is why I hired Patrick – if anyone can help me win a major tournament, it’s him. He knows what it takes. He knows what I’m missing, what I need to do.’
I desperately wanted to write all of this down, but didn’t want to ruin the moment.
This was the most open he’d been with me, and it felt like he was beginning to trust me a little bit already.
If I got my notebook out now, it would remind him that everything he said was liable to be printed in the press he hated, and that seemingly hated him.
‘So he thinks you can do it?’ I asked.
Marcus nodded enthusiastically. ‘I’m injury-free, I’m fit, and I’m putting everything into this year that I can, because if I want that Slam title, it’s going to have to be now.’
‘Why’s it so important to you? Isn’t winning one Grand Slam in your lifetime enough?’
‘That’s a very complicated question, Ava.’
‘Is it?’
He hesitated, as though he was unsure whether to say anything or not.
‘It feels like I owe it to my mum. There, is that the kind of quote you’re after?’
‘Do you see me writing anything down?’ I said quietly.
Marcus looked towards the shoreline, taking a deep breath. This felt important, like a bit of a breakthrough, and I wanted to keep him talking if I could.
‘Was it your mum who got you into tennis?’ I asked him, keeping my voice soft and gentle, so he didn’t feel as though he was being interrogated.
He rubbed at his jaw.
‘It was. She worked behind the bar at a tennis club near Manchester.’
I literally hadn’t read this anywhere. ‘Okay.’
‘I hung out there while she did her shifts because she couldn’t afford to pay for childcare.
It was a way for her to keep an eye on me without having to fork out for after-school clubs or a childminder.
Luckily, the owner of the club had a soft spot for her, because obviously employees weren’t supposed to have their kids there. ’
I rested my chin in my hand, watching him. He rubbed his mouth with his fingers, perhaps wondering if he’d said too much.
‘Is this the kind of thing you want?’ he asked. ‘The sort of stuff you’ll use?’
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘Try not to think of it like that.’
I wondered whether to push it further. I had so many questions about his past, about young Marcus and how he’d discovered he was a tennis prodigy.
What he was like at school. What the other kids at the club thought of him – I could imagine, of course, that they were probably annoyingly entitled and then in breezed Marcus, the barmaid’s son, blowing them all out of the water.