‘That is not a sport, Ava.’
‘Who cares? I enjoy it. I have fun doing it. You should try it sometime.’
I grabbed my water bottle and glugged at it, hoping to reset so that I could act like a professional journalist trying to get somebody on side instead of this weird, outspoken version of myself. Perhaps I could explain that I’d just broken up with someone and wasn’t feeling myself? I’d made an absolutely catastrophic start to the interview, whichever way you looked at it. And annoyingly, even though I hated him on sight, my journalistic curiosity had well and truly kicked in and I suddenly wanted this interview more than anything else; Ihadto persuade him to do it, even if he was – on first impressions – an awful person. There had to be more to him than back-to-back snidey put-downs, didn’t there?
‘Look, I think we might have got off on the wrong foot,’ I said, which was obviously an understatement.
‘You think?’ he said sarcastically.
His voice was deep and resonant, but quiet and melodic, as though in another life he might have been loud and boisterous, but in this one he was forever holding something back. Except when he lost it out on court, of course, and then it was as though he released every single emotion he’d ever felt in one spectacularly visceral swoop.
‘Why don’t you tell me why you won’t do interviews?’ I asked, trying a different tactic. ‘I might be able to alleviate some of your fears.’
‘It’s not about fear, it’s about fact: the papers only skew stuff to make me look bad,’ he said.
‘Worse than you look already, you mean?’
Surely he had to take some accountability for his actions?
‘Don’t hold back,’ he said.
Funnily enough, Ididusually hold back, big time. If it wasn’t because of Charlie, then it must be the champagne – quaffing three glasses of the stuff before 10 a.m. had clearly been a bad idea.
‘Go on, then. Sell yourself to me. If you don’t usually write about tennis, which clearly you know absolutely nothing about, whatdoyou write about?’ asked Marcus.
‘Well,’ I said, mentally scrolling through my CV, ‘you might be interested to learn that despite being twenty-one and with marriage the furthest thing from my mind, I started out as an editorial assistant onYour Weddingmagazine.’
Marcus snorted. ‘I thought you were a serious journalist?’
‘People are very serious about their weddings, I’ll have you know. Anyway, it was the first paid writing gig I was offered out of uni, so I wasn’t about to turn it down, was I? I had a little thing called rent to pay?’
‘Not interested in marriage, you say?’ said Marcus.
‘That was then.’
‘Changed your mind?’ he asked, his tone teasing.
Charlie’s face flashed into my mind’s eye again, as it still did about fifty times on a good day. I was in dangerous territory here, but needs must.
‘Currently undecided,’ I said. ‘You?’
‘Is this part of your interview technique? Start talking about yourself and then slip in a question?’
‘I didn’t think you’d agreed to an interview?’
I had him, I had him, I had him! Surely. Didn’t I?
‘Carry on. What came after writing about other people’s weddings?’ he asked.
‘Features assistant on one of the Sunday supplements,’ I said, trying to gauge if he was still interested.
‘I suppose that’s marginally more impressive,’ said Marcus.
‘And now I’m a freelance journalist, so I can basically write about anything.’
‘Except tennis.’
‘Trust me, I can get up to speed in no time. I mean, it’s a game, isn’t it – how much can there be to learn?’
