Chapter Twelve
Marcus had insisted on picking me up in his car at the godforsaken hour of 7.45 a.m.; I hadn’t even had time to make full use of my hotel’s above-average breakfast buffet.
‘Couldn’t we just have played at the country club?’ I complained, thinking that surely that would have been a far better photo opportunity than this other tennis club, which appeared to be way out in the suburbs. The last thing I wanted was to have to struggle through a game of tennis without a camera in sight, making the entire thing a pointless exercise. I could have been writing by the pool with a caramel latte instead, it would have been much more pleasant.
‘The courts will all be booked out. Sometimes even players involved in the tournament have to practise elsewhere,’ he explained. ‘Also, Dean reckoned it would look too obvious for us to be playing together there, too set up. He wants it – us – to look natural together, apparently.’
I sighed a little bit. ‘Wonderful. Any advice on how to achieve that would be gratefully received.’
When we arrived at the club, the manager came bustling out to make a fuss of Marcus and then we were shown to the court we were using for our ‘game’.
‘If you need anything, anything at all, Monsieur Taylor, please do ask for me personally,’ he gushed.
‘Thanks,’ said Marcus, turning his back on the poor guy and unzipping his bag, producing the kind of paraphernalia that might suggest he was going into a session with Patrick, not a knock-around with a complete novice.
‘I don’t own a racquet, by the way,’ I said.
Marcus pointed to his bag. ‘Take your pick.’
I bent down and looked inside, surprised to see at least ten of them placed neatly in there.
‘Do you always carry this many around with you?’ I asked.
‘Yep,’ he said. ‘Sometimes if you’re playing badly, it’s good to switch things up. Or if the court is faster than you think, or if your serve isn’t going well. Plus there’s the problem of broken strings.’
‘Throwing them about probably doesn’t help?’ I suggested.
Marcus gave me a look.
‘What?’ I said, all innocence. ‘Just stating the obvious.’
‘I’m well aware that you can’t stand the way I let my anger get the better of me on court, Ava, but maybe you’ll at least understand it a bit more by the end of our time together.’
‘That is one hundred per cent my intention,’ I said, glad he understood the point of the piece, even if he wasn’t exactly at the opening-up stage. Then again, we hadn’t actually spent much time alone together – maybe this would be a good opportunity to get him talking. Plus, the more I talked, the less I’d have to play, right?
I chose a racquet for no other reason than I liked the electric-blue trim and stood up, acclimatising to the weight of it in my hand; it was much heavier than I’d imagined. I wondered whether the fact he might have won a tournament with this very piece of equipment would bring me beginner’s luck.
‘Happy with your choice?’ asked Marcus, making a show of stretching out his hamstrings. Should I be doing the same?
‘You do know I haven’t played tennis since I was forced to in a PE lesson circa 2011.’
‘Well, that’s what I’m here for. To show you where you’ve been going wrong all this time.’
‘At pretty much every stage of the process, I’d say.’
He laughed. Like he had on the plane, but not really since. He was always so deadly serious when he was engaged in something tennis-related, and I guessed this didn’t really count. Maybe a positive by-product of us doing fake couple-y things together would be that he’d feel relaxed enough to start talking.
‘Let’s just start hitting and see what we’ve got,’ said Marcus, who of course was all kitted out in the kind of thing he’d just played the Rolex Monte-Carlo Masters in.
‘Please don’t work me too hard,’ I said, looking around anxiously and noticing that almost everyone else playing at the club – most of whom were at least twenty years older than me and looked rich as hell – were really quite good.
‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ said Marcus, tossing a ball at me. Of course I fumbled it, didn’t catch it and had to clumsily lunge around after it until it finally stopped bouncing out of reach. A fabulous start.
As I stood across the net from him and attempted to partake in a very basic rally, I was aware of how tight my shoulders were and how I kept sticking my tongue out every time my racquet made contact with the ball. Why was I doing that?! On the plus side, Iwasmanaging to hit the odd shot back and when I did occasionally make proper contact with the ball it made that satisfying thwack that I suspected could become addictive. Everyone had to start somewhere, didn’t they?
‘Not bad,’ said Marcus generously.
After working on my forehand for what felt like an hour but was actually only about ten minutes, we moved on to backhand, which I found much trickier. There was so much to think about: getting into position, changing my grip, using my left hand more than my right, even though I was right-handed, following through after a shot and swinging the racquet over my right shoulder.
