I wondered, then, about his temper. Whether that had been the point at which it spiralled out of control when he was on court.
‘How did it affect you, not having your mum come to matches?’ I asked him.
‘I was angry a lot of the time. In a way, I felt as though the game had ruined my relationship with her, and therefore if I played badly, or the match didn’t go my way, I felt this uncontrollable resentment that I’d given everything up for tennis and I wasn’t even winning at it. Plus, my mum had always been the person I’d talked to about my feelings – the only person. After she’d gone from my life, there was nobody. I was totally on my own, and when I was out on court, under all that pressure, it would sometimes just explode out of me because I didn’t know what else to do with it.’
Without thinking, I reached out to touch his arm. ‘That’s really sad, I’m sorry, Marcus. You must wish things could go back to how they used to be.’
He looked at my hand on his arm and he just let it rest there for a few seconds before I realised my fingers were covered in dough, which was now smeared all over his (no doubt) very expensive shirt.
‘Shit, sorry!’ I said, whipping my fingers away, wiping them frantically on my apron.
‘It’s fine, Ava,’ he said, his voice barely more than a whisper.
My breath caught in my throat. If either of us had thought to ask someone to take a photo, it would have made a brilliant shot – Marcus and I, covered in flour, staring at each other with thoughts running through my head that I really couldn’t explain.
And then Collette bashed a wooden spoon against a stainless-steel bowl to get our attention and I swung my eyes away from him, although I could still feel the heat of his on me.
While we waited for our bread to cook, we all relocated to the tables at the front of the shop, where Colette topped up our wine and brought out plates of olives and cheese and butter for us to enjoy once our baguettes were ready to eat. Judging by the delicious smells emanating from the ovens, we’d all done a pretty good job, and Colette seemed pleased with our creations.
‘So,’ said Marcus, taking a large mouthful of his wine. ‘Time to talk about you. That would be much more fun.’
‘Fun for who?’
‘Me, obviously. I’ve just told you all my family secrets and now it all feels a bit ... unbalanced. Like you know loads about me but I know next to nothing about you.’
‘Isn’t that the whole point ofmewriting a profile onyou?’ I reasoned.
‘Oh, I think we’re a bit past that, don’t you?’ he said.
I swallowed hard, fiddling with my glass.
‘Fine. What do you want to know?’ I mumbled. ‘By the way, how come you’re drinking the night before a match?’
He shrugged. ‘It’s just one glass.’
‘Am I a bad influence on you, Marcus?’
‘No. Now, tell me about your ex,’ he said.
‘What about him?’
‘Well ... how long were you together? Was it serious?’
Charlie’s face came into my mind’s eye for the first time that day. I noted this was a definite improvement – it meant I could go hours without thinking about him, whereas at first I’d been lucky to go ten minutes. And I hadn’t had time to miss him as much because I was either going off to meet Marcus or I was trying to write the best article of my life or I was thinking about Marcus or I was thinking about the article. I’d seen Zoe a few times and was back out there in the world like a normal, functioning human being, and even the housework was on track, although there wasn’t the same need for me to keep the flat spotless so that Charlie didn’t compare me unfavourably to his mother. I could never live up to his mum’s high standards of cooking or cleaning, it seemed, and honestly, I had no aspirations to.
‘We were together for four years. Lived together for two of those,’ I said. ‘And then one day he just came home from work and said he was leaving.’
‘Why would he do that?’ asked Marcus, seemingly almost as confused as I’d been at the time.
‘Apparently, he’d been unhappy for months. It’s difficult for me to explain because I honestly don’t know what happened, but I’m starting to suspect that he left me for his new girlfriend.’
‘Have you asked him?’ said Marcus.
‘There wasn’t a chance to. He just packed up his stuff and left. I think I was a bit in shock, because I just let him.’
‘Jesus,’ said Marcus. ‘What did you do then? Are you close with your parents? Who was the first person you called?’
This was going to sound strange, particularly when I’d been pushing him to open up, telling him that was the way to release some of the tension he felt on court, how talking was good.
