Sweat began to prickle at the nape of my neck as the players took a changeover break and we waited for the third set to begin. Marcus was sitting with his back to us, glugging at water – he was already on to his third bottle – and then rubbing his face with a towel. In a split second he had peeled off his top – several female members of the crowd wolf-whistled in admiration, but it was over in seconds when he grabbed another from his bag and pulled it on in one swift movement. Then he threw the towel on the floor, did some hamstring stretches and ran back out on to the court, ready to begin.
Marcus took his position, taking a few beats to settle himself before executing what looked to me like a perfect serve. It was an ace, right off the bat. Dean pumped his fist next to me.
‘Yes, Marcus! Let’s go!’ he yelled.
Marcus held his serve in the first game.
As the set went on, neither lost their serve, with each man matching the other’s increasingly powerful shots stroke for stroke. It was the best I’d seen Marcus play. Neither of them double-faulted and the aces came thick and fast. There was a different feel to this set – not so much slogging it out on the baseline and more coming into the net. I wondered if this was due to fatigue, or whether one of them had purposefully changed tactics. Less of the running back and forth and more well-thought-out shots that caught the other off guard, forcing them to make a mistake. It was four games all, then five.
Marcus prepared to serve. His first went in the net, his second went long.Love-Fifteen. He shook his head, mumbling something to himselfunder his breath. Keep calm, I willed him. Don’t lose your head, stay focused. He served again, but it was slower than usual and Horvat took full advantage of that, slamming it straight to Marcus’s backhand so fast, it sailed right past him before he could even move.Love-Thirty.Marcus slammed his racquet on the ground twice, his face twisted in frustration. Fuck. This wasn’t good. I glanced across at Patrick, who was calm and stoic, no doubt trying to show Marcus that he wasn’t worried, that he had this, that it was just one point, two points. Although points that, because he’d lost them, could cost him the game and then the set.
The crowd, who I felt had been starting to get behind Marcus, were looking distinctly unimpressed as he served again. He seemed to have suddenly lost focus completely because the ball went into the net and he had to use his weaker second serve again, which Horvat took control of immediately with a sharp return to Marcus’s far right-hand side. He lunged to return it, flicking it back across the net, but Horvat was there waiting for it and put it down the line. It looked out from here, and Marcus clearly thought the same as he gestured to indicate that it was wide.
Suddenly, the umpire was out of his seat, jogging over to the line, crouching down to inspect the clay. He called it in. Marcus went storming over to see for himself, pointing to something on the clay. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but his body language was clear – he was about to lose control and I didn’t think I could bear it after all the progress he’d made. I got that he couldn’t be expected to change entirely overnight, that this was Roland-Garros, that winning this match was a big deal and he had enough skill, he was almost there, matching world number one Horvat shot for shot. Maybe every point did count, but from what I’d seen, the umpires never, ever changed their minds after making a call, so what was the point in going on about it?
Marcus was still arguing, pointing at the clay, holding his head with disbelief and frustration, gesturing towards Horvat. It didn’t look good. And as the umpire, clearly deciding he couldn’t continuebickering about the call indefinitely, returned to his seat, Marcus threw his racquet across the court, sending it skidding across the clay. The crowd hissed and whistled. I bit my lip, finding it very hard to watch, perhaps even more so than the first time because I knew him now and I knew this wasn’t an accurate depiction of who he was as a person. He looked like a bad loser, like a petulant child not getting his own way, and this wasn’t what he was like, not at all. It was the pressure of the event, the disappointment with himself, this braying French crowd sneering at him from the stands. I got it. And maybe I’d been expecting too much – perhaps this would be an interesting angle for my story, anyway. A sort of one step forward, two steps back, as happened to us all. Maybe my angle was that he was human and made mistakes like we all did. It was just that, in his case, there were fifteen thousand people watching.
Somehow, against the odds – because when I’d seen him lose it before, his play seemed to disintegrate steeply from there – he held his game. At six games all, they went to a tie break.
‘How does this work?’ I whispered to Dean.
‘They alternate serves, two each. The first to seven with two clear points wins the set,’ explained Dean.
I nodded. As this was a Grand Slam, the match was best of five, so if Marcus lost this tie break he would be down two sets to one. There would still be a chance, but was it possible? Against the world number one, in this heat? Would Marcus’s experience count for something, perhaps? He’d played Roland-Garros ten times at least, whereas this was only Tomas’s third. But then Tomas was on a roll – he’d taken the US Open title last year, Wimbledon the year before. He knew what it took to win a tournament of this calibre. And he didn’t look as tired as Marcus, which I supposed you wouldn’t when you were twenty-one and at the absolute peak of your fitness.
Tomas won the tie break and, eventually, the match.
Chapter Sixteen
I waited in the grounds for Marcus to finish his press conference, deciding I needed some fresh air and a cold beverage more than I needed to watch him talk live about the match I’d just seen – I’d hear about it if anything interesting happened. Distracted by the lure of a glass of cold white wine, I hit one of the many bar areas and found a single chair and a shady spot for one, despite the crowds. The drama of the match had stayed with me; I thought it might have been the tensest I’d felt in my entire life, or at least for that length of time – nearly four hours! How Marcus had played at that level for that long, I had no idea. I had a new admiration for him, despite the fact he very nearly lost it at the umpire, because I’d witnessed what he was capable of when he played at his absolute best, even if he couldn’t quite carry it through to the end. He might have slipped back into his Racquet Man persona for a minute there, but other than that he’d been brilliant – the match could have gone either way, particularly on a different surface. I wasn’t sure if Marcus felt it, but from where I was standing, his hard work – and employing Patrick as his coach – was beginning to pay off.
When I checked my phone, I saw that I had several missed calls from Charlie and a text sayingRing me, please.My stomach fluttered involuntarily. Had those photos upset him rather than made him want me again? I didn’t like disappointing anyone, obviously, but especiallynot Charlie. Even now, after everything he’d done, I felt the need to behave impeccably, to take the moral high ground even if he had taken the low one. I wasn’t sure posting photos of me and Marcus together had been the best idea, in hindsight – I second-guessed everything I put on social media at the best of times. What if Charlie thought I was an awful person now? And – more annoyingly – why did I still care?
I returned the call, thinking about Marcus out there on the court – if he had the courage to do that, I could totally do this.
Charlie answered on the first ring, as though he’d been staring at his phone waiting for my call.
‘At last,’ he said huffily.
‘Hi,’ I said, as a gust of deliciously cool wind licked my face.
‘So I saw your photos,’ he said.
‘Which photos?’ I asked, as if I didn’t know.
‘You and that dick Marcus Taylor. Seriously, Ava? The guy’s an animal!’
Now, after the way Marcus had just played, after I’d seen him leave his soul out there on that court, essentially, it took all my strength not to tell Charlie to fuck right off and end the call immediately. On the other hand, this was what I’d wanted, wasn’t it? He was clearly rattled, otherwise why would he give a toss who I was dating?
‘Know him personally, do you?’ I asked, a little facetiously, I knew, but comeon.
‘We’ve all seen the footage of him, Ava. I’m surprised he hasn’t seriously injured someone the way he throws racquets around. Why would you want to date someone like that?’
‘Well, at least I’ve waited a respectable amount of time before jumping into something else. Could you have been any more insensitive, Charlie? Posting cutesy photos of you and your mysterious new girlfriend not long after you moved out. Who is she, anyway?’
I seemed to have rendered him mute, and I could almost feel him fumbling around for an answer.
‘Why does that matter?’ asked Charlie.
