I still found it quite difficult to look him directly in the eye when we were up close. I actively untensed my shoulders and forced myself to.
‘Good. Busy writing up the article. I work in a pub sometimes and did a couple of shifts there.’
The bar manager had seen photos of me and Marcus in the papers and had been teasing me mercilessly about it ever since. My rule about not outright lying was getting harder and harder to stick to as time went on.
Marcus looked surprised. ‘I had no idea you had another job.’
I shrugged. ‘I’m not quite at the point of my career when I can survive on writing gigs alone. It’s so up and down – one month I’ll have a couple of commissions and the next I’ll be lucky to pick upanything at all. And then there’s the age-old problem of companies being slow to pay and having to chase them up the whole time. We don’t all have a “Dean” to do that kind of thing for us.’
‘Oh, believe me, I know how lucky I am,’ said Marcus. ‘If it was down to me I’d do everything for free. Even the whole sponsorship deals thing really doesn’t sit well with me – if I didn’t have to do it, I wouldn’t.’
‘How come you’re doing all of this, then?’ I said, indicating him and me. ‘Because I thought the whole thing was about the sponsorship. The money. Getting it all back.’
He sighed. ‘Yeah. It is, but not for the reasons you probably think.’
‘Which would be what?’ I asked.
‘You probably assumed I was thinking about myself and my own bank balance. And sure, I’m not completely selfless, and a tennis career is short – I want to be able to support myself until I find something else to do afterwards. But really, it’s for my team. They rely on me for their income, especially Patrick and Nick, but Dean too, in a smaller way, and my nutritionist and my psychologist.’
‘You have a psychologist?’ I asked, amazed.
‘I do.’
‘What do you talk about with your psychologist?’
‘Almost exclusively tennis,’ said Marcus.
I rolled my eyes, teasing him.
‘And my temper,’ he admitted.
‘And your racquet smashing?’ I asked.
‘Sometimes,’ he said.
‘And your parents?’
He shuddered. ‘Not yet.’
‘So you have a whole team of people helping your body and your mind,’ I said.
‘I do. And I’d feel bad if I had to start letting people go. Or cancelling sessions or whatever. I feel I have a responsibility to themto change, to do well, to start bringing in sponsorship money again so that they can carry on doing what they love, too.’
‘Can I quote you on that?’ I said.
I made it sound like a cheeky request, but I actually meant it. This was exactly the kind of thing that would endear him to people – that readers would never have guessed about ruthless, ambitious Marcus Taylor.
‘Sometimes I forget that you’re actually a journalist being paid to follow me around. That anything I say to you may or may not be splashed over the pages of the UK’s biggest-selling glossy magazine, as somebody once billed it to me,’ said Marcus.
‘Ah, well, that is my special power. Lull my interviewees into a false sense of security,’ I said, smiling at him.
‘Are all our conversations just about that?’ asked Marcus.
‘Course not,’ I said, meaning it.
Our phones pinged simultaneously.
‘What’s the betting that’s Dean checking up on us?’ said Marcus, looking at his watch. ‘It’s like three a.m. in LA – does that guyeversleep?’
