‘Hey,’ he said back.
He pulled up a chair and sat opposite me.
‘You look very relaxed for someone about to go out on court at Wimbledon,’ I said.
‘Turns out I play better when I’m not all wound up and tense. Who knew?’
I tried to smile, I really did, but it struck me that this might be the last time I ever watched him play. If he lost today, that would be it – I’d file my piece and he’d do his photo shoot and the September issue ofLuxewould come out and I would treasure it forever, but I would never see him again, not properly. Not like this.
Dean came over to join us, which was probably a good thing. Marcus needed to focus, and who better than his team to keep him on track? His nutritionist had apparently had him on a strict diet, Nick had him stretching every night and he was sharing a house in Wimbledon Village with a couple of the other players. He’d started texting me every day – aHow are you?Or aWhere’s my wedding debrief?I hadn’t told him that my mum and sister had been slagging him off ever since. Or how let down by him I felt. If I could do anything now, it would be to walk away from this with dignity and my head held high – we’d had one night together, and if I’d thought it would be anything more, that was on me.
I tapped away on my laptop as Dean and Patrick talked business with Marcus. I was listening with half an ear – yet more potential sponsors had come forward, impressed with Marcus’s self-control on the court recently, and the new, much less volatile side to him, i.e. the fact he wasn’t embroiled in screaming matches with the paparazzievery five minutes. He looked up and caught my eye when Dean told him this. I nodded and smiled. He thought he partly had me to thank for it, maybe – after all, would any other journalist have agreed to go along with the ridiculous fake-dating charade Dean had concocted? I doubted it. If it had been anybody else, they would have kept their professional boundary. Written a well-crafted piece. Done their best to understand Marcus on a deeper level with the time they were given. For me, I’d gone way beyond understanding him in the way I needed to as a writer – it felt like I’d shared things with him I hadn’t with anyone else for a very long time, if ever. I’d spent a night (two nights ...) with him that I thought about almost every minute of every day. He’d got under my skin when I was supposed to be getting under his, and if anything this was bad for my article because how objective could I be at this point? What did I leave out? How did I write about Marcus without it being obvious how hard I’d fallen for him?
‘Ava?’ said Marcus.
‘Hmm?’ I said, looking up, desperately wishing I could drag myself out of this melancholy.
‘Wait for me after? I can drop you home?’
I could hardly upset him before his match.
‘If you like,’ I said.
And then everyone told him good luck and I stood up too, taking both of his hands in mine. ‘You can do this,’ I said.
He pressed his lips into my temple. ‘I know I can.’
We took our seats on No.3 Court, which apparently housed two thousand, although it felt like much less. From our front-row position I could see the grass in all its glory, the perennial rye I’d read about that had to be 8 mm high, no more, no less. Apparently, it was the special soil underneath that gave the court its bounce, which explained whyI’d never been able to bounce tennis balls on our patchy garden lawn when Cassie and I had tried in those long school summer holidays. Because it was only day one of the tournament, the grass was vibrant and smooth, which I assumed it wouldn’t be by the end of the two-week run. Today was tipped to be the hottest day of the year so far and I could already feel the sun beating down on the top of my head. I had an iced coffee in my hand, which I kept rubbing on my wrists to keep me cool. Wimbledon smelled like flowers and occasionally, when you passed a strawberries and cream stand, there would be the scent of plump red fruit. There was more noise than I imagined, too, the rumblings of voices and hissed whispers that only dropped in volume when the umpire appeared on court, signalling that the match was about to begin. I was fascinated by the ball boys and ball girls I’d read so much about – apparently, 250 of them were whittled down from 1,000 applicants aged fourteen to eighteen, who were all pupils at nearby (mainly state) schools. They’d spent months being put through their paces by a woman who trained them like it was a military operation, shattering kids’ dreams of being let off school for two whole weeks by ruthlessly dropping them for a variety of semi-valid reasons, like being late, chewing gum on the job or not being able to stand still for ten minutes straight.
Marcus arrived on court first, to rousing applause. As he set out his water bottles and towels, he looked across at us and I tried to smile encouragingly, although I didn’t think the warmth I was trying to project reached my eyes. I thought he looked a little less relaxed than he had upstairs, and I supposed this was the moment at which he had to begin his crusade to win another Grand Slam, and not just any Grand Slam but the one that meant the most to him.
Marcus’s opponent, a young Norwegian player called Anders Nilsen, followed him out of the dressing rooms. He had slightly less support, if applause was anything to go by, but he seemed happyto be there anyway. He was only nineteen – it must have felt like quite the occasion.
‘What’s Nilsen like?’ I whispered to Dean.
‘It’s his first year out of the junior circuit. He’s good, but the pressure and inexperience might get to him. Marcus should be able to dominate if he plays like he has been over the past couple weeks.’
I nodded, reassured, watching as Marcus and Nilsen took to the court for their warm-up.
Despite Nilsen’s youth and enthusiasm, Marcus won the match 6-2, 6-4, 6-0. He was off to a flying start.
A few heads turned as we left the lounge, and even though it probably wasn’t me they were looking at, it was still a relief to slide into the cool leather seats of our executive car. We hadn’t held hands as we’d left the building – I hadn’t wanted to anyway, but I thought he might have at least tried so that I could have had the satisfaction of pulling away.
Marcus sighed as we slipped into the leafy back streets of Kensington.
‘Is something wrong, Ava?’ he asked.
I really should have thought about exactly what I wanted to say beforehand, but now I would just have to play it by ear.
‘It’s about the wedding,’ I said, deciding I may as well be honest, even if he wasn’t. ‘I guess it didn’t feel great that you didn’t come.’
He turned to me, frowning. ‘But you said you were fine for me not to. Didn’t you?’
‘Yeah, if you’d told me that from the beginning. But we were all expecting you and then ... you just didn’t show up.’
He ruffled the hair on the back of his head. Good, I was making him uncomfortable – that was nothing compared to the discomfort I’d felt that night.
‘I’m really sorry. I honestly ... I misunderstood. I thought you didn’t particularly want me there anyway, and then I got caught up with stuff after Queen’s. The day ran away with me. I assumed you wouldn’t mind.’
