We head to the clubhouse, watching as Lisa serves on court one, and Mandy and Samira pause for a water break on court two. Rose talks quickly, telling me that we’ve encountered the couple we’re about to play against before.
‘It’s the tall woman with the big serve.’
‘Oh God. They beat us 6–4, 6–2 didn’t they?’
‘Yes, but that was at the start of the season. We’ve had more practice since then.’
I don’t point out that they inevitably have too.
We head straight onto the court and introduce ourselves. ‘We’re going to need to skip a warm-up, I’m afraid,’ says one of our opponents. ‘We’re fighting against fading light now so the priority is to have enough time to finish the match.’
‘Of course. Absolutely,’ I say, though Rose flashes me a private glance and rolls her eyes.
My lack of warm-up shows immediately. I stand on the baseline with my heart racing, telling myself that I don’t need to do anything special today. I just need to do what I’ve been doing all season.
Show up. Hit the ball.Relax.
I am single-handedly responsible for us losing three points in a row after repeatedly hitting long. The first game goes to them when I’ve barely had the chance to blink, and this is rapidly followed by another three.
By the time we’ve been on court for just fifteen minutes, they are already winning four games to zero. It’s completely my fault. Rose is playing well and has saved me from several clangers by scooping up the ball and keeping it in play. But it’s not enough. She can’t carry this match alone.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say in a mortified whisper, as she picks up the ball to go and serve.
‘Hey, don’t worry about it.’ She gives me an encouraging smile.
I take a deep breath and nod.
Then we touch racquets and go to stand at the net. Over the next two games, I pick up slightly, but we still lose the whole set by a humiliating 6–1. As we swap ends, I feel myself sinking into a fug of anger and frustration, beginning to spiral, cursing the fact that Barbara isn’t here instead. I am standing on a precipice, about to single-handedly lose not merely this match but the whole season.
Rose seems to read my mind as we prepare to start the next set and takes me to one side.
‘Listen to me, Jules,’ she says, intently. ‘You’re doing great.’
‘I’m really not.’
‘You just came in cold, that’s all. That last game could have gone either way.’
But it didn’t. And I’m worried the next one won’t either, that I’m going to throw the whole thing away because I couldn’t get my act together.
After the first set, one of the opposition players asks for a break so she can go to the bathroom. I don’t really needit but I decide to go anyway. I pick up my bag and head to the toilet and, after I’ve been, I glance at my phone. There’s a message from Frankie. She and her new Dutch boyfriend, who’s called Bram, are pictured at the top of a mountain, arms around each other.
And as I look at the huge smile on her face, I realise that what I said when she first left was totally true. Ed would have been proud of her. But not as proud as I am.
My daughter isamazing. Nothing less. She’s travelled around Europe, stayed solvent, safe,alive. She’s looked after her friend, grasped every opportunity that came her way and done it all without a shred of fear. I click off the picture and put my phone away. And maybe that’s all it takes, the realisation that sometimes it wouldn’t do any harm if I could Be More Frankie. Whatever it is, as we start the next game, somehow, some way, I find my fire.
I can’t say the opposition’s standard dips in the second set. The transformation is not in them. It’s in us. Oddly, the platitudes that usually run through my head at times like this –you can do this, youarea tennis player, a winner– are completely absent. I don’t need to persuade myself of their viability.
I don’t just merely believe we can win.
I know it.
Everything becomes easy, to the extent that it’s impossible to fathom how I ever found this game so hard. I feel like I am on a moving walkway at an airport, carried along faster than everyone else. My shots are fluid and powerful. Even when I miss or stumble, it feels inconsequential, little more than a blip.
We win the second set 7–5. The scoreline is closer than it felt, because we and the opposition both know that we dominated. But now, at one set all, we’re even – and this whole thing is going to be decided on a tiebreak.
I become vaguely aware that the other matches have finished but I can’t allow myself to think about them, or the scores. We might well have lost our position in the league already. I also can’t look at the crowd on the clubhouse terrace, watching with bated breath. As Rose comes towards me on the baseline, she seems more nervous than I’ve ever seen her, as she articulates my thoughts precisely.
‘A tiebreak. Just what we needed, eh?’
