Love Game - Season 2012 (31 page)

“I expect this to happen on a daily basis,”
she replied with a grin. “Finished for today?”

“Yes and no,” Tom said, grinning
mysteriously. “No more tennis for me today. But I have to prepare for something
else. I haven’t done this in ages but tomorrow I will do someone a favor and be
a wedding photographer.”

***

One step after another. One step after
another. And don’t stumble. Don’t trip over the dress. Don’t roll your ankle.
Don’t – .

Sasha opened her eyes, exhaled sharply and
straightened her back. Ms. Daisy Hardwood fastened the zipper on the back of
her dress. The satin was cool and it didn’t help that there were no sleeves to
keep her shoulders warm.

“Are you cold?” the wedding planner asked.
Sasha nodded. In fact she was shivering. The last couple of days had been
hectic with her and Jaro’s family arriving and getting to know each other. At
the last minute she had forbidden her mother and her nieces from taking part in
dressing her.

“Put this on.” Ms. Hardwood handed her the
embroidered bolero jacket she would wear after the ceremony, but it didn’t
help. The tremor got worse and worse.

“Oh, dear,” Ms. Hardwood mumbled. “Come,
sit down.”

She sat down with Sasha on the chair and
put an arm around her.

“Are you nervous?”

Sasha shook her head. Why should she be
nervous? She only had to say yes. Easy. Probably the easiest thing she had done
in a while.

“Are you having second thoughts?”

Sasha looked the elderly woman in the eyes.
“No.”

“Good, it’s very unpleasant having to
explain to all the guests and the family that the bride ran away.”

Now Sasha had to grin. “Did that happen to
you?”

“Oh, yes. Of course,” Ms. Hardwood nodded.
“But it was in fact mostly the men who chickened out.”

The elderly woman still had her arm around
her and Sasha realized that – besides the nights she had spent with Anastasia –
the last person to touch and hug her had been Gabriella in Wimbledon.

She swallowed and closed her eyes. The
Galloways were the last people in the world she needed on her mind right now.

“Do you know how Mr. Clutterbuck and I
met,” Daisy Hardwood said with a mellow voice. Sasha shook her head.

“It was in the late sixties. I needed to
find a groom for a friend. She was unmarried and her father had determined in
his will that she would get nothing as a single woman. Her father was already
very sick at that time and she offered me part of the inheritance if I could
marry her off in one week.”

Late sixties? Sasha raised her eyebrows.
Why on earth had Kurt chosen a wedding planner that old?

“So, I went out to a gay bar and found a
husband for her in no time,” Ms. Hardwood explained matter-of-factly.

Sasha tried not to blink. The word ‘gay
bar’ seemed outright bizarre coming from the mouth of a stuffy old lady. She
also wondered where this story was going.

“And that’s where I met Alvin,” Daisy
Hardwood added. “He was friends with the groom. We got along very well and
decided to make it a business. We specialized in convenience marriages for
queers.”

“Oh,” Sasha uttered. Queers. She suddenly
understood. “So, that’s the reason Kurt chose you?”

“I assume. We have an excellent reputation
and we are very discreet,” Ms. Hardwood stated. Then she rubbed Sasha’s
shoulder. “Better?”

The wedding planner was about to get up.

“Not really,” Sasha quickly said – and the
hand stayed.

“What’s her name?”

“Whose name?”

“The girl with the dark hair. The girl you
looked at in Eastbourne.”

Sasha sighed. So they had seen her looking
at Lulu. Her name is Luella, Sasha wanted to say. But, of course, it had been
Gabriella. Instead she said nothing, just shook her head slowly.

“Do you love her?”

She wanted to keep on shaking her head, but
her head stopped turning. As if the bones inside her neck had become iron screws
and these screws were getting wedged the more she tried to shake her head.
Sasha opened her mouth and tried to explain the strange immobility that was
affecting her neck. But even her throat wasn’t working properly anymore.

But before Ms. Hardwood could wonder why
Sasha wasn’t answering or moving, an excited voice sounded through the dressing
room.

“Oh my goodness,” Tom exclaimed. “You look
gorgeous. Absolutely amazing.”

The loud photographer hauled Sasha out of
her rigor.

“You will both look so adorable in the
car,” Tom gushed.

“What car?” Sasha got up and approached
Tom.

“The car we chose with Jaroslav in
Eastbourne,” Daisy Hardwood explained.

“A limo?”

“Oh, no,” Ms. Hardwood chuckled. “It’s an
Aston Martin DB5.”

“Good man, that Jaro,” Tom winked at Sasha.
“The DB5 is the classic James Bond getaway car. You should make good use of
it.”

***

One step after another. One step after
another.

The hill seemed to never end. Slowing down
a little, Gabriella caught her breath. Why did she have the feeling that she
was terribly unfit? Shouldn’t she be up there already?

“Come on,” she fired herself up and began
jogging again.

Everything seemed perfect when Tom had
mentioned his new mission in a conversation with Lars on the way to the
broadcast centre. He didn’t even look up when Gabriella passed by.

“Mayfair Manor,” Tom had trumpeted.
“Perfect location for such a high-profile couple, but still intimate and
private, you see?” Lars had nodded.

High-profile couple? Intimate? Private?
These guys had no clue. Gabriella had rushed home and looked up the mansion on
the net. It was located thirty miles outside of London. Clever, she thought.
Everybody she had asked reported that rumor had it that Sasha planned the
wedding in an inner-city church and that the family was staying in a hotel
nearby. But obviously that had been diversion.

All the better, Gabriella thought. She
didn’t like the thought that a horde of paparazzi would storm the hill with her
and could see her like this – sweaty and out of breath. How unworthy of the
current Wimbledon Champion!

It was like running for the bus, while
people were standing by and watching. Was she fast enough? Would she make it in
time before the bus came? Of course not. Murphy’s law always prevented a happy
union with the vehicle. Speaking of vehicles, the public transportation
connection to Mayfair Manor could have hardly been worse. The train stopped at
every whistle stop – and it always whistled. When Gabriella had finally arrived
in Mayfair she made sure that it had in fact been a modern train, not a steam
engine. And why did she have the foolish idea that there would be cabs waiting
at the Mayfair train station? There weren’t.

This was so typical of the whole situation.
All this had started in Dubai with a completely botched day. And it would end
in a mess. She just knew it. The train chaos wasn’t a good omen, and now she
was even running up a hill. Tom hadn’t mentioned a time for the wedding. It was
quite possible that the ceremony was scheduled in the morning. And it was
already 10:27. But she kept on running.

“Can’t say I didn’t try,” she panted, while
jogging along the winding road. But that’s what people always said when running
for the bus.

The winding road was marked-off by a stone
fence and trees blocked the view to the top of the hill. Gabriella growled. She
wasn’t even sure whether there was a mansion or a church on the hill. What if
there was nothing? Just the road that would lead down again.

Gabriella gasped for air and stepped to the
side of the road. Suddenly, she listened up. The smoothly buzzing roar of a car
was audible. Gabriella frowned. No need for anyone to see her sweating and out
of breath. Or running up a hill looking for a church that wasn’t there. And no
need to get run over by a car now.

She climbed up the stone fence, quickly
jumped down into the meadow and ducked.

When the car drove by she peered over the
stones.

“Idiot,” she said after the car. The car
was speeding along the narrow road. One small mistake and it would crash into
the stone fence. Gabriella shook her head, watching the car disappear behind a
turn, then jumped over the rocks and began jogging again.

Twenty minutes later she stopped in
amazement. There was the mansion and to the left of it, at the end of a narrow
lane, was a chapel. By now the road was lined with parked cars. She was right.
She clenched her fists and hurried down the path towards the chapel. But the
closer the church came the slower she walked.

What should she say? What did she actually
want? Gabriella swallowed hard. How she hated it when doubts flooded her mind.
This happened in matches, too. She had to learn to muzzle these treacherous
voices.

I want to say sorry, Gabriella told
herself. That’s why she was here.

On Sasha’s wedding day? Can’t you wait
until the next tournament?

No, no. Gabriella almost blurted it out.
No, she couldn’t wait.

Or are you actually here to prevent Sasha
from marrying someone she doesn’t love? Because you want to believe that Sasha
loves you? Perhaps the liaison had been just that for Sasha – a liaison.
Nothing more.

“I need to apologize,” Gabriella whispered
loud enough to drown out the treacherous voices. She had almost reached the
tall chapel door. When she touched it the oak was warm from the sun and
Gabriella got ready to fling open the wings. But she wasn’t quick enough. From
inside the door was opened and would have knocked Gabriella on the nose had she
not dodged to the side. Led by the priest, more and more people poured out of
the church and walked up the path. They were chatting agitatedly.

Gabriella stumbled backwards against the
church wall. She was too late. She had missed the ceremony. Sasha was married
now.

“Why did everything go wrong?” she mumbled.

Because you are a gutless coward. Because
you are a liar. You don’t deserve Sasha. She is better off with a decent young
man like Jaro.

Gabriella moaned. Then she saw the familiar
red hair of Tom Richardson who had just come out of the chapel. At a quick pace
he walked up the dirt lane and Gabriella decided to run after the photographer.
At least she could ask him if he would take her back to London.

“Did you like it?” she addressed him when
she caught up with him.

“Like what?” Tom looked at her, surprised
to find the Galloway at his side.

“The ceremony.”

Tom stopped and looked her over. “Were you
late?”

Gabriella nodded. “I had to walk up the
hill.”

“Well,” Tom slowly began. “You didn’t miss
anything. There was no ceremony.”

“What?” Gabriella gasped. She watched the
people pass by. Yes, they were excited. But they were not smiling. And only now
did she realize that there were no bells ringing.

“What happened?”

“Sasha bailed out,” Tom grinned. “She
escaped in the wedding car.”

MAKE UP

AND BREAK UP

Montréal, Canada

“Can’t you sleep?”

Agnes sat up and watched Candice in the
dark. Her partner was sitting on the bed hiding her head between her knees.

“Nope,” Candice whispered.

“She will turn up in time.” Agnes tried to
console Candice but even she had doubts that Sasha would play the tournament in
Montréal. The draw would be made the next morning and the second seed hadn’t
arrived yet in the Canadian city.

“What if she did herself some harm?”
Candice wondered, turning around to Agnes.

“Sasha? No, I can’t believe that. She is
too clever for that.”

The truth was that Agnes was worried, too.
They had phoned all hospitals in London after the crashed sports car was found
on the side of a road leading to the British capital, but Sasha was in none of
them.

“It’s been days since this clever person
was seen!” Candice snapped. “Journalists pester me with questions I can’t
answer. Gabriella – of all people – is stalking me, asking every five minutes
whether Sasha has arrived and is playing Montréal. She is probably looking at
her ranking and knows that Sasha would lose some crucial points if she doesn’t
show up. As if I had nothing better to do!”

“Strange,” Agnes mumbled, putting her arm
around Candice to console her. “I’ve never seen Gabriella like this. But it
seems the rivalry is very much alive.”

“Oh, you know what money and fame do to
people,” Candice said tiredly. She laid back into Agnes lap and closed her
eyes. “Just look at her sister. Same procedure as every year. Wins Wimbledon,
completely loses contact with earth.”

Agnes began stroking Candice’s blonde hair.

“Remember the last time you were racking
you brain over some players?”

Candice opened her eyes.

“You mean two days ago when our dear No. 1
player, Carina, ordered a foot massage and an organic omelette with shredded,
organic lobster and organic oysters for breakfast. It was eight in the morning
and she wanted it by half past eight.”

Agnes chuckled. “Shredded lobster?”

“Would you believe it? Poor Alice almost
went mental.”

“How did you get the lobster?”

“We didn’t,” Candice said. Finally she
grinned. “The chef had some king prawns. She didn’t notice. And they weren’t
organic. And I don’t feel guilty.”

They laughed about the excessive
expectations of some players and slipped under the covers again.

“You know I didn’t mean something like
shredded lobster,” Agnes picked up the conversation again. “I meant the
disappearance.”

Candice turned to Agnes and snuggled into
her arms. “Which one? We have three now.”

Agnes had to laugh, albeit silently. “Well
played.”

There was no need to talk about the most
dreadful crisis of their lives. All was said a million times already. Agnes
just wanted to remind Candice that they had seen worse. The night was about to
swallow them up again when a phone rang.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Candice moaned. It
was her phone. She turned on the light and began looking for it. When she had
found it she turned around to Agnes. “Unknown number.”

“Yes?” Candice barked into the phone. Then
her eyes grew wide. “Sasha! Oh, thank god. How are you, girl?”

Agnes sat up straight. That was great news.
At least now they knew that Sasha was alive.

“Will you be here for the tournament?”
Candice wanted to know. She sat down on a chair looking at Agnes. She didn’t
like Sasha’s answer.

“What do you mean you can’t play? Did you
get injured in the car accident?”

Mon Dieu
, Agnes thought. Perhaps she had a concussion and
didn’t notice. That could be very dangerous. But Candice was already talking
again.

“Well, that’s good to hear. But what is the
reason you don’t want to play? What was the reason you ran away from the
wedding?”

Agnes got up and approached Candice. With
her ear she got closer to the phone.

“I was confused. Someone very close to me
deceived me,” Agnes could hear Sasha say. She gave Candice a side glance. They
both thought the same. Jaro!

“Oh, Sasha,” Candice purred. “That’s
terrible. Now tell me where you are, please.”

“I’m right here,” Sasha said. Then the
connection was cut off.

Agnes looked at Candice, shaking her head.
What was going on with Sasha? Then they heard a knock on the hotel room door.
Agnes jumped up and ripped it open. In the dim-lit hotel corridor, Sasha waited
– with Jaro.

***

How could she pay this much for a hotel
room with walls this thin, Morgana wondered. She was kneeling on the bed with
her ear pressed against the wall paper above the headboard, listened closely.
But to no avail. The voices she could hear were muffled. However, she could
make out a heated discussion in the other room. The interesting part of it was
that it wasn’t between two people. Morgana had counted at least four voices and
some snippets of a conversation.

“
Eh oui,
” she said, finally giving
up. There was no use to be upset about the disruption. It wasn’t like she had
been sleeping.

She went back to her desk and sat down
again. In the last three hours she had made headway with her doctoral thesis.
Thanks to the information Larissa was giving her, she could fill the gaps
little by little. The connection between the
Tennis Nurse
novel series
and the real players’ lives was distressing at times. No wonder Bernadette had
been scared to talk about the power game that was going on behind the scenes.

Monica, Agnes and Michelle were all part of
the inner circle of older veterans that controlled the tour. Their characters
in
Tennis Nurse
were easy to detect – for good reason, Morgana had
learned. Especially those characters who were portrayed positively and in major
roles had to be eyed suspiciously.

This evening she had received new
information via e-mail, had made notes and was now working the quotes into the
PhD. Morgana read over the passage she had just finished.

“[Every reader] knows that certain
characters are based on certain players. Their positive portrayal throughout
the series also has the effect of players being seen in a positive light by
those who are exposed to the Tennis Nurse novels for a long period.”

Oh dear, she scolded herself while
inserting the footnote for Larissa’s quote. How often had she given out these
novels to young players who were eager to read about their heroines? Especially
Polly, who had knocked on her door this year more often than any other player.

Morgana stopped writing. The thought of
Polly made her miserable. When she had asked Candice the other day about
Polly’s mother and whether the surgery went alright, Candice had erupted into
an angry rant that she didn’t know everything.

“Stupid Sasha,” Morgana said quietly.
Everything revolved around the mysterious and scandalous disappearance of the
No. 2 player. While some people were concerned about Polly when she had to
withdraw so unexpectedly from the Olympics, after Sasha’s called-off wedding
the Czech had been the talk of the town. Who cared these days about a young
Canadian player whose mother needed a new heart? Perhaps she should try and
visit Polly. Yesterday it was announced that the Canadian had withdrawn from
Montréal, her home tournament. Her mother was still in the hospital and she
wanted to be there for her. Everybody understood – and then talked about Sasha
again. Because bad news was so much better than sad news.

***

Mint’s finger was hovering over the mouse.
One click and all those silly pictures would be gone. She didn’t like looking
at them anymore. Also, she had delivered all of them to the photo models. There
was nothing she could do with the pictures now.

Or was there? Mint pulled her finger back.
A thought crossed her mind. But it was an outrageous thought. She couldn’t do
that. Or could she?

Mint jumped up and closed the laptop. “No,”
she stated.

She put on her running shoes and left the
room.

As she didn’t make the cut for the London
Games she had spent the summer after Wimbledon playing Stanford and Carlsbad,
two well-endowed tournaments in California. With the field thinned out due to
many players participating in the Olympics, it had been easy to fare well. In
Stanford, she had reached the semifinal, and in Carlsbad the final. While Mint
was happy about the ranking points she had gained in California, as they
allowed her to enter bigger tournaments without going through the qualifying
process, there was a downside to it, too. Her stepmother suddenly had even
higher expectations. Whereas a year ago Evelina would have grimaced with pain
when she had to step inside a gym, she now dragged her stepdaughter there
personally.

Mint jogged down the stairs to the lobby
and out into the street. A couple of blocks down was a park where a lot of the
players went running. Sometimes Mint just needed to escape from her
stepmother’s grip. No wonder she had outrageous ideas about what to do with the
pictures. No, it was unthinkable that she would leak these pictures to the
press. There was no gain for her by doing so, only harm for the other players.
They had to stick together – all the gay players. They were one big family.

But, then again, who stuck with her? Chili
had deserted her long before the Olympics and there had been no word from her
since that she planned to come back to Mint and play doubles with her. She and
Teresa had become best friends and Mint was no longer in contention.

The only person Mint felt she could talk to
these days was Natsumi. But when she had approached Natsumi the other day –
happy to have her friend back since the fateful sliding accident at the French
Open – the Japanese girl was gloomy and brusque. Nobody was interested in her problem
with Evelina.

Mint jogged around a corner and almost
screamed out in surprise.

“
Ouille!
” Morgana yelled when they
bumped into each other.

Mint looked the French player over in
astonishment. Morgana wore jeans and a fancy blouse. Her heels suggested that
she was definitely not doing any exercise in the park.

“Are you taking a walk?” Mint asked, still
looking at Morgana’s shoes.

“
Mais non
,” Morgana replied. “I
visited Polly in the hospital. It’s right across the park.”

Mint blinked. Polly?

“I didn’t know Polly lives in Montréal,”
Mint said.

“She doesn’t live in the city,” Morgana
informed her. “But her mother was taken to this hospital as it is the best for
heart transplants.”

“How did the surgery go?” Mint asked
faintly. She feared a negative answer.

Morgana looked her over, then frowned a
little bit. She looked like she was about to explode into one of her little
fits she sometimes had when Mint knocked on her door very late at night to ask
for a new
Tennis Nurse
novel. But then Morgana steadied herself.

“Why don’t you ask her yourself?” she
responded. “The room number is 376.”

***

Gabriella hurried down the little alley
behind the main building of the Rogers Cup tournament.

After her practice she and Freddie had
discussed tactics and he had given her advice on how to adapt quickly to the
new surface. Most players who had gone far in the Olympic tournament had taken
a week off after the London Games. They skipped the tournament in Montréal and
would join the tour again in Cincinnati, taking time to prepare for the hard
court season. The different surface not only changed the way the ball bounced,
it also affected and demanded more of the tennis players’ bodies than grass. It
would have been wise for Gabriella to skip Montréal as well as she had stayed in
London just as long as the finalists. But after Sasha’s wedding scandal she
felt more than ever that she had to talk to the Czech.

News about the crashed car left her
worried. So far there hadn’t been an official withdrawal statement by Sasha. So
far there had been no statement at all. Gabriella had found out that Kurt,
Sasha’s manager, as well as Candice had tried to find out about Sasha’s
whereabouts. To no avail. There was no sign of life.

A day before, Gabriella had dared to
approach Candice again. Oh, what a stupid mistake. It had been a while since
Gabriella was told off that vehemently. The communications manager had knocked
the stuffing out of her. Gabriella had been so perplexed by the response that
she was rendered speechless for a moment. Long enough for Candice to rush off.
What the hell had been wrong with Candice? Did she know about Sasha’s romance
with Gabriella? Was that the reason Sasha had disappeared?