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Love Game - Season 2012

Page 28

by Gerard, M. B.


  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. Tha
nks 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?

  She had hardly slept that night and during her practice she had checked the watch that often that Freddie had asked if she had a date. Yes, she did. A date with the draw sheet that had to be hung up in the players’ lounge building by now. Not only did she need to check against whom she would play in the first round but more importantly she needed to find out if Sasha was in the draw.

  Gabriella entered the building. At the end of the hallway she could already make out a crowd of players and team members who had gathered before the wall with the draw. Gabriella lined up in the back of the crowd, tiptoeing so as to get a glimpse of the draw, but she was still too far away and the huge sheet of paper wasn’t hung high enough.

  “Hi,” a voice next to her said. Gabriella turned around.

  “Hey Elise, how are you?”

  The German shrugged. “So, so.”

  Gabriella raised her eyebrows. That was an atypical response fro
m the German who was known for her cheerfulness.

  Didn’t Elise crash out of the Olympic Games rather unceremoniously after a good run in Wimbledon? Gabriella couldn’t remember. She had been so preoccupied with her own worries that she didn’t follow the other players’ results. Amanda lost pretty early too, she thought. But again she wasn’t sure.

  “Are you okay?” Gabriella asked.

  Again Elise gave a shrug. “Amanda and I are in a bit of trouble,” she whispered, so the other players didn’t hear.

  Oh dear, Gabriella thought. Amanda and Elise were such a nice couple. She often saw them sitting together in the players’ café, laughing and chatting. They never gave the impression that all this was a façade, but of all people, Gabriella should know better. She was the perfect example for living a masquerade.

  “I am sorry to hear that, Elise,” she said, giving her German friend a little hug. “I’m sure you will work it out.”

  Elise nodded. They reached the draw sheet and began looking for their names. Gabriella found hers – she would play against Teresa Santayana – but she couldn’t find Sasha’s. As the No. 2 player, the Czech would have naturally been at the bottom right of the draw, opposite to the No. 1 player Carina, who was in the top left of the sheet. Again Gabriella went over all the sixty-four fields in the draw. Sasha wasn’t there.

  ***

  “You are a genius!”

  Martina gave Antonia Sapore a kiss on the cheek, as best as she could while they were running down the hotel hallway. Behind them was Tom Richardson. He was carrying Anastasia’s laptop.

  After weeks and weeks of fruitless waiting for Anastasia to leave her room without her laptop they had decided they couldn’t wait any longer. Instead they had come up with a daring plan.

 

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