by Lola Keeley
“Gracias,” I said as the egg-and-tomato dish was placed in front of me, sizzling cheese in evidence. My mouth watered at the sight. Getting back in shape for Australia was going to be an uphill climb after this week, and I found I didn’t mind one bit. I did my part by pouring the coffee, and we all settled down to eat together.
We did venture out during the rest of the week, not least because Maria had a lot of charitable projects and social commitments that she preferred Toni to drive her to.
Lake Chapala was certainly as beautiful as promised, and we went out on boats to little towns full of local crafted goods and delicious treats. My favourite part was that no one seemed to recognise me at all, apart from a few double takes from the imported Americans. Toni was much more of a celebrity in in her home country, and everyone who recognised her wanted to talk either about Maria or the Mexican Open in February.
Most days, though, we spent at least some time in the pool or lying around it. I had brought some books that were long overdue for reading, and Toni turned out to be a total podcast addict. I’d never really found one I clicked with. Since my occasional insomnia was usually broken up by listening to people talking on the radio, most podcasts just made me feel sleepy before long.
“So,” Toni said as we sipped at the mojitos she’d made after lunch on our second-to-last day. “This isn’t shop talk, but kind of…what-about-after-the-shop talk. For some reason, I feel like your answer isn’t going to be more of the T-word.”
“It’s true,” I agreed. “I’ve never wanted to coach. The thought of going on television to talk about how other people are playing makes me want to hide under my bed. No, none of that is for me. Maybe—only maybe—some kind of ambassador role if it’s for charity. I’ve been asked about that already.”
“Right, but nobody expects you to retire yet. You’d have to stop winning everything first.”
I snorted. “I don’t know. It’s not like I really have any other skills. I did okay in school but there’s no degree or anything. Could I go back to college? It doesn’t seem right somehow.”
“What do you like doing? For fun, I mean.”
“Haven’t you heard? I’m too boring to have fun,” I teased. “I really love taking photos. Not sure I could get to professional level, but I like my cameras.”
“That makes perfect sense,” Toni answered, playing with a mint leaf from the top of her drink.
“Why?”
“Because you’ve spent, what, twenty years almost in front of cameras? Not just the matches being on TV, but all the press calls, the adverts, the promos. It would be kind of cool if you ended up behind the camera after all that. Your introvert’s dream.”
“We can’t all be show- offs, Antonia.” It felt nice to use her whole name, the way it tripped off my tongue. I shifted on the lawn chair, my white bikini determined to wriggle into every crack and crevice. “Most likely I’ll start a foundation. Pick something not so fashionable that really needs the help.
“I’m lucky, I know. Me personally? I’m set for life. I invested, I had good advice. I feel like I just want to quietly help people who didn’t get that luck. Not for the pictures and the press. Just to…help. That’s all.”
“You’re such a good person sometimes. It’s kind of disgusting,” Toni said, laughing around her straw. “But that’s the dream. Now I’m back to playing regularly I’m trying to rack up the earnings. I’ve got a few years left in me; I know that. My back is better than before I hurt it, but there’s just always that worry, you know? Back of your mind before you dive for a net shot or your knee doesn’t like the landing on a jump.”
“Oh, I know, trust me.”
“This is getting kind of shop talk, isn’t it? Sorry. I just really want a Slam. I want to get into contention this year. Is that crazy?”
I shook my head. Not if she wanted it enough, trained hard enough. The raw ability was clearly there.
“Anyway, afterwards I’m, like, the opposite of you. I’ll go on TV. Give me pretty clothes and someone to do my make-up. I’ll talk about anyone and how I could do it better. That seems to be what the guys do, anyway.”
“Better you than Mira,” I replied. “That woman really hates me. It wouldn’t be so bad if she just worked for the BBC, but she gets everywhere. Australia is my only break from her, because she hates the long flight.”
“She does not hate you,” Toni said. “Anyway, I think it’s cool how we balance each other. It means we won’t be in competition, outside of playing. No fighting over jobs, no fighting over guys…”
“No fighting over girls?” I hid mostly behind my book as I said it, only so brave.
“Nah, I don’t think we have the same taste,” she answered. “I mean, you’re not into blondes like I am, are you?”
I flicked my blonde—oh, I had never been so glad to be blonde—hair casually out of my eyes in response, saying nothing. Toni just smiled and popped her headphones back on, lost to some murder podcast or other.
I was starting to really like hanging out in Mexico.
Our unofficial pact had been to ignore our phones as much as possible for the week, so I only caught up on my non-urgent messages when we were driving back to the airport. Toni didn’t check hers until after she returned the hire car, and we made it through security.
“What the—” She stopped in her tracks.
“You okay?”
“No, I…”
“Toni?” She made her way to the nearest little metal bench and sat down, heavily. With her hair down, her sunglasses were like a hairband keeping it from her face. I could see that she was a moment away from bursting into tears. I sat next to her, careful not to touch or overstep.
“Is it true?” she asked, and I felt the ground shift underneath me.
“What?” I asked, although I knew. Surely our perfect week that had left us much closer, with the prospect of Toni dating women and definitely not dating the man who was about to wreck everything, would be immunity against my deciding not to tell her?
“About Xavi. Did he…? I heard a whisper in Singapore, but I dismissed it. Now he’s blowing me up with messages saying he didn’t do anything wrong, and he wants to be my coach more than anything. Meanwhile, half the girls on the tour are asking if I’m changing coach for next season, since you’ve poached mine?”
“I haven’t. Toni, look at me. I have no interest in Xavi as my coach. You know how well I work with my mom. Why would that change now?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she’s stepping down. You said your parents are getting divorced…”
“That doesn’t mean I steal coaches from other people. I wouldn’t. And with all possible respect, even if I had a list of back-up options, I’m not sure I would have Xavi on it.”
“Wow, I’m glad you didn’t go with the disrespectful option.”
“Toni—”
“Elin, did he ask you? Did he approach you?”
I nodded. “I was going to tell you, but then—”
“So he could have been out there asking everyone else, and I’d be blindsided. Left without a coach and scrambling around. You didn’t warn me?”
“No, I would never have let that happen. I swear.”
“Let it happen?” Toni stood then, as furious as I’d ever seen her. “I’m not one of your minions, Elin. You don’t get to decide for me. You tell me the truth and I’ll handle it. That’s the only way it goes.”
“I’m sorry.” It was true, at least. Hot tears were just about blinding me, and I clasped my hands on my lap to hide how they were trembling. I knew how weak, how pleading that apology sounded, but it was all I had.
“Yeah, and what good does that do me? Just as well we’re on separate flights.”
“Toni, no. Wait!”
She started to march off towards her gate. I called her name, but she kept on going. I thought about r
unning after her, but it felt too much like making a scene.
Great, truly spectacular. I’d really screwed it up this time.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The yellow blur took me by surprise.
“Ow!” I yelled, rubbing my forehead.
“Elin! Focus!” My mother snapped at me from the side-lines, as if it was my fault.
Okay, maybe she had a little bit of a point. At this stage of my career, I really shouldn’t have been getting beaned on the head by the ball machine. Still, she could have told me she had switched it on.
“Sorry, Mamma!”
“Don’t give me sorry, give me your attention. You haven’t had a good show in Melbourne for four years now. Let’s get it together.”
We’d arrived at the warmup tournament in Brisbane two days early, and my mother was intent on working off the last of my vacation-time moping. I’d played an exhibition match for charity just before New Year and, even with the annoyance of playing against Jürgen in doubles, I had been rusty and distracted. And I never played doubles, which really didn’t help matters.
The practice court was good, a similar finish to the hard courts at the arena, much like the one in Melbourne too. I appreciated it when they kept things consistent.
“Alice wants to know if you’re coming to her show, when you get back to LA?”
That was unlike my mother, to bring the personal into training time.
“Oh, does she want me there? Then she can ask me herself. Is Dad coming out for it too?”
“Maybe later in the week. He’s busy with work, so he says. Wrapping up everything so he can start his retirement.”
“He’s retiring?”
Although tennis had become the unofficial family business, my dad had continued to work in his own importing and exporting business, a spin off from his days as a diplomat. He travelled almost as much as I did, and for years we’d tried to coordinate our schedules as far as possible. I hadn’t realised how much I missed him until that moment.
Not that he was the only person I missed, but still.
“Yes, it’s all coming out for the divorce paperwork. He wants to sell his boat and get a bigger one. I never thought he was such a cliché.”
“Mamma, are you okay? This is a big change, especially at your age and—”
“I hear that boy Xavi wants to be your coach.” She was good at catching me off guard. She did it on court to improve my footwork and reactions, and she did it even better in conversation. I considered her then, wondering if all girls really did turn into their mothers. We weren’t so different to look at—she with her tidy blonde hair now cut short, her tracksuit worn like a suit of armour. With my ponytail and tennis dress from the same range, it certainly wasn’t hard to tell we were related.
“And you know I’d go without a coach at all before I’d ever let him coach me. Please, Mamma. I don’t want any other coach unless you’re done with me. We’re so close to finishing this up.”
“Finishing?” Mamma shut the ball machine off, walking back over to me. We’d had most of our conversations at a distance, and it was disconcerting to have her zeroing in on me. “You’re talking about it for real this time, aren’t you?”
“I can’t play forever. When my hip went, I worried… One of these days it’s all going to slip. I don’t want to keep playing when the next generation is knocking me out in the first rounds.”
She sat on the bench on the side of the court and motioned for me to join her. For once we were all alone: no one sitting in to watch practice, no Ezi on hand in case I hurt something else. This week, players were scattered over Brisbane, Sydney, and Hobart depending on their tournament. All funnelling towards the big two weeks in Melbourne.
“First of all, I’d never let you play on that long. You have a reputation to uphold. But we also know you can’t win every tournament every time. You never have. Maybe we start looking at a more targeted schedule. Jürgen is already doing this—focus only on the slams and the big prize money. Sit out everything but the minimum.”
“Sure. Whatever you think.” I couldn’t hold my head up any longer, letting my chin drop to avoid my mother’s gaze.
“Elin, what is it? You’ve never been the shiny happy one, but this is worse, even for you. Are you keeping up on your therapy?”
“Yes,” I said, because it wasn’t technically lying if we just kept rescheduling the same Skype call for weeks on end. I was sort of trying.
“I work you hard, jag?”
I nodded.
“Right, and look what you did. I just kept you on track to do all this. And you’re so close to that record, it makes me crazy. I have dragged you through all of your doubts, and wasn’t I right every time?”
“Yes,” I sighed. I should have known my mother wouldn’t deviate from the programme at this late stage.
“But nothing—nothing, äskling—is more important than you. If your heart has gone, we’ll think of something else.”
That did it. I burst into tears. Mamma pulled me close with one arm and let me sob on her shoulder. I felt like a pressure cooker who’d just blown the top clean off. She muttered something in Swedish that I didn’t need to untangle, it sounded comforting all by itself.
“To be as talented as you are, Elin, it would have been a sin to keep it from the world. Do not think I haven’t noticed what it’s cost you too. I know how the attention and the expectations weigh on you, and I’ve tried to make myself a barrier. Are you really thinking about walking away so soon?”
I wiped the last of my tears and took a deep, shaky breath. Sitting forward again, I wiped my hands on my shorts. I studied the laces on my brand-new tennis shoes, available in stores right after the tournament, exclusively branded with the Australian Open logo and my signature, yet again in gold. What would walking away really do at this point? What if I regretted it in six months, when I got my head right again? Assuming I ever did.
“No, not yet. It’s not some far-off mystery anymore, though. We’re going to start talking about my last season soon. Hopefully right after I snag that last slam, wouldn’t that be something? Break the record and retire in my acceptance speech?”
“A lot better than waiting for the next injury and issuing a press release from your surgeon’s office,” my mother admitted. “Then we need to get your head back in it for this. Okay?”
“Okay.” I wiped my face with the towel poking out of my kit bag. I hadn’t had time to work up a sweat yet, so it was still clean. “What about you, Mamma? If you don’t have to coach me anymore?”
My mother shrugged, picking a ball from the floor and squeezing it in her left hand. I noticed her wedding ring was gone, a tan line under it fading fast.
“There are some interesting faces coming out of the juniors. I’ll find someone, if it comes to it.”
I should have known she wasn’t done. Britta Larsson hadn’t taken it easy a day in her life, and passing sixty clearly wasn’t going to change that.
“They’ll be lucky to have you,” I said, bumping her shoulder with my own.
“There’s something else going on with you,” my mother said as I stood to resume my drills. “I know you’ll tell me when you’re ready.”
I swallowed hard, not daring to mention Toni or Xavi. Everything about it made me feel like a perfect idiot. I whacked a ball over the net and told myself to focus on practice instead.
I was surprised to see the practice court was still fully lit, even though they were usually locked up this late in the day. I’d been in bed just after nine, but after two hours of tossing and turning I’d given up and made my way down there, looking for some staff I could charm into letting me in to hit for a while. When I got there, someone else had clearly had the same idea.
There was a ball machine firing mid-height lobs across the only strung net, a tall dark-haired woman returning each one with i
ndividual vigour, baseball cap pulled low. Of course. Of all the people to run into.
Toni didn’t see me at first: She was deep in the zone and returning her shots with a relentless rhythm. When my soles squeaked against the floor, she was jarred from her concentration and looked over. As much as I hoped for some kind of acknowledgement, it stung when all she did was purse her lips in disapproval.
“I can turn around and leave,” I called across the empty court to her. No reaction; she just lined up and thumped the next ball. “You’re playing before me tomorrow, so you get dibs.”
“Does your mother know you’re out so late?” Toni asked when the machine finally ran out of balls. “Assuming she’s still your coach.”
“That’s right, she is my coach. Always will be,” I said. “That doesn’t make her my keeper.”
Whatever Toni’s mumbled response was, she was smart enough to make sure I didn’t hear it. It was time to change the subject, so I slipped my racquet bag from my shoulder. Not the giant match-day bag, just one of the countless spares left lying around in the crates of sponsor-provided kit.
“You want to hit?” I asked, but winced at how it sounded too formal, too imperious. Like I believed my own press, the tabloids who called me the Ice Princess. Or Toni herself, doing her level best to make ‘goddess’ catch on. “Or I can just stay over here and use the wall.”
For a moment, it looked like she might ignore me altogether, but instead of reloading the ball machine, Toni tipped the unwieldy thing on an angle so she could wheel it well clear of the court. She strode back to her baseline like she was late for an appointment, before finally putting me out of my misery with a flick of the braid that hung over her shoulder.
“We can rally, sure.”
“Well, if it’s not too much trouble,” I found myself saying. Not like I could really take the high ground. I sprinted over to the other end of the court, ditching my jacket on the way.