“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 individual 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.
I was surprised when Toni came up to the net, glaring at my mini racquet bag that only held two.
“I want to try yours,” she said. “Maybe that’s what gives you the edge.”
“Help yourself,” I said. Sure, they were custom-made racquets that only I had in this exact colour. They weren’t on sale anywhere. The big signature, again in gold, across the racquet cover made me feel sort of mortified as Toni looked it over.
“Why gold?” she asked. “Everything I see is gold, against black and white? Don’t you get sick of it?”
“I didn’t ask for it,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest, bag dropped at my feet. “I guess the people who make the racquets at Wilson decided it, since I started winning stuff?”
“Actually, since your Golden Slam year,” Toni corrected, pointing at me like a disappointed teacher. “It makes me nuts sometimes, that you don’t keep track of all these amazing things you’ve done. It’s almost ungrateful.”
“Hey!”
“Well, it is,” she said. “You realise you’re the only woman to ever do a calendar year Grand Slam and top it off with the Olympic medal? But if anyone mentions that kind of thing, you act like they’re insulting your ancestors.”
“I’m not comfortable with compliments,” I replied, which was painfully true. I shifted my weight from foot to foot. “Maybe I could learn to be more gracious. I thought I was being humble.”
Toni was testing her grip on my racquet, so I pulled out the other and unzipped it. We
