Love Game - Season 2012 (23 page)

“That sounds interesting indeed,” Alice
mumbled, while dunking a piece of cake in her coffee. “Is there anything I can
do for you? Do you need help with the research?”

Morgana looked up, beaming. “Yes!”

She took out a little notepad and opened
the cover. On the first page Alice could make out a list. With a swift movement
Morgana ripped the page off and handed it to Alice.

Monica Jordan

Agnes Lion

Florentina Bonelli

Alessandra Calhau

Jamie and Susan McKay

Daniela Grieb

At first glance, Alice only knew a few of
the players. Some had retired a long time ago, others she had never heard of.

“These are the names I received from my
source,” she said. “We need to find out more about them. Everything, in fact.
Where they played tournaments, whether they played doubles and with whom – and,
of course, every little story available.”

We? Alice had to smile. Morgana was very
good at delegating work, but why not indulge her? It would be a welcome change
from her usual chores.

“They made up a group that called
themselves –,” Morgana made a little pause for the dramatic effect. “ – the
Secret
8
.”

“Are you serious?” Alice chuckled but went
quiet when Morgana gave her a disapproving look. But she couldn’t help noticing
something. “You realize that there are only seven players on the list, didn’t
you?”

Morgana sighed. “Yes, another mystery to
solve.”

***

“Oh, no,” Tom muttered. He looked outside
the hotel room window and saw two familiar faces coming up the street.
Anastasia had linked arms with Ted and was happily chatting away.

However, when Ted came into the hotel room
and flung his racquet bag onto the bed, he didn’t look too crestfallen over his
obviously failed attempt to observe Anastasia unnoticed.

“You talked to Anastasia?” Tom blurted out.
“I saw you coming to the hotel together.”

“Yes,” Ted smiled. “We talked all the way
to the hotel. I know everything now, and I have a wonderful plan.”

Tom anxiously followed Ted into the living
room. A plan?

“Anastasia confirmed that she was seeing
Michelle van der Boom,” Ted informed him. “They meet up now and then and
usually it’s Anastasia who stays in Michelle’s room overnight. Michelle doesn’t
want all the trouble of walking back to her own room in the morning when she
has an early practice and Anastasia usually doesn’t have any appointments in
the morning.”

Tom nodded impatiently. “We found that out
already.”

“Not about the room habit,” Ted interrupted
him.

They sat down on the couch and Ted opened
his backpack. He pulled out a small carton.

“Look what I found on the way from the
tube,” he smiled, handing Tom the box to unwrap.

“Mint chocolate biscuits?” Tom shook his
head in amazement.

“Anastasia showed me the shop,” Ted explained.
“They have all sorts of British stuff. I bought a box for mum, too.”

“As if we wouldn’t get enough of it in a
couple of weeks,” Tom grinned. The grass season would begin soon and they both
were looking forward to spending time in their home country. Even more so with
the Olympics prolonging their stay in England. Tom took a biscuit and fed it to
Ted, then tasted one himself. They were delicious.

“Tell me about this wonderful plan of
yours,” Tom demanded to know, letting the mint and chocolate taste spread in
his mouth.

“Well, so far we’ve tried to get a chance
to somehow snatch her laptop bag when she wasn’t looking, and we failed
miserably. Of course, she looks after it and most times she doesn’t even have
it with her on the tournament site.”

Tom agreed.

“But now we know she leaves her room to see
Michelle and stays away all night,” Ted continued. Tom suddenly knew where this
was going.

“You want to break into her room?” he
exclaimed.

“I’ve done it before,” Ted said with a
smile. “I’m Mr. Cat Burglar.”

“You almost fell out of the window,” Tom
remarked with a serious tone. “And you know that we are in this situation in
the first place because of exactly such a cat burglar operation.”

That was true. The only reason they were in
all this trouble trying to get Tom’s risqué pictures back, was that Ted had
stolen the photo files from Tom’s computer during last year’s U.S. Open. Ted
had climbed into the window of Tom’s hotel room and had broken the password of
his computer. But when he fled the room he had lost his flash drive.

“I will be more careful this time,” Ted
promised. He grabbed another biscuit. “All we have to do now is find out when
Anastasia spends the night with Michelle.”

“More observing,” Tom sighed.

“I have a better plan.” Smugly, Ted slipped
the biscuit into his mouth and Tom sighed a little more. Another plan by Ted.
This could only end badly.

***

“Here we go again,” Amanda mumbled.

The hotel room seemed to have shrunk, as so
many bags and suitcases covered the floor. Elise and Amanda’s racquet bags
occupied the bed, and a large trolley, rolled into the room by a bellhop, was
waiting to be loaded. They had shooed the young man out again quickly, as there
were a few items still to be packed which were lying openly on the bed.
Especially one item nobody was supposed to lay their eyes on.

“You take it this time,” Elise suggested.
She had said it lightly as if this was a matter of course, like taking the car
keys.

Amanda chuckled at the cheap attempt. “No
way. This time you will carry it. I’ve counted the times we’ve had to take it
on the plane and go through customs and you have a lot of catching up to do,
young lady.”

Pursing her lips, Elise seemed to slip into
a sulky mood, but then she gave Amanda a mischievous smile.

“I had to try,” she grinned.

“You love trying stuff, don’t you?” Amanda
challenged her, making a step towards Elise. The German nodded and pulled
Amanda closer.

“And you seem to like our little travel
companion,” Amanda whispered into Elise’s ear while pushing Elise down onto the
bed. Her lips began wandering over Elise’s neck. She was waiting for the sighs
the touch of her lips always conjured. But Elise had grown stiff.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I couldn’t help but notice that you are
eyeing our little Mr. Pecker all the time,” Amanda grinned, still kissing
Elise’s face. “Are you toying with an idea that involves him?”

“What?” Elise began to move uncomfortably.
“What are you talking about?”

“I mean, do you want to fuck me with a
cock?” Amanda laughed. Sometimes Elise could be really slow. But the German
wasn’t as enthused about the direct approach.

“No!” Elise yelled. “I don’t!” She began
pushing Amanda away from her.

“It’s alright,” Amanda stuttered. “It’s
totally alright. We can talk about these things.”

“I don’t want to talk about it!” Elise
replied angrily. She wrestled herself free from Amanda’s embrace and jumped up
from the bed. With lightning speed she was in the bathroom and Amanda could
hear her rummaging around the sink. Amanda wondered for a second what exactly
Elise was looking for. They had already cleared their toiletries from the
bathroom. But then the door was closed with a bang.

Fuck, Amanda thought. She had pushed too
much. Obviously, Elise was ready to explore new frontiers but unable to come
forward with her desires, her sheltered upbringing clearly being the main
reason for her inhibitions. Not that Amanda herself had been told about the
birds and bees by her parents, but unlike Elise she had a lot more experience.
She had joined the tour professionally when she was fifteen years old,
surrounded by friends in her age group. Now that she thought about it, she had
grown up quite playfully and had been very open to all kinds of sexual
experimentation, especially when she had been with Natsumi.

Natsumi. Amanda felt miserable thinking
about her friend against whom she had held such a grudge in the last several
months. It really wasn’t the Japanese player’s fault that she had been having
these nagging injury problems since the Australian Open. Amanda just hoped that
Natsumi’s woodpecker box hadn't turned into the Pandora’s box, causing a
disagreement between her and Elise. She jumped up, and after knocking on the
bathroom door, she entered. Elise was sitting on the toilet lid looking teary.

“Babe, I’m sorry,” Amanda said, kneeling
down and laying her arms around Elise. “We don’t have to talk about it. And we
don’t have to do anything. Alright?”

Elise nodded.

“Remember what I told you last year?”

Elise shook her head.

“I said we had all the time in the world,”
Amanda whispered. She pulled back and looked at Elise. “That’s still true.”

She hated to see Elise so insecure and
embarrassed by her hang-ups. “If you want to explore, I’m here. Alright?”

Now Elise looked at Amanda and nodded ever
so slightly.

“Good. Let’s pack the pecker and get
moving,” Amanda teased, getting up and pulling Elise along. They stowed the
mara
deeply in Amanda’s racquet bag and piled their luggage onto the trolley, when
Amanda’s cell phone announced a message had come in. She grabbed it and touched
the screen to read it.

“It’s from Natsumi,” she exclaimed. Then
she shook her head. “She wants us to go on a mission with the
mara
. In
Brighton.”

SECRETS, SCANDALS

AND A SCENT
                                          

Eastbourne, Great Britain

“Bernadette?”

Mint squinted her eyes. It was hard to make
out the dark figure against the black night sky.

“Good evening, Mint,” the Canadian said,
while coming through the parking lot towards the young American.

Mint had just ordered one of the tournament
cabs and was waiting in the back of the building to be picked up.

“Have you forgotten something?” Mint
wondered. There was hardly anybody left on the tournament site.

“No,” Bernadette responded. “Polly is
training in the gym and she wanted me to show her a couple of things.”

Damn. Mint tried not to let her shoulders
hang and show her disappointment. All that time Polly had been in the gym and
now Mint was going home.

“Isn’t it a bit late for a training session
now?” she asked.

“Polly wants to get fitter,” Bernadette explained.
“She takes the Olympic Games very seriously.”

Of course, Polly did. Due to her good run
at the French Open there was a good chance that the Canadian could play in the
singles competition. Mint swallowed hard. It was very likely that she herself wouldn’t
make the cut and she still wasn’t sure if she would be allowed to play doubles,
or with whom she’d be able to play.

“Well, perhaps she wants to come over later
to watch a movie,” Mint suggested innocently.

“After the gym session Polly’s free tonight,”
Bernadette said. “I’ll let her know.”

“Yes, that would be nice. You’re invited
too, of course,” Mint said, hoping and praying that Bernadette would never show
up.

“I don’t think I’ll make it, Mint. This old
lady needs some beauty sleep,” she said, then nodded and entered the building.
Brilliant, Mint rejoiced. That was brilliant. And she didn’t even have to ask
Polly personally. Bernadette would do it for her. When the tournament cab
picked her up she ordered the driver to hurry. She needed to clean the room.
How long would a late training session go? Perhaps forty-five minutes. Not
longer. The driver took her back to her hotel, and thirty minutes later, she
looked at her tidy room and couldn’t believe how quickly she had stuffed all
her scattered belongings into her bags, and the bags into the walk-in
cupboards. She checked the clock. 8:37 p.m.. Polly should have finished her
session by now. A look at her cell phone revealed that there was no message,
but Polly would probably just show up soon. They all stayed in the same hotel.

She began wandering around her room,
thinking about how to make a good start to a conversation and, in case Polly
should become bored, preparing a list of topics she could fall back on. For a
moment it crossed her mind to rush down to the hotel restaurant and snatch a
candle or two from the table and put them on the window sill. But that would
have been overly suggestive.

She checked her cell phone again, but there
was still no message. Mint frowned. Was it possible that Bernadette had
forgotten to tell Polly? But the older Canadian had promised. Bernadette also
gave the impression of a meticulous person, who never forgot anything. She even
knew that Polly was free tonight. Mint stepped to the window and looked
outside. Behind a row of old buildings she could make out a church tower. The
lit up clock said it was already quarter past nine. Polly’s training had to
have been long over by now.

This could only mean that Polly wasn’t
interested in seeing Mint. That she had chosen not to call at all instead of
presenting a flimsy excuse. Mint turned away from the window and let herself
fall down in the lounge chair. She grabbed the remote control for the TV but
didn’t turn it on. Instead she stared at the dark screen.

She shouldn’t have told Polly about her
mother. She didn’t like the fact that someone so indifferent knew this detail
about her life. It usually took ages before she told someone and she could
count the people who knew on one hand. Why had she been so open with Polly?
Yes, Mint knew. She had felt a connection because Polly’s mother was sick and
apparently she had hoped that Polly would feel a connection too, if Mint told
her about her dead mother. She even told her how she died. Not even Chili knew
that her mother had died from a drug overdose.

Mint moaned. But she couldn’t move. Her
limbs and head suddenly seemed to be filled with lead. Perhaps she had trained
too much, she thought. She should just go to bed. But still, she didn’t move.
Only when the remote control fell out of her hand and onto the floor, and Mint
woke up still lying on the lounge chair did she crawl into bed, instantly
falling into a fitful sleep as soon as she hit the sheets.

***

The match was in the second set and the
spectators had filled the stands of the Eastbourne main court to the very last
seat. Marieke Bender was serving for the set after losing the first set to
German Angela Porovski, who now bent over to receive Marieke’s first serve.

Tom had managed to squeeze himself into the
photo pit just in time before the players went back to the baseline after the
changeover. Marieke hit an ace and the crowd clapped enthusiastically.

Tom looked through the stands. There was
Angela’s player box. He scanned the crowd once more. A little further to the
left he found the seats assigned to Marieke’s team and also the person he was
looking for – Michelle van der Boom. She was watching her doubles partner,
Marieke, clapping at a fine winner made by her Dutch compatriot.

After another rally Marieke was leading
40-30. Two minutes later she walked back to her chair with a little fist pump.
She had leveled the match and they would play a third set.

That was great! Tom jumped up. He had three
minutes to get to the other side of the court before play would resume. He
sprinted along the side of the court and out the exit, hurried around the
stadium and entered again on the other side. Just before the umpire could say
“Time” he took a seat next to Michelle van der Boom.

“You look like you just ran a marathon,”
the Dutch player grinned while looking Tom over.

“Feels like it,” Tom said. “I hope it’s
alright if I sit with you. I have a little back problem at the moment and
sitting in the photographers pit is hell after a while.”

“Sure,” Michelle shrugged. She concentrated
back on the match, but Tom couldn’t let her go now. Ted had come up with the
plan to concentrate on blabbermouth Michelle, find out when she met with
Anastasia and then pilfer Anastasia’s laptop.

“I hear you have a funny nickname among the
other girls,” Tom remarked. Sasha had tipped them off that ‘Boom Boom’ not only
referred to Michelle’s cracking serve, but to a delicate story that was never
mentioned.

“Ask her,” Sasha had grinned. “She loves to
boast about it.”

Tom felt Michelle turn towards him. Her
glance burned on his face while he pretended to follow the match.

“That’s true,” she finally whispered. “I
had a very good serve. Still have.”

“Nothing more?” Tom asked innocently.

“Of course, there’s more,” Michelle replied
with a wry smile. “It’s a nickname I’ve earned for getting down to the
nitty-gritty with a flick of the wrist. Basically the same as serving well.”
She made a quick serving motion with her hand.

“Want to elaborate?” Tom asked, knowing
that she would.

“A couple of years back I had a good run at
Wimbledon,” Michelle whispered. “Perhaps you’ve heard about it.” Tom had.
Michelle had won the Championship back then.

“I celebrated with one of the chair
umpires. We had a quick romp in the broom cupboard of a restaurant,” she
giggled. “Of course, the restaurant was full of very old and very important
people.”

“Of course,” Tom chuckled.

“It wouldn’t have been any fun had the
restaurant been empty,” Michelle spread her arms in a helpless gesture.

“Agreed,” Tom nodded. “What happened next?”

“One of these very old, very important
ladies – probably a Royal – almost had a heart attack. It was especially
delicate as it was the chair umpire who had called my semifinal match. It
wouldn’t have looked good at all, you see.”

Tom nodded again. “What happened?”

“Candice saved us,” Michelle said. “She’s
the best communications manager in the world. She can rewrite history, I tell
you.”

She turned back to the match and Tom
understood that Michelle wouldn’t say more. Tom grinned, as it would be easy to
look up the umpire’s name. Silently, he congratulated himself on making first
contact with Michelle. With the Dutch player being so open about her love life
it would be easy to find out when she would meet up with Anastasia.

***

“I can’t believe we are already into the grass
season,” Monica sighed. The year is halfway over.”

Monica and Agnes had taken a table in a
seaside restaurant overlooking the boardwalk of Eastbourne.

“It will be a very long grass season with
the Olympic Games coming up,” Agnes remarked. “Have you settled everything with
Gabriella?”

“Yes, we’ll team up,” Monica nodded. She
looked out onto the sea, pursed her lips and frowned. “Last time.”

“Well, you might play in Rio, too,” Agnes
said carefully. The next Olympics would be played in the Brazilian metropolis.

“I’ll be pushing forty,” Monica replied.
“Too many players are coming up. I’ll be long gone by then.”

Agnes could easily think of another reason
Monica wouldn’t set foot in Brazil but she kept her mouth shut. The door opened
and Agnes had to smile. Candice was approaching their table. When she arrived
she gave Agnes a kiss, sat down heavily and sighed.

“What’s up?” Agnes asked.

“You won’t like it,” Candice replied. She
gestured to the waiter and ordered an Irish Coffee, then turned to the two
doubles players again.

“Morgana has a source,” Candice revealed.

“Bernadette. I knew it,” Monica hissed.

“Not Bernadette it seems,” Candice said
pensively. “Morgana talked to Bernie but she didn’t really give her any
information. Just things Morgana already knew.”

“So, who is this source?” Monica inquired.
But Candice shrugged.

“I don’t know any name,” she admitted. “But
this new source seems to know quite a bit. She tells Morgana everything.”

Agnes and Monica looked at each other.

“Everything?” Monica asked.

“Well, it seems she knows about your little
girls club in detail.”

“Is that all?” Agnes asked. “That’s far
from everything.”

“I know,” Candice said and put her arm over
Agnes’s shoulder. Her girlfriend had grown tight. “Also, it was ages ago.
Nobody really knows what happened.”

Agnes looked at Monica. They both moved
uncomfortably in their seats.

“I really wouldn’t worry too much,” Candice
kept on talking. “I mean, not even you know what really happened. If you don’t
know, how would Morgana’s source know?”

Agnes and Monica stayed silent. They had
had this conversation so often, going in circles and never finding peace.

“No,” Candice said, more to herself than to
Agnes and Monica. “I can’t see her ever finding out.”

“Alright, alright,” Monica grunted.

Candice looked up. “I know you don’t like
hearing it, but I will say it time and time again, it wasn’t your fault.”

“Please, Candice,” Agnes muttered. “Let
these sleeping dogs lie.”

An uncomfortable silence fell over their
table and wasn’t broken until the waiter served Candice a huge mug of Irish
Coffee. She took a sip and began to smile.

“See, I knew before I even sat down that I
would need some good spirits,” she said placably.

“I wish I could join in,” Monica finally
said with a grin. “But I have a match later. What would Gabriella think if I
smelled of alcohol?”

The ice was broken but Monica wasn’t
finished yet.

“I know you mean well,” she continued,
looking at Candice. “But I can’t help it. I
do
feel responsible. Not
just for the dead but also for the living.”

Candice nodded.

“Yes, it makes me nervous when you speak
like that,” Agnes added looking at her partner. “The last person who spoke like
that and downplayed the incident vanished without a trace.”

Dani. How many years since their old
companion had suddenly disappeared overnight.

“You know what? Fuck it,” Monica mumbled,
then called the waiter and ordered two more Irish Coffees for herself and
Agnes. They really needed it.