Page 106 of Game, Set, Match
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
When Rob woke up in the early hours of Saturday morning it was still dark outside. He stared at the shadows on the ceiling for a while, then reached over to check the watch his parents had given him for his twenty-first birthday. Three thirty. He’d been asleep for four hours, and apparently that was all he was getting.
Like every day for the past few weeks, Rob had fallen asleep thinking about Hannah, and woken up still thinking about her like no time had passed at all. It felt like a gnawing pain in his stomach that wouldn’t go away; a yearning he hadn’t felt since he was a kid and spent all of Christmas Eve praying that Santa would bring him a Buzz Lightyear toy.
He rolled over onto his side and picked out the glowing white of his tennis shoes by the door, next to his tennis bag. This room was much bigger and nicer than the one on the first floor he’d started out in, and he wondered if that was Mark’s doing. His old room was now occupied by an American coach called Amy who was working exclusively with a couple of up-and-coming future tennis stars from Croatia. She was in her late twenties and single and had been flirting with Rob all week. Yesterday she’d asked him on a date and he’d briefly considered it, just for the opportunity to stop thinking about Hannah for five minutes. In fact five minutes was probably ambitious, considering how long it was since he’d last had sex. He thought about when that was – Nina, the night before he left for Spain. Two months ago, which was probably the longest he’d gone without getting laid since he was fifteen years old.
He picked up his phone and opened WhatsApp. Still no photo or timestamp for Hannah, although obviously she wasn’t putting his number back into her phone unless he told her what it was. He scrolled to his browser and the page for Upton Country Club, which had a smiling photo of Hannah standing behind a desk with a small team of reception and admin staff. Her outfit was frumpy and her hair was longer and didn’t suit her. He remembered Trish saying she’d had some kind of glow-up before their trip, but it was hard to reconcile this woman with the gorgeous, sexy Hannah he knew.
The only other photos he’d found during his various snooping sessions were on the website for her tennis club, where she seemed to have won every cup going in the previous season. These photos felt more familiar; Hannah’s hair held back by a sun visor or a hairband, and endless legs that could never, ever look frumpy in tennis gear. She had no Facebook or Instagram pages, but he already knew that. He was all out of stalking options, and he also hadn’t forgotten what Luke had said about leaving her be.
Rob sighed, feeling twitchy and unsettled. He switched back to WhatsApp, scrolling through the endless messages from women he’d dated over the past couple of years. A gallery of twenty- and thirty-somethings, mostly slim and pretty and natural-looking, although he wasn’t hung up on any particular hair or skin colour. There were so many Sophies in his phone he’d had to give them descriptive surnames. Sophie Boat Party. Sophie Wimbledon. Sophie Ricks Sister.
As he scrolled the names they all started to blend into one, and it made him flush with shame to realise that he could barely remember some of these women, even when he read their messages. Jas, a two-night hook-up from a trip to Ibiza with some old school mates.That was fun, I’m going back to Toronto tomorrow but I’ll let you know when I’m next in the UK.He could remember what she looked like, but not where they went or what they did beyond having a lot of sex. Niamh, a drop-dead gorgeous primary school teacher from Dublin who’d been in Bath for a hen weekend.You’re cute and a great fuck. Thanks for a fun night.Was she the screamer, or was that Siobhan, the other Irish girl he’d hooked up with not long after? He’d had to ask both of them to write their names in his phone because he couldn’t spell them.
And then most recently of the women before Hannah, a message from Nina sent a couple of hours after she’d stormed out of his flat, read while he was waiting in the departure lounge at the airport.
I’m not going to say sorry for getting emotional – when you have feelings for someone you have to tell them, even if your timing is shit. Have fun in Spain.
He thought again about what Luke had said, about how Hannah had made her decision and he had to respect that. It had been over three weeks; maybe she’d stopped thinking about him by now. Or maybe she’d stopped thinking about him the minute she’d left Spain. She’d deleted his number, which was pretty clear in its intention. It was pretty fucking arrogant of him to assume she was pining as hard as he was. He wished he could call his dad, but their chats about Hannah hadn’t been much use either.You’ve done the right thing, son. Give her space, and if it’s meant to be, she’ll come back to you.It felt like some kind of inspirational Instagram quote – uplifting on paper, absolutely bloody useless in practice.
The knock on the door made him jump – who the hell was that at 4 a.m.? He pulled on a T-shirt over his boxers, very much hoping it wasn’t a drunk Olly looking for trouble. They’d done their best to keep their distance since Rob had returned to the Club, knowing that Mark was watching their every move and would fire them both in a heartbeat if there was any aggro. He peered through the peephole but there was nobody there, so he opened the door.
‘Hey,’ said Amy, sliding into the doorway. She was wearing tiny white denim shorts that barely covered her backside, paired with an oversized pink shirt that had fallen off one tanned shoulder. No bra, bare feet. In fact, not very much outfit at all. Her long, tousled hair was all on one side, dirty blonde at the roots and white at the tips. She leaned against the doorway, and Rob couldn’t tell if it was all part of the sexy look, or just that she was so pissed she couldn’t hold herself upright.
‘Amy, it’s four in the morning,’ said Rob, raking his hand through his hair. ‘What do you want?’
‘I want what all drunk girls want at four in the morning,’ said Amy with a seductive smile. Rob was pretty sure that was a line from a movie, but he couldn’t think which one, and now didn’t seem like a good time to ask. ‘I want you,’ she added breathily, taking a step forward and sliding her warm hand under his T-shirt and around his waist.
‘Amy, I . . .’ said Rob.
‘Ssh,’ whispered Amy, pressing her hips against his and tilting her head until her lips were just a few inches from his. She smelled of wine and pure, unadulterated lust, which made his head swim. ‘Just do what feels right.’
Rob looked at her for a long moment, feeling that familiar stirring in his shorts.What feels right, in this moment, right now?he thought, then reached out and wove his fingers into her other hand.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Hannah waited impatiently by the departure gate window at Bristol Airport, watching a tiny drama play out on the tarmac outside. A man in a high-vis jacket was gesticulating wildly at the set of steps currently a few inches from the exit door at the front of the plane, whilst other men in high-vis jackets were rubbing their jaws thoughtfully as they tried to come up with a way to fill this particular void.
The inbound flight had arrived ten minutes ago, but clearly nobody was getting off until the steps and the plane had come together in aviation matrimony, even though you could easily step over the gap. Obviously that would be a health and safety nightmare, but Hannah wasn’t worried about that right now. If nobody was getting off the plane, she wasn’t getting on, which made Rob feel further away with every passing minute.
The stress of it all was starting to make her arms itch, and she wondered for the hundredth time if Rob had got the message she’d left with the receptionist at Club Colina last night.Don’t go anywhere tomorrow. I’ll be there by lunch. We need to talk.She’d made the woman write it down and read it back to her, then promise to take it up to Rob’s room immediately – Hannah had even given her his room number. But she had no way of knowing if he’d received it – wouldn’t he have texted if he had? Just a basicGot your note, I’ll be here.Or evenDon’t come, I’m spending the weekend on a yacht with Megan Fox.
Finally the steps made contact with the plane, and the passengers started to disembark. She watched them mooch across the tarmac and through the door to the inbound corridor on the other side of the glass wall, looking moodily up at the grey sky and bracing against the sideways wind. One by one they all filed up the stairs and past the waiting outbound passengers, all sporting that grumpy look of tired, post-holiday blues. Even that handsome guy in the blue hoodie who looked a bit like . . . Rob.
That’s actually Rob, thought Hannah with a gasp, pushing through the crowd to reach the glass wall. Her heart was pounding in her ears and nothing about this situation made sense, but the fact remained that Rob had just got off the plane she was about to get on. He walked within a few feet of her, but even though a woman glanced her way when she hammered on the glass wall, Rob didn’t notice. She could see he was wearing giant headphones and felt a frisson of panic as he disappeared from view, presumably heading towards passport control and baggage reclaim. If she couldn’t track him down before he left the terminal, there was no way of knowing where he might be headed next.
Hannah shouldered her backpack and pushed through the crowd once again to the passenger help desk, which was manned by a woman with an on-brand orange face and the tightest ponytail Hannah had ever seen.
‘I need to get back to Arrivals,’ she gasped. The woman’s name tag said ‘Fay’.
‘Sorry?’ said Fay. ‘Can I help?’ Her accent was pure West Country.
‘I’m not getting on this plane, I’ve changed my mind. I need to get back to Arrivals to meet someone who’s just got off it.’
Fay sighed with her whole body and shook her head slowly, like her day had just taken a distinct turn for the worse. ‘Right.’
Hannah jigged around desperately. ‘I was going to fly to Spain to tell a man I love him. But I’ve just watched him get off the plane that’s just arrived.’