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Chapter Nine

Sailor told Dave not to wait for me after we’d showered following the afternoon session on Monday. Dave raised his eyebrows and left with a couple of the others for a meal. I told Sailor I was sorry to be missing the social.

“That’s what I want to talk to you about, sit down.”

When I was settled he asked, “What do ye want to do in life, son?”

“Do? What do you mean? Career or something?”

“Aye, that’s what I mean.”

“I’m not sure. Go to university, anyway. I’m good at maths. I like English, too.”

“There’s no’ anything definite, then? The Navy, for instance. Does your father want you to go into the Navy?”

“It’s my mother who wants me to do things. Certainly not the Navy. She’s always rabbiting on about it, Navy this, Navy that, never complimentary. My dad just laughs. He’s a bit more easy going. My mother would like me to do something in the City ideally. She likes the idea of the salaries, big bonuses. She’s got a point. I’m not sure if I fancy it though. Then there was the idea that I should become a surgeon. After she’d had her hysterectomy. She must have been impressed,” I raised my eyebrows at the ‘impressed’, “by the guy who did the operation.”

“Don’t be disrespectful. But I get the picture, ye’ve no any vocation. And that’s good considering what I’m going to say.” Sailor paused. “Pay attention to me, son, because I’m serious here.

“How would you like to be world squash champion?”

It took me a moment to digest what he’d said. Sailor was glowering at me.

“World champion? It’s pure ridiculous, Sailor, for God’s sake. It is ridiculous, isn’t it?”

“That’s where you’re wrong, son. Of course there’s many things to go wrong along the way. There’s always injuries. There’s some Pakistani or Egyptian or Aussie who moves the game on. But you’ve got it. You can be the one to move the game on. Zoë said to me, and I think the world of Zoë, respect her, Zoë said after your first practice with her, something about your intensity. I’ve seen that, I’ve noticed it. You’ve impressed me here, son. I’ve been thinking, these last few weeks, shame Jolyon didn’t start younger, he could be good.”

He reached into his case and pulled out some papers. “Then we did the performance testing. Look at this, standing jump, forty three, drop jump, two point eight, that’s ridiculous. Do you want a career as a high jumper? It’s yours. Then your VO₂max, nearly eighty four. Ridiculous, there I’m saying it again. Do you want to be a racing cyclist? Tour de France? And your bleep test, seventeen, you’re up there with the academy footballers after they’ve had two years of training. I mean training for just that kind of effort. That’s the one I really like. A big VO₂max is no good unless you’ve a high lactate threshold. A big bleep test says you can go on through the pain, the biochemistry pain as well as the physical pain. And all this is on four weeks of training, just four weeks. It’s absurd.”

I shrugged, feeling a mixture of pride and embarrassment.

“You may shrug, son. You’re a frigging physical freak. But that means jack shit if you can’t play. I told you, you’ll never be an Ahmed. It’s too late. But you’ve good volleys, that’s the tennis. And then the game on Friday. I didn’t expect you to win the first game. Dave’s too good. I thought you might damage him in the first game, and then if you wanted it enough, ye might scrape a game yourself, then two, then mebbe even three. Did you feck! Excuse me. You wiped him out. You did everything I said, only twice as well. Far better than I thought. It was the mental side. Mebbe ye didn’t notice. He knew he was in trouble. Early on. See how he rallied. He knew he could beat you, he thought he knew. If he rallied. That lasted for ten minutes. Then he started hoping you’d slow the pace. Hope doesn’t win any prizes. That’s what it took, ten minutes. The rest was going through the motions.”

“It didn’t feel like going through the motions. Saturday I was knackered. Sunday, I was so stiff. I was still tired this morning.”

“Aye, you youngsters, you always expect something for nothing. This isn’t a sport for fairies, son. Haile Gebrselassie, do you think he wasn’t tired after his world records? Muhammed Ali, how deep did he have to dig? You watch Zoë before a match. She does more visualising than warming up. Partly it’s the tactics, but mainly it’s preparing for the physical side.

“Am I getting through, son?”

“I think so. It’s so, I dunno, so ridiculous. And if I agree, if I want to do it, how are we going to make it work? I could come up here some weekends in term time. Then most of the holidays. You could give me stuff to do in the week, schedules and so on.”

Sailor laughed. “No, no, you’re not understanding me. Listen. If you want to do this, there’s only one way. You start tomorrow. Here tomorrow, nine o’clock prompt, good breakfast inside you.

“Have ye heard of Edwin Moses?”

I wished I hadn’t said it as soon as it came out of my mouth. “The guy in the Bible?”

“I’ll ignore that. The winningest track athlete ever. Four hundred metres hurdles, never beat for more than nine years, think of it, nine years. Moses talks about the links in a chain. Each day’s training is linked to the last, linked to the next. Ye can’t break the chain. It’s mental as well as physical. One hundred percent committed, that’ll be you. And there’ll be no days off. Three sixty five days. It’s a leap year next year, three sixty six.”

“That’s impossible. How could I do my A levels? What would I live on? Where would I live? I can’t stay with the Kemballs for ever.”

“That’s some questions ye’ll have to answer. As for where ye’d live, you’ll stay with Mary and me. I’d expect something for food and such, but no’ much. As for your A levels. It’s bye bye to A levels, son. The only way this will work is if you do it one hundred percent. Starting tomorrow, September the third. Mebbe Dave could get away with it, staying on at school, it’s hardwired into him, the squash. He’s been playing the game since he was eight. Not you. You’ve too much catching up to do.”

I’d thought when he said he’d wanted to see me that Sailor might be proposing a special training programme, something I could do at school, to help bring me along through the juniors. Plus the occasional visit to the Institute. But nothing like this. This was huge. With huge implications. First thing, I’d have to talk to my mother. How was that going to go down? Silly question. And the world champion business? In reality, don’t be ridiculous. I used to fantasise a bit about becoming an international, at cross country that is. I was happy to let that happen if it happened. This was different. This meant changing my life. Completely changing my life. What about my friends? What about parties, could I still go to parties? What about mixing? There was no way I could give up mixing.

As these thoughts went through my mind, I realised that ‘no way’ had to be the only answer. There was just too much to give up. Too much to risk. There’d never been any question that I’d do my A levels, and then something at uni. Another five or six years before I was faced with decisions. Decisions like this one, but when I was grown up, easier then. Moving out of home permanently, moving away from my mother? To be fair, that would be special. In one way. But not really, not yet. My friends at school? Samantha? She was still pissed off about me spending six weeks of the summer in Manchester, but I’d get her over that.

“No, I don’t think so, Sailor. Yes I beat Dave, but I’m not that good. It was just one win. Probably won’t happen again. And the squash is beside the point anyway. My parents wouldn’t go along with it, not me leaving school. I’ve only got GCSEs.”

“I tell you what, son,” Sailor sounded almost kindly. “Ye don’t have to make up your mind right now this second. You’ll have to give your family a call. If ye like I’ll speak to your father.”

“He’s away, you can’t reach him.”

“All right, you’ll think about it tonight. Talk to your mother. Phone me tomorrow, early. If the answer’s yes you can come in then. But,” he hesitated, “but do me a favour. Think about it seriously. You could be best in the world. World champion, say it, savour it. Jolyon Jacks, squash champion of the world. That’s if you start now. There’s no slack in the timetable. You’re a physical freak. No doubt of that. You’re the perfect storm. But in squash terms you’re so raw, so raw. I think we can deal with the rawness. But there’s no time to waste, and it’s going to take your one hundred percent commitment, and I mean one hundred, ninety eight’s no’ enough, nor’s ninety nine.”

Sailor stared at me intently. ‘World champion’. I did say it, to myself. It sounded ridiculous. Me, world champion? Best in the world? It was a thrilling idea, but crazy. And deeply improbable.

I shrugged. “All right, Sailor, I’ll think about it. I’m sure the answer’s going to be no. But I’ll have a think. And I’ll call tomorrow.”

As I headed for the changing rooms to get my kit I was surprised to see Zoë, looking hot, in running shoes, coming into the Institute.

“Gosh, you’ve not gone yet,” I said. “You don’t stop, do you?”

“Do you think the Aussie girls stop? Do you think Beth LaSalle in New York stops? The Egyptians? Look at it this way. With the time difference the Aussies are always a day’s training in front of me. That’s the way I think of it. I can’t afford to slack. Right now I’m better than them. The results show it, look at the rankings. But if I don’t push, every day, I won’t stay there.”

She bounced a question back to me. “What are you doing, anyway?”

“Bit of a bombshell. Sailor wants me to come up here permanently. Train full time. I could stay at his house, he says, so there’d be somewhere to live. He wants me to make my mind up straight away, like tonight. Fix it with my parents.”

I shrugged. “There’s no way, not really.” The enormity of Sailor’s proposal was starting to come through. “I’d have to leave school,” I tried to joke, but it wasn’t funny. “There would be some benefits.”

“Jesus, Jolyon, that’s a big one. Tell you what, you don’t have to get back to Dave’s straight away, do you, right now?”

I shook my head.

“Right, give me ten minutes for a shower. I need to feed. There’s an Indian not far away. We’ll have a meal, my shout.”

“Hey, thanks, that sounds great.”

Zoë headed for the changing rooms in her brisk way. In spite of the turmoil I was in, I couldn’t help noticing for the umpteenth time her truly international walk, cosmic movement, upright, perfectly balanced, a glide, feet angled at five to one, muscular bum tilting slightly with each step. I hauled my mind off that image, located my phone and called Marion to say I’d be back later. Then I retrieved the image of Zoë’s bum and sat down to wait. I wasn’t familiar with Indian food. It hadn’t featured in my mother’s world. I knew it was hot and hoped I wouldn’t make a fool of myself.

Chapter Ten

Zoë drove us the half mile to the restaurant in her sponsored BMW. “This is a big perk. I get great lottery money as world champion,” those two words again, world champion, “but running a car is expensive.”

“Do you have to do anything for it?”

“Nothing in the contract. But twice I’ve had a hit with a couple of sales people from the garage where this comes from. And the manager asked me to turn up at a new model launch earlier in the year. She’s great.”

“She?”

“Yes, must be a rarity. She’s going places.

“Anyway, I was around. It wasn’t a problem. What I do do is let them know, about once a month, how I’m getting on, the local dealer and the UK head office. It’s just an email. I send a photo if I have one. They put it up in their show room, at the dealership, and they’ve used it in the newsletter they send out to customers.

“For me, it’s a small price to pay. Well, it’s not even that. It’s saying thank you, and,” she smiled with glee, “I’ve got this glitzy car.”

Zoë was a whole lot better than my mother in the business of driving. She parallel parked easily in a small slot, and a few moments later we were sitting in one of the restaurant’s booths, in dim light. The waiter placed a plate of discs in front of us.

“These look like models of sand dunes from a geography lesson,” I said.

“They’re poppadoms. For heaven’s sake, you weren’t kidding, were you? Never been inside an Indian? I always try to find Indian restaurants when I’m away at a tournament. You’d be amazed where they crop up.”

There was a dish of stuff to go with the poppadoms, divided into compartments. Zoë warned me about one of the substances, dark and mysterious with green lumps in it. I made a total prat of myself by ignoring her. Something as benign sounding as lime pickle? Can’t be much wrong with that, come on, Jolyon. After five tearful minutes and absurd volumes of water, plus something called raita from one of the other dishes, I finally erased the mixed concern and amusement from Zoë’s face.

“What’s the Indian word for napalm?”

“You mean Hindi; maybe Urdu. I’ve no idea.” She studied a menu and ordered several dishes no less mysterious than what I’d seen already.

“There’s one main to avoid,” she said when the waiter had gone. “I’ll point it out. This time listen.”

My eyes were still watering. “Don’t worry, once burned, twice shy. Anyway, my tear glands are empty.”

“Now,” she demanded, “tell me all about it. What did Sailor have to say?”

A particular advantage of sitting opposite Zoë with our knees almost touching, was that I could look at her. The tabloid cameramen loved Zoë. She’d come third in the BBC Sports Personality of the Year competition the year after she’d become world champ. The papers had been all over her after that. The vivid yellow dress she’d worn on the night had helped, a second skin. I’d watched the programme and gawped, never imagining that I’d meet the wearer of the dress, still less that I’d be this close to her in a half lit Indian restaurant. Now I tried not to gawp some more, and confined my gaze mainly to her rich brown eyes. Not a problem.

“Well, like I said, Sailor wants me to come up here full time. It’s embarrassing. Ridiculous really, he says I could be,” I made a pathetic attempt to mimic his accent and his gruff voice, “‘wurruld charmpeeyun’.”

A half smile and she shook her head. “It’s not ridiculous, Jolyon.”

Yesss Zoë’s eyes. Oh, oh, oh! Dark brown, almost black in that light, intense and no other way of putting it, longingly lovely.

“Well,” I managed to say, “even if it’s not ridiculous, I can’t do it. In practice it’s ridiculous. I can’t stop school just like that. I can’t drop out, no A levels. Most of my friends are down in Sussex. And all this on the basis of one game of squash against Dave Kemball.”

“I don’t have any A levels,” she said. “Do you think everything was clear for me when I committed to full time? Full time squash, full time training? Full time absolutely exclusively nothing else? No time for the rest of life. I was going to be a doctor. My Mum and Dad are both doctors. And one of my brothers. The other one did law. What do you think my father said when I told him? He went ballistic. ‘You silly child. It’s out of the question. Where’s your sense of responsibility?’ Stuff like that.”

“I’d be more worried what my mother would say.”

“Mother, father, same difference. The point is, you’ve got it. Something inside you. I could tell the first week you were here. You haven’t a clue how to play squash, but you can learn that. You hit the ball well enough. Especially volleying. The thing is, I’ve never seen anyone, any man that is, with your attitude. You cottoned on to the match point thing straight away. The result is, you’ve got far more out of the last three weeks than any of the others. I’m amazed the way you’ve come on.

“And then the performance testing. If you want something that really is ridiculous, that’s it, your results. You’re a freak. You’re off the scale.”

At that moment a waiter arrived with a pungent trolley of dishes and placed them on aluminium mats under which he lit little candles. One of the dishes came straight out of a pan and was still sizzling. It smelt fantastic.

Zoë smiled at my reaction. “Now we’ll seriously see how you cope with the pain barrier. Big time. I’m joking really. She pointed to one of the brown meaty dishes. Just don’t take much of this one.”

“Why, what is it?”

“Chicken Madras. It’s quite spicy.”

“They all smell spicy if you ask me.”

“Well, help yourself and eat up, I’m starving.”

Sixty seconds later I had to ask for more water. Sweat was trickling down the back of my neck, even without the Madras.

“You can’t go back home now anyway,” Zoë said. “Not if you have any more Indian meals. You’ll reek of it, all these spices. From the way you’ve described her, it sounds as though your mother would throw you out.”

“If mothers were Indian food, mine would be the lime pickle.”

Zoë’s face softened. “Mine would be the raita. She’s lovely.”

I’d talked about my home set up, and she hers. “The thing that decided me,” Zoë said, “in the end, was this. What would I feel when I got to thirty? ‘Oh, what a shame I didn’t have a real go at it. It’s too late now, look at me, five kilos overweight, ten years too old, I’m past it. They said I could have been really good. I wish I’d tried, I really wish I’d really tried.’

“I didn’t want that. My dad had always drummed into me, from when I was little, ‘Have a go. Go on, Zoë, don’t be shy. Have a go’. Well I didn’t act shy and I did have a go. I turned it back on him when I told him I wanted to do squash full time. In the end he saw it. He came out to Boston when I won my first world championship. Saw me beat Heba Elkalawy in the final. You know what he said straight after? He gave me a great big hug, me all sweaty, and then looked at me straight and just said, ‘You were right’. I knew what he meant. All the nagging, all the guilt they made me feel about doctoring, or rather not doctoring. All gone.”

“I’m sure my dad would be pleased,” I said. “In the end. I could make him realise. My mother? Something else. I can remember when I was only eight or nine, I heard someone describing her as implacable and I went and looked it up. Implacable. It’s totally accurate. She’d just say, ‘World champion? In squash? Huh; such a minority sport’. She always wanted me to win Wimbledon. Nothing else would do. Olympic Games? Nah. The Open? No way, not golf. Squash? To her squash is the equivalent of a dog turd you find on the sole of your tennis shoe.”

“She sounds awful,” Zoë said. “But up her, Jolyon. What do you want? If a man like Sailor says you could be world champion, you’d better believe it, you’ve got a chance. It’s a possibility, maybe small, but Sailor doesn’t say things he doesn’t mean. There’s maybe only three or four juniors worldwide you could really say that about. You can go back to Sussex next week, and end up what? Another plummy south of England commuter, working too many hours so you can make too much money. You’ll never get rich playing squash. Too much travel, too many hotel rooms, too much being dog tired. Too much hurting. Something’s always hurting, I’m telling you. But a chance to be the best in the world. Who has that? In a major sport. It’s not glamorous, squash. But think how many people play it around the world. It’s millions. And you could be the best one. Out of all those millions.

“Look, it’s eight o’clock. You could call your mother now.”

“Not Monday night. It’s one of her bridge nights. She doesn’t like being interrupted. She turns her mobile off.”

What Zoë did next really surprised me. She reached over and put her hand on mine, really gripped it. “For God’s sake Jolyon. There’s no question. Do you want to be an ordinary this or an ordinary that? All your life? Stuffed up Englishman, anonymous. Twenty five year mortgage. Posh voice. Pinstripe suit. Two point four children. In among the crowd. Single figure golf handicap. An also ran. That’s what’s in front of you. Or do you want to be something? Not for long, maybe.

“But look at me.”

I certainly was, almost torched by her passion. “How do you think I feel?” She measured the words. “I feel great. There’s all these eminent folks in my family. OBEs, there’s a Knight, someone with a Rolls Royce. And then there’s me. I’m Zoë Quantock. I’m world flipping squash champion. I’m up there with any of them. Above them. And I tell you what. There’s not one of them that wouldn’t swap. Not one.

“Do you have any choice?”

Then she realised we were being stared at by a nearby couple and took her hand away. “I’ve got to go to the loo. Think about it.”

I watched her moving in her easy way to the back of the restaurant. Zoë had just demonstrated what you needed. Beyond the talent and the technique and the Sailor stuff. Enthusiasm. Passion. Commitment. The way she spoke, it came across like an explosion. Her passion wasn’t for me, unfortunately. It was for what she was doing. For the choice she’d made. I don’t think Zoë had a boyfriend. Probably no room for that, not after what I’d just heard. I’d already seen her dedication, day after day. Now she’d shown me where it came from. The question was, could I do the same thing? Could I commit to a goal in the same way?

A waiter came past, balancing several great-smelling dishes for the nearby couple. I wondered what goals he had. Get back home to the sub-continent with a little money? Open a restaurant of his own? Marry sultry Soraya from down the road? That was it, probably, all of it. What goals did I have? With a jolt I realised that the only goals I’d ever striven for, cross country being the single notable exception, hadn’t been mine at all. They’d been my mother’s. Boadicea one day, boa constrictor the next. Laying opposition to waste one day, squeezing the life out of it the next.

The tale for me had started early. Tennis: win the Under Eights at the club. You could see his talent from the first time he picked up a racquet. Then the Under Tens. Apart from his talent he really puts his mind to it, look, so dedicated. Then the Under Twelves. Look at that timing, he hardly needs a coach.

And so on and so on.

Then it was school: lead role in the annual musical. I think he’ll be a baritone when his voice breaks. He’s so expressive.

Tennis again, it wasn’t long before it became personal. Specifically I had to beat Quentin Berkeley whenever confronted by the poor boy, preferably six love, six love. I can’t stand that child’s mother, such a pushy woman. Pushy, hark at that!

Then it was a money thing, the TV commercial for boys’ jeans: ‘Builder’s Denim For Growing Kids. Tear These And Your Money Back. It’s Guaranteed!!!’ That involved me and two others upside down in a tree. I’m wondering whether drama school wouldn’t suit Jolyon; he was an absolute natural during the filming. Not to overlook academics, of course: pass the entrance exam for Redbrook School, preferably with a scholarship. Oh that, the entrance exam? He sailed through that. Then further tennis: the stifling LTA training camp. They say he moves like Andy Murray, just look at him. Full house of A stars at GCSE? Er, no, that didn’t happen. He was forecast to do so much better... hormones; I’m sure, he’ll grow through it.

All my mother’s goals. What about mine, my own goals? Good phrase, there were some big own goals, often to spite my mother, the worst being my refusal to play in a tennis match on the afternoon of the FA Cup Final. I wasn’t then allowed to watch it on TV. My other goals were nebulous, a foggy horizon whichever way you looked. A levels? Yes, three or four. Shag some girls? Yes, three or four hundred. What else was there? University? Probably. Oxbridge? No way, for obvious reasons connected with my mother’s ambitions. Then what? Not the Navy. One thing I was sure of, I wanted to control my own life, not have the military dictate what happened to me.

And now this.

I looked up and Zoë was coming back, a smile on her face. “Careful, you don’t want to be pulling a muscle in your brain.”

“I was just thinking.”

“I could see that. Do you want a dessert, or a coffee?”

“Do they do tea? A tea would be good. I’ve no room for anything else.”

The waiter looked disappointed that we didn’t go for one of his kulfis but was mollified by the way Zoë apologised.

“Well,” she said, “did any conclusions emerge from all that thinking?”

“You’ve made it so obvious. I really like playing squash. It’s something I want to do. Not something someone else expects me to do. For one thing, there’s nothing like the feeling of getting on top of someone, breaking them down. Breaking their will, I suppose. It happened to me once, big time, when I’d just started playing, at school. That was the game that really got me started. And it happened on Friday, against Dave. Don’t get me wrong, I really like Dave, he’s a great guy. But it was that feeling, I guess it’s what boxers feel, it’s very raw. To lose isn’t an option, that’s being beaten. You’ve got to win, and there’s this other guy in the way, tough luck. And then you get on top.

“I enjoyed squash from the start, the grind. It’s like a long uphill run, uphill into the wind. But there’s shots to enjoy at the same time. I guess seeing how it worked out against Dave, exactly the way Sailor said it would after the gym tests, how to convert them into something on court, I didn’t expect that.”

“I knew you’d beat Dave,” Zoë said. “Not on Friday, I didn’t think it would be then. It was obvious you had it in you, the way you’ve trained, the way you can volley, so early. Then, on Friday, that was brutal. You have to have the brutality.”

“At least I’ve inherited something worthwhile from my mother.”

Zoë laughed. “Don’t knock it. You should be grateful. And Sailor’s good. He must have seen it in you.”

“He said that about you, something about brutal.”

Zoë gazed at the maroon wallpaper over my right shoulder, far away. “It is brutal, but it’s got to be economical. Otherwise you tire yourself out too much. Lots of the girls can do a game, or two games, at the same pace as me. The way Sailor explained it, if you’ve got really good functional stability, you don’t waste anything in the way you move. So you can sustain a higher pace for longer. You can’t teach that. Apparently it comes from the way you grow up. I did lots of tennis, too, like you. And I did gymnastics, till I was ten or something, but if you think I’m obsessive, you should see women’s gymnastics, women’s artistic gymnastics as it’s called. That’s brutal. And I did swimming, and I used to love football. Any sport. That’s when you develop your functional stability, that’s what they say. When you’re a kid.”

“Funny that,” I said. “I did most of those sports. Quite a lot of gymnastics. I do slag my mother off, but she was always organising things for me. I never had any free time. And swimming too, till I was eleven I think, not much after that because it clashed with the tennis.”

“Well, you move so well on court. It’s funny watching you because, how can I put it, there’s all this economy, you glide, but at the same time you look so raw, your choice of shot sometimes. Inexperience.”

“Thanks,” I said, “rub it in. How about naïve?”

Zoë smiled again. “That’s it, perfect, naïve.”

“Perfect?”

She laughed. “No, naïve. I’m the one who’s perfect. You don’t get to be perfect till you’re world champ.

“So what’s it going to be, young man? Are you going to have a go? Or are you going to be the biggest disappointment in Sailor’s life?” Then Zoë added quietly. “And in a way, mine, too.”

“It’s unfair,” I said. “If I was Dave, any of the really good juniors, I could sort of ease into a decision. Why do I have to decide everything now, right now?”

“Sailor was right, as usual,” Zoë said. “For you it’s the time factor. You’ve just not played enough squash. It’s a gamble. Can you pick up enough of the squash side, the craft? Luckily you do hit the ball well. But forget that stuff. At some stage, no matter who you are, anyone who wants to be best, at squash or any other sport I should think, they have to commit. They have to accept that the next, I dunno, eight, ten years of their life is going to be focussed on just one thing, getting to the top. And then staying there.” She grimaced. “Excluding most other things, almost everything else. It may be a bit sudden for you. It is sudden, just this month up here. And maybe it has to be now for you, how old are you, sixteen, seventeen? You look older. Because of your history it has to be now. But everyone has to face the decision.

“Come on,” she said, getting up, “I’ll pay on the way out, and then I’ll drive you back.”

“You don’t have to do that.” I checked my phone for the time. “There’s a bus just after nine o’clock.”

“It’s no problem. And it’s crunch time for you. I’ll shut up. It’ll take, what, twenty minutes to reach the Kemballs? Then Master Jolyon, twenty minutes is what you’ve got to make up your mind. Twenty minutes will be enough. We don’t need to talk. You have to remember, if Sailor said he needs to know by tomorrow, that’s it. He never goes back on anything. If you’re undecided tomorrow, the chance will be gone. He’s like that. I know Sailor very well. As for making up your mind, you’ve got as much information as you need from outside. You just need to do the inside stuff.”

“The inside’s stuff’s the hard stuff.”

“Of course it is. That’s the way it is. On court, too.”

“Look, really, you don’t have to take me.”

Maybe Zoë thought I’d bottle out if I went on the bus, and maybe she’d have been right.

“Course not. Anyway, from today, if you’re going to go for it, you’ve got to look after yourself. Plenty of rest, and I mean plenty. That’s part of the formula. And I want to see where you’re staying if we’re going to go running.”

“If I decide yes, and if I can get things sorted, my mother, school, the whole lot, I won’t be staying with the Kemballs much longer. I’ll be moving in with Sailor.”

“Well we won’t argue tonight. The traffic’s gone. I don’t suppose it’ll take long.”