DailySquashReport.com

Chapter Twenty Nine

“I heard from Dick Bentley.” I was sitting with Sailor in his kitchen, having a cup of tea. “He said some good things about you.”

“When I found out he was on the panel, I thought it was the end.”

“Dick wouldn’t elaborate. Something earlier in the year.” He raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

Not the time to talk about Mick the Prick, I thought.

“Well I owe ye an apology son. Too quick to jump to conclusions.” He rubbed his chin, looking uncertain. “But Christ, pardon me, son, but Christ, don’t put me through that again.”

“You through that? Me too. Me too, Sailor.”

The cannabis incident acted as a sort of spur. It took a couple of weeks for me to get over the missed training, but the rest had done me good and I had prodigious energy. At Christmas I played Riley O’Callaghan in a training game. With Sailor marking, and several of the squad including Zoë watching, Riley had to be on best behaviour. After five incredibly hard minutes he ‘exceeded his aerobic capacity’, as Sailor would have put it, and became what the rest of us called ‘totally fucked’. In all I lost just seven points. The trick was to keep your opponent running, so he couldn’t recover. I kept Riley running for the pure satisfaction. I repeatedly avoided pulling the trigger when I’d worked him out of position. More fun to exploit the step change in my speed and strength and make Riley look like an idiot.

“A triumph of youthful impetuosity, eh Riley?” I said as we left the court, he with his head down, having declined my handshake. Undiluted pleasure.

“That’s the way you do it,” Zoë said, walking past a few minutes later as I was doing my stretches.

“That was out of order, son,” Sailor said more accurately as he sat down beside me in the changing room. “It does show you where you are. Time to forget the Rileys now. Focus on next year. That was top ten play, think about it, top ten. And if you’re no’ in the top ten by this time next year, you’ll have let yourself down.”

World Squash News, July 17th

Teenage Sensation Jacks Beats No 2 Seed

In one of the most brutal sixty minutes of squash those privileged to be watching have ever witnessed, nineteen year old Jolyon Jacks eliminated second seed Jan Berry from the first round of the $130,000 PSA World Series tournament in the New World Shopping Mall, Nanjing Road, Shanghai. The shock score of 13-11, 16-14, 11-7 gives some clue to the closeness of the contest, but no indication of the pace at which the game was played. Berry is noted for his remorseless attacking game, and it has been accepted that no one in the modern game takes the ball earlier. Not any more. That crown has gone to Jacks.

In a sensational contest, the teenager with his whirlwind style beat Berry at his own game, cutting everything off at the service line and volleying to a deadly length on both sides of the court. The dynamic South African fought to the end, but it was clear in the last few points that he had nothing left to offer. PSA Chief Executive Pierre Dentressangle said, “We have seen the future. Jacks has raised the bar tonight. For sure he has a lot to learn, but his sheer physicality will take him right to the top.”

The measure of Jacks’ achievement is that he had already come through two qualifying rounds. Admittedly they were both swift 3-0 victories. The teenager was thrilled with his win. “I knew it would be hard against Jan. I’ve seen him play and we have similar styles. My coach Sailor McCann said, nothing to lose, just go for it. I had to dig deep at the end of the second.”

A bitterly disappointed Berry had no excuses to offer. “I came into the tournament in good shape. He executed better than me this evening. Good luck to him. He should have a great future on the tour if he can continue with that intensity. For me, it’s back to the gym.”

“Bl**dy h*ll, J*n B*rry! :-)” It was a text from Dave that came in while I was showering after my game with Jan. I was elated with the win and had wanted to tell people back home. ‘People’ meant, automatically, Dave, who would tell Russell and Marion, and diffidently, Zoë. Would Zoë be interested? Probably not. She had been mainly stand offish since my dope test scare, which I thought was unfair. I shouldn’t have told her about the second phase of my passive ingestion. I knew where Zoë was while I was in Shanghai, defending her title in a tournament in Philadelphia, so I probably wouldn’t hear from her anyway for a while. Right now she’d be asleep.

The Shanghai was my first ever World Series event, and Sailor had generously decided to come all the way over to China to support me. “I want you to stay on the rails, son. And stop you from getting big-headed.”

“What do you mean, big-headed?”

“I’ve a good feeling about this one,” he said before the tournament started. “You’re going to surprise yourself.”

It was more than surprise. Less than a year before I’d been scrabbling around in Challenger tournaments, delighted to pick up anything more than a hundred points for reaching the semis. Here I was with the scalp of the world number two, the renowned Berry the Hatchet, with a minimum of three hundred and twelve point five points for getting into the last sixteen, and the prospect of playing an unseeded opponent in the next round because of the PSA’s recent decision to halve the number of seeds in their tournaments. They’d done this to mix the entries up and prevent the top players from becoming complacent in avoiding hungry, unseeded challengers. I was due to play another qualifier, an unknown Chinese called something like Fu Wi.

Being in Shanghai itself was a thrill, the twenty four hour action, the noise, the sheer energy of the streets. Per the PSA rulebook, I was having my accommodation paid from the night before the first round, and free meals. This Shanghai result, even if I lost to Phew-wee, combined with the success I’d had in the first half of the year, should see me into the world’s top sixteen, with automatic first round entry into any PSA tournament. Event organisers would take care of my travel and hotel bills. By scrimping and scratching, by the start of summer I’d finished paying Mary back for her subsidies. The money side was looking all right.

After Shanghai, so should the squash have been. Phew-wee had reached the end of his road by the time I played him, following three consecutive five setters. For him, oriental pictograms aplenty in the local media. For me, five hundred and thirty one point two five points, in fat Arabic numerals, even if I got no further. But I was on a roll. In the quarters I beat a good Frenchman, Serge Colson, guaranteeing eight hundred and seventy five points.

Those eight hundred odd points were the ones I finished with. I lost the semi in straight games. Mansoor Ali Khan, a seriously quick guy from Pakistan, short, intense and with a seriously cool moustache, was too strong. According to Sailor, Mansoor was a throwback to the days when Pakistanis ruled the squash world. He had no trouble in ruling me in Shanghai. It had been a long six days and I simply ran out of gas. Nevertheless, the semi final points boosted my total to precisely three thousand five hundred and two, giving me an average of three hundred and fifty point two points, making me the world number sixteen. Nineteen months to go. On the surface, these were rosy statistics. You would think I left Shanghai in a positive frame of mind.

Not so.

“Ay, those are my thoughts, too.”

I was chatting with Sailor over breakfast the day after we’d arrived back from Shanghai. I’d been saying how impressed I’d been with Razza Mattaz. Razza had won the tournament in Shanghai, having beaten the world number one, Magdi Gamal in the other semi, and then my conqueror Mansoor Ali Khan in the final. It wasn’t the fact of the two wins, Razz after all had reached number five in the rankings. It was the ease with which he’d won.

“We’re going to have to look at Mattaz specifically,” Sailor went on. “I’ve seen people as quick.” He looked at me. “You’re as quick, son. I’ve seen the shots, not often, mind. That’s quality. What set him apart in Shanghai, and I’d no’ seen him enough before to recognise it, it was the man’s intelligence, the way he put it together. Did you notice how much he hit it to Magdi’s forehand?”

Sailor went on for a few minutes, maximum intensity, about the technical side of Mattaz’s game. I was only half listening. I was looking forward, previewing the next eighteen months. I wasn’t bothered at the idea of having to beat Mansoor Ali Khan when I next had to play him. Next time I’d be too strong. Jan Berry? It would be more of the same; both of us knew I had the measure of Jan. Trevor Cooper, even Magdi Gamal, I could see myself doing well against them, certainly with another year’s strength and experience. But suddenly none of this mattered. I knew, as clearly as I knew my own name, that I’d never be able to beat Julio Mattaz on even terms. I reflected that in spite of my troubles, since I had committed to squash I had always believed, had always known, that I would make it to number one. I had always known that one day I would be standing in front of my mother saying, ‘It may not be much, Mother dear, just a sweaty little game with a mere fifteen million players worldwide, but I am the best of all of those fifteen million, I am the number one, top of the tree’. It was arrogant but it made sense to me. After three years with Sailor I’d met or exceeded every one of his targets. Zoë had told me I was doing better than she was at a comparative stage. I was still improving in the physical tests. I had learned about reading an opponent. I was able to raise my game at the crucial moments of big matches. Everything was good. Everything apart from Razz Mattaz.

“It’s your left handed factor,” Sailor was saying, “that’s where we’ll have him. Him a lefty, you a lefty. There’s no any other left handers in the top fifteen. We can prepare for that, better than him. Lefty backhands can be suspect. Yours is strong. We’ll be working on it.”

Bullshit, I’m afraid, Sailor. You know it, I know it. Bullshit. Dream on. Usain Bolt? I’m going to beat Usain over a hundred metres? Insane. I’ve the same chance of breaking down Razza Mattaz’s sublime backhand. Razza is something else. Razza has moved the game on. Razza is a freak’s freak.

I didn’t say this to Sailor over the following months. It just hung over me like depression. Even so I stuck to the programme, clung on to it, really. Through the second half of the year I continued to improve my ranking, fourteenth after reaching the semis in Doha in August, thirteenth after Sharm el Sheik, and then a breakthrough in Chennai.

Chennai Vision, September 3rd

Newcomer Jolyon Jacks, the seventh seed, overcame Frenchman Armand Darnaud yesterday evening in the final of the $200,000 Madrassar Jewels PSA Squash Tournament. The score was 11-7, 10-12, 11-9, 11-6, a hard fought match lasting sixty five minutes. Jacks was eventually too strong for the giant Frenchman. Jacks, a whirlwind of speed and energy, is the current World Under Nineteen champion. He was sponsored for a period by the Mumbai-based AllSports India racquet company, and made many visits to the northern cities to train with the cream of Indian squash. His victory in Chennai marks a triumphant return to India for Jacks, with a performance that shows the value of the hard work he has put in, back home in Manchester with the renowned Sailor McCann, and in Delhi and Mumbai.

This was my first trophy, and more to the point, my biggest prize to date, twenty five thousand dollars in cash, unheard of. Admittedly it was reduced by the five percent levy I had to pay the PSA. Fancy having to hand over twelve hundred and fifty dollars, I thought, eight hundred quid! It was painful. It reminded me that I ought to take up Zoë’s offer of an introduction to her accountant. Another fancy-that, me having to get an accountant. I’d been dreaming of winning significant prize money ever since I’d started with Sailor. What I hadn’t considered was the hassle. It was a nice hassle, though, and I wanted to show Grandpa, and more importantly my mother, that I could be independent of them and independent of family legacies.

I spent a bit of time with Armand in Chennai before the final. His ambitions were hard to work out. I was to learn about those later from his father. Part of the problem was the language barrier. I couldn’t say much in French to Armand, not with my fifty word French vocabulary, and neither could we get far in his English. Armand was never part of banter in the changing room, obsessively organising his spare racquets and his kit and the sticking plasters he was always applying to blisters on his feet. In Chennai, like me, he had done better than his seeding, noisily supported by his father throughout the tournament. He had unexpectedly beaten an off-colour Razz in the quarter final, so that my anticipated first encounter with the American was deferred. Eventually in the final I had silenced ‘Doctor Marcel’, as everybody called his dad, by running the legs off his son during the crucial, desperately hard third game.

I’d been feeling strong all the way through my half of the draw. I’d not been affected by the squits that had been jetting out of several of the players, and I revelled in the noisy atmosphere that I was coming to expect from tournaments in India. Now I had an average of four hundred and six points, and was tenth in the world. I texted Zoë, ‘Wld #10. 9 2 go :-)!’. She texted back, ‘And counting x’. I hadn’t told Zoë of my fears, that the best I could manage would not be nine places higher, but eight. Just not enough. None of us could rely on Razza getting diarrhoea at every tournament. My pinnacle then, world number two? So what, some might say. So second best.

Back from Chennai I had a long chat with Grandpa. “Thing is, I’m a bit less confident now,” I concluded.

“This Razza,” Grandpa asked. “What sort of a fellow is he, I mean underneath?”

“That’s part of the problem. He’s a one off, a really decent guy. You should see the clothes he wears, crazy, long hair, red bandana, shirts in weird fabrics, shorts, sandals. He was halfway through a PhD in astrophysics when he decided to give it a go at squash. Not like me though. He’d played the game since he was a boy, in the army, all over America. He makes it look ridiculously easy. He seems to be as fit as me, and I’m fitter than anyone else.”

“Sometimes the people it comes easily to fall apart when things go wrong. And don’t forget, you’re still improving. Sounds to me as though Razza has reached his peak.”

“Huh,” I said, “probably like Roger Federer. His peak lasted years. Flat as Table Mountain.”

“Don’t be a chump, Jolyon. Nadal could have come along sooner than he did, Djokovic. I’ve never heard you negative like this. It’s one of the things I admire in you, you’ve always been such a positive person. This thing is still in your grasp. More than a year still to go. It’s up to you to work out how to deal with Razza Mattaz. It was never going to be easy, never going to fall into your lap. Remember, you’ve given up your education for this. Are you going to wimp out at the first difficulty?”

First difficulty! It seemed to me as if I’d had plenty of difficulties. It was just that in the chapter of difficulties, this was a big one, north face of the Eiger in December rather than Mount Kilimanjaro in the tourist season. But Grandpa was right, no point in feeling sorry for myself. This wasn’t something I wanted to talk to Sailor about, but armed with some of my Chennai dollars, which physically had disappeared into the hands of a teller in the mercifully air conditioned branch of the State Bank of India, I’d take Zoë out for a meal and see what advice she had. And once bitten, I’d make sure that the meal was exclusive. Riley wouldn’t get to know about this one.

Zoë gave me a fantastic smile when I suggested the meal. We’d just finished a hard training session at the EIS. If I could bottle that smile it would be worth two points a game, even against Razz. I said that after Chennai I might find Manchester Indian food disappointing, so we arranged to meet in the city centre at an Italian restaurant Zoë knew. Good choice, it was a classy place with linen napkins, well separated tables and no music. Zoë looked spectacular in a short, red dress.

In response to my compliment she said, “If only I didn’t play squash I’d fit better into clothes like this. My legs and bum.”

“Rubbish. I’ve never fancied scrawny girls, on catwalks or anywhere else, and for goodness sake...” Enough said, I left it hanging, feeling pleased with the balance. Don’t lay it on too thick. Jolyon Jacks, the personal relationships genius.

Genius? Zoë’s next words left me utterly, totally shocked. Not just shocked. Want-to-die-now devastated.

“Don’t say that. I’ve been wanting to tell you. You remember on that run, I mentioned that girl, the one at school, way back? Well that was then and I’d always sort of regretted not doing anything about it, not finding out. Well I’ve been seeing this lady and it’s something marvellous, absolutely marvellous.”

She smiled at me, lost in her mind’s eye.

“Oh really? How...”

“She’s the regional manager for the car dealership, my sponsors. She’s never had any doubts. About her orientation. She says.”

“Is she...”

Zoë’s eyes were all lit up, happy. “She’s thirty two, she’s really going places in BMW, one classy piece of work, breaking through the glass ceilings in a tough business. But outside of work she’s so kind. She doesn’t impose herself or anything. She knows what a struggle it can be if you’re a woman. There’s parallels between what we do, the loneliness. With her I don’t have to put on a show. I can just be me.”

“I’m so...”

“I can even imagine a life after squash now. Not yet of course, no way, but some time in the future. It’s a real change in my life, a turn around. Rachel has turned it round.”

Rachel. I thought seriously bad thoughts about Rachel. Pox, pox, pox! Pox on Regional Manager Rachel. BMW? Maybe she’d be posted to Germany. If I remembered rightly, BMW were based in Munich. Southern Germany, too, a long way away. But it didn’t matter. If Zoë really fancied women, what could I do?

Our food arrived and I made the almighty effort to pull myself together.

“That couldn’t be better, Zoë.”

It was up there with the great lies, the dog ate my homework; your bum looks fine in that dress; of course I’ll love you in the morning. Why did this have to happen to me? I’d been longing for Zoë ever since I’d set eyes on her. Even before; when I’d seen her on television, I guess I was fourteen, at the Sports Personality awards, she’d perfectly fitted a set of receptors in my brain. It didn’t matter then, she was just an image. Now it did matter. I’d always known that my fantasies about Zoë fell into the same level of probability, improbability, as winning the lottery. This was like not even having a ticket. Sure the lottery was an infinitesimal chance, but what a distance between that and no chance at all.

Now, Jesus, I had to force down some food. I just wanted to curl up in a corner.

I managed to launch into something normal. “Have you seen Razz Mattaz play recently?”

“Not for a few months. Why?”

“He’s got so good. I just can’t see myself beating him. I’ve played most of the others in the top twenty. Even if I haven’t done them, I reckon I could. But Razz, I haven’t actually played him yet, but the thing is, I can’t see anyone beating him, unless he’s sick.” I shrugged. “Or doesn’t turn up.”

Zoë nodded. “I know what you mean. He’s got class.”

“Oh yes?” An attempt at a joke, well done.

“I don’t mean like that. Although he is a bit of all right.”

“Like Riley?”

“Riley? What are you talking about?”

“Before this, I’d thought you and Riley?”

“Riley, no way, do me a favour. He did doss on my sofa for a week. After he’d been thrown out of his apartment. Oh, I see,” she said, “you thought...” She laughed. “I’ve got better taste than that, give me credit. Razza, maybe yes, in another incarnation.”

“He’s married,” I said.

Zoë laughed. “You know I’m not worrying about that in this incarnation.”

“The problem is,” I said, “in my current incarnation, I haven’t talked about this, I sort of promised my Grandpa that I’d make it to number one, I know it sounds big-headed, by the time I’m twenty one.”

Again Zoë laughed. “When’s that?”

“March the tenth, the year after next.”

“I’d forgotten you were as young as that. My baby little brother.”

“Thanks. Anyway, that’s what I am. I’ve got, what, eighteen months.”

“A lot can happen in eighteen months.”

“Yes, Razz will ascend into the squash stratosphere. As far as I can see, he’ll be winning most tournaments he enters. So he’ll be getting anything between slumming it at thirteen hundred for a Silver to two six thou for the World Open. Golds, they’re seventeen hundred and fifty aren’t they? Platinums, two thousand one hundred. He’ll be averaging close to two thousand points a tournament soon. Know what I’ve got? An average of four hundred and piddling footling six.”

“It’s hard to sustain, though,” she said, with an achingly pretty frown. “There’s always injuries. And what happened in Chennai?”

“Chennai, Razz got the squits. I can’t rely on him getting the squits.”

Zoë was eating her penne with unconcealed enjoyment. She would never be a scrawn in a magazine ad. “Well, let’s think through what you’ve got to do. First of all, what about winning the World Open? Would that satisfy your grandfather?”

“Yes, that would do it, world champion. That’s November, in Delhi. All I’ll have to do, in all likelihood, is to beat Razz. Plus any combination of Magdi G, Trevor Cooper, Armand Darnaud, you name them.”

“Armand Darnaud? He’s always looked too lazy to me.”

“Not any more. From what his father told me he’s been training really well. He was no pushover in Chennai. And how about this? His father’s had a glass court built specially for him. At his business, in Aix-en-Provence. Think of that, a private glass court. He has his own trainer, Lou somebody, and his father invites quality players there for practice. No expense spared for Armand.”

“Well stop fretting about Armand,” Zoë said, “let’s think what you can do. You’ll shed all your results to date by this time next year, so you don’t need to worry about your four hundred and six. Which after all isn’t bad; it’s got you to number ten. Let’s say you’re going to need an average of at least fifteen hundred points to get to number one. If you don’t win the World Open that is. Let’s think about the calendar.”

“You’re sounding like Sailor,” I said.

“Sailor talks sense, believe me. How many tournaments do you think you’ll play?”

“Apparently there’s usually some late changes, but for next year it looks like there are going to be ten Platinum events, the prize money’s been going up with India adding three big ones, at least ten Gold and eight silver. Under PSA rules I can drop one Gold if I want to, and two Silver. That means I could be playing as many as twenty five tournaments, if I’m not injured, plus the World Series finals.”

“That would be crazy. I’m going to do eighteen this year,” Zoë said. “Under WISPA rules the women can drop their nine worst results out of twenty five for the divisor, and just count their best sixteen.”

“It’s the same in the PSA,” I said. “And the problem is, even if I’m regularly runner up it isn’t good enough.” I’d done the calculations with Sailor. “In a Platinum event you get fourteen hundred and thirty seven point five points for runner up, eleven fifty in Golds and eight sixty two in Silvers.”

Zoë gazed up and thought, for a moment looking incredibly young, mid teens rather than twenties. “So, for an average of fifteen hundred points over sixteen tournaments your target is twenty four thousand, aggregate that is. You’re going to have to win a lot, just doing the arithmetic.”

“That’s what I’ve worked out.” I was going to add something about needing Razza not to win too, but I became hugely conscious of Zoë’s brown eyes. “Stop it, I’m losing my thread.”

“Stop what?”

“Oh, nothing.” What a waste of breath.

We carried on eating and chatting, about the other members of Sailor’s squad and music and earliest memories. Finally we got onto training.

“When I’m really tired,” Zoë said, “I think about losing, and how much pleasure someone’s going to get out of beating me. You feel hunted when you’re number one. I hate losing, hate it. The thought of losing really pushes me. Even so, I train smarter now. I used to do ridiculous amounts, right through the season. I still do when we’ve a break from tournaments, but when I’m competing, that’s different.”

“I know about your training,” I said, having earlier that day continued with Zoë in a sequence of shuttle runs after everyone else had finished.

“Problem is,” Zoë went on, as I ceased to take in her words, just bitterly enjoying her eyes, “maintaining fitness when there’s a run of tournaments. What I do then is short, really hard sessions. Avoiding tiredness is the key then.”

“That’s all very well if you’re winning.”

Her eyes went fierce. “What’s this ‘if you’re winning’? This is you, Jolyon, and this is your chance. You won’t have more than one chance like this in the whole of your life. Why are you so negative tonight? Remember what Sailor says, the top two inches. If there’s doubt in the top two inches you’re never going to make it. Razza’s human. At some point you’ll make him realise, all that skill, all that finesse, they’re not enough. He’ll have to beat your will. Your will’s mixed up with your commitment. You have to commit.”

It gave me a boost, Zoë’s passion. She thanked me sweetly for the meal and dropped me off at Sailor’s, with me longing for another aspect of her passion.

If only.
Chapter Thirty

I had a pleasant surprise at the end of October while I was preparing for a sharp trio of tournaments in the Middle East, the Kuwait Open, Qatar Classic and then the biggie, the World Open in Saudi. The surprise came in the form of a phone call from Marcel Darnaud.

“Hey Jolyon. I’m glad that I was able to reach you. I never got to see you in Chennai after your win. Armand was so disappointed. You deserved it. I told him he had to be fitter. Why don’t you come down here and visit us for a week, do some sessions, play some practice games? It will be great for Armand to see how you do it, and I promise you, it will be great for you too. We have a fine team here, Lou Kiefer, he does the conditioning, he’s one you won’t love. Pascal Neige is our dietician, Mary-Emmanuelle Colombey, physiotherapy. I swear she halves the time of any injury. One of my medical colleagues takes care of health issues, Gaston Miahle. You’ll be well looked after, we’ll have some fun. And one more thing, it’s twenty two degrees here right now. I hear your having some bad weather in Manchester.”

It did seem an idea, the south of France, and he was right about the weather, two degrees rather than twenty two, the dank cold that often affected Manchester. Problem was, what would Sailor say? Well sod Sailor.

“Wow, that sounds like a fantastic idea,” I said. “Maybe the guy who works on Armand’s wrist can do something for me while I’m with you.”

Marcel laughed. “I’m sure we can work on your wrist. Give me your email address and I’ll send you the travel arrangements.”

That was how I found myself the following Friday in a huge country house just outside Aix-en-Provence, sharing a delicious meal prepared by the Darnaud’s cook with Marcel, Armand and Madame Darnaud, whose English was of Armand rather than Marcel quality and whose looks were the quality of Marcel’s English, phew. Clothes too; I knew about clothes from my mother. Of course Madame D bore no resemblance to that Sussex elephant. She was, I guessed, early thirties, too young to be Armand’s mum. How often, I wondered, did Marcel change his wife?

“Have a glass of wine, Jolyon,” Marcel said. I’d noticed Armand already had a small glass.

“No thanks. I had some issues a year ago, not with alcohol. Anyway, I made up my mind to stick to water.”

“Oh yes, the cannabis.”

“How did you know about that?”

“It was in the squash press. It was said you were lucky to escape a ban. I’d have known about it anyway. We make it our business to know about Armand’s opponents.” He rattled off something in French and Armand nodded, looking embarrassed. His wife wasn’t paying attention.

“You see,” Marcel continued, “Armand and, I must admit, myself, we take the squash seriously. We are after all following some great French players, Lincou, Gaultier, the very best. Armand announced, well I announced actually, to L’Equipe, in January, I announced Armand’s ambition, no his intention, to reach number one, to become the world’s best player. I make no secret we will learn about you this week, Jolyon. Nor will we hold back, you will benefit also. You will learn about Armand. You will see the routines he accomplishes. He is a remarkable young man.

“You see, Armand has been playing squash since he had seven years, since he was seven years old. He has talked of becoming world champion. Even as a boy he dedicated himself. His mother, my second wife, she objected to how much he played. I would take him to the club every day, before I built the courts at the factory. She did not want his success. We fought,” he shrugged, “sadly, divorce. But happily now, you see a formidable young man.”

The formidable young man was staring at his plate.

“I can tell you,” Marcel went on. “It is in my log book, Armand has missed, not trained, not played, on a total of thirty seven days since he began to play squash.”

“Are you serious? Not since he was seven, surely?”

“Yes, it is true. You know the theory, ten thousand hours to produce a champion? Well Armand has spent more than sixteen thousand hours with a squash racquet in his hand. Sixteen thousand three hundred to be precise. That is the origin of his skill. Armand’s technique is totally the best.”

“You mean you’ve logged all the time he’s been on court? Since he was seven?” I did the mental arithmetic. Sixteen thousand hours: it was two solid years.

“Of course. And his training, that is logged also. Kiefer has made it more scientific now of course, the last three years. He is the expert,” he shrugged, “I am the amateur. But once I begin a project, my business, my passion for flying, this rare individual, my son,” an open gesture with his hands, “I am dedicated to it. As you see, I am dedicated to Armand.

“And so you are too, my friend, dedicated. I know a little of your story. From your coach. That’s a man I admire, Sailor McCann. He told me you only started squash when you were fifteen. Remarkable. Armand since the age of seven, you fifteen. Tell me more. How did you start? How did it happen?”

I paused as the cook, who I learned the next day doubled as Pascal Neige the dietician, came in to take away our plates and bring dessert, something delicious based on peaches. No cream, I noticed.

“Well, I started when a girl at school challenged me to a game.”

Marcel translated. His wife looked at me and made a cheery remark. “She says,” Marcel explained, “that there’s always a girl involved.”

“If only,” I said. “There doesn’t seem to be time for girls. Or else I’m too tired these days.”

More from Madame D in her soft voice, all the while smiling at me. Marcel followed up: “Crudely translated,” he said, “she says ‘more fool then the English girls’. She is sure that French girls would find a way of making you forget your tiredness. I think you are a hit, is that what you say, with my wife.”

I smiled back and managed a, “Merci, Madame,” to which she inclined her head.

I carried on with the story of my arrival in Manchester, trying to work out how long I’d spent in total on court. It would probably be measured in minutes rather than hours.

“We do performance tests too,” Marcel interjected when I described the day Dave and I did our first set of tests with Sailor. “We do them monthly, a little more sophisticated than yours, if I may say, and we include blood tests. Monsieur Kiefer is the expert. The aim is to balance the training against the athlete’s physical condition, against tiredness certainly. There is a limit to what the body can tolerate. We know that exceeding that limit makes performance fall away; the athlete is open to infections; often he becomes unwell. Armand keeps himself, well let’s say Monsieur Kiefer keeps Armand, just below the critical threshold.”

Not long afterwards Madame Darnaud excused herself, kissed Marcel on both cheeks and left the room. Marcel said, “I have some work to do but you must be tired, Jolyon. Perhaps sleep now for you? Armand is never late. We will have breakfast at seven. I will leave for my office at seven thirty and Armand will drive you both to the plant in time for your start at nine thirty. You can take it easy before that, maybe a swim in our pool.

“For now, good night.” He made a small bow. “Till tomorrow.”

I’d already been shown my bedroom, up a wide wooden staircase that continued, I could see, for at least two more floors, it was that sort of house. I said goodnight to Armand, who shook my hand, and made my way up. My room was sumptuous, a suite. Notable were the vast bathroom and the four poster bed. I undressed and crashed between the posts. Marcel was right, I was tired. Unfortunately the mattress was too soft. If you’d been in there with someone else you’d have had to cling to the side. Unless it was Madame Darnaud, in which case you’d have happily let go, hoping to be joined by her in the valley.

I lay there for ages trying to get to sleep. What a strange set up, Marcel and Madame and Armand. Madame D was of an age to be Marcel’s older sister. I wondered if they got on. They hadn’t said much to each other at dinner, but no one could with Marcel around. Another thing to consider, the plan for Armand to be number one. He had nodded vigorously when Marcel mentioned his announcement to L’Equipe. Maybe I’d have to take Armand more seriously. He had always seemed destined to be just there or thereabouts, with his enormous frame and incredible wrist. He was capable of beating anyone, maybe even Razza, on his day, but to date he had never been consistent enough to make it right to the top. Now I’d seen from close up the way his father thought, and his father was central to team Darnaud.

Sailor had been positive about the trip but warned me about its purpose. He said that Armand, or more accurately Marcel, would use the visit as an opportunity to establish a psychological advantage over me. He mentioned home cooking, ‘garlic-infused snails’, the home squash court, the expected home town result in any competitive game. “Whatever you do, don’t lose to Armand.”

It would be interesting to experience Armand’s training over the next few days. I was confident I could cope with any of Monsieur Kiefer’s routines. Not so confident about playing Armand.

I was surprised to be wakened at half past six by Madame Darnaud. Disappointingly after my four poster musings, she was wearing a cover-everything dressing gown, not the négligée I’d have picked out for her. Fortunately I too was covered, by the duvet. I was in the buff.

“Here is a cup of tea,” she said with her comically strong French accent. “For you English, no?” She smiled and glided out of the room.

The tea turned out to be fine, and so was the breakfast. There was melon, fresh grapefruit juice, croissants and delicious baguettes, with all manner of stuff to go with them. Marcel was there for a short time. He was in his usual linen suit and open-necked shirt, also linen. He didn’t eat much and quickly headed off after a meticulous wipe of the lips on his napkin. More linen. Armand and I were able to take our time, with his appetite more than making up for his father’s. I managed a joke about carbohydrate loading before he too disappeared.

Armand found me outside at about nine o’clock. I’d been chilling beside the magnificent kidney-shaped swimming pool.

“It is necessary not to be late.”

“Okay. Same with Sailor. I’ll get my kit.”

It was a ten minute drive in Armand’s convertible Peugeot. We were nodded into the site at a security gate. Armand drove through the main complex to a large building the far side. This appeared to have not one but two courts attached.

“Yes, the other one, it is a doubles court.” Blimey, a bespoke doubles court.

Inside I was even more impressed. There was a gallery behind the courts, which both had glass back walls. To one side there was a changing room, luxurious I was to discover, and to the other a twenty five metre gymnasium. At the far end of the gymnasium there was a variety of multi-gym systems, free weights and exercise machines, plus a small office. A stooped figure in the office conspicuously didn’t look up when we came in.

“Him, that is Monsieur Kiefer. He is my trainer. We must get changed.”

I noticed Armand strapping a heart rate monitor round his chest while we were changing.

“Yes, for Monsieur Kiefer, for every session. I am all recorded. You too. I am the most recorded moine in ’istory.”

“Moine?”

“I don’t know. Priest?”

“Oh,” I said, “you mean monk. That I can identify with.”

I was starting to appreciate what was being invested in Armand.

We made our way out of the changing room and across to the office. With a glance at his watch Monsieur Kiefer came out and greeted me unsmilingly with a ‘bon jour’, and then pointing to himself, a ‘malheureusement, not Eenglish’.

Indeed no Englishman would ever smell so strongly of garlic. Nor dress any more in a shell suit.

“First we are weighed,” Armand said. Monsieur Kiefer led us over to an electronic scale. I followed him in removing my shoes and tracksuit and stood on the scale. Armand weighed in at a massive ninety two point seven six kilograms, exceeding my puny seventy two point three seven. I wanted to ask if they couldn’t do it a bit more accurately, but I judged the joke wouldn’t find its mark. The diligent Monsieur Kiefer noted our weights on an iPad, which I saw already had an entry in my name. Scary. Next he indicated that I should put on a heart rate monitor. My turn to indicate, a polite ‘non’. I didn’t want to give team Darnaud an insight into that. Sailor was big into the physiology, and insight was a word he used. Monsieur Kiefer shrugged.

Now it was the business of the day. We did a half hour warm up of movement and stretches on the singles court, and a half hour of hitting. Monsieur K prescribed the heights at which the down-the-wall shots should strike the front wall. Interesting in that you had to be continually adjusting the pace to keep a good length. Armand was very focussed, and I was amazed at how hard he could  hit the ball. Next we did twenty minutes of high intensity ghosting, exhausting work, followed by ten minutes rest. All the while we were encouraged to drink a foul tasting electrolyte concoction, little and often. The final session before lunch was a best of five game match, with each game played to just five points. The object was to hit as many winners as possible. Armand won all five of these games, blazing the ball into the nicks.

Before we had a shower we were weighed, apparently so that we could be given the right amount to drink, and met Marcel in the airy works canteen for lunch, queuing up with the other workers for our food. The options looked pretty good but to my surprise, Pascal Neige appeared from the kitchen with a tray each for Armand and myself, loaded with two bottles, one of Badoit and one of the electrolyte drink, plus some risotto, delicious as it turned out, some fruit salad and separately, two bananas.

“So, how was the morning?” Marcel asked when we had sat down among the staff.

“Different but hard,” I said. “He’s a serious guy, Mister Kiefer.”

“Ah, Monsieur Kiefer, yes, he is a conditioning genius, an artist. I took him from Castres, you know, the rugby club. He transformed that team.”

“What, just for Armand?”

“You must understand by now, Jolyon. This is a serious project. I told you, if I make a project, I make it properly. Nothing is left to chance. For Armand,” he looked at his son proudly, “the best. I searched all over France for a trainer with the right approach. The scientific approach.” He grimaced. “Castres had been meat. You know rugby players? Neanderthals. See here, they say, I can do the enormous bench press. Watch me, I need the biggest pair of shorts. My thighs? They are nucleaire explosions. Now at Castres they are athletes, all athletes, not just the backs, the forwards, the front five. They move at speed. They leap. They rip the ball better than ever. Monsieur Kiefer was always my man. He was a good squash player, too, one of my best investments for sure.”

Marcel paused for a moment to put some food in his mouth, and continued while still chewing.

“Kiefer says, with Armand, it will take another twelve months. He has been with us for twelve months already. He specialises, it is the application of plyometrics.”

“Plyometrics?”

“You don’t know? Plyometrics, as Kiefer tells me, plyometrics makes the maximum, in the speed-based power. It was his university thesis, Université Louis Pasteur, always the best. Kiefer is a world expert in exercise physiology. Speed-power, how quickly you reach the ball, this is the difference. There is a maximum amount of force a muscle can produce when it contracts.” Marcel was animated now. Armand? He was looking the other way. “If the muscle is stretched while it is loaded just before the contraction, it will produce greater force. It is the storage of elastic energy. Kiefer concentrates on this with Armand. You will learn about this.

“Kiefer says it will take two years for Armand to reach his peak. This is why I have been announcing to L’Equipe, it will be the end of next year. Armand will win the world championship. Armand will become number one. I don’t say this to insult you, Jolyon. Julio Mattaz, it is Julio and you. We see you as our greatest rivals.”

These ambitions were awfully similar to my own.

“Yes, Razza,” I said. “It’s hard to see either of us beating Razz Mattaz.”

Marcel looked at Armand, and then at me, intensely. “There you are wrong, my friend. Mattaz has his weakness. We have studied him. We know it. Kiefer has catalogued his movement, his patterns, his shot selection. If it all comes too easily, you have nothing to fall back on when things go, what do you say, go awree? That is his weakness.”

“It’s ‘awry’, and I’m not so sure. You’ve been studying me too?”

“Of course, we make no secret, as I’ve said. As if your Sailor, tell me Sailor McCann doesn’t study your opponents, Armand naturally, also Magdi, Mansoor. We study you here, for sure, but tell me you don’t study Armand. Tell me you don’t learn from Monsieur Kiefer. And listen, Jolyon, I’m saying to you now, I am open. What I want Armand to learn from you, it is not your shots,” a very French gesture with his open hand, “Armand has shots. Not your pace, Kiefer gives him pace. He has to see your will, to understand it, to learn from it. To adopt your will, your red rosbif.”

Jeez, the will again. Wills seemed to be on the agenda, even if Marcel’s metaphor had strayed into underdone Sunday lunch territory.

“Manchester United,” Marcel carried on, shovelling down the crêpes he had taken for dessert. “How often do Man U score in the last minute? It is their will. If Armand can duplicate your will, he has the world. I tell you this frankly. It is the end of the jigsaw puzzle, for me the last piece. I tell you too, you must add our science to your programme, you must adopt the plyometrics. That is what we will give you. We show you our science freely, we do not hide it, you shall learn, you are an intelligent boy. From you, Armand learns, he must. Maybe it is the one thing I cannot teach, he learns the goal in the eighty ninth minute. That is why we invited you here. You will see. The week is designed around the will.”

He finished his crêpes. “I like you, Jolyon, I want you both to be successful.” He acknowledged a colleague passing our table and leant forward towards me. “Now, tell me this, why do you refuse the heart rate monitor?”

“I don’t know. It feels private.”

“We will do some performance tests, on Thursday and Friday. There the heart rate is essential.”

“I don’t mind it in proper tests,” I said. “That won’t feel like spying.”

Marcel looked hurt. “You disappoint me. Your heart rate in the entire programme, it gives an important insight, not for us to spy but for Kiefer to help you.”

“Just the same,” I said, “I think I’ll pass on that.”

Marcel’s eyes flared for a moment, then he took a breath as though making an effort to control himself. “Have it your way, my friend. It is your loss.

“Now, let me explain the programme for the rest of the week. This afternoon you will go back to the house for ninety minutes, take some rest, the pool, the computer. Return here, a review of your physical status with Marie-Emmanuelle, we will take a blood sample, and then the serious business of the day, two hours of circuits, directed by Monsieur Kiefer. We finish with stretches, a cold bath and a massage. That will be Marie-Emmanuelle. As well as physiotherapy, she has trained in Japan for her massage. Then home and dinner and bed.”

He addressed his son. “What do you think of the circuit training, Armand?”

Armand shrugged. “It is ’ard.”

“It is carefully, how do you say, tuned, for the individual. Monsieur Kiefer has already planned your circuits, Jolyon, different from Armand’s. He will refine them tomorrow when he sees how you have responded. This is where your heart rate would help. There is a big emphasis on monitoring, and also on symmetry, we must provide balance, to help movement. Squash is so one sided. I will be there at the start to give you the explanations.”

“Well, thanks, Marcel.” What could I say? “I’m looking forward to it.”

“So, that is today. Tomorrow morning, a ten kilometre run, in the hills, some high intensity ghosting and then lunch. Before the circuit work in the afternoon, half an hour of racquet skills, we will practise hitting nicks. I think you will be surprised by Armand. Then always at the end of the day, a massage.”

“I try to avoid those in Manchester,” I said. “Henry Clark is too brutal.”

Armand smiled and his father said, “I think you will find Marie-Emmanuelle agreeable.”

The idea of someone with a name as luscious as Marie-Emmanuelle giving me a massage did have an appeal, at least in theory. She might turn out in real life to be a toughie, a Dee-Anne or a Charlie, but you could always hope.

“Wednesday,” Marcel continued, “some practice hitting and ghosting, and then the performance tests. The main afternoon work will be a circuit. Thursday, more circuit work in the morning, ghosting, shuttle runs and another mini-match to finish. Friday a run paced by Kiefer on his mobilette and in the afternoon a full game, marked by Kiefer.

“Saturday…”

“Saturday,” I interrupted, “the dream is over and I go back to grey old Manchester.”

Marcel smiled.

Chapter Thirty One

It turned out that I would have a dream to take back with me to Manchester, Marie-Emmanuelle Colombey. We met Marie-Emmanuelle in a sort of medical suite attached to Marcel’s main manufacturing building. We had already provided a blood sample to a serious looking guy in a white coat, introduced as Dr Miahle. Marie-Emmanuelle was also wearing white, a sleeveless tailored tunic that almost but not quite reached her knees. Above them it faithfully followed every exaggerated curve of her body. The tunic wasn’t unsubtly tight, she was too, I struggled for the word, chic for that, but neither was it camouflage loose. It took all of my self control not to gawp. Marcel introduced us and said that Marie-Emmanuelle would spend five minutes checking Armand and would then ‘interview’ me. I sat around in the waiting room, speculating hopefully about Marie-Emmanuelle’s interview technique. Would I be grilled? Ooh please, ask me that again, Marie-Emmanuelle. How strong the psychological pressure? Dominate me, Marie-Emmanuelle, break me, mould me to your will. Sleep deprivation? I will not sleep in your presence.

Marie-Emmanuelle turned out to be thorough and professional, with English that in most respects was adequate and where applied to anatomy, superior to mine. Anatomy dominated the interview. Mine in terms of my history, my pains and strains, my muscle tightness, where I was sore after hard matches. We went into detail about my flexibility routines. All the while my responses were carefully noted in a manila folder. As for me and her anatomy, no formal notes. My surreptitious but minute scrutiny of the downy dark hair on her arms, the lopsided dimples on her cheeks when she smiled, the ears half hidden by black hair, the quaintly uneven lower teeth, was all recorded in multi-megabyte detail in my memory. Occupying even more storage space (would my brain ever have room for anything else?) were Marie-Emmanuelle’s bountiful bits, the ones the lads’ magazines would have concentrated on. I would happily have continued adding to the folder, but Marie-Emmanuelle concluded the interview.

“So, I will be seeing you later, after the circuit training,” here a smile, “and I will try to repair what Mr Kiefer has done.”

“I hope the damage is extensive.”

This elicited a cool look as I left the room.

I was apprehensive about the circuit work, afraid I’d be shown up by the weights Armand could lift or his one armed press up repetitions or something like that. I needn’t have worried. Marcel explained that Monsieur Kiefer had devised a different programme for me from Armand’s. Apart from being knackering, it was satisfying. There was an element of competition in the time we took for each element. Marcel stayed and watched for a while, shouting encouragement at me and surprisingly vitriolic abuse at Armand if I beat him, whereupon Armand would look sourly at his father but say nothing. Then we alternated, Monsieur Kiefer first demonstrating and then timing each routine. By the end of the two hours we were exhausted.

I knew well enough the importance of stretching after high intensity exercise, and we did twenty minutes. Then it was five hundred millilitres of protein slurp, and three two-minute dips in a tepid bath that felt far colder. We emerged in towelling dressing gowns. Armand made a call to Marie-Emmanuelle from a phone on the wall. Now, at last I thought, the massage.

When Marie-Emmanuelle arrived, same tunic I was pleased to see, she gestured to Armand to go first. “We will be twenty minutes,” she said. I chilled during the twenty minutes, trying to read a copy of L’Equipe. No radical squash pronouncements in that edition. But it was hard to concentrate.

Then it was my turn. “Do you have any soreness?” Marie-Emmanuelle asked as I lay down on the table.

“No,” I replied, “only all over. That was a hard session.”

“Then I will attend to you all over,” she said primly. Ooh goody.

Oh dear, more like. It was up there with the great disappointments in my life, for instance having the Sussex elephant for my mother. I’d thought Henry in Manchester was bad. Henry was nothing, a novice. This was seriously worse than Henry, quite intimate in terms of coverage, but so painful, real live pain.

“Deep massage,” Marie-Emmanuelle explained in response to my protests. What did she have for fingers? Forged titanium rods? If it had been the interrogation I’d been dreaming about earlier I’d have confessed to everything inside sixty seconds. And then made stuff up for the next nineteen minutes. 

“You are very tight,” Marie-Emmanuelle said, “I have to tell these muscles to relax.” Let me tell them, Marie-Emmanuelle, I’d rather do it myself.

When she eventually finished I croaked, “Thank you.” It had felt far longer than twenty minutes. “You are very strong.”

“Thank you,” she echoed, with a flashing smile that propelled me far down the road to forgiveness. “You have nice muscles. I will see you tomorrow.”

Armand also smiled when I emerged, as if he knew what I’d been through. “We get dressed and go ’ome,” he said.

’Ome was where I wanted to be, and quickly, as far away from the massage room as possible and closer to food. On the credit side, I had to admit to a pleasant feeling of languor in my mangled muscles. Furthermore, I slept well that night in the valley of the four poster. At breakfast I felt really fresh, with no hint of tiredness. This was just as well, as Tuesday’s programme was a hard one, starting with the 10K run on a hilly route above the town, paced by the dour Monsieur Kiefer on his Mobilette. The circuit in the afternoon was edgy with its competitive element. My weights and reps had been adjusted, and Armand and I invariably finished within seconds of each other. Towards the end I had to battle to maintain concentration. I was starting to dread the final act of the day’s training, the massage.

Again it was Armand who went first. He emerged the prescribed twenty minutes later with another rueful smile, rubbing his shoulders. “She is, ’ow do you say, an assassin, a killer.”

“Oh well,” I replied, “my turn to die.”

Marie-Emmanuelle was writing some notes as I went in. Without looking up she said, “I heard you say that.”

“Oh no, Marie-Emmanuelle, you don’t understand. That’s English irony. Sometimes we use a word that’s opposite to the meaning we intend. Having your hands on me will only be a pleasure.”

A sideways glance from a brown eye. “So,” she asked, “any soreness today?”

“Well strangely enough, I’ve reviewed my entire body. Nothing is sore today. Does that mean that my massage is gentle?”

“Of course not. Not sore today means my work yesterday was good. It’s logic. We must repeat so you are not sore tomorrow.”

“Can’t you put some local anaesthetic in the oil? Aromatherapy or something?”

She put her hand on her hip and arched her eyebrows. “Do not say aromatherapy in ’ere.” Her smile was like an astronomer’s gamma ray burst. “I will have to punish you.”

“I will shout.”

“No one will hear. The room, it is, I do not know the word, insonorisé.”

“I’m afraid you mean soundproofed.”

“That is correct. Under data laws, in France, nothing leaves the treatment room.”

“Not even to Monsieur Darnaud?”

“Of course not.”

“So I can’t expect any help?”

“Of course not.”

It was probably worse than the day before, but with the banter it was better fun, and the twenty minutes were quickly over. Again through the evening, as the memory of the pain faded, the benefits of the treatment were apparent. Lucky Armand to have this every day.

The performance tests on Wednesday were not so different from what I was accustomed to in Manchester. There was though a greater emphasis on the performance of the heart. Armand and I were hooked up to an ECG machine while we were on the treadmill for the VO₂ max measurement. As in Manchester, scheduled last was the bleep test. Marcel had already visited us twice that morning, and he appeared again as we were about to start. Two strips of what looked like heavy groundsheet ran on the gym floor alongside the array of weights and multi-gyms. “It is for grip,” Marcel said. There was no CD player. The beeps, Marcel informed me, would be played over the sound system. I didn’t mind how they were played. I’d completed all twenty one levels of the bleep test the last three times I’d done it, eliciting a ‘well done, son’ from Sailor and a ‘that’s the way you do it’ from Zoë. I’d refrained from asking Armand how he performed, confident that I’d beat him. Sailor told me that very few sportsmen can reach, let alone complete, the final stage.

We duly set off, and the early levels were jokey, as they usually are. It takes nine seconds to do each twenty metre length at level one. Not difficult. Usain Bolt goes nearly five times that far in nine seconds. Around level seven or eight we went quiet, as you usually do. At level ten, not at all usual, I started to become aware that something was wrong, oh fuck, the ground sheet was shifting when I turned, making each interval harder than it should have been. I glanced at Armand. He didn’t appear to be having any problem. By level fourteen, when you are going exactly twice as fast as level one, still normally a cruise for me, I was having to work hard. As I turned in the transition to fifteen I noticed Marcel whisper something into Monsieur Kiefer’s ear. Armand was grunting but doing okay. Fifteen was a serious strain for me and by sixteen, with reduced purchase as I slowed and then accelerated at each turn, I could hardly keep up. I just managed level seventeen, utterly exhausted, and had to stop.

Armand carried on. Nooo! With a huge ‘aarrghhh’ at each turn he managed to complete level eighteen and collapsed.

Straight away Marcel was all over him as he heaved air back into his lungs. Effusive congratulations in excited French. As I sat and repaid my artificially severe oxygen debt with poxy Aix-en-Provence O₂ molecules, I saw Monsieur Kiefer removing the start and finish markers and rolling up both lengths of ground sheet. Getting rid of the evidence. I’d been set up. The bleep test had been rigged.

“So Jolyon,” Marcel said, “maybe Armand has been learning the will from you this week. Level seventeen is impressive, well done, but I’m delighted that my son has made a personal best today.”

“Good effort,” I grunted, “he’s very fit.”

“These tests are nothing.”  You creep. “Don’t be disappointed. What is important is performance during a match. We will see on Friday how you really compare.”

“You are quiet today,” Marie-Emmanuelle said during my massage.

It was true. I was totally, mortally pissed off about the bleep test. I should have quit as soon as I began to slip. It was just that it hadn’t seemed serious at first; I thought I could cope. By the time I was struggling it would have been lame to pull out. What could be done? The only answer, I decided, as Marie-Emmanuelle’s fingers probed down through my muscles to my very bones, was to thrash Armand on Friday, three games to love, minimum points. Marcel would see what will was. I would show will to both of them. And show that zombie accomplice in his shell suit. Not that it would have been Monsieur Kiefer’s idea. The idea clearly came from Marcel. As for Armand, I doubted he had any notion of what was going on. I hadn’t felt as strongly about anything since Riley had conned me out of our match in Lancaster. Poor Armand was going to have to be humiliated.

“Have I upset you?” Marie-Emmanuelle asked as she manipulated my feet. “You have said nothing.”

“No, no, not at all.”

When she had finished the massage Marie-Emmanuelle stopped at the head of the couch and surprised me by running her fingers down my cheek.

“Something has happened. You will be better tomorrow.”

“I will certainly be better tomorrow. And then on Friday, I’m looking forward to Friday.”

The circuit work on Thursday morning was seriously hard, at least for me. Armand appeared to have a lighter programme, though I couldn’t be sure. Monsieur Kiefer had devised an intense session for my legs. The reps were fewer but the loads much higher than I was accustomed to.

“Kiefer sees more potential for you,” Marcel shouted to me when he popped in halfway through the session. “He tells me he thinks you can be significantly quicker. It will be a matter of strength, the major muscle groups in your legs, and the plyometrics. We will give you the programme to take home.”

I grunted an acknowledgement, too knackered to say anything more. It felt weird afterwards in the light ghosting session we did before lunch. My legs had lost all their power. I knew this would be temporary, and that if I could sustain the bouncing movement at this workload for a month, doing it no more than three times a week, there might be benefits from my additional strength. Anything to make up the difference with Razza.

Armand and I were once again given a lunch prescribed by Pascal Neige. For the first time, I was issued with more drink than Armand. On the previous days he had been given at least half a litre more, which I put down to his size and the fact that he must have sweated more than me.

“A good morning, no?” Marcel said when he joined us.

“I’m going to need Marie-Emmanuelle this evening,” I replied. “My legs are dead.”

Marcel dismissed this. “What is it the Americans say, ‘no gain without pain’? You will be okay.”

We were just finishing the meal when Marcel took a call on his Blackberry. He listened and nodded and said a few ‘ouis’ before returning the phone carefully to its leather pouch.

“Okay,” he said, “we have a change of plan. Tomorrow I have to visit my mother, in La Ciotat. An issue with her lawyer. I regret I will be away for the whole day. So we will play the match today, and transfer the afternoon’s schedule to tomorrow.”

Not a good idea at all, from the way I was feeling. “I’m a bit tired from the circuits,” I said. “We can still play the match tomorrow.”

“Oh no, my friend. For me this is the highlight, your match with Armand. This I must see. I must discover if Armand has learned to cope with your English whirlwind, your tornado as we say in French, your tempest. You must feel some obligation, Jolyon, of course you do. I would not miss this.

“It is important,” he went on. “Take some rest, for sure. We will do the match at five o’clock. That is plenty of time to recover. Go back to the château, relax, chill out.”

I knew even as I nodded agreement that I should have said no. Even in the week before a competition Sailor would never have given me a session like the one earlier. It was another set up, that was obvious. Marcel had manoeuvred me into another loss to Armand. This time not in an easy-to-dismiss performance test. What had Sailor said? ‘Whatever you do, don’t lose to Armand’.

“Until later, then,” Marcel said as he got up from the bench.

Fuck.

Armand drove us both back to the château. I’d have preferred to find Marie-Emmanuelle and get her to massage my legs. Anything to get some life back into them. But there again, I reflected as I snoozed the afternoon away beside the Darnaud’s pool, it would take a lot more than a massage to put me into shape for a match with Armand. What could I do? Drop the pace, play slow ball? There were some on the circuit who could change their game, throw in a stream of lobs and drops. Dave could do it, back in Manchester, so could Riley. It could be difficult for opponents to adjust to. Problem was, I’d never done it, didn’t know how. I only had one pace, as fast as I could go. Only not today. Whirlwind today was going to be a limp force five.

We made it back to the centre at four. One thing was definite, I wouldn’t go on court beaten and I went through my normal pre-match preparation. I visualised getting Armand behind me, dominating the rallies, crushing his spirit. I did a full warm up, ignoring the sensation that my quads had turned to blancmange. At ten to five Armand and I walked into the gallery area behind the main court. At least twenty spectators had distributed themselves on the four levels of tiered seating. Marcel introduced me to a young man with a shaven head whom I vaguely recognised.

“Here is Alphonse Manasset. You know each other?”

“Oh yes. I saw you in Hong Kong.”

Alphonse was an up and coming French player who had occasionally made it out of qualifying into the first round of the bigger tournaments. I remembered him for the lurid shoes he wore. Then my heart sank. Sitting right at the end of the front row, unaccompanied, was Marie-Emmanuelle, luscious in a short skirt and tee shirt, looking more girlish than she did in her uniform. Not fair, I didn’t want to lose in front of Marie-Emmanuelle. The ever present Monsieur Kiefer was there. Marcel explained that he was going to mark the match.

I paused for a moment before going on court for the knock up, pushing everything out of my mind apart from the game. Monsieur Kiefer threw us a ball, Armand and I shook hands and we were off.

I was taken aback by the sheer fierceness of Armand’s hitting during the knock up. He was more intense than I’d ever seen him. The intensity carried through into the game. The control I knew about, and the brutal strength, but not the passion. That rarely if ever showed with Armand. I had to respond. Move up thirty centimetres, my squash brain knew it, push. Trouble was, my drained legs wouldn’t do it. Something extra was needed and nothing extra was available. I resorted to an attritional game, fighting, scrapping, defending. Six all the score, seven all, then bang bang bang, a stream of unplayable winners from Armand. Fifteen minutes gone according to the big clock at the back of the gallery. First game to Armand 11-7. I had done my best but the result of the match was already written on the wall, or at least pencilled in.

I was going to lose.

I desperately considered the options as I towelled myself down. Normally I’d have concentrated harder, hit every shot tighter, pushed even further forward. Today pushing wasn’t an option. I would simply have to make winning as difficult as possible for Armand. I would give him nothing. He would have to wring every point out of me. Maybe along the way he would start to have doubts, tighten up, make a few mistakes. Right now he was the opposite of tight, standing with Marcel and Alphonse, calmly taking in advice.

“Quinze secondes,” Monsieur Kiefer called. Here we go.

For a while it worked. Two all after five desperate minutes became six all after fifteen. None of Armand’s six had been errors from me. Seven all, eight all, a gut wrenching rally, come on! Then Armand did the ridiculous again. In quick succession, off tight shots that were all but clinging to the wall, he hit three clean dead nicks. Each time the ball fizzed off his strings across the court, and rolled without a hint of bounce. Unplayable. I felt my shoulders slump. Forty two minutes and I was two love down.

You’d never have thought twenty people could make such as much noise as we left the court, clapping and cheering. Marcel was beaming, Armand looking sheepishly pleased. I sat down with my towel over my head. What now? Well, take a drink, change your shirt, get on with it. More of the same was all I could offer. Or try to offer. The second game had taken so much out of me. Realistically, I had nothing left. I looked across at Armand and his team. Marcel was laughing.

“Alors, allez!” he said with gusto, pushing Armand in the direction of the court, and exchanged a high five with Alphonse.

At that something snapped in me. It wasn’t Armand I was playing. Not at all. It became Marcel. For all his urbanity and his generosity, Marcel was a cheat. Not some euphemism: gamesmanship, professionalism, slanting the odds. This was naked c-h-e-a-t-i-n-g. I’d suffered several cheats in my short time in sports and I didn’t like it. Cheating brought bile to my throat. Cheating was Ron Clarke in the Senior Steeplechase; that still rankled. Cheating was Siobhan in my first ever squash match, when I didn’t know the rules. What a little tit she had been with her blatant obstruction. And worse than either of them, cheating was nobber Riley, the cynical one. Now here, cheating was Marcel Darnaud. He glanced at me then shared a self satisfied observation with Alphonse. He had won. He knew it.

I was incandescent. Would I allow it? No way.

The adrenaline took me all thirty of the centimetres forward that I needed. The first point of the third game, I was where I had to be, right on the T. I overwhelmed Armand through that long first point. He fought and fought, scrambling in the back corners. Finally he was late reaching the best struck shot I had played the whole game. What a satisfying way to win a rally. As I went to retrieve the ball from near the back wall, I found myself less than two metres from where Marcel was sitting. We locked eyes as I slowly wiped my hand on the glass. Eventually Marcel looked away. He was embarrassed.

I managed to sustain the effort through the whole of the third game. Armand raised his level too. It was the only game of the match of real quality. I kept thinking of the smirking Marcel, the high five with Alphonse. Sheer indignation kept me going. Armand meanwhile did everything that he did well, getting big applause for each point he won. It was never going to be enough. He led nine eight, two points from victory but there were no miraculous nicks at the finish. I took the game 11-9, another twenty knackering minutes. This time the crowd was silent as we came off court.

Now the attitude in Team Darnaud was different. A grim-faced Marcel was jabbing Armand in the chest. Alphonse had his back to both of them, scratching his head. Armand would be tired after that, I thought, and disappointed having got so close. He wouldn’t realise I was spent. No amount of adrenaline could sustain me further at the level of the third game.

Sailor would often talk about a great player of the nineteen sixties and seventies called Jonah Barrington. ‘Bar-rington’ was how he pronounced the name, though apparently bars were the last place you would find the man. Barrington had wrenched the world crown from a stream of talented Egyptians and Pakistanis, and then defended it against some great Aussies in the second half of his career. On one occasion he took the British Open crown in a match lasting two hours, and had to be literally carried off the court. Barrington apparently was rock hard in the manner Sailor approved of. He later wrote a book, Murder in the Squash Court, maybe inspired by that two hour match.

What followed between Armand and me would have qualified for an extra Jonah Barrington chapter. The match became attritional on both our parts; neither of us would take any risks. My legs had gone and with them my speed, but so had the snap Armand had displayed in the first three games, the quality of his striking. There were numerous lets, to his credit accurately called by Monsieur Kiefer. Marcel was shouting instructions after almost every point. If he’d carried on like that in a proper tournament he’d have been ejected. There was nothing I could do about it, and anyway it wasn’t helping Armand. I won the fourth game 11-8 after all of twenty more minutes, without making a single error. Coming off the court I was rewarded by a smile from Marie-Emmanuelle. From the spectators? Further silence. From Marcel, serious abuse for his son. Armand looked dejected.

Marcel’s invective had an effect, though. Armand must have been tired, but anything he was suffering was magnified in me by the strain my legs had been through that morning. Armand tried to attack at the start of the fifth game. It must have taken some of his remaining strength and I managed to soak it up. We soon returned to boring make-no-mistake attrition. After every point, and every one of the frequent lets, I paused to visualise Marcel’s face at the moment I won. A highlight for me was a lengthy argument between Marcel and Monsieur Kiefer about one of his decisions. To Marcel’s fury Kiefer wouldn’t back down. How sweet. I was beating Marcel through his agent Armand on the court. He wouldn’t meet my eye when I wiped my hand and stared at him through the back wall between points.

Armand looked drained, pausing for longer and longer between points. I built up a good lead, seven four. Then Armand brought the audience to life with one of his runs of nicks. It took him to eight seven and I was three points from defeat. It was never going to be enough though and after exactly two hours and a mental nod to Mr Bar-rington I won my first match point to finish the most exhausting game of squash I’d ever been involved in.

Armand’s handshake was heartfelt and he insisted I leave the court first to polite applause from the remaining spectators. Marcel wouldn’t acknowledge me, and I went to thank Monsieur Kiefer for the marking. He wouldn’t let go of my hand, repeating, “Good, good, good, formidable, very good.”

As I separated myself from Monsieur Kiefer I was astonished to see Marcel frogmarching Armand away. Monsieur Kiefer also departed, leaving me on my own to collect three saturated shirts and the rest of my kit. Maybe some stretches before my shower, and was I looking forward to the shower.

I stopped to look at the court before I left. The floor was spattered with sweat, the glass back smeared where we had repeatedly wiped our hands. I wondered, why had I made such an effort? No ranking points at stake, no journalists to write about the game. It was, I think, an aversion to being controlled. Control was what my mother wanted. Marcel had tried to contrive control during the week with his manipulation of the training and the performance tests and this evening’s match. Winning this evening more than made up for losing the bleep test.

“You did well.”

I jumped with surprise to see Marie-Emmanuelle, now in her white tunic, at the entrance to the gallery.

“Hey, you gave me a fright.”

“I’m sorry. I came to insist you make your warm down.”

“I was going to do some stretches.”

“Yes, and the ice bath.”

“Oh, not this evening, Marie-Emmanuelle. I don’t think I could face an ice bath.”

“Today it is more important. Much damage to your muscles, that game.”

It made sense. “I suppose so.”

“And then I will give you a massage.”

“No, that’s kind. I simply couldn’t cope with one of your massages this evening.”

She laughed. “This will be different. This will be a healing massage. Come. Make your stretches. Have your shower. I will prepare the bath. And then the massage.”

I was too tired to argue. As long as she moderated her attack.

Half an hour later I was stretched out on my front with a towel over my bum enjoying the most sublime sensations as Marie-Emmanuelle stroked the fatigue away from the muscles in my legs. She was using an entirely different technique from before. The high-tech table was lowered and she was kneeling while she worked. “I learn this in Turkey,” she explained. ‘Tourkay’, but who cares. “It is a special oil. It is long strokes. It is therapy.”

“Oh it certainly is therapy. It feels wonderful.”

Next it was my back and shoulders and then I was ordered to turn over, my head comfortably on a pillow. I watched Marie-Emmanuelle through half closed eyes. She was lovely, maybe older than I had first thought, nearer thirty than twenty five, far too curvy to be a squash player. The massage was hard work, the continuous movement, the bending from the waist. I could see faint perspiration on her forehead and upper lip. Well, I was happy to lie back. I’d done enough perspiring myself that evening. Then I noticed something else. It came like an electric shock. Marie-Emmanuelle wasn’t wearing a bra.

How had I missed that? Marie-Emmanuelle breasts were behaving as free agents inside her tunic. The women I usually saw, Zoë, Carmen and other squash players, had small breasts that didn’t swing around much. Marie-Emmanuelle’s did. It was lucky they weren’t musicians because they were out of time, the swing of one slightly behind the swing of the other, depending on how she moved. Inevitably the notion of studying her breasts more intimately sprang to mind, and where springing was concerned my dick wasn’t far behind.

Marie-Emmanuelle must have noticed. She asked directly, “What are you looking at?”

Oh well, in for a penny. “Your breasts.”

She stopped the massage and knelt up, shoulders back, which brought the items under discussion into greater prominence. “That is not polite.”

“That’s true. You must suffer a lot of impoliteness.”

“I don’t understand.”

“A lot of men must stare at your breasts. They are very attractive breasts.”

“Thank you.”

From the way my dick was behaving, it clearly shared my opinion.

“Please don’t stop the massage,” I said.

“So you can watch my breasts?”

“Well, partly, but the massage is wonderful after that game. I might be able to walk again if you keep going. Walk as far as the car park anyway. I don’t know in whose car though. Armand has disappeared.

“But if I’m honest I would mainly like to watch your breasts. With your permission.”

Marie-Emmanuelle shrugged and carried on with the massage. After a few more minutes of watching I became aware that the focus of her massage was progressing. It was closing in on the part of me that had not been stressed at all in the two hours of the match. Marie-Emmanuelle cast my tented towel aside. “Ah,” she said. “You are not absolutely fatigued?”

“It appears not,” I said.

“Then we must achieve a balance,” she replied. She stood up, unbuttoned her tunic and let it fall to the floor. No bra, manifestly. Just a pair of plain white knickers. She walked over to the door and locked it, then returned, knelt down again and reached under the couch. This brought the twin subjects of our conversation disturbingly close to my face. With a whining sound the couch descended to what must have been its lowest setting. Marie-Emmanuelle moved astride me and sat back on my knees. In direct contrast to the couch my dick had assumed its highest setting.

“Have I your permission to continue?”

“It appears I have no option. I am at your mercy.”

Continue she did, down my chest and stomach and then to the centre of my universe, if we consider my priorities at that moment. The cosmic rod was showing definitive signs of wanting an equalising two hour work out.

“You have a beautiful body, Jolyon,” she said as she slid her hands up as far as my neck and down as far as my absolutely fatigued thighs, now trapped between her legs. This continued for several minutes until she stood up again, slipped off her knickers and without asking permission stepped over me and lowered herself onto me.

She bent forward, her nose almost touching mine, and looked into my eyes. “It is best like this. You do not have to move.”

“Okay, if you insist.”

Watching Marie-Emmanuelle do the moving was too much for me. I came straight away.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “You’re too sexy.”

“It means nothing. I demand you make the massage on me.”

“It would be ungrateful of me to refuse.”

“Let me lie where you are.”

We exchanged places.

“Now, it is necessary to apply some oil to my body.” She giggled as I complied by squirting the oil into her deep navel, over her nipples and into her pubic hair.

“Is that the way?”

“Yes. Now, you have seen my massage. Make it the same way.”

I think it was the sexiest experience of my life massaging Marie-Emmanuelle, from her neck all the way down to her feet and then all the way back. She lay still, with closed eyes and parted lips. Her skin glistened under my hands. When I eventually concentrated my efforts halfway between her neck and her feet her breathing became progressively deeper until suddenly she half sat up with a series of grunts, eyes tight shut, her face contorted in a violent orgasm. When she had finished coming she lay back, breasts rising and falling with her breathing.

“Oh thank you,” she whispered. “You are very good.”

“Good teacher,” I replied, and bent to kiss her lips. “I’ve never made love to anyone before without kissing them.”

“Wait,” she said, and stood up. She went over to a cupboard and took out some towels and pillows. These she spread on the floor and invited me to lie with her. This was much more normal and tender. I enjoyed the touching of our faces as much as the touching of everything else.

Afterwards while we were just lying there she said, “That was a hard game you had.”

“It was the hardest. I really didn’t want to lose. It was Marcel...”

“I know,” she interrupted. “I heard him talking about it yesterday evening with Monsieur Kiefer. After you had gone. Kiefer was to fatigue you today and they change the plan. The match today, not tomorrow.”

“Why didn’t you warn me?”

“I was away all today, in Marseille.” She looked at me with solemn eyes. “I didn’t need to warn you. You won.”

“Well I got a good massage out of it, anyway. Armand is lucky. To get a massage every day.”

“He does not get this massage.”

I smiled and kissed her. “Well I was dead lucky. Maybe he’s not as lucky as that. It’s hard to tell what Armand’s thinking. My French isn’t good enough to speak to him, not really, and his English is no better.”

“I know him since three years,” Marie-Emmanuelle said. “He hates his father.” ‘’E ’Ates’ is what she said, but I understood.

“Really? You can’t mean that.”

“It is true. Every time his father shout at him, he, how do you say, makes the grimaces?”

“Uh, I see, he pulls faces.”

“Yes, when his father is not looking. But I notice. He is still a little boy. Some day this will stop. Maybe when Armand becomes mature.”

“When he grows up, you mean. You’re probably right. I wouldn’t take it. My mother’s like that. Except she doesn’t have any good features. Marcel does. He can be a decent guy.”

“He is a good man when he succeeds,” she paused, “when he... gets his way?”

“That’s it. Gets his way. I can see that. He’s very generous. He’s been very generous here. Apart from setting me up to lose.”

“I worry,” she said. “Since three months. Armand is heavier. I feel it in his muscles.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think,” she frowned, “I suspect, an anabolic.” ‘Anabolique’ was how it came out but the meaning was clear in any accent.

“You can’t be serious. He could get caught so easily.”

“Marcel is too clever for that.” ‘Clevvair’. “Armand was eighty seven kilograms, always. Now since, I think, the summer, he is stronger for sure. He is what, ninety three, ninety four kilograms? I ’ave no proof. But it is not the cassoulet.”

She looked me in the eyes, so seriously, and put her index finger on my lips. “You must not say. I ’ave no proof.”

She presented an alluring sight as she sat up and stretched. “He is still not strong enough. That match this evening, that was to give Armand confidence.”

“Didn’t work, did it. I felt so pissed off being manipulated by Marcel. I don’t mind being manipulated by you, though.”

She smiled. “You are looking at my breasts again. No more manipulations. We must go.”

Marie-Emmanuelle drove me back to the Darnauds’ château. I got out, kissed her through the window and said my thanks. She smiled and drove away without looking back. Everything was quiet; some lights were on. The mighty entrance wasn’t locked. I left my bag at the bottom of the staircase and went hunting for some food. I was starving.

Finding the kitchen was easy. It was next to the dining room, and huge. I retrieved the best part of two baguettes from a large waste bin and found some butter and pâté in one of the fridges, plus a carton of tropical fruit juice. With this lot inside me I felt better and heaved myself step by step as quietly as I could up the staircase to bed. Not quietly enough. Marcel emerged from a door on the landing.

“Where have you been?” His eyes were fierce.

“I had a massage with Marie-Emmanuelle. Then she brought me back. I’ve just had something to eat in the kitchen. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Why have you been so long?”

“I haven’t been so long. I’m tired, you won’t be surprised to know. That was a hard match. Then you and Armand disappeared.”

“I had to speak to Armand.”

“Well, I had to get back here and Marie-Emmanuelle offered.” Better not go into more detail on the extent of Marie-Emmanuelle’s offerings. This appeared to be a sensitive subject for Marcel.

“You should have called me.”

“I didn’t want to trouble you, and Marie-Emmanuelle was very friendly.” I kept a straight face. Marcel looked at me suspiciously.

“Next time call me.” If the alternative is a massage from Marie-Emmanuelle Colombey, probably not, mate.

What a day.

Chapter Thirty Two

My time in Aix-en-Provence had helped. I understood Marcel now, mighty rich and mighty generous with it, good company and watch out, alarm bells, sonny, utterly not to be trusted. He was far too passionate about his son winning. Armand himself, him I’d never understand even if I did a degree in French and a postgrad in psychoanalysis. How could anyone be so good at something and yet so passive? One thing, I’d never now lose to him when it mattered. Armand’s will to win came from his father. Mine had its origins in my dominant parent too, my mother. Big difference: mine came from inside, founded on spite; Armand’s from outside, founded on what, fear?

Marcel had phoned me during lunch on the Friday. ‘It was your will, Jolyon, nothing else, Armand knows it. Armand learns. Thank you.’ Hmm, the will wasn’t something you could teach, I’d have thought. On the training front, the visit had been good for me. I had picked up tips from Monsieur Kiefer that I wanted to incorporate into my routines in Manchester. The principal gain came from the match against Armand, the knowledge that I could push myself further than I’d imagined. If it came down to murder in the squash court, it would always be me the perp.

After Aix-en-Provence it was the three year-end tournaments, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi for the big one, the World Open. Good results in Kuwait and Qatar, including a win over Trevor Cooper, then ranked three, should have taken me into the World Open in a confident mood. Problem was, I was seeded to meet Razza in the quarter final. At least I’d find out if he was as good as I thought.

Was Razza good? Was the lake in Salt Lake City salty! Razza destroyed me. The score was 11-8, 11-6, 11-4. He pulled away in a depressingly arithmetic progression. I all but gave up in frustration.

I returned to a freezing cold December Manchester with the full-on glums. I’d been embarrassed on court against Razza, made to look a novice. He had ghosted about, never physically stressed, controlling the ball with supernatural skill. It wasn’t as if I’d played badly. I had done everything I did well, moving better than ever, onto the ball so early, timing every shot with a subconscious ease that comes with peak condition. Fat lot of good. Razz had taken the ball as early as me, he had reached virtually everything, his length was immaculate, and as if all that wasn’t enough, he was incredibly deceptive. Time and again I’d be wrong-footed as I set off in the direction his shot had to go, only for him to flex his wrist and send it in another direction at the last moment, or crack it deep with zero backswing. This took extra energy out of me, and for all the game was short, I was knackered when I shook hands and hurried off the court.

 Coming up to New Year I shook myself out of the glums and made a resolution. Zoë was right about attitude. The way the calendar worked I had thirteen months. The big chance was next year’s World Open in November. Even if Razz was way ahead in the rankings, he could always lose there. And if it was me who won, not an impossibility, that would be it, think of it, world champion! The far side of the World Open, the last big tournament before my birthday, was the Tournament of Champions at the end of the following January. The ToC in Grand Central Terminal New York, a glam tournament that all the players wanted to do well in. If for some reason the points were close at that stage, winning the ToC might be my final step onto the top rung. What a place to claim the number one spot.

The clichés came out as I looked forward to the next year. It ain’t over till it’s over. You’ve got to be in it to win it. Winning is not a result, it’s an attitude. All hot happy clappy air but never mind, that would be my attitude.

On the credit side, at the start of the year my six hundred and thirty seven point five points as World Open quarter finalist had taken me to my highest ever ranking, number six, with an average of seven hundred and two points. Also, I had qualified for the season-ending World Series finals at Queen’s Club in London. A great opportunity to kick the year off well. The season’s top eight players competed for a huge prize by squash standards, thirty three thousand dollars, big prestige, too, and a fantastic venue, the all glass court erected on the main tennis court at Queen’s. Not, that is, out in the open. The court was set up inside an enormous science fiction cube, a sort of mutated bouncy castle. That was how I found myself in the lobby of the nearby Hilton Hotel with a group invited out for a meal by Marcel Darnaud.

The meal became progressively more enjoyable. I’d wanted to be closer to Zoë, for the pleasure of looking at the loveliest eyes on the planet, and enjoying being on the same page as her in the rankings for the first time. Next best thing though: it was great talking to Sasha Cremorne, with her nose rings and her ear rings and her eyebrow rings. I told her about the music scene, down in Sussex and up where I lived now. I promised to take her to a party some time. I described the chaotic London markets, where to shop in Petticoat Lane and Camden Lock, yes Brick Lane, but avoid the restaurants. I told her I’d personally accompany her on a shopping expedition in Manchester if she’d make it up there. She surprised me by explaining that she and Trevor Cooper, my opponent at one o’clock prompt the following day, weren’t really together now. He was a great guy, Trev, they’d had something going way back in Sydney, but it had petered out.

The meal didn’t go on late: too many earnest squash players with matches to think about. Sasha and I fell behind the others on the short walk back to the hotel. Everyone had dispersed from the lobby by the time we arrived.

“How about a drink, Sasha?” I asked. It wasn’t yet ten o’clock.

“Sure, I’d like that.”

The bar had several Aussie lagers available and Sasha opted for a Swan, a west Australian beer apparently.

“What’s that?” she demanded when my pint of orange squash arrived. “Jeez, you’ll wash yourself away from the inside. Trev is always up for a beer.”

“Nah, I find the only way to deal with substances is not to have any of them, at all. Anyway, Sailor would kill me.”

Next morning, when I stumbled down to what I’d hoped would still be breakfast at half past eleven, having left Sasha fast asleep in the monster bed, Sailor did kill me, as near as. He was hanging around in the hotel lobby, the last person I wanted to see. I braced myself as he walked briskly up to me.

“What are you doing, son?” Each word emphatically separated from its neighbour, and he didn’t care who heard. “I’ve been trying to phone you for three hours now. What is going on?”

My guilt must have been all too apparent.

“You horny, immature...” brace yourself, Jolyon, “...child.” Phew, I got away with that one. “You friggin’ idiot. This game today is key to your whole season.”

Oh come on, Sailor, it’s not that bad. “Trevor flippin’ Cooper!” An effective variation on tmesis, though I doubted Sailor was thinking of it in those terms.

“Where do ye keep yer brains? In yer...” another hesitation, “...friggin’ penis?”

He looked around and turned as if to walk away, and then turned back, waving a finger under my nose. “I’m done, done with you, son, Jesus wept.”

I was saved by the arrival of Razza Mattaz, who appeared with Ruth from one of the lifts. “Hey Sailor,” he said as he took in the scene, “the coach’s burden is an onerous one.” He signalled me away with his eyes, put an arm around Sailor’s shoulder and ushered him off in the direction of the nearby café.

I hurried away. I was well knackered, well and truly. Sasha had been, how can I put it, demanding. We’d gone on for ages. At one stage just for the fun of it I’d asked her a pointless question.

“Sash, do you know what the word ‘lascivious’ means?”

“No.”

No surprise there. Then when we were well and truly finished, and so was I in the other sense, with murky winter daylight just visible outside, since Sasha had insisted on having the curtains open, she switched on the TV. Porn for goodness sake. Half an hour into that I said, “We’ve done better than them.”

“We haven’t done it that way.”

“For fuck’s sake.”

“Wouldn’t you like it like that?”

“I’ve never tried.”

I had to admit the idea did have its attractions. So it was one more time, like the lyric in one of my dad’s songs, all the while watching the bored twosome on the TV. Eventually we flopped back and as I lay there with my chest heaving, thank goodness for all those four hundred metre reps at the EIS, Sailor, Sasha put her arms around me, kissed the end of my nose and said, “That was good.” Then in her businesslike way she pulled the duvet over both of us and fell asleep, head on my chest, arms around me. I cleared her hair away from my face, reflected for a moment that Sailor would have insisted on proper fluid replacement, and fell asleep myself.

With hindsight I should have given more consideration to the advice Sailor would have given if I’d consulted him the previous evening. I’ve the possibility of shagging my balls off with this crash hot Aussie girl, Sailor, all night. Or do you think I should simply go to bed?

Well, son, I can see the dilemma. She certainly is a sexy piece of work, well stacked as we used tae say in the tenement, two o’ the best. If ye can confine it to a quickie it might relax you, help you sleep.

No, it wouldn’t have been that. At quarter past twelve, having eaten a bread roll pinched from a discarded room service tray in my corridor, I was getting changed in the splendid trad locker room in Queen’s Club, as far on the other side of the room from Trevor Cooper as I could manage. Razza came over and sat down beside me.

“How are you feeling?”

“Awful.”

“You look it. Some bridge building to be done there. Sailor is not pleased.”

“I feel an idiot.”

“Well, you can only start from where you are now. Maybe an apology. The best thing would be to beat Trevor.”

The Times Online, January 9th

World Series Squash, Queen’s

The first pool matches in the squash World Series finals were played today at the Queen’s Club. World champion and world number one Julio Mattaz had a straightforward win, 11-9, 11-7 against Magdi Gamal. In the same group, Armand Darnaud surprised the seedings by beating Hosni el Baradei, ranked six places above him. This was the only one of the four matches to go to three games.

Darnaud was impressive in seeing off the lightning quick el Baradei 7-11, 11-8, 11-8. Afterwards El Baradei said, “Armand was impressive today. I didn’t expect him to be so consistent. With Razz in the group it’s going to be hard for me to qualify for the semis now.”

In the other group Jan Berry dominated all the way against Mansoor Ali Khan, to win 11-8, 11-7. Earlier, in the opening match, Trevor Cooper reversed two recent defeats by Jolyon Jacks in a 11-6, 11-5 win in only twenty five minutes. A delighted Cooper said, “It was time someone put Jolyon in his place. He has come up so quickly.” A tired looking Jacks said, “I just didn’t have it today. Maybe next time.”

Queen’s was a disaster. I lost my other two pool matches, one of them watched by Grandpa, the worst possible start to my crucial year. You would think it marked a low point for me, packing my bags to leave the Hilton Hotel to return to Manchester. No. That came over a cup of tea with a belligerent Zoë after my first training session back.

“You bleeding idiot. That Sasha thing was a set up.”

“What Sasha thing?”

“Oh stop it, you know what I mean. Everyone knows. You were set up. Trevor Cooper’s been bragging about it. Along the lines of ‘that stupid Pommie galah’, you know what he’s like. I can’t believe you fell for it. She’s kind of obvious, isn’t she?”

Oh dear, how could I have been so gullible. Now it was twice as bad for being common knowledge. That’s not the way you do it. I felt my face going red as Zoë regarded me coldly. I’d like to think it hadn’t all been an Aussie plot for Sasha. I didn’t think it would help with Zoë to say that even if Sasha was obvious, she was certainly committed.

Through the spring it appeared that my Zoë boats had been burned. She was consistently unfriendly on the rare occasions she wasn’t away playing tournaments. Sailor, to his credit, treated me as normal, that is to say consistently sadistically, after having an almighty go at me the first evening I was back. Then after the embarrassment had faded and after I’d had Riley by the throat in the car park when his smirking had become intolerable, I adopted the Razza philosophy, ‘you can only start from where you are now’.

My rebooted life was little changed. Training was even more intense, enhanced by some of the stuff I’d picked up with the Darnauds. There was regular travel to tournaments: my first ‘Tournament of Champions’, the ToC in New York; in February the British Nationals, which was my home competition, literally, at the EIS; there was another transatlantic trip to the North American Open in Richmond, Virginia; then the Canary Wharf Classic back in London. And all the while encouraging progress, I continued to improve: by July I was ranked number four in the world, squeeze that into your absurd little Prada handbag, mother.

And all the while the prospects were becoming bleaker. Inevitably, that was down to Razza Mattaz. Razz too was playing better, and his better bested my better, and everyone else’s. Razza had acquired his own conditioning guru, his own Monsieur Kiefer, in Salt Lake City. This guy, one Cornelius Liszt, had imposed order on his training, according to Razz’s wife Ruth. The free spirit Razz had become the serious, fully physically focussed athlete Julio. It wasn’t so much that he beat you more easily now. His extra fitness seemed to protect him from injury. It enabled him to play a series of tournaments without the loss of form that eventually affected even the best players. Razza won in New York, beating me on the way, he won in Richmond and he won at Canary Wharf. As the second half of the year began, Razz had an average of one thousand nine hundred and fifty five points. Me for my fourth place in the rankings, eight hundred and three. I could catch Trevor Cooper, one place above me, I could catch Magdi Gamal, world number two, but as for catching Razz, the idea was beginning to become absurd. My chances of meeting Grandpa’s challenge were narrowing: I couldn’t do it in the rankings. There was only one way. I’d have to win the World Open. This year, good news, the Open was being held in New Delhi. I always did well in India.

I wasn’t without hope for the World Open. Razza did get beaten occasionally. In the Australian Open, he sensationally went out in the first round to a qualifier. “I can’t explain it,” he said to the excited journalists afterwards. “There was nothing in my legs.” Armand came through in Razz’s half of the draw to play me in the final. It was satisfying to beat him, in one hour rather than two, under the nose of his father. Sadly my massage afterwards was not delivered by Marie-Emmanuelle Colombey.

So Razza could lose. So indeed could I to others in the top ten. So could Armand, but in his case ominously he was starting to lose his reputation for going walkabout during matches. I thought back to Marie-Emmanuelle’s theory that he was on something. I remembered Marcel’s implacable commitment to his son’s reaching number one. Armand was responding, clean or drug-enhanced, and was on a collision course with me, not for the number one spot but for number two. Magdi Gamal was just Magdi, a lightweight with an always present grin, whom you had to beat over and over again, it seemed, to actually win. Magdi had come back from two nil down in more matches than anyone else in the history of the tour. Then there was Trevor Cooper, abrasive Trev, always a danger, though I’d enjoyed beating him comprehensively the first time we played after the World Series finals. “Good night’s sleep, Jols?” he’d asked before we’d gone on court. “How’s Sasha, by the way?” I’d responded during his cursory handshake at the end of my three nil win. “Still hanging out with friends?”

The World Open became an increasing obsession through the autumn. As long as I didn’t have an injury, in Delhi I was going to be at the highest physical level I’d ever reached. My training had gone well, I was ‘in the stratosphere’ as Sailor put it in the performance tests. My one blip had been in the Hong Kong Open. I was seeded to meet Armand in the semi and play Razz in the final. Foolish to take things for granted. I lost in the quarters to Serge Colson in a game in which my legs had no spring. Frustrating, and nothing I could do about it. It was Armand who underwent a demolition at the hands of Razza in the final.

Chapter Thirty Four

I loved being in New Delhi. Not the classic tourist stuff, Rajpath, India Gate, the colonial architecture. It was the stuff I’d picked up when I was with AllSports, the noise, the smells, the mad traffic; narrow streets bustling with people in every sort of colourful clothing. It added up to an energy I’d buzzed off ever since my first visit. Admittedly, in the Oberoi hotel we were insulated from the grimmer, grimier side, the legless beggars and the open sewers.

The seedings in Delhi had worked well for me: I was not going to meet Razz until the final. My semi opponent was due to be Trevor Cooper if the seedings worked out, and Magdi Gamal would play Razza in the other. Mentally I was even sharper than I was physically, which meant razor with a capital ‘R’. ‘Murder in the Squash Court’; I’d made up my mind, if anyone was going to beat me, even Razz, they’d have to murder me to do it.

The Daily Telegraph, November 27th

Tragedy in New Delhi

The world’s number one squash player, Julio ‘Razza’ Mattaz is dead. Mattaz suffered an anaphylactic reaction in a Delhi restaurant yesterday evening and in spite of prompt medical attention passed away before he could be taken to hospital. Mattaz, the first seed in the squash World Open, was due to play today in the quarter finals. As a mark of respect, play has been suspended for the day and will resume tomorrow. The Pakistani world number eight, Mansoor Ali Khan now has a walkover into the first semi final, where he will play either Magdi Gamal or Jan Berry. In the other half of the draw, Australian Trevor Cooper meets Armand Darnaud and Egyptian Hosni el Baradei takes on the young Englishman, Jolyon Jacks.

“Razza has been the star of the tour for the last eighteen months,” said Jacks’ coach, Sailor McCann, summing up the feelings of everyone in Delhi. “He is the one the players all set themselves against. Razza in my opinion was the greatest player of the modern age. No one dominated in quite the way he did. Razza is irreplaceable.”

It was the most horrible experience of my life. A bunch of us had gone out for a meal, the now traditional Darnaud tournament meal. Razz almost got lucky that Marcel was with us, and my opinion of Armand’s dad went up several notches for the way he handled the situation. I was sitting opposite Marcel and Razza. Sailor was on the far side of Marcel. I had Magdi on one side of me and my old friend Neeraj Solkar on the other. Who knows what went wrong? It was an Indian restaurant. We had persuaded Marcel that to eat European would have been all wrong, and he had reluctantly agreed. If only we’d gone with his idea of a meal at La Table Orientale, a leading French restaurant, everything would have been okay. While we were ordering, Razza had specifically spoken to the head waiter about his nut allergy. He had not taken any of the huge plate of samosas we shared for a starter. He wasn’t a confirmed veggie but he had ordered vegetarian. Afterwards Marcel said that it could have been the nan.

Whatever it was, Razza had sat up very straight and started stroking his throat soon after we were into our main course. “Hey fellers, I’m not feeling too good.” Moments later he said, “I’m going to go outside.”

Straight away Marcel was alarmed. “Are you all right?”

Razz stood up and bent forward with his hands on his knees, gasping. From that moment Marcel took charge. “Quick,” he said to a waiter, “clear a space.”

The restaurant went so quiet you could hear Razza’s rasping breathing. The adjacent diners quickly got up and moved out of the way. Once their table had been shifted Marcel had Razza lie down. He undid the buttons on his collarless shirt.

“Razza, listen to me. Where is your EpiPen?”

Razza pointed to the beaten up leather satchel where he kept his money and his mobile. Marcel rummaged in it and came out with a box that contained two hypodermics. He took one and quickly broke off the plastic cover then made the injection through Razza’s shorts into the side of his thigh. We all stood around, silently watching, not knowing what to do.

“Hospital, call the hospital,” Marcel said urgently.

Neeraj made a call on his mobile and after a brief conversation said, “You must go by taxi. It will be quicker. Wait, I will flag one down.”

He hurried out of the restaurant. Marcel kept checking the pulse at Razza’s neck. “He is not responding. No blood pressure.” Razza was pushing, desperately trying to exhale, his eyes staring, his face turning a ghastly colour in the dim restaurant light. Marcel injected the second EpiPen into Razza’s other thigh. Then muttering ‘antihistamine’ he grabbed Razza’s bag and emptied the contents onto the floor. It wasn’t much, some coins, one of which we all watched roll away across the floor, a money folder, a mobile phone, a sachet of tissues. No more hypodermics. For the first time Marcel looked unsure of himself.

Neeraj returned. “There is a taxi outside.”

Marcel waved him away and started heart massage. With Marcel pushing rhythmically on his chest Razza was otherwise still, his eyes staring, his face now swollen. Then every few seconds one of his feet would do an agitated burst of turning inwards and outwards. Most of the diners had left. A few joined our helpless circle, peering at Marcel’s battle, Razza’s battle really. Marcel persisted with the heart massage, but some minutes later, I’ve no idea how many, Razza half pulled his knee up, slid it back down and sort of flopped. His eyes remained open but they were lifeless. Marcel persisted a little longer but it was obvious to all of us, Razza had died.

Eventually Marcel felt a final time for a pulse, looked up at us from his kneeling position and announced the obvious. “Il est mort. It is useless. He is dead.”

The tournament went on. It should have been my great opportunity, the world championship and no Razza. I had the beating of everyone else there. Trouble was, you had to want to play, and I didn’t. Sailor went through the motions of talking me through my game against Ahmed. Hopeless. Sailor had taken it harder than any of us. He finished with a half-hearted, “Go on, son. Do yer best.”

I didn’t even do that. I might have had a faint spark of motivation in wanting to prevent Armand from winning, to defy Marcel. My heart wasn’t even in that. Marcel had managed the Razza incident with such dignity and authority, both in desperately trying to save Razz, and afterwards in placating the police, dealing with the bureaucracy, arranging for the body to be collected, it went on and on. So my developing animosity had evaporated. I lost to Ahmed three love.

I needn’t have worried about Armand. He lost equally tamely to Magdi Gamal. Trevor Cooper was the only player who didn’t seem to be affected. He beat Magdi in the final to a half empty gallery.

Squash wouldn’t be the same.

“What do you want to do?”

It was the day after Sailor and I had returned from thirty degree Delhi. I was on the phone to Grandpa, plumbing depressed depths in a wet December Manchester.

“I don’t know, Grandpa. I just don’t feel like playing.”

“I can understand that. It’s a shocking story, and actually to have been there. Why don’t you come down to the South coast for a few days? Change of scene. I’d love to see you.”

The idea of seeing Grandpa gave me a flash of optimism, a buoyant moment in a grey sea of couldn’t-care-less. So with Sailor’s blessing I headed down to Sussex, by expensive train rather than penny pinching coach.

The trip worked, even if not in the way I’d imagined. It was marvellous to see Grandpa, who was so much more robust on his latest drug regime than when I’d last seen him. His Zimmer frame was parked unneeded in the corner of the room, supporting some neatly folded laundry.

“Are you going to carry on?” he asked.

“I’m surprised you’re asking that, Grandpa.”

“What would you feel now if you got to the top?”

“I’d still feel I’d done something. It’s a fit-for-playing, you go on whatever the circumstances. You’ve got to be there. You can only beat the person in front of you.”

“It’s devalued, though.”

“What are you saying? Razz could have got injured. Or lost form. He’s not the only player out there.”

Grandpa smiled. “That’s what I wanted to hear. You’ve got to look forward. If Mattaz is gone, so be it. You can’t let anything distract you, even something like this.

“Now, are you going to see your mother while you’re down here?”

“Yes, I’m staying for two nights.”

“Good. She’ll be glad to see you.” Like a boxer welcoming a punch bag.

“The one thing I will not talk about,” my mother greeted me as soon as I walked in the door, “is squash. It just goes to show what a miserable little game it is. If someone like you can win matches against top players...” ‘Top players’ said as if they were some sort of fatal food contamination.

“What are you going to do when you stop playing, anyway? Don’t come back here asking for charity.”

Hey, the charity rant. I hadn’t heard the charity rant for ages. So many young people these days...

“So many young people these days, relying on their parents, as if the world owes them a living.” The Bank of Mother and Father... “Money, the Bank of Mother and Father. I’ve been talking to your grandfather. His ridiculous commitment, that trust. It’s not too late to change it. Even if it’d be just symbolic; the chances of you, what is it, becoming world champion? But I want him to give you a message, Jolyon. You have to earn things in this life. Not have them handed to you on a plate.” I haven’t noticed you turning down your dad’s dosh, dear.

If ever I needed a stimulus, something to make me push for the number one ranking, this was it. My mother went on for the full two days, Rorke’s Drift, we’d learned about it in History, wave upon wave of hostile Zulus. I’d been taken aback by her opening attack. After that I fended off the assegais by imagining the pleasure of getting my hands on the trust in March. Maybe I’d send her a bunch of flowers, with a note saying, ‘such a trivial bouquet’. I’d like to send her an assegai, point first.

The plan was to avoid her as much as I could over the two days. Mostly successful, but I did have to undergo one humiliation. She had invited round my old housemaster, Mr Middleton, to meet some prospective Redbrook parents. They were a Mr and Mrs Wang, originally from Taiwan and lately apparently from the tennis club, where their little Master Wangster ponced around with the other juniors. The timing of the invitation must have been spite. My mother knew my feelings about Mr Middleton, pompous pillock that he was. Somehow I got trapped into having a cup of tea with the group.

The Wangs were formal and friendly when they arrived. Mr Middleton in contrast looked away during our briefest of handshakes. With a piece of cake in his hand he was quickly into his stride.

“Jolyon’s the exception that proves the rule. Redbrook pupils,” ho ho I’m in stitches, “are almost universally successful.”

“You’ve got it there, I’m afraid,” my mother said. “It’s been so disappointing.” She turned to the embarrassed couple. “But I’ve nothing but praise for Redbrook. And Tudor House especially. I can’t recommend Tudor highly enough. Mr Middleton runs a tight ship.”

The poor Wangs. Mrs W had the grace to ask me what I was doing now.

“He plays squash,” my mother said. “Can you imagine it?”

I could have handled things better but I did keep my temper. “I play full time, on the professional tour.”

“Jolyon was such a good tennis player.” My mother couldn’t let it go. “Like your little Lee. Now he imagines he’s going to be world squash champion.”

Mr Middleton laughed. “That’s rich.” He addressed the Wangs. “Not that we don’t have squash courts at Redbrook. And Tudor are the current house champions. And at tennis too, I’m pleased to say. We’re not just top on the academic side.”

Mrs Wang still wanted to talk to me. “Are you really that good?”

“Well...” I got as far as saying before Mrs Large Hadron came in again. “Jolyon a world champion? It’s about as likely as me parading round the bar at the tennis club in a Venus Williams outfit.”

Everyone laughed, except me of course, and I did myself credit by saying some insincerely respectful goodbyes when mercifully I heard the horn of a friend’s car. If he’d been on time I might have escaped my mother’s bit of fun.

Overall the short stay was more good than bad, good for relaxation away from Manchester, good for catching up with friends, Samantha not included. As I was getting ready to leave I said to my mother, “Thanks for all the motivation, Mum.”

“What do you mean?” The idea that she’d given me something clearly didn’t appeal.

“I’d been wavering a bit. Your hostility, somehow it’s given me the boost I needed. I’ll let you know when I get to number one.”

“Jolyon, I will not be spoken to like that.” Well not if I can help it either. I want to avoid having to speak to you at all.

So there I was, after less than five years, in with a chance of becoming world number one squash player, before my twenty first birthday.

Sweet.

And with a chance of sticking a very big one indeed up my mother.

SWEET!

Chapter Thirty Five

All I had to do was win the ToC in New York. I worked out the permutations with Sailor before I left, but it wasn’t difficult. Trevor Cooper was number one. He had an average of eleven hundred and thirty two and a bit points. Magdi Gamal was second with eleven hundred and one and a few fractions, I was third just a couple of points back and Armand fourth, with only three points fewer than me. It couldn’t have been closer. A Platinum tournament win was worth two thousand one hundred and eighty seven point five points, seven hundred and fifty more than second place. We were so bunched that if any one of us won the tournament, we’d take over as, or in Trevor’s case remain, world number one.

New York Times, January 23rd

Squash Returns to Grand Central Terminal

The J P Morgan Tournament of Champions brings squash back to Grand Central Terminal for a week of the highest quality squash racquets competition. Once again the all-glass court is being erected in the lofty Vanderbilt Hall, with a gallery for nearly five hundred squash fans. The matches will be seen by many further casual observers, the thousands of commuters walking past the front wall of the court as they head between the main concourse and 42nd Street.

The Tournament of Champions marks the traditional start of the year for the Professional Squash Association tour. It will be played under a cloud following the tragic death of the undisputed world number one Julio ‘Razza’ Mattaz from Salt Lake City, UT. Mattaz tragically died of anaphylactic shock due to a food allergy during the World Open squash championships in New Delhi, India in November.

In Mattaz’s absence, the competition is wide open. At least four players have a realistic chance of winning. The first seed is the Australian, Trevor Cooper, from Sydney, New South Wales, who took over the number one ranking from Mattaz. Then successively there are Magdi Gamal, from Sharm el Sheik, Egypt, the twenty year old Jolyon Jacks, from Manchester, England and the giant Frenchman Armand Darnaud, from Aix-en-Provence.

The qualifying rounds take place on Monday and Tuesday. The competition moves to the show court on Wednesday. The event is already a sell out.

I’d been looking forward to the ToC, even beyond its overriding significance for me. New York itself, the amazing Grand Central venue, the hospitality, it ticked all the boxes. You could add the proximity of the luxurious black clad Grand Hyatt Hotel where the players stayed. Its dark marble lobby, supported on opulent gold columns, seemed the height of luxury and it was an easy stroll from the venue. None of the players wanted to miss the ToC. I would also have added the tournament’s sheer razzmatazz, but not this time.

The ToC had been a highlight the previous year, my first visit to New York. There’d been the spectacular sightseeing. This included the flimsiest pair of knickers I’d ever had the pleasure of removing, from Connie, a hoot of a curvy red-headed hospitality waitress. Connie had tried to ply me with wine at the J P Morgan reception at the other end of Vanderbilt Hall. No to the alcohol, Miss. Is there any other hospitality on offer?

This time of course my eve of tournament nerves were way beyond the usual butterflies. It was a positive nervousness. For me this was it, the culmination of five intense years, and I believed I could make it. With Sailor’s help I was approaching the best physical condition I’d ever be capable of reaching, and though I’d never be a Razz or an Armand in terms of artistry, the game I had was brutally efficient, I was confident of that. The draw had turned out okay. I was seeded to meet Trevor Cooper in the semis, and I’d disembowel myself if I lost to Trevor, though neutral observers would probably have put us fifty-fifty. If the other semi followed the seedings it would be between Armand, or should I say Marcel in the shape of Armand, and Magdi Gamal. Magdi I liked and I hoped he’d win. Any good feelings I had for Marcel after Delhi had not neutralised my revulsion over the way he controlled his son and over his role if Marie-Emmanuelle’s suspicions were borne out. A Magdi win would mean Marcel’s predictions were overturned even before the final. Do you want me to phone it through to L’Equipe myself, Marcel? As for playing Armand or Magdi, I’d happily go on court against either of them the way I was feeling. Again, neutral observers would probably call either match even. I’d hoped to be where Razza was coming into the ToC, the undisputed favourite. It hadn’t worked out that way, but I was in with a big chance.

There was another five star angle to the ToC. The tournament traditionally included a women’s invitation event, for just four competitors, two semis and a final. Zoë had inevitably received an invitation. It was always a thrill when I did well with Zoë watching, bittersweet these days, and this could be the all time top of the ‘did wells’. If I could make it to world number one with Zoë there it would be the sweetest completion of the circle. I sometimes ran over the scene in my mind, at that Indian meal in Manchester, the time Zoë had inspired me to go all out for squash. Almost five years ago now. At first it wasn’t one dream but two. More accurately, one dream, on top of world squash, and one fantasy, on top of Zoë.

The tournament started okay. The background announcements in the station, this arrival from here, that departure to there, were something you had to get used to. In addition there was the vague distraction of New Yorkers in their winter coats hurrying past just the other side of the front wall. It was the same for everyone and after two comfortable wins I was coping fine, quarter finals to come. I didn’t at that stage pay much attention to the fact that Armand was coping even better. I did tot up the points: Armand had won his opening two rounds for the loss of fifteen fewer than me, a lot given our respective opposition, but so what.

The rest of the arrangements were good. Sailor was giving me space. I was enjoying Manhattan. I didn’t always want to socialise with other players but when Magdi Gamal suggested a meal in the hotel after our respective matches on the Thursday evening I quickly agreed. As we passed through the enormous lobby Magdi called out in Arabic to another Egyptian player, Abdel el Tayeb, who earlier had lost to Trevor Cooper. Abdel hadn’t eaten and said he’d join us.

“You know Jolyon?” Magdi said.

“Yes, not well. Our game in Hong Kong was too short.”

That was the ice broken and as we ordered food we chatted about the tournament. Magdi was older than Abdel and myself and described his first ToC. “Back then it was sponsored by Bear Stearns. Before the banking crash. It was cool then too. It was my first time in New York, I couldn’t believe the city. I went up the Empire State, and downtown to Ground Zero. Back then it was unusual to play a tournament away from a sports place. The ToC was radical. It’s still special in Grand Central, I love it. Then J P Morgan, I think they took over Bear Stearns. We thought the ToC would finish but J P Morgan, they’ve carried on with it.”

“How did you get on in your first ToC?” I asked.

He laughed. “I lost in qualifying. I never made it to the glass court. I said I’d be back. I wanted to play on the show court.”

Abdel nodded. “It was Magdi talking about the ToC that made me go for squash. Do you remember? You were playing in an exhibition, at the Gezira Club. In Cairo. You’d just come back from the ToC and you talked and talked about it. I was a medical student then. I was only a year short of qualifying. After that I made the decision to interrupt medical school and play on the squash circuit. My father almost killed me.”

“Talking of fathers,” I said, “did you hear Marcel Darnaud and Armand yesterday? In the lobby here? It sounded as though Marcel was going to kill him. It was embarrassing. Armand started by just standing there, you know how he is, just taking it. Then he had a go back. I’ve not seen him do that before.”

“What was Marcel saying?” Abdel asked. “Armand is playing so well, I can’t see any problem.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It was in French. The general impression, Marcel wasn’t happy, big time, something to do with a girl, I think. I visited them in Aix-en-Provence last year, a week’s training and practice with Armand, everything laid on.” Even the masseuse, I thought fondly. “Very generous, Marcel, but always hard on Armand, that’s the way it seems to be. As for Armand, he’s such a quiet guy. He never used to react when his father had a go at him; just stood there taking it. Maybe that’s changing.”

“Marcel’s been helpful to me,” Magdi said, “as well as all the meals, very good meals I have to say. Two seasons ago I was feeling bad. I kept losing, no reason, I just didn’t have the strength. I lost to Armand, before he was top ten. Marcel asked me some questions afterwards, while we had a drink, a lot of questions about my health. Eventually he said to check for malaria.

“He was right, It was malaria.”

“Yes,” I said, “on balance a good guy, but he makes me want to beat Armand twice as much.”

Abdel leaned forward. “Good guy, bad temper. Did you hear this? I was laughing. It was at Delhi airport, you know, Indira Gandhi airport, after the World Open.” His face clouded for a moment. “Well I wasn’t laughing much, not after Razz. We were going through security. Dr Darnaud’s attaché case was being searched. He had a jar of peanut butter. A Frenchman with peanut butter? It was taken away from him.”

We all chuckled. It was so out of character, Marcel Darnaud of all people. Why on earth would he want to supplement his diet in Delhi with peanut butter?”

“It’s a secret training supplement for Armand,” Magdi said. “I must buy some tomorrow.”

“You may not be able to find a Halal version,” I said. Magdi was a committed Muslim, even to the extent of not playing during Ramadan. He’d told me he found that the daytime fasting, and even more, the inability to drink anything, left him unable to compete.

“Kosher if that’s all right,” I carried on. “You’ll find kosher anything here in New York.”

Abdel wouldn’t let it go. “I can’t understand. He is very French.”

“And very organised,” I agreed. “I’ve seen it. Nothing is left to chance for Armand. Armand is regulated. It’s like he’s an extension of Marcel. I wonder why the peanut butter.”

“I like the supplement theory,” Abdel said. “It’s high energy, peanut butter.”

Even as I was saying, “Yes, I guess that’s it,” I felt I’d been tasered. It was worse than the time I thought Riley was going home to bed with Zoë.

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck!

I didn’t want to say anything to the others, but suddenly it was plain stark horribly obvious.

Awful. Terrible. Unbelievable. The nut contamination that had killed Razza Mattaz had come from Marcel Darnaud. Peanut butter. It made sense. Marcel had made a big show of trying to save Razza, even while he was making sure he was going to die.

No, surely not? I’d missed something. I had to be wrong?

He’d used the EpiPens. He’d done heart massage.

But why otherwise the peanut butter?

I had to check some facts. “Do you remember the meal in Delhi, when Razza died?” I asked Magdi. “You were there. Where was Razz sitting? It was next to Marcel, wasn’t it? And Marcel did his best to save him; his EpiPen and everything. Do you remember the business just before, the glass of water he spilled?”

“I remember. Some of it went over my pants.”

I could picture the scene. “Marcel stood up quickly. It was funny. He moved all the dishes, and the plates. He was helping to clear up as he called for a waiter. He was apologising.” But I didn’t want them to realise what I was thinking, and said, “A good guy, Marcel, trying to help.”

“He spilt a glass of beer over me once,” Abdel smiled at the memory. “It was at a meal also, in KL. I remember clearly. I remember because I lost in the quarter final, to Armand. I was third seed, he was seventh, eighth. It was disappointing that time, very disappointing. I had no energy.

“It can happen.” Abdel looked at the ceiling. “Before I was more sensible and the coaches had taught me about nutrition, and I should have known from my physiology studies, I missed a meal before a match once. I ate two Mars Bars, half an hour before I went on court. I was playing a qualifier at that big tournament in Zürich last year. All that refined sugar, it made too much insulin in my system. It took away my energy. I was so slow.”

Abdel’s Mars Bars moved us on from Marcel Darnaud and peanut butter to Zürich and how everything cost so much in Swiss francs. That suited me. I needed time to think.

Chapter Thirty Five

I lay awake for ages, trying to convince myself it wasn’t true. The whole idea was just too terrible. The peanut butter, could it have been an innocent supplement? Perhaps, although I’d never heard of anything like that. Strange for Marcel to be carrying it in his hand luggage. Then there was Abdel’s remark, ‘I had no energy’, and the coincidence of the meal the evening before that game, one of Marcel’s invitations. The loss of energy had happened to me too, in Hong Kong. I thought back, yes, Marcel had taken a party of us out that night, me included. I tried to remember. There’d been so many Marcel evenings. I was pretty sure I was sitting next to him on that occasion. What was not in doubt, my lifeless feeling next day on court. But the match wasn’t against Armand; my opponent had been Serge Colson. Why arrange for me to lose to Serge? One reason might be that Armand had never lost to Serge. He duly beat him the next day, and he wouldn’t have beaten me.

I had to talk to someone. Not Sailor, not until I was sure anyway. I’d not seen much of Zoë; maybe I could catch up with her. First I needed some sleep. I was playing an experienced Canadian, Jerome Bale, the next day. I should win but should wasn’t enough. That I knew.

My heart gave a jump when Zoë walked in to the buffet the following morning while I was having breakfast with Sailor. She was just back from a series of exhibitions in Australia and was looking fabulous. What about the BMW exec? Zoë was coping easily away from her, I hoped. Not pining. I was scheduled for a practice hit on the show court at eleven thirty with Sailor but he suggested Zoë take his place. Yeeha, it was a deal.

“Is that an all over tan?” I asked as we went on court.

She laughed. “Wouldn’t you like to see?”

“Well of course, here comes a monumental untruth, I’m more concerned about a good practice.”

She laughed again and we got down to some concentrated but stress-free hitting. There were a few people scattered around the gallery, plus some possibly surprised Grand Central Terminal travellers peering at us through the front wall. I felt special just to be there in that amazing venue. And to be on court with Zoë, that was always special.

Then when I thought about the Marcel business, all my good feelings evaporated. It was awful.

“Have you got time for a bit of lunch?” I asked as we collected our kit.

“Good idea. Let’s meet back here at one and we can go down into the food hall.”

“What, here in Grand Central?”

“Yes, there’s all sort of concessions. It’s into the main hall and then down the stairs. See you at one?”

I wouldn’t be late. We both went back to the Hyatt to shower and I returned to the court at five to one. Armand was knocking up with Lou Kiefer. Marcel was there of course, and I exchanged pleasantries with him, all the while wondering uncomfortably whether I was chatting with a murderer.

Zoë and I found our way down into the enormous food hall and ordered a couple of sandwiches and soft drinks from one of the delis.

“What’s the matter, Jolyon?” Zoë asked when we’d sat down.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re tense. Worried about playing Jerome? Or Trevor Cooper in the semi?”

“Jerome’s a chicken I’ve not yet counted. He’s too good for that. But what makes you think I’m tense?”

“You’re like a harp string. I know you too well. You’re twanging.”

I hadn’t thought it showed. “Well there is something. Not what you’d think though. It’s not the squash, not exactly.”

Without a pause I went through the conversation with Abdel and Magdi the previous evening. At one stage Zoë said ‘slow down, slow down’ but otherwise she listened intently and ate her sandwich.

“So,” I finished off, “it’s too grim to think about. And I don’t know what to do.”

“Let’s see what you have,” Zoë said. “First, the peanut butter. That is a strange one. Then Razz, who we know had a nut allergy, having a reaction at a meal.”

“Reaction? The guy died. And it’s a pretty big coincidence. Him sitting next to Marcel.”

“But Marcel tried to save him,” she said. “I’m trying to look at everything. Then we have the tiredness in games that might benefit Armand, directly or indirectly. People do have off days.”

“It was pretty radical in my case,” I said. “I felt dead.”

“What could account for that?”

“Abdel talked about eating Mars Bars, too much refined sugar just before a match. Not what you’d think but it increases your insulin, he said. It made sense to him anyway.”

“Marcel hasn’t been handing out sweets to Armand’s opponents,” Zoë said. “Not that they’d eat them.”

“It must be something else to slow you down.”

“I’m not an expert. My dad might know, more likely my mum. She’s the scientific one.”

“Could you ask them?”

“I could try. They’re away in South Africa. Sailor wouldn’t know. Is there anyone else medical?”

“Doctor Darnaud, ha ha,” I said. Then I had a thought, “I know, maybe Abdel himself, he’s a down to earth dude. He wouldn’t blurt it out everywhere.”

“Abdel’s not a doctor.”

“No, but he was saying last night, he gave up a medical degree to play squash. From the way he talks, it’s very medical sounding, he got quite far. He says his father nearly killed him when he stopped.”

Zoë made her child-like grimace, with the corners of her mouth turned down, and I melted inside. “That sounds familiar.” Then she nodded. “I don’t know Abdel. Let’s try him if you think so.”

Abdel was on court after me that evening. We found him chilling in the lobby at the Hyatt, reading something on his iPad.

“What’s that, Abdel?” I asked. “You watching one of my old matches online?”

A big smile. “It’s the New England Journal of Medicine. My tutor told me to read it, to keep in touch. My father arranged the subscription. For when I retire as world champion, back to being a doctor.”

“Here’s a current world champion. Do you know Zoë? I train with her.”

He stood up. “Only from seeing you on court yesterday. Nice win.” He shook Zoë’s hand formally.

“Something we wanted to ask you,” I said. “Mind if we sit down?”

Abdel sat back down with a gesture to join him. “I’m curious, please.”

“Let me do this,” Zoë said. “It’s delicate, Abdel. Please can we ask you not to say anything to anyone about this. You’ll see why.”

“No, that’s okay. What is it?”

Zoë clearly explained the story, taking half the time I’d have done. “The question is,” Zoë concluded, “is there something, some substance, that could slow you down a little, that you probably took the night before, but that in the end doesn’t do any harm? Some drug. Jolyon says you talked about Mars Bars and insulin; so maybe insulin?”

“Insulin you have to inject,” Abdel said, “you know, diabetes, and it doesn’t last long enough. It’s dangerous pushing insulin levels up, or even diabetic drugs, they’d be an idea.”

“Is there anything else?”

“It’s funny you should ask. The time in Kuala Lumpur, when I was so lethargic, I had some trouble with my breathing. It was like when I was a boy. I had asthma as a boy, never very bad but I had an inhaler. I grew out of the asthma, some children do. It was difficult on court at the KL Open, very hot, no energy and the trouble with my breathing too. I couldn’t play, I knew from the first point. With childhood asthma it’s never completely gone. Your airways are susceptible, perhaps when you get a cold or flu. I was worried that my asthma was coming back.”

He paused and gazed into the distance. “You’ve made me think. There is a heart drug that can take away your strength, it’s a whole family of drugs, very common. They’re called beta blockers. They treat high blood pressure and angina, heart pain. They reduce the force of the heart muscle. Beta blockers, most heart drugs, have side effects. With beta blockers it is a tiredness, a lack of energy. There is something else, and I have to look this up. Beta blockers I think are not for people with asthma. I think. They can give you problems just like I felt in KL, breathing problems. If you are right and Dr Darnaud is trying to slow people down, if it was me I would chose a beta blocker.

“Give me a moment.” Abdel picked up his iPad and within a minute had stroked some information out of the screen. “Here it is,” he read out, “beta blockers, common side effects: cold hands and feet, tiredness, dizziness, sexual problems, wheezing, sleep disturbance. Wheezing means airways.” He pulled the pages down on the screen. “Wait, listen to this, contraindications, beta blockers are contraindicated in patients with asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.”

Abdel looked up. “It does fit. It’s possible. What are you going to do?”

Zoë asked me, “What do you want to do, Jolyon?”

“We can’t do anything without proper evidence,” I said, “and I don’t know where to start. I guess we need to keep Marcel away from Armand’s opponents for a start.”

“Who is he playing today?” Abdel asked.

“He’s playing now,” I said, “first session. It’s against Mansoor. We’re too late to do anything about that. Mansoor wouldn’t have hung out with Marcel anyway. I don’t think so. He spends all his time with his manager. No one sees much of them.”

Abdel nodded.

“If Armand wins,” Zoë said.

“Which he will,” I added.

“If Armand wins,” Zoë continued, “it’ll be a semi against Magdi or Zhang Chao.” Zhang Chao was from Hong Kong, the same age as me. I’d known him as a good junior and he’d come on in the last year. He’d almost certainly reached his limit this time in the ToC though.

“So Magdi’s the one who has to be careful,” I said. “Zhang Chao isn’t going to win.”

“Could Marcel get at Magdi?” Zoë asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “How much of this, what did you call it, this beta blocker drug would be needed?”

Abdel thought for a moment. “Not much. It would be a tablet or maybe a capsule. One would be enough. It wouldn’t be big. He could empty the contents of a capsule, or grind up a tablet. It wouldn’t fill a tea spoon. Then it could go into a drink, or more likely food. You might notice the taste in a drink or it might not dissolve. Food would be better.”

“Is Magdi likely to spend time with the Darnauds?” Zoë asked.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “He never has done, as far as I know. He’s a strong Muslim, no booze. I know he prays a lot. It would be hard for Marcel to get at him.”

“Marcel is going to have to rely on Armand beating him honestly, then,” Zoë said. “What’s your feeling?”

I was surprised by Abdel’s answer, the detail of it. “Armand is looking very good. Have you noticed, he’s strong, twenty centimetres further up the court. Moving so well. To me it looks very easy for Armand. If you play him,” he looked at me, “you’ll be under pressure. He has that short game, everyone knows, and he has been playing short early in the points, taking risks.”

“That’s precisely what Marcel tells him not to do,” I said. “It was a constant theme when I was in Aix-en-Provence.” I didn’t mention Marie-Emmanuelle.

“He’s been so accurate,” Abdel went on. “Normally with Armand I would say that game would leave him exposed, giving his opponent openings. That’s where I hope to beat him when I play him. But his short game, just now,” he nodded, “very impressive.”

“Armand to beat Magdi then,” Zoë said. “So you’re the one at risk, Jolyon? As long as you beat Trevor Cooper.”

“It could be Trevor. It could be me. First I have to beat Jerome. That’s as far as I’m looking.”

“Far enough for now,” she said. “One way or the other though, we need to look a bit further.”

Was Zoë right, I wondered as I headed back to my room. What a mess. I glanced both ways down the corridor as I left the lift.

I was frightened.

Chapter Thirty Six

I did a Jan Berry job on Jerome Bale.

“Jolyon will go on to win the tournament if he plays like that,” Jerome said in his post match interview. “That was one heck of a hiding he gave me. I was powerless. Well done. I’m off to lick my wounds.”

I was starting to believe it again. It wasn’t just a theory now. It wasn’t the dream I’d lived with for five years, a quarter of my life. It wasn’t Sailor’s prediction. Suddenly it was there, a reality, so close. Jolyon Jacks, world number one, I could almost touch it. Looking back, all the way through my time in Manchester, all the ups and downs, the training, the travel, the self denial, well mostly self denial, it had always been the dream. Now it was just two days and two wins away, almost in my grasp. I so wanted it. I mustn’t fail now. I couldn’t cope now if I failed after coming so close. Trevor Cooper next. Trevor would be more worried than I was about tomorrow. No one wins a quarter at a major tournament as I had, for so few points, without being at the top of his game.

Then who in the final? It had to be Armand. The people who knew were all saying how well Armand was playing. Magdi was good too but you always felt that any one of Trevor or Armand or indeed I, certainly Razz if he’d still been alive, we all would have beaten Magdi at our best.

I was doing my stretches at the back of the gallery while Armand and Jan were knocking up, having decided to watch some of their game. Marcel Darnaud came over and congratulated me on my win. I felt surprisingly calm.

“You are playing well, Jolyon. It is the plyometrics, no? I spoke to Sailor. Your movement is exceptional. And I hope you will stay to watch Armand. That boy has taken a step forward, I have to say it. You inspired Armand with your performance in Aix-en-Provence. You inspired all of us. Tonight you will see your spirit in my son, your rosbif will. I love your will.

“Jan Berry? Tonight I fear for Jan.”

Marcel called it correctly. I stayed for two games. One would have been enough. Armand was giving the great Jan Berry a lesson. The fearsome hatchet was at maximum intensity. Armand was impassive, physically untouched by the pace. He was consistently there in front of Jan, dragging the South African around the court with delicate drops and angles. Jan was exhausted after fifteen minutes, his spirit draining away. Armand meanwhile appeared not tired at all. Squash can look so easy. He was consistently reaching every ball with a giant stride, this way or that.

Bugger any beta blocker, I thought. Marcel had a better weapon than that. It was his son.

I was wary of intervention by Marcel over the following twenty four hours, but I couldn’t be distracted from the more real threat of Trevor Cooper. A good hit with Zoë in the middle of the day left me feeling as well as any person could feel. I was bursting out of my skin with relaxed energy. Trevor and I bumped into each other a couple of times the next day, the second time mid afternoon in the Grand Hyatt.

“Hey Jols,” he called from the upper level of the lobby. “Who did you shag last night?”

“Just a beauty sleep, Trevor.”

Several people turned in our direction.

“What, can’t you pull unless it’s laid on for you?”

“Oh Trevor. Why don’t you leave it alone? I’ve learned that lesson.”

“My my, the humility.”

“Take it easy. I’ll see you at seven o’clock.” That’s when I’ll score, I thought. I was at the top of the escalator from the entrance level when I saw Marcel Darnaud joining Trevor.

“Ah, Jolyon, you too, perfect.” He made a sweeping gesture. “I want to invite you both, win or lose, to Smith and Wollensky’s. Tonight. You know it, the famous steak restaurant? We have a table at nine thirty. Magdi cannot come, it is to be regretted, but there will be several others, Armand of course. It is only ten minutes, on third and forty ninth. We must celebrate a great tournament.”

Trevor had no hesitation. “Jeez, Marcel, I’m up for that.”

“I’m not so sure, thanks,” I said. “Sailor is very insistent these days.” I let it trail away.

“What a wimp,” Trevor said. “Look, Jols, don’t be scared. You afraid to be the other side of the table from a winner?”

I hesitated. Marcel said, “That is unfair. But you must reconsider, Jolyon. We won’t be late tonight. It is necessary to eat. And Sailor has agreed to join us.”

“So you’ll have a chaperone, Jols.” Eff off, mate.

I was torn. I wanted to speak to Zoë. The sensible thing would be to say no, I want a quiet evening, very kind of you, Marcel, et cetera et cetera. But I was driven by curiosity, and surely I could see to it that he had no opportunity to add anything to my food. Or Trevor’s, if it came to that. Anyway, unless I had a disaster in my semi, it would be an opportunity for some fun at Trevor’s expense.

It felt surreal, eight of us crammed round a circular table in Smith and Wollensky’s. Marcel Darnaud’s hospitality, and, I was pretty sure now, some inhospitality to come. Marcel had approached Sailor and me jovially while we were leaving the Vanderbilt Hall after the semis, my win against Trevor Cooper and Armand over Magdi.

“No excuses now, gentlemen. Monsieur Kiefer recommends a good protein intake and I assure you, that is what you will take from Smith and Wollensky’s.”

I still hadn’t told Sailor about my suspicions. He was well up for the meal. Almost deferentially he said, “Ay, Marcel, after my boy has had his ice bath. We need to prepare for a hard final.”

Marcel beamed. The final seemed to have been fated. Yet again, Armand and I had won our matches by three games to love. Yet again, Armand had lost fewer points. I hadn’t seen his match, preferring to do a thorough warm up in the exercise room at the top of the Hyatt. Apparently for all Magdi’s quicksilver movement, he had simply lacked the firepower to disrupt Armand’s game. Scary. My match with Trevor had been closer but I never felt I wasn’t going to win.

Smith and Wollensky’s was packed. ‘Steaks and Chops Since 1922’, it said outside. Downstairs there was a noisy bar, with classy leather-covered bar stools, where Marcel insisted that everyone have a cocktail. Iced water for me, which came with a twist of lime. The decor was clubby, the walls decorated in pink and cream, hung with wood-framed pictures. There were several dining areas, which meant that it felt quite intimate in what was apparently a large restaurant.

I was feeling okay, not too tired after my match, looking forward to the food. I made sure I was safely separated from Marcel. Sailor was between him and me, to my left. The others in the group were Trevor, on my right, to his credit reasonably cheerful, Ruth Mattaz, who had accepted an invitation to present the trophies after the final, Gaston Guillot, a journalist from L’Equipe, Lou Kiefer, Armand and a spectacularly lovely girl with waist-long black hair who insisted on sitting beside Armand. Marcel introduced the girl as Stephanie Boumedienne. Stephanie told us she worked at the French consulate in Manhattan. Lucky consulate.

“Mesdames, Messieurs,” Marcel said. “I am going to adopt a privilege as the host this evening and order for all of us. I know you will forgive me. Smith and Wollensky’s is not,” he looked up, “it is not subtle. It concentrates on what is does best. And what it does is the best, I assure you. I propose we all take the New York Cut Sirloin, on the bone, medium rare. This the Americans call the top sirloin. Here they understand meat. Here it is properly aged, perfect condition. Sirloin is from the French, I have to say, sur la loin, above the loin,” he shrugged. “Of course there has to be a French connection. We will have baked potato, our boys must pay attention to the carbohydrates, no, from Idaho of course, broccoli and something else they do so well here, creamed spinach. I propose no appetisers. You will understand this precaution when your steak arrives.

“Armand, Jolyon, a glass of wine?”

We both shook our heads.

“A pity. Of course, we understand. The rest of us will enjoy a Californian Cabernet Sauvignon. Trevor? This may even be superior to your Barossa Valley.”

“I’ll have a beer thanks.”

“Sailor, are you a wine drinker?”

“Me, I take an occasional glass of whiskey.” He gave Marcel the full flint stare. “Tonight I’ll stick to water. Mebbe something stronger tomorrow night to celebrate.”

Marcel smiled. “Tomorrow we can celebrate together, the world’s new number one squash player,” he nodded to Ruth, “with due deference, Madame. It will be Armand,” he paused and Armand looked away, “or Jolyon.” I just smiled.

“Enjoy it while you can, fellas,” Trevor said. “I’m getting it back. Most likely at Canary Wharf. Respect to Razza, Ruthy. We wouldn’t be having this discussion if Razz was still going.”

The Canary Wharf Classic was in March, now a Platinum tournament. It was held at another spectacular venue, the East Wintergarden in London. Razz would have been the defending champion.

Ruth replied, “Thanks, Trevor. I guess we all could do with having Razz here. I wanted to come because he regarded this championship as the best, the one he always wanted to win. Razz was so proud to be a US citizen. His grandfather’s Mexican, Pedro. Pedro was always challenging Razz to make good in the USA. He did. And now he hasn’t.”

Armand was the only one not listening, doing his best to distract Stephanie. “It looks as though Armand’s sorted,” I said quietly to Trevor. “Can I take back what I said earlier. I need balance. Have you lined up any of your Aussie girlfriends for me?”

“I tried mate, believe me, I tried. As soon as they heard is was you...”

I couldn’t help but laugh. Again quietly I said, “It’s straightforward playing me, but you’d worked that out. Watch out for Marcel, though.”

Trevor surprised me with his reply. “I wonder about that too. Not good vibes there. But Marcel or not, you’re going to have your hands full tomorrow. The great lummox has finally got it together. I don’t reckon he’d have beaten Razz. But look, Magdi got just eighteen points today, seven, seven and four. And Magdi’s playing well. That is a cruel wipe out.”

“I don’t think Armand believes he can beat me,” I said. “Not Marcel either.” I told Trevor about the Aix-en-Provence match. “If you see what I mean, I’m more worried about beating Marcel.”

Two waiters then arrived with a trolley, necessarily sturdy since it had to carry our food. The sirloins were massive, attached to pieces of bone that could have doubled as girders in a Manhattan bridge. The baked potatoes were sized to match, sliced crosswise, ready for butter or cream with chives. The second waiter put a bowl of steaming broccoli on the table followed by another one with the creamed spinach.

“Is that everything?” he asked.

Marcel laughed. “You understand now about the appetisers?”

Gaston uttered some oath in French. “Three countries I have visited, Australia, that was the rugby; Argentina, rugby also; and the United States, the first time for cycling, Lance Armstrong, now for the squash. These countries are the champions for beef, but here we have the winner. My wife insists on my diet. Regrettably,” he smiled, “she is not here.”

Sailor muttered to me, “Go easy, son. Ye could still be digesting this lot back home.”

Stephanie asked me, “Do you eat steak now in England? The beef scare?”

“That was a long time ago. I think. It never affected me. No one pays any attention now.” Marcel helped Stephanie to some broccoli and spinach, then he leaned across me and put some on Trevor’s plate.

Stephanie smiled directly at me. “Marcel says you have the rosbif spirit. I think perhaps,” ‘per-aps’, “he is right. You are very English Jolyon. Is that an English name, Jolyon?”

“Greek originally, I’ve been told. It comes from Jupiter. He was the king of the gods.”

Another smile. “So you are a god?”

Armand was looking pissed off.

“I wouldn’t go as far as that, though if you were a goddess...”

“For Christ’s sake,” Trevor said, and we laughed. Not Armand though.

Then fuck. Oh fuck.

I’d realised that Marcel had put some broccoli and some spinach on my plate. Pay effing attention, Jolyon! How could I get out of this? The food didn’t look as though it contained any hidden extras, but seeing it there on the plate made me nervous. The steak? That should be okay. It had gone nowhere near Marcel. The mighty baked potato? Ditto, if I avoided the add ons. The broccoli looked okay, but that had come from Marcel. Then there was the spinach.

The spinach looked delicious.

No way was I going to eat the spinach.

Problem was, I was starving and I didn’t want to make a scene. The steak and the potato at least should be safe, surely. Then I had an idea.

“Hey Armand. I’ve too much spinach here. You must have some of mine.” As I half stood up with my plate there came a sharp ‘no!’ from Marcel.

“Why not?” I asked. “He’s twice as big as me and he needs twice as much greens.”

“Surely it is not polite,” Marcel said smoothly, “and there is still some here.” He pointed to the bowl. Then he locked eyes with me. Everyone else looked on, sensing the tension. As for me, I’d gone cold. If I’d needed proof, this was it. Marcel had sabotaged my food, almost certainly the spinach.

And Marcel knew I knew. And he knew that I knew he knew. Knews travelled fast, I thought. No knews would have been better knews.

I looked away. “Sorry, out of order,” I held up my hand. “I’m sure if Armand finishes his steak he won’t have any room for more spinach.”

That was the end of the general tension, if not my own. Inside I was back where Zoë had seen me, twanging. As the meal carried on, Trevor asked me quietly, “What was all that about?”

“Not here. I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

As I was finally setting my knife and fork to one side, defeated by the massive potato as much as the steak, Sailor said, “What’s wrong with the greens, son?”

My bloody vitamin balance. Would Sailor never let go?

“You into the Floyd then Sailor?”

He frowned. “What Floyd? What’s that?”

Ruth perked up. “Pink Floyd.” She did a passable attempt at a Scottish accent. “‘If ye don’t eat yer greens you can’t have any pudding.’ Another brick in the wall, that’s right?”

“Bravo,” said Gaston.

I agreed. “That’s impressive. Avoiding my greens isn’t an issue, anyway. I’m not up for pudding tonight. When did you become part of the Floyd fan club, Ruth?”

“It’s not me really. It’s Razz. Sorry, was Razz. Razz was Pink Floyd crazy. And I come at it from another angle. I’m an IP attorney.”

“IP?”

“Intellectual property. I did some work for a file sharing outfit. I had to advise them: stay very clear of EMI. They were in dispute with Pink Floyd at the time. Big bucks and potentially big lawsuits if you made the wrong move.”

“So you’re a lawyer?”

“Yes, it’s a specialised field, but an attorney as we call it, that’s what I am.”

I suddenly felt embarrassed for Ruth, on behalf of all of us. Her husband had been murdered to further someone’s pathetic ambition, in something as trivial as a sport, two guys whacking a ball against a glass wall. I didn’t know how things were going to turn out with Marcel, but I wanted to tell Ruth the story. She might even be able to help with nailing the man.

Eventually we had all had enough steak. I guess Stephanie had eaten ten percent of hers, Ruth fifteen, me and Gaston doing well, in the fifties. My spinach was conspicuously untouched. Armand was the champion, with just the bone remaining on his plate. I didn’t take any comfort. I’d seen in Aix-en-Provence how much he ate.

Looking at the unfinished steaks while we were all declining desserts one of the waiters asked, “Anybody want a doggy bag?”

“Oh certainly,” Stephanie said. “My dog will love the steak.”

While the waiter was attending to this I said, “I’ll have one too.”

“Of course sir.”

For an instant Marcel looked poleaxed. “Jolyon, Jolyon, I’m disappointed. You are more cultured than that. A doggy bag and no dog? What are you going to do with it?”

“This has been just fantastic, Marcel. Best steak I’ve ever had. I’ll finish it later.”

“Me too,” said Trevor. I was grateful for that. It took some attention off me. Not Marcel’s attention though. Without asking, the waiter transferred my spinach as well as the pink hunk of meat into separate sections of a plastic container and into my doggy bag. Marcel was uncomfortable; anyone who knew what was going on would have seen that. The waiter wanted to take the bags away but I put mine on the floor beside Trevor.

“I don’t want to lose that,” I told him while everyone was ordering coffees.

The conversation meandered comfortably on as we enjoyed our coffees, decaff for me. Ruth was so composed. She had some funny stories about Razz. Lou, poor fellow, didn’t have much to say in English. Gaston explained that he had been specifically sent by his editor to record the ascent of another French player to the top of the squash rankings. Armand didn’t contribute much. Everything Armand wanted to say was into Stephanie’s ear and she was enjoying the monaural input.

Eventually Sailor said, “Okay, Marcel. It’s time for a beauty sleep for Jolyon here. Wonderful evening.”

“Of course,” Marcel said. “It is a big day tomorrow.” He summoned the waiter and took care of the bill while we waited for our coats.

As we left the restaurant I clung on carefully to my doggy bag. I’d felt safe in there. Now I was worried. I had to get through the next twenty hours to the final. Surely the spinach was Marcel’s final effort? It was scary: sure I was not.

I was planning to walk back, it wasn’t cold, and was amused as we milled around outside the restaurant to see Armand hailing a cab. A yellow monster pulled up immediately and he made to get into it with Stephanie.

“Non. Non, non, non!”

I couldn’t believe it, Marcel shouting. Armand paused and received a further volley of French. Stephanie was half into the cab, trying to pull Armand in with her. Monsieur Kiefer got between Marcel and a now belligerent Armand like a boxing referee. Eventually Armand, looking as animated as I’d ever seen him, stood up, waved Stephanie away, said some strong words to Monsieur Kiefer, the meaning of which was pretty clear, and astonishingly shaped to deck his dad.

Now it was Trevor who intervened. “Come on, mate. It’s probably for the best. I’ll walk back with you.”

“Ay,” said Sailor. “This is no’ helping anyone.”

Together he and Trevor dragged Armand off down the street. Meanwhile Monsieur Kiefer hailed another cab in which he, Gaston and a livid Marcel departed.

I was left standing on the pavement with Ruth. “You up for a walk?” I asked, “or shall we get a cab too? Plenty of them.”

Ruth was well protected with a dark coat and a Cossack hat. She looked up at the sky, swung a colourful wrap round her shoulders and said, “Let’s walk.”

Chapter Thirty Seven

“All sweetness and light in the Darnaud camp,” Ruth said.

“The domineering dad and Armand’s hormones finally surfacing.”

“Stephanie’s an attractive girl.”

“Certainly is. It would have been better for me if they’d gone off together.”

“Yes,” she said. “Boys will be boys.” Then, “Oh damn. Oh damn, damn, damn.”

“I know.” I wanted to put my arm round her. “I haven’t had a chance to say something about Razza. I wish I’d known him better.”

“I’m almost sorry I did,” she said bitterly. “It wouldn’t feel so bad. What a human being. What a waste, and how darned stupid. I was always reminding him about his EpiPen. In some ways he was like a boy. He needed someone there, to remind him about all the little things.”

“But he did have his EpiPen. Two in fact. Marcel used both of them.”

“What?” Ruth stopped. “It was explicit in the PM.”

“Uh?”

“Post mortem. We had a post mortem done back home. There was no evidence that an EpiPen had been used. Let alone two. Who said?”

I was shocked. “It was me. It’s been bothering me. A lot of questions. There’s some stuff I need to tell you and you’re not going to like it. Let’s grab a coffee.”

We went into a diner a little way on, joining a couple of lonely figures at either end of the row of benches. A cheery waitress with big hair approached. She turned around our coffee order and brought two glasses of iced water in about thirteen seconds straight.

There wasn’t much colour in Ruth’s face and the light in the diner didn’t help. “Well, what is it?” she asked in a resigned voice.

I stirred some full fat sugar into my coffee, postponing the moment. “I was only able to work this out yesterday. Before that none of it had crossed my mind. Some of the stuff this evening confirmed what I’ve been thinking. Rock solid, I can’t dress it up,” I took a deep breath. “Marcel Darnaud murdered Razz. I’m sure of it.”

Ruth’s hand flew to her mouth but it couldn’t stifle her shriek, “No. Oh no!”

The waitress came over. “Are you all right, Miss?”

Ruth started sobbing, face to the table, her whole body shaking. The sobs evolved into a continuous keening, horrible to hear.

“It’s okay,” I said to the waitress. “Some bad news.”

She nodded uncertainly.

“Could you bring some tissues?”

The tissues arrived in seven seconds.

“I don’t really know her,” I said. “Could you... could you hold her for a moment?”

She nodded again, sat down beside Ruth and put both arms around her.

It was so awkward. The other two punters had left at the start of the commotion. I felt utterly inadequate and just sat there, watching Ruth in her distress, with the waitress stroking her back. It took long minutes before Ruth’s composure returned.

“Thank you,” she said eventually. “What’s your name?”

“Patsy.”

“Well, thank you, Patsy. I’ll be okay now. May I keep the tissues?”

“Of course.”

Patsy moved away.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know how to tell you.”

“There’s no way to sugar that one. Give me the whole story. I want to know.”

First I described the scene in the restaurant in Delhi, and Marcel’s convincing act of trying to save Razz, including the use of the two EpiPens. Then I repeated Abdel’s tale of the peanut butter, and our theory that Marcel had from time to time been using a drug to hold Armand’s opponents back.

“It happened to me once. And I’ve a strong suspicion he tried it again tonight.”

“Oh my god, are you all right?”

“I think so. I think it was in the spinach. But I didn’t eat any of it. Did you see how agitated Marcel was when I pretended to offer some to Armand. And then when I asked for the doggy bag?”

“Yes, I didn’t understand. Oh my God! Do you still have some of the spinach?”

I patted my bag. “All of it.”

“We could get it analysed. I did my law school here in New York. I know some guys in one of the forensic labs.” Her eyes were fierce. “First thing is though, you’ve got to beat Armand. Got to, got to. That creep has been making such a big thing of his son being number one. Now Gaston Ju... I can’t remember, whoever, all the way from France to write the story. As if Armand would’ve come within a million miles if Razz... oh God, oh fuck.” She broke down again and this time I moved to the other side of the table and stroked her as she sobbed.

Patsy came over, hesitantly. “More coffee?”

I signalled yes. She brought two fresh mugs and filled them. Ruth slowly composed herself again.

“I’m so sorry. We’ve got to get you back to the hotel. You won’t beat Armand without a good night’s sleep.”

“It looked like Armand was a near miss for a good night but no sleep.”

“Yes, that was sad. I’ve seen the way his father controls him. Razz used to laugh about it. He said that sort of motivation never works.

“Anyway, come on.” She took a sip of the coffee, found a wallet in her handbag and took out a fifty. We went over to the till. “Thank you, Patsy,” Ruth said. “You’re a sweetie in the best way I can say it.”

Patsy smiled. “You’re so very welcome, Ma’am.”

We were back at the hotel in a few minutes and arranged to meet for a late breakfast. I said I’d try to get Zoë and Abdel to join us.

In the lift Ruth said, “Watch out for yourself,” and departed a couple of floors below my level.

I felt like someone in a spy thriller. Thrilling it was not. It was scary. Marcel wouldn’t actually try anything, would he? I breathed a sigh of relief as I firmly closed my bedroom door, clutching the doggy bag. Darkness. Peace and sleep at last, it had been quite a day.

Darkness?

The thing about the Grand Hyatt, and any decent hotel, I’d learned over the last couple of years, was the way the cleaners and valets and minibar managers were constantly in and out of the rooms. A premium was placed on the early evening preparation, pillows plumped, beds turned down, sometimes an insincere good night note and a chocolate.

And the bedside lights? On. Why no lights?

I felt a stab of fear like nothing I’d ever experienced. Pure electric terror. I heard rather than saw the bathroom door opening.

Out!

Thank goodness I hadn’t fixed the security lever. It was a heavy door, heave! I hit my shoulder on the frame going out and spun. Slam it shut, quick. But a foot in a leather shoe thrust through the opening. A violent kick to the attached shin brought a grunt and the withdrawal of the foot. Using all my strength against the pull in the opposite direction I hauled the door closed. Still clutching the doggy bag I ran down the opulent corridor. The emergency staircase. The lift would take too long.

Up or down? How high was the hotel? Twenty five floors? I was on the ninth, I’d go up. I sensed someone back down the corridor as I pushed through the door into the utilitarian stairwell.

What to do? It was hard to think.

First, run! I’d be quicker than Marcel or anyone he’d employed.

Could it be Kiefer? No, I reckoned he was a decent sort at heart. It had to be Marcel. There’d not been time for him to make other arrangements.

Should I seek help down in the lobby? The threat was too sinister.

Sailor? Sailor was back on the ninth. The ninth was unhealthy.

Zoë! Yes! What floor was Zoë on? The seventeenth. Zoë was in 1707.

In no time I was five floors higher, bounding past fourteen. I stopped to listen. Someone below was on the stairs, leather soled shoes.

The terror gripped me again. He was taking his time. What did he know? Why was he so certain?

I exited on the fifteenth and ran down the corridor to the other stair well; the room numbers started at that end. Then up the two remaining floors to seventeen and out into the corridor.

Here it was, 1707, quick!

It was close to one o’clock now. Would Zoë be asleep? Probably. I knocked, not hard, I didn’t want to make too much noise, but continuously, urgently.

Come on, come on!

“Who is it?”

Ah!

“It’s me, Jolyon. Let me in.”

My voice must have signalled that whatever it was had brought me to Zoë’s room at 1am, it was urgent. The security lever clicked and the door opened. Zoë stood there in a white knee length silk nightdress, sleepy and perplexed. I pushed past her and violently shut the door.

“God, thanks, you’ve saved my life. I’ll explain.”

I grabbed the room’s single lounge chair and jammed it under the door handle.

This must have convinced Zoë I was either serious or mad. She went into the bathroom and emerged in a dressing gown. “What on earth is going on?”

The shock got me then. I sat on the bed, still panting from the stairs, sweating, and I started shaking violently. Just a couple of minutes ago I’d thought, I’d known, I was going to be killed.

Killed.

Ending up dead. The end.

Finito.

Then the flight, the frantic ascent of the aptly named emergency stairs. Footsteps following, pursuit, someone tracking me. Horrible, I’d never not shudder at the phrase ‘man hunt’; that’s what I’d been, hunted. Then the relief, the elation as Zoë opened her door.

My breathing slowed, and with it my shakes. “Give me a moment. It was the dinner. It all started in the restaurant.”

“Smith and Wollensky’s?”

“Yes, how did you know?”

“Marcel invited me, ’nuff said?”

“Yup, ’nuff said and the whole thing’s moved on.”

I told her about the meal and the spinach and the doggy bag. “Here it is. I hung on to it.” Then about Ruth and what she’d said in the diner about Razza’s post mortem. Then about the moment I realised how sinister darkness was when you returned to a posh hotel room. After you’d shut yourself in.

Then I started to cry.

I couldn’t help myself. Not in front of Zoë, I thought, how embarrassing. More shakes, this time with added sobbing. Stop!

What happened next was as surprising as anything that evening. Zoë sat on the bed, pulled me to her and started to rock me and stroke my head. The relief was as intense as the terror. I stopped thinking and gave myself up to it. Safety. Another concept that had moved on for me. Zoë was so gentle, her hand, over and over, stroking my close cropped hair and the side of my face. She was smoothing away my sobs. Slowly they subsided. And as they did the relief turned into plain prosaic happiness, Zoë with her arms round me. I dreamed about this.

Eventually she said, “Come on. Get your stuff off, into bed. You need some rest.”

A moment later I was in bed beside Zoë. I enjoyed the thought for about five seconds before I fell asleep.

The next thing I was aware of was Zoë’s whisper and her hand on my face.

“Wake up, come on, wake up.”

It took me a few seconds to realise where I was. I opened my eyes. There were Zoë’s, close, regarding me seriously.

“You could get me into trouble with Sailor,” I said.

“I don’t know if we’re going to give Sailor all the detail.”

“What detail are we not going to give Sailor?”

“Jolyon, this is very peculiar.”

I reached out. A naked shoulder, that would do.

“Do you mind?”

Her big brown eyes came even closer. “I’m not sure. I don’t think so.”

So I pulled her into my chest and started to stroke her hair, roles reversed. She wriggled into me and rested her hand on my face. Then she said, “Wait, I need a pee.”

“So do I, before I have to do a handstand in there.”

“What?”

“To point it at the bowl.”

She laughed. Moments later, back in bed, we were off; her nightdress off; her pulling my pants off: getting off. “What are these?” she asked. “I never thought you were going to be shy.”

“It wasn’t on the agenda.”

Her body was so hard, small boobs, rippling stomach, nothing soft about her bottom, strong legs. She made love like she played squash, with an overwhelming intensity. “Fuck me,” I exclaimed in surprise as she quickly slid onto me, “match point down?”

The slightest of nods. Then she closed her eyes. Concentration, Zoë’s major strength. It didn’t last long for either of us. For me it was the culmination of an incredible twelve hours. The transcending memory of those twelve hours was Zoë’s face as she came, straining, an agony of pleasure.

“Phew,” I said, as we held each other when we’d finished. “I didn’t expect that.”

“Neither did I.” She kissed me on the lips and slipped out of bed. “No time for post mortems. Sorry, bad phrase. We’d better get on or we’ll miss breakfast.”

Ruth was finishing a cup of coffee, reading the paper, when we entered the dining room. “Ah, there you are,” she said as we approached. “I thought I’d missed you. I see you still have your doggy bag.”

“Not for breakfast though. It’s my evidence bag. I was hoping to hand it over to you.”

“I called my contact at the lab this morning,” she said. “I’m meeting him for lunch. I’ll give it to him then.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Are you two together then?”

“Just last night. I’ll explain.”

When we had collected some food I filled Ruth in about the night’s events, or most of them anyway.

“Phewy, scary.”

“You just don’t know.”

“Are you sure it was Marcel?”

“I think so. I’d probably recognise his right shoe. And pick out the bruise at a shin identity parade.”

“Has he had breakfast?”

Ruth shrugged. “Not that I’ve seen. Gaston was here, Sailor. He came over and said hello. Said he was going to do some work in his room.”

“If it was Marcel,” Zoë said, “whoever it was, I wonder how long he was looking for you before he gave up. We’ve got to keep him away from you today.”

“Yes, only I’ve been thinking. You know the attaché case he always has with him? I’d love to get a look inside it.”

“How?”

“That’s where I have absolutely no idea.”

“He’ll be at the court when Armand has his practice,” Zoë said. “That might be an opportunity. What time are you on?”

“One o’clock. Till half past. Armand’s on after that.”

Ruth sounded positive. “Best chance we’ve got. I should be back by then. I’m meeting my friend early, round the corner. On forty second. Can you help too, Zoë?”

“I suppose so. It would help if I wasn’t on court with Jolyon. I could just be there. Watch out for an opportunity.”

“Sailor will do the hit. Or even Trevor. Have you seen Trevor?”

“Yes,” Ruth said. “He was going off to Central Park for a run.”

I explained what I’d heard from Trevor at Smith and Wollensky’s. “He seems to have had the same idea about Marcel too, some suspicion at least. Said he’d tell me about it today. It would be good to have Trevor watching out. I don’t want to tell Sailor yet. He’ll go up and confront Marcel. Too soon.”

“Is Abdel still here?” Zoë asked.

“I think so. He was supporting Magdi during his match.”

“You should get Abdel to keep an eye out as well.”

At that moment Trevor came in and strolled over to our table. He was wearing a heavy hoodie and thick tracky bottoms. “Mind if I join you?”

“Sit down,” I said. “Strange evening, wasn’t it?”

“Too right.”

“And it got stranger, wait till you hear. How did you get on with Armand?”

“He was spitting fire. Sailor and I managed to frogmarch him back here. Ha ha, sorry about the joke. Frog. Halfway back he was all set to turn around. I told him his dad had got into a taxi. I guess he went to bed in the end. All by himself.” He laughed. “You nearly got lucky there, mate, big time. That Stephanie. But you know that story, excuse me ladies. Armand would have been wrung out. We left him in the elevator. Going up.”

I told him about the end of my evening.

“Jesus Christ,” he said when I’d finished, “you’re not kidding?”

“What we were hoping,” Ruth said, “is you’d kind of ride shotgun with Jolyon today. We don’t know what Marcel might do. We don’t know for certain it was Marcel last night. But you haven’t heard the rest of it, certain now, from what Jolyon’s found out.” She took a deep breath. “Razza’s death wasn’t an accident.”

“No?”

“No. Marcel murdered him.”

“Jesus Q Christ, excuse me. I thought Marcel’d almost saved him.”

“It seems it was peanut butter,” I said. “Abdel el Tayeb saw him with a jar of the stuff when he was leaving Delhi, in airport security of all places. Razza’s nut allergy, a lot of people knew. Thing is, I think he’s been fixing some of Armand’s matches, too, slowing his opponents down, with a drug, not enough so they can’t go on court but enough to stop them performing. I’ve no idea how many, or how, but it must be at the Dr Darnaud meals. There are enough of those. Abdel thinks he knows the drug it might be. It happened to me once; I just had no energy. And Abdel, he said.”

Trevor became animated. “That’s what I wanted to tell you. I’m convinced that happened to me. I was playing Armand in Toronto. What is it, the Canadian Classic? I was second seed, two years ago. We did go out the night before I played Armand, Marcel and all, the usual. Then it was the quarters next day, fuck, what quarters, good night Gertrude. I couldn’t raise a sweat. There was something about the way Marcel looked at me as I went on court.”

“A beta blocker,” Ruth said. “Abdel thinks so. It makes sense. It’s a common heart drug. My father’s on a beta blocker. It’s supposed to slow the heart down.”

Trevor was wide eyed. “Just let me get at him.”

I rested my hand on his arm. “Not yet. He must be putting it in our food. That was the spinach story last night. That’s why I didn’t eat my Pink Floyd greens. The spinach is in the doggy bag now, along with half a ton of New York fillet. Ruth is going to have it analysed.

“Today though, we want to see what’s in Marcel’s attaché case. We’d like you to help, Trev. Would you do my practice with me, one o’clock? That’ll leave Zoë free with Ruth as soon as Armand goes on at one thirty. They’re going to see if they can distract Marcel so one of us can have a look in the case.”

“If it’s not locked,” Trevor said.

“We’ll have to take a chance on that. I haven’t seen him lock it.”

Ruth added, “Or just take the case? Mystery theft?”

“That’s a thought.”

We didn’t need to steal the case, or not for long; it was just borrowed. Zoë was all over Marcel in the gallery while Trevor and I were having a hit. She filled in the details afterwards: ‘please tell me about Armand’s training’; ‘would you have any advice for me as a woman’; ‘what’s the best way of coping with my period?’ et cetera et cetera. According to Ruth, Marcel was beginning to think he’d hit the jackpot. Sailor hadn’t a clue what was going on.

It was Ruth who did the actual borrowing during Zoë’s performance, and she did the inspecting of the case’s contents, under the main stand. She was apparently able to return it in less than two minutes. Inside the case there were various papers, a copy of the New York Times, a pair of reading glasses, a packet of antacids and a small bottle.

The label on the bottle apparently said, ‘Corgard 80mg’.

We arranged to meet in the Grand Hyatt lobby at four o’clock. I was comically careful through the afternoon. Marcel didn’t try anything, either in Grand Central or at the hotel. He’d have had to get past a belligerent Trevor, who didn’t leave my side. He’d come back to my room for his shower. Abdel, whom we’d managed to contact, had sat outside the room, among other things checking out what Corgard was on his iPad.

At four we were sitting at one of the low tables in the lobby, Zoë, Ruth, Trevor, Abdel and me. “I thought I recognised the name,” Abdel said. “It’s a drug called nadolol. Corgard is the brand name. It is a beta blocker, like I thought. It’s a perfect drug for the job because it’s long acting. An eighty milligram tablet would easily last for twenty four hours. The other thing is, it’s known to affect the breathing in people like me who have a medical history of breathing problems.”

“Marcel could be taking it himself,” Ruth said. “Let me give my contact at the lab a call. I’ll tell them to look out for it, what did you say, nad...?”

“Nadolol,” Abdel confirmed.

Ruth took out her mobile and made the call. “Well, what are we going to do now?”

“We have to go to the police,” I said, “but where? Here? New Delhi? In France?”

“The sooner the better,” Ruth said. “It has to be here. Let me worry about that. I’m going to speak to someone I know at a downtown precinct, now, today.” She addressed me. “Come on, it’s time you started preparing for your match.”

I laughed. “It’s ridiculous. I’ve not been thinking about the match. I’d’ve been bricking it all day normally.” I checked my iPhone. “I’m due to meet Sailor in fifteen minutes. You’d better go too, Zoë. You’re on first.”

We agreed to get together after the squash for something to eat. By then, Ruth said, the cops would have made a move on Marcel, if she could get them to believe the story. She solemnly told me to take care in the meantime. So, chaperoned by Trevor, I went up to my room for my kit. The red light was blinking on the room telephone: a message for collection at Reception.

It was the message that brought my nerves back up to the twanging level, the way I’d expect to be feeling before the most important squash match of my life. I’d had a lot of posts on my wall, and several texts, one from Grandpa saying, ‘I’m proud of you, win or lose but the deal doesn’t change. Go for it and good luck! With love, Grandpa’. Another was from Dave, Russell and Marion, much shorter, ‘Go Jolyon!’ The message at Reception was in an envelope from the British Consulate-General, New York, 845 Third Avenue. The message was typed on a sheet of swanky cream paper. “Good luck in the final. Somewhere in the deep I’ll be thinking about you. All my love, Dad.’

That brought a lump to my throat.
Chapter Thirty Eight

Break out the booze and have a ball – if that's all there is.

Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller

My nerves were making up for lost time. Zoë’s match was over. She’d beaten the local girl Beth LaSalle, less convincingly than Sailor had expected. She hadn’t had her normal focus and it had taken five games. There wasn’t a single space left now in the boisterous gallery. An extra crowd had gathered on the travellers’ side of the front wall. I’d done my warm up. Various people had come up to me with the usual ‘good lucks’. A pink and sweaty Zoë had looked at me fiercely and said, “Believe it, Jolyon; you know you can win.” I’d had some final encouragement from Sailor, “Go on, son. Do the business, yer physically ready for this,” and from Trevor, “For Christ’s sake, Jols. This one’s for all of us, especially Razza.”

Armand and I hadn’t spoken. He was standing to one side of the court arguing with Marcel, a radical departure from the normal Darnaud pre-match routine. I’d not heard Armand answer back to a single one of Marcel’s instructions before. Not at tournaments, not in Aix-en-Provence, not at Marcel meals. Had Stephanie brought this on? She was sitting in the front row, with Gaston beside her with his laptop. Armand turned away from his father to Monsieur Kiefer, who was talking with a series of emphatic hand gestures. Marcel was almost hopping at being ignored; I wasn’t the only one who was tense. Earlier he had given me a nod and then tried, and failed, to stare me down. His shoes I didn’t recognise but the size looked right.

At last the announcer went on to the court with his microphone.

“Good evening, folks and welcome to the Vanderbilt Hall in Grand Central Terminal. This is the final of the J P Morgan Tournament of Champions, magnificently organised once again by Event Engine. This is the final we all wanted, between arguably the two most exciting players on the PSA circuit. Currently ranked two in the world, a semi finalist from last year, can I introduce to you from Aix-en-Provence, France, winner of five PSA titles, Mr Armand Darnaud.”

Thudding music started, disco lighting, big applause. Armand jogged onto the court, waving acknowledgment. He stood to the announcer’s right.

“And contesting the final with Armand tonight, from Manchester, England, the physical sensation we all know as The Whirlwind, the twenty year old Jolyon Jacks.”

More music, more applause. I walked forward slowly, taking in the atmosphere. This was it. Where had the five years gone? If only my stomach would stop churning. In the front row of spectators Marcel glared at me as I passed, Stephanie smiled, Gaston nodded. Monsieur Kiefer was looking at Armand. Sailor, Zoë and Trevor, my team, were to the side where I’d left my kit. I took my place to the announcer’s left, turned to the audience and tried to look nonchalant, in body language terms a whopper. Armand had resumed his jogging on the spot. How was he looking so calm?

“May I remind you,” the announcer continued, “that this match is also for the privilege of the world’s number one ranking. Neither Armand nor Jolyon has been there before. These are big stakes tonight at the ToC.

“The marker is David Dolman, the referee Robert Vaughan and the two assistant referees Ian Fuente and Charles Hodgson. Let me hand you over to David Dolman.”

From his seat a few rows back in the centre of the gallery David threw the white ball down to us. “Five minutes knock up.”

Armand and I went into the familiar routine, banging the ball across to each other, hitting a few returns back down the wall, moving up to a few short balls to get the tension out of the legs. I was vaguely aware of the spectators sitting to the sides, hardly more than a metre beyond the court wall, and I noticed the guys crouched low with their cameras on either side of the front wall, behind the two rectangular areas left clear for photography.

“Half time.”

We crossed over. Seeking inspiration I thought of my mother. This is for you dearest M. Not even she could dissipate my nerves, this must be bad. Then, “Time!”

We stopped, Armand shrugged, I nodded and he spun his racquet. Me to serve. We returned to the court after our final adjustments. David announced the match, finishing with the standard, “Best of five games, love all.”

I went to the right service box and smashed a serve as hard as I could, straight at Armand.

BlackBallBlog, January 28th, by MatchPoint

ToC Final

I’m in the gallery at the ToC, high up in Vanderbilt Hall, Grand Central, looking down at the final. And now I’ve seen everything. Armand Darnaud, as tall as the Empire State with the seven league stride and the titanium wrist. He’s playing Jolyon Jacks, the kinetic energy phenomenon from England who has been rewriting the laws of physiology. The first rally, the scene is set. It lasts for, read this carefully, seven minutes and thirty five seconds, I timed it, four hundred and ten strokes. Darnaud eventually takes the point. Most players would have died. These guys battle on...

I’d never played a point quite like that. If you had to calibrate it, it was mid twenties in the bleep test. This was a different Armand. He’d never struck me as confident before. Here his stroke play was full of confidence. It was as if he was out of the shadow of his father, just doing what he wanted to do, in the way he wanted to do it. He seemed the taller for it, stronger, with an aggressive, bullying attitude.

Not that Armand was going to bully me. I didn’t mind losing that point. It was bound to have damaged him already. I was the only player on the planet who could sustain that pace.

BlackBallBlog...

It goes on, no less explosive. This is NOT going to be one of those tedious play-the-ball-down-the-backhand-wall-and-wait matches. The two players are vying for who can take the ball earlier. Normal traffic for Jacks, but what a difference it makes to Darnaud’s game. I’ve not seen him play like this before. All that skill, and now the aggression to convert it into a score. Not that it’s easy scoring points. No freebies today from Jacks. 1-1, 2-2, 3-3, the score inches forward. The gallery is alive, uproar after every point. And this is only the first game!...

I lost the first game, but I didn’t mind. The doubt would only set in later. Armand took it thirteen eleven on a fifty-fifty penalty point decision. It should have been a let, but there you go; I knew the refs and they were a good team. In credit was that Armand would never be able to sustain this. Never. I was dripping when I came off. I rarely had to change my shirt after a first game. This time I did.

“It’s okay son,” Sailor said, as I took in some drink. “Keep working him, that game’s damaged him. He’s tired already.”

“You’ve got to push,” was Trevor’s advice. “Take the front of the court away from him.”

“If I get any further forward I’ll be into the front wall.”

“Then do it, mate, do it.”

Zoë said, “Come on! Match point, match point, remember.”

As I walked past Marcel onto court he was looking smug. Enjoy it while you can.

BlackBallBlog...

The second game is following the pattern of the first. How can two athletes sustain this energy? The consolation for Jacks and Darnaud is the applause at the end of each point. At least it gives them time for a breather...

I’d never known support like it. Noisy New Yorkers, all partiality, shouting for one or other of us. You could pick out individual voices: Marcel’s constant ‘Allez, allez’; Trevor’s ‘Go on, mate, push’; and sharp as an arrow into my consciousness, Zoë’s ‘Focus, focus’. Seven all, eight all, nine all; this time a big fifty-fifty decision went my way. Game point to me, yesss. I could visualise one game all. Above the noise I heard Marcel’s excited, “Non, non, ce n’est pas possible!”

Someone called out, “Sit down.”

I couldn’t clinch the game though at ten nine. Armand won the rally with one of his exquisite feathered drops. Can he keep that up for the whole match? No, leave the thought, not a good one.

I might not win?

No, no, no. No way, of course not. But Armand took the game twelve ten.

I was two nil down.

I followed him off court mentally patching over the cracks. I’ve been here, Aix-en-Provence, remember. I didn’t lose then. I’m not going to lose now. Repeat it: I am not going to lose.

If Marcel had been smug after the first game, the expression on his face after the second was smug squared. It made me want to puke. No way, my friend no way. Even if I have to die!

“Steady, son,” Sailor said as I towelled down. “Ramp up the pressure. The boy’s gone. He’s done as much as he can.”

“More pace,” said Trevor. “Pour it on. Make him know. You’re in it to win.”

I looked across at Armand. A different dynamic there. Marcel had remained seated, apparently not welcome. Armand was talking with Monsieur Kiefer. Stephanie was up with him, holding his arm, urging him on. No luck, Stephanie, babe. Your boy knows how this one’s going to turn out.

I still believed that.

BlackBallBlog...

I can’t imagine I’m writing this. The third game is surpassing the first and surpassing the second. If the first point in the first game was hard...

That first point in the third game. It gave me a sense of déjà vu. It was me against Dave that afternoon back at the EIS. Dave had fought and fought, but I had been implacable. I would not lose that point. Finally Dave realised it. A single point had broken him. Now Armand was me, fierce, frowning and Zoë’s word, focussed, reaching everything with his huge stride. Didn’t the guy get tired any more? What training had he been doing? Marie-Emmanuelle must have been right, he was on something. Armand was positively devouring my shots while maintaining his unbelievable control.

It is not going to be enough though. It is not going to be enough.

It’s not going to be... enough?

BlackBallBlog...

Jacks puts his life into this point. Three times he’s full length on the court to retrieve impossible balls. Now he makes the crowd laugh with an absurd diving backhand, back wall boast from a ball that’s gone, out of reach, give it up fella, regroup, point over. Jacks fights and scrambles. But it’s Darnaud who is applying the pressure, keeping his concentration. And this point. You won’t believe this. I still don’t believe it. Eight minutes and ten seconds, I have to check my stopwatch. Another four hundred and thirty two strokes. Watch it tomorrow on YouTube. A last dive from Jacks. Not quite there, 1-0 Darnaud...

Nooo! That point was important. Armand knew it. I knew it. Armand is off script. How can he be playing like this? Come on! I cannot lose this match. Not after everything I’ve been through.

BlackBallBlog...

2-0 Darnaud, he’s controlling this now. Jacks is looking frustrated... What’s that, a disturbance behind the front wall? Never mind, this squash is unbelievable.

Remember Aix-en-Provence. Make it difficult. He’s going to run out of belief. He must. He must?

BlackBallBlog...

3-0 Darnaud, another superb point. You have to admire Jacks... Hello, it looks like cops back there. There’s a posse of New York’s finest the other side of the front wall.

Uunghhh! Marcel was standing applauding after that one; I watched him through the back wall as I wiped my hand. I cannot tolerate the idea of Marcel seeing the see sawed: me lose, Armand win. His Armand, his win.

BlackBallBlog...

Jacks is lucky there. The ball jams out from the front wall nick. 1-3 Jacks.

Now he’s lucky again, Armand should have had a let. 2-3 Jacks. Maybe this isn’t over.

Yes it is. It must be now. That was a cracker of a rally, another long one. Armand had the Brit on a string, but he wouldn’t give up. Then the ball comes off Darnaud’s frame for a fluke winner and the Brit’s shoulders slump.

Who is that? Armand’s dad again, on his feet, shouting. What a jerk...

That mishit winner hurt. It was bad enough dealing with Armand’s properly hit shots. This was no longer Aix-en-Provence, with my fate in my hands as long as I had the will. Now my will wasn’t enough. Armand had the game to overcome everything I willed and the luck was going his way too. My fate was in his hands.

Armand played another delicate drop. How could they be so consistently tight? I got a bang from his hip as I lunged past, in hope rather than certainty that I’d reach the ball.

Worth a try? Yes. “Let please?”

There was a pause, the three judgements made, “Yes let.”

“No!” A loud shout from the gallery: Marcel.

“Quiet please,” David Dolman said. “Two four. Jacks.”

BlackBallBlog...

Then can you believe it. Darnaud hits three cross court nicks in succession, two silky ones on the back hand and a triumphant two hundred mile an hour smash on the forehand from a Jacks lift. 7-2 Darnaud. Surely it’s all over... Even the cops are watching. I’m counting five of them.

I kept Armand waiting at seven two, checking my socks, adjusting my wristbands, replenishing my oxygen. Then I glared at him. You’re still going to have to win this. I am not going to lose it for you.

Then it was more of the same game. I was still strong; problem was, I wasn’t good enough. One of my defensive shots came out, just a little. Not too far?

Armand: “Let?”

It was a fifty-fifty call at best. The pause for arbitration.

“Yes, let.”

Phew, I’d thought that one would go the other way.

BlackBallBlog...

Who is this jerk? It’s Armand’s dad again and he’s shouting at the marker. Sit down!

I exhaled big litres of carbon dioxide, took in volumes of oxygen. Keep on, Marcel, it all helps. Then he subsided. Armand served.

BlackBallBlog...

Jacks is getting lucky. Where does this decision go?

Close up behind Armand, I took a chance and anticipated one of his backhand drops, yet another as tight as tight could be. Anyway, I couldn’t get through.

“Let, please?”

Please give me a let, pretty please.

“Stroke to Jacks, three seven.”

No way, not a stroke. They definitely got that wrong.

Marcel was up again. “You cheats. You are cheating. It is a conspiracy.”

A slow handclap started, and some booing.

“Sit down, Mr Darnaud. For all of us. Let the players play. If you persist you’ll be removed. Jacks to serve, three seven.”

BlackBallBlog...

This guy is seriously out of order. Someone’s going to have to throw him out, he’s spoiling the match. And it’s not over. Now I’m starting to wonder. Looking at Jacks, he’s bouncing. He’s still so competitive. Might do something remarkable. I’ve never seen such determination...

A shout from Zoë, intensely personal, “Come on Jolyon. Do it for me!”

It gave me a surge of adrenaline, a jolt like the darkness in my bedroom the previous night. We were connected.

BlackBallBlog...

No one can believe Jacks and I’ve never heard this much noise in a squash gallery. This is physically impossible. Darnaud is superior. Everyone can see that. But now Jacks is winning the points. 3-7 becomes 4-7 and I’d swear that was a dead nick he picked up there. 5-7, Darnaud looks bemused. 6-7.

Nooo! Eight six.

BlackBallBlog...

Another great point. I take my hat off to Jacks. He is possessed but Darnaud still has the force. More accurately, Darnaud has the skill, another feathered drop. 9-6, it must be all over. Now 10-6, a back wall nick from the serve.

Oh God, the back wall nick, the ball rolling, that’s not fair. Come on! I will not lose.

BlackBallBlog...

10-6 match point. That must be it. Not even Jacks can come back from this and let’s face it he’s two games down. Oh dear, another tight let decision...

Maybe I shouldn’t have asked for that one. Two love and ten six match point down, you have to or you’ve lost. Worth a try. Armand had wrong footed me and I crashed into him as I turned.

The pause was longer than usual.

“Yes, let. Ten six, match point.”

A big disturbance at the front of the gallery, Marcel again. He was standing up and shouting at the marker. A slow handclap took hold, with shouts of ‘sit down’ from all over the gallery. What a prat. You don’t need to do this. Your son’s two oh and ten six, he’s won it, all but!

I took some deep breaths.

BlackBallBlog...

What’s happening? They’re shaking hands. Darnaud’s coming off court. He’s giving his father the stare as he walks past...

We’d been standing in the middle of the court, waiting for Marcel and the noise to subside. I felt Armand’s big hand on my shoulder. I turned. He gave one of his shrugs and shook my hand.

“Zat’s eet,” he said. “Is enough, my fuzzeur again, ’e push too much.” Another shrug. “Eet ees finished. Sank you.”

What?

He opened the door and left the court.

The whole gallery went silent.

“Mr Darnaud, Mr Darnaud.” This was David. “Armand?”

Armand didn’t listen. He collected his kit, headed off down the side of the court with everyone’s eyes on him. Through the semi-opaque wall I could just make him out turning left towards the street exit of Vanderbilt Hall. Stephanie shouted his name and ran after him.

David stood up, looked round and announced, “Hold on.” He picked his way down to the front of the gallery and hurried off after Armand. The buzz restarted. I looked through the side wall at Zoë and Sailor. Zoë mouthed ‘stay there’ so I started hitting some shots to myself. After a couple of surreal minutes, David returned. The buzz subsided. Everyone watched him climb back to the marker’s position and take the microphone.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry. Mr Darnaud defaults. Jolyon Jacks wins, eleven thirteen, ten twelve, six ten,” a pause, “Retirement.”

The buzz intensified. I saw Marcel stand up and look around, opening and shutting his mouth like a fish. Then he grabbed his briefcase and scrambled off, head down, past the spectators along the side of the court. Moments later there was a mighty commotion beyond the front wall. I couldn’t see clearly but Marcel was shouting again, surrounded by the NYPD. Ruth had obviously got through to them.

I felt embarrassed and went to leave the court. Some tentative applause started.

David said, “Wait.” I stopped at the open door and looked around the big gallery. Now everyone’s eyes were on me.

“Jolyon Jacks,” David repeated, raising his voice. “Our new champion, J P Morgan ToC champion!”

I looked across at Sailor, sitting with his hands on his knees, shell shocked. Beside him Trevor was shaking his fist in celebration.

“And let’s hear it again, Jolyon Jacks, ToC champion and new world number one!”

Huge applause, it must have gone on for at least a minute solid.

I looked at Zoë as I took it all in. And oh, this was best. Zoë was clapping, hands raised, and smiling warmly at me with her eyes.
Chapter Thirty Nine

A couple of hours later we were in Michael Jordan’s, another of New York’s famous steak houses, at a table overlooking Grand Central’s main hall. It was a superb place, Ruth’s recommendation, high up on the station’s north balcony. What a spot to celebrate. Across the vaulted hall you couldn’t miss a mighty reminder of the squash, the four huge ToC banners that had dominated the main terminal entrance during the tournament. Through the archway to Vanderbilt Hall you could see the lights of the court, and hear the pneumatic drills that were already disassembling the structure.

There were seven of us, Ruth, Zoë, Sailor, Trevor, Abdel, Gaston Guillot and me. You’d have thought after such an extraordinary end to the match we’d have been deflated. Not this time. I was zinging, still pinching myself, world number one, the best in the flipping world. You could argue about the circumstances, but not about the fact. I’d made it and it had been such a pleasure sending messages to Grandpa and the Kendalls.

Ruth was upbeat too. She’d told me outside the restaurant that discovering Razza had been murdered had taken away the guilt she’d been feeling. It didn’t ease the pain but the pain was more bearable. Horrible as it was, Razza’s death hadn’t after all been the accident she might have prevented. As for Gaston, he was as thrilled as I was: he had a major scoop, mainstream, not just sporting; Marcel was a prominent figure in France. It wasn’t the story he’d expected but his byline would be on L’Équipe’s front page. And I’d never seen Sailor so high, after a couple of glasses of the normally reviled red wine. He was sitting next to Zoë, who was directly opposite me, the only one of us, I thought with some concern, who was quiet.

“Well, Jolyon, son,” Sailor said, “now I’ve two number ones. But work to do, I logged six errors, three in the second game and three in the third.” He flung back his head and laughed. “Happy days, what am I quibbling over, eh Zoë?”

“It’s the coaching that’s responsible,” I said. “I’m thinking of moving on.”

“Where to? Aix-en-Provence? Marcel Darnaud?”

“I believe he’s unavailable.” I turned to Ruth, sitting next to me. “How did you fix it with the police?”

“Not so difficult. I called an old friend at Midtown North Precinct. It’s only a few blocks, on West 54th. Maria had met Razz once. She said she’d need more than just my word, but it all fitted together. Trevor and I went over there during Zoë’s match.”

“Oh, I never realised you’d gone.”

“It was only ten minutes in a cab.”

“Hold on, hold on,” Sailor said. “Would one of ye take me back to the beginning.”

So we pieced together the Marcel Armand story to an increasingly incredulous Sailor, who hadn’t fully understood the background to the arrest. Gaston was furiously jotting stuff down in his notebook, eyes darting to whoever was taking up the tale. Marcel was not going to look good. After Ahmed had described the effects of nadolol Ruth said, “Yes, the result came through really quickly from the lab. Jolyon’s spinach was loaded with it. He’d have OD’d if he’d eaten it all. That helped us down at the precinct. Enough for Maria to get an arrest warrant.”

“Did you mention the shin?” I asked. “There’s no way it won’t be bruised if it was Marcel in my room.”

“Yes,” Trevor said. “And they want all of us down there tomorrow morning to make statements. We fixed it for ten o’clock. Ruth managed to block their first proposal, to interview us all tonight. Your friend, Maria, she’s a squash player, that’s right?”

“She won’t be troubling Zoë, but yes, she’s a regular player. She had tickets here for the second round. She’s looking forward to meeting you, Jolyon.”

“Another of your women?” Zoë said with a raised eyebrow.

Ruth laughed. “Give him a break. I guess he’ll be a bit tired for that.”

Zoë was looking at me intensely and I decided it wasn’t the time to describe Marie-Emmanuelle’s ministrations, and what the tired body could be coaxed into accomplishing. I did want to mention Marie-Emmanuelle’s suspicions, though.

“There’s something else,” I said. “When I was staying in Aix-en-Provence I found out some interesting stuff about Marcel. Mainly the lengths he’d go to to improve Armand’s chances. I suppose we know that now anyway,” I was conscious of Ruth stiffening beside me, “but have any of you noticed? Armand’s bulked up a bit. The physio there, I’m not sure Marcel’s so popular among his staff and she was quite forthcoming, she said she suspected Armand was on something, maybe a steroid. She said he’s put on some kilos just recently.”

“No way,” said Sailor. “He’d be picked up.”

“Marcel’s a doc,” Trevor said. “And he’s into all this drug stuff.”

“It’s all very scientific down there,” I went on. “There’s a dietician, Pascal something. Everything Armand eats is controlled. I wouldn’t put it past Marcel. We’ve seen what he does. Excuse me, Ruth.”

“Is it that Armand knows about this?” Gaston asked. “The drugs?”

“I really don’t know,” I said. “It’s a good question.”

Trevor nodded. “Does he know is one thing. If it’s happening. My feeling is no. Armand’s not a cheat. The other is, I’m still wondering why he pulled out when he did. For Christ’s sake it was match point. Think what was at stake, and he had it won. Pardon me, Jols, but not even I could have come back from two nil six ten. Not against Armand playing like that.”

“I’ve been watching him over the last few days,” Zoë said. “Armand is okay with Lou Kiefer. He seems fine in general with squash people. But he absolutely loathes his father. It’s physical. He’s been doing a good job hiding it, but you can’t altogether. He flinches,” she made a small finger thumb gesture, “not much but it’s been there, whenever his father gives him orders. As he does. He treats Armand like a ten year old. And have you noticed the way Armand looks at Stephanie?”

“I have,” said Ruth.

“He’s besotted,” Zoë went on. “There’s a lot happening in Armand’s world.” She looked round. “And someone said his father wouldn’t let them go off together last night.”

“Almost a fight,” Trevor said.

“If you add it together, Stephanie, his father’s pressure, and he must have been so embarrassed this evening,” Zoë grimaced in the way I loved, “I’d have been cringing if my father had started giving off in a squash gallery like that.”

“Also,” Gaston added, “the pronouncement to my newspaper, my boy will win this, my boy will win that. Armand the puppet, no?”

This time Zoë nodded. “I think in the end he reached his limit, just reacted against it. It would have been instinct. He’s probably regretting it even now.”

Trevor laughed. “He’s probably with Stephanie right now, not thinking about it one little bit.”

Sailor was pink in the face from the unaccustomed wine. It was still the normal Sailor’s speech though. “Aye,” he said, “maybe it was the pushy parent in the end. Pushed too far. That was you, Jolyon, eh? Ye’ve your mother to thank for taking up squash.”

“Well, I have her to thank for not being a tennis player.” I explained the full frontal details of my relationship with my mother. From Sailor there was a quiet, “Aye, I’ve met the lady.”

“And thanks for reminding me,” I continued. “I can’t tell you how sweet this is. She’s an avid follower of tennis, my mother. Do you know what she said a little while ago, it was when I was down there before Christmas? She said she’d parade around our tennis club in a Venus Williams outfit, of all things those are horrendous, in the impossibly improbable event that I made it to something as trivial as world number one in squash. She said it in front of witnesses, even better. Someone from my school was there. Well, I took the precaution of having a friend at art college in Brighton photoshop my mother’s Medusa head onto Venus Williams’ body, Venus wearing one of those does-she-actually-have-any-knickers-on outfits. He’s created two full-sized cardboard figures. I’ll text him now. We’ve agreed he’ll put one up in the tennis club bar, and we’ve worked out how to get the other one into my school.”

“Steady on, son,” Sailor said sternly. “You’re over the top there.”

I sat up straight. “Over the top? That’s what she’s been, way way over, for the last five years for goodness sake. I’ve got to do something. She’s earned it. And it’ll only be this once. I won’t do anything like this again. But imagine how I feel, Sailor, how I’ve felt all this time, since I came to Manchester, it’s not been easy. If she’d shown the slightest trace of respect, or given me any support at all, just something, I might have felt like holding back.”

“Aye,” was all he said.

“Bear with me while I send the lady a text.”

I’d thought about this. The others watched silently. Our excellent waiter, I think he was all the way from Serbia, collected our plates. I tapped out the message. I had Mr Middleton’s mobile number and added him as a second recipient:

copy 2 MISTER middleton, hi mum Im world number1 tonite, tell your friends and its the Venus Williams outfit I believe? Is it a size 16 or a size 18? ha ha x your devoted jols, not yet 21 ;-) please tell dad PS theres something abt a LEGACY I believe...

SWEET.

I hit the ‘Send’ button and looked up at Zoë. She was fixing me with her beautiful brown eyes. I hadn’t had time to reflect on where I was with Zoë. Maybe back to square one. Back to the ninth floor for me; I’d console myself with the ToC trophy on the other side of the bed. Zoë had been so reserved since we’d gathered underneath the balcony at Michael Jordan’s. I’d have to arrange more escapes from attempted homicides.

Gaston started telling the others about the copy he’d submitted to L’Équipe, and the follow up stories he was planning. Zoë wasn’t listening. She was still staring at me expressionlessly.

It was then that I felt it, hidden under the tablecloth, Zoë’s shoeless foot pushing its way between my legs. All the way up to my crotch. Her eyes held mine as her toes began a slow circular movement.

Maybe I wouldn’t need the attempted homicide after all.

Zoë smiled.

Seventeenth floor tonight, I thought, yippee, and a sleepless night to come.