The Seed Collectors (41 page)

Holly runs up and touches the net before taking her place back on the baseline to receive serve. This is a way of burning around two more calories every point, which is quite a lot over the course of a match, especially if you intentionally do not win all the points. Another thing is to do squats. Three if you win a point and four if you lose it. In any match, the coach told them today, more points are lost than are won. It’s just a fact. This is one of the profoundest things Holly has ever heard.

The David Lloyd Tennis Centre smells of the rubber inside tennis balls. It is full of echoey, squeaky sounds, like tennis shoes changing direction on the acrylic courts: rubber against rubber. One of Holly’s teachers at school is known for giving a punishment that requires pupils to write about the inside of a tennis ball (it may have been a ping-pong ball, but whatever), as if that was the most boring thing in the world. But the week Holly has already spent here, and the week to come, are basically that: being trapped inside a tennis ball. And obviously it is brilliant, and it costs LOADS, and Uncle Charlie was very generous to give it to Holly as her birthday present. You get to play tennis for about eight hours EVERY DAY. And the coaches
teach strategy as well as just hitting. For example you can move someone back behind the baseline and then drop-shot them. You can actually choose to do that, and not just do it by accident. And you also have to wait for the short ball before going to the net. And play the percentages, although Holly still isn’t quite sure what that means. And you can serve and volley, except apparently you also have to be a complete lesbian to do something as bold and aggressive as that.

In the breaks between sessions all the kids are allowed to go to the bar and order snacks and drinks. Charlie has given Holly ten pounds for each day, which is generous. The other kids all get Cokes, which cost £1.89, and are full of sugar, caffeine and empty calories. For lunch they all get huge baguettes with crisps and a chocolate bar. Holly gets a glass of skimmed milk for only 79p. And she never buys crisps, which, as well as being expensive, are basically bits of old potato dunked in boiling hair grease, but instead gets two apples: one for her snack and one for her lunch. If she wins every single match she plays in the little championships they have each day then she allows herself a Freddo bar, which is a whopping ninety-five calories but OK as a reward every so often. Sometimes Holly throws a game on purpose so that she doesn’t have to eat the Freddo bar. There’s something about Freddo bars that means that if you do have to eat one, you should do it as quickly as possible.

So far Holly has saved over fifty pounds! Uncle Charlie has told her that he will double whatever she can save from her daily ten pounds and then she can spend it on something nice from the David Lloyd Tennis Shop, which is the kind of place kids are not really allowed in on their own, and which also smells of rubber, but in an expensive, frightening kind of way. Holly has no idea what she will buy in there, but imagine, just imagine, having around £200 to spend on anything . . . Probably another new racquet. Having two racquets means that if you play in a tournament and one of your strings breaks, you just get out your spare racquet rather than forfeiting the match.
But you should not use a crappy old racquet for this: all your racquets should be amazing. Perhaps Holly’s second new racquet will be a Babolat, which is what the Angel plays with. If Holly could never eat again in order to save the money to be twenty per cent of what the Angel is then she would. She would do anything.

The Angel is actually called Melissa, but that is the wrong name for her really. She is too perfect to have a human name. She is quite old, maybe seventeen, and is the best tennis player Holly has ever, ever seen. She turns up for her coaching sessions in very short shorts, which are strangely silky looking, like footballers’ shorts, and an old pink sweatshirt over a tight white T-shirt that shows she has basically no fat. But it’s not even that. She is very strong and when she hits the ball she seems to be flying through the air like a warrior from one of Uncle Charlie’s martial arts films. Not that Holly likes those films. They are very, very lame and boring and unrealistic. But when Melissa flies through the air, that’s different. Melissa is the captain of the U18 Middlesex county tennis team. Middlesex is where the David Lloyd Tennis Centre is, even though it’s really in London. Holly knows she would pass out if Melissa ever said anything to her. Melissa is going to play at Wimbledon next year.

When Holly defeats what turns out to be Alice, not Grace, one of the coaches says something to one of the other coaches and looks at her and sort of nods. There are three games going on simultaneously, and on the far court Melissa is flying through the air and making only a little grunt – nothing like the ghostly wail of some current tennis stars. Melissa’s grunt sounds like an angel sighing. She’s hammering the male coach she’s playing: really annihilating him. What is it about seeing a thin girlish girl with long blonde hair like in a fairy tale hitting the ball like that? And beating a man? It’s so, so deeply ace. Holly loves beating Uncle Charlie, but she also loves beating the boys here, which is really, really easy. But the girls are so . . .

‘Watch out,’ says fat Stephanie, walking into Holly and shoving her.

A ball hits the back of Holly’s knee from where someone has thrown it ‘at the basket’ which is about three metres away. Yesterday Holly didn’t just drop a game to Stephanie, she actually gave her the match. It was quite an odd feeling, like being God or something – not in a weird spazzy way – but Holly knew exactly where Stephanie was going to hit the ball every single time she hit it. For most of the points Holly just kept getting the ball back, but that was a risky strategy because Stephanie would make a mistake fairly quickly usually, going for the winner when she should be just hitting middle and deep. On the other hand, long rallies mean more calories burned. And if you give your opponent the chance to run you around the court, then . . . but Stephanie is not very good at running people around the court. She certainly doesn’t like running herself. There is nothing she can do, no shot she can play, that Holly can’t retrieve. When Holly wants to lose a point her favourite method is hitting it in the net because at least that’s controllable. And sometimes she does what Uncle Charlie would call taking the piss. She will get 40–0 up in a service game by playing normally, and then serve the most outrageous double faults for the next two points and hit it into the net for deuce.

Occasionally, though, when she tries to serve a fault, she actually serves an ace, which is really, really weird but might have something to do with the
Inner Game of Tennis
, which is a book that Fleur got Holly for her birthday and says that instead of telling your body to do things you should let it do what it wants because it knows how to play the right shot and if you keep telling it what to do you are only interfering.

The big question now is what to do about the next match with Stephanie. Holly would like to beat Stephanie this time, especially as losing to her does not seem to have stopped her bumping into her and saying horrible things to her at lunchtime and in the drinks breaks. Yesterday there was this long conversation about deodorant that Holly didn’t understand but seemed to be aimed at her. On the other hand
it would be nice not to have to have a Freddo bar. The idea of a Freddo bar seems quite exhausting at this moment. The Good Holly who lives in Holly’s mind frowns at her for a moment, shakes her head, and then turns her back and goes to sit down for a nice roast dinner with a blurry family that may or may not be Holly’s real family. Anyway, the Holly that exists in the world is different from her. What if she ate two Freddos? Which is ridiculous, when she doesn’t even want one! Or
five
? Where is this coming from? Who, apart from a real fatso like Stephanie, would eat five Freddos?

‘Actually, Holly . . . Holly?’

The nicest coach, Dave, who is a Geordie, is talking to her.

‘Yes, you, flower,’ he says. ‘Can you get over to court 4?’

Court 4 is where Melissa is playing. How can she possibly . . . ?

‘And hit with Melissa for a bit?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Hurry up! Don’t keep her waiting.’

‘OK.’

Over on court 4, Melissa is drinking something from a silver bottle. She raises an eyebrow at Holly and then sort of half smiles before getting up, only slightly tightening her by now very loose, long blonde ponytail. On court, she nods at Holly to feed the ball in. Of course Holly hits it straight into the net – and not even on purpose. Maybe she is doomed from all those other times. ‘Sorry,’ she says. But after that the hitting is great. Melissa windscreen-wipers the ball much more than Holly does and her balls fly over the net like spinning meteorites in a slightly stronger gravitational zone than Earth’s. Holly is fast. She can get to Melissa’s wider balls, but only just. Every so often, when Holly hits short and weak, Melissa kills the ball breathtakingly hard, just like she probably does in real matches, and then grins at Holly. But most of the time she just hits it back hard but straight, and the two of them dance a faraway waltz with one another, and with the ball, sidestepping, pointing and
windscreen-wipering, and soon Holly finds she is making a little grunt just like Melissa’s and hitting the ball harder and deeper than she thought she could. And it’s as if the ball will never go out, will never fade, become bald or die . . .

Afterwards, Melissa offers Holly a sip of her drink. It’s sweet and herby.

‘Don’t ever say sorry again,’ Melissa says. And then she leaves.

Dave comes over. ‘That was more like it,’ he says.

‘Thanks.’

‘So what’s the problem when you play Stephanie?’

Holly shrugs.

‘I mean, why are you throwing the . . .’

‘I’m
not
.’

‘You won’t do that when you’re in the county squad, will you?’

‘I, uh . . .’

‘Twelve, aren’t you? So you’ll be in the 13Us.’

‘The
county
squad?’

‘Yep. Do you live far away? We’ll need you here on three weeknights, sometimes four. And get you an address here so you can play for us. We’ve got another girl doing that, so don’t worry. Anushka. You’ll like her.’

‘I live in Kent.’

He frowns. ‘Kent. Could be worse. OK, I’ll call your mum.’

‘Oh my God! Thank you. Thank you. I’ll train all the time . . . I’ll . . .’

More sit-ups. No more Freddo bars. Only green vegetables. Maybe a touch more protein. Lots of squats and lunges. Resistance-band work.

‘I don’t want to ever see you throw a point again. No matter who is bullying you or what they are saying. Kill them on the court. Don’t be anyone’s bitch.’

‘I, er . . .’

‘I totally shouldn’t have said that. Anyway, if I see you throw a point again you’ll be out of the squad. Got it?’

‘Yes.’ Holly frowns. ‘What if it’s by accident?’

‘You can lose a point, flower. You just can’t do it on purpose.’

It isn’t then that Holly passes out, as she thought she might do when Melissa spoke to her. It isn’t after her hot shower that evening, although she does feel a little faint then. It’s not at dinner, because she doesn’t go, and no one makes her, and it’s not when the pizza she has ordered through the hotel does not come. Holly goes to sleep empty but happy. Happier than she has ever, ever been. It’s at breakfast the next morning when she hits the deck, right at Stephanie’s feet. And she doesn’t wake up for a whole day, and when she does come round, there are Uncle Charlie and her mum and her dad standing by her hospital bed and they all seem to be cross with one another.

Reasons for giving up smoking:

Live longer

Better breath, especially in a.m.

SWIMMING – lap times will improve

Annoying cough will finally go

Will not have to be slave to something

Not have to worry about cancer any more

Not have to stand outside in the rain

End embarrassment at work – must not be caught by D again

Smell in office/on clothes/in car will go

Will not have Del Boy feeling on holiday

Can attend long meetings w/o cravings

Also not get stressed in cinema, theatre, flights etc.

No more staining on fingers

Will be able to speak more clearly, and project voice more in lectures

Will save money

Will be more attractive to C?