Games People Play

Games People Play by Louise Voss Read Free Book Online Page B

Book: Games People Play by Louise Voss Read Free Book Online
Authors: Louise Voss
country when you were on bail, did they?
    ‘No, he didn’t,’ she said shortly – fair enough, since she never knew anything about Dad’s movements. I decided not to ask her outright if he’d been arrested. It seemed faintly ludicrous now that I was home, and Dad was simply upstairs asleep. And anyway, if the Jehovah’s Witness story was a cover-up, she wouldn’t admit the truth to me. She was ridiculously loyal to Dad.
    ‘Well, never mind. I’m just going to ring Gordana – we were worried when he didn’t show up – and then I’m going to bed too. I’ve been up since half five this morning.’
    Later, after I’d placated Gordana, had a shower, and climbed gratefully into my single bed, I heard Anthea whirring away on the exercise bike in the spare room.
    She was at it for hours. I thought I could hear a faint moaning sound too, although that could have been the bike’s mechanism. It was like being haunted by a manicured ghost. She’s going to collapse with exhaustion if she carries on like this, I thought; or else exercise herself into oblivion. I had a vision of breaking down the door to find nothing left of her except a pair of false eyelashes floating in a puddle of sweat, next to an empty crumpled Chanel tracksuit.
    Clearly all was not well with her and Dad. I felt a surge of anger as the whirring kept me from sleep: Dad ought to get his nose out of my love life and concentrate on his own for a change. But I still wondered if it had anything to do with Dad’s early visitors. Feeling guilty at my annoyance – poor Anthea, I felt sorry for her really – I got up and made her a cheese sandwich, which I left outside the spare bedroom door with a glass of milk, for when she eventually finished exercising. I called through to tell her it was there, but received no answer.
    It took me ages to get to sleep. My room seemed too big and too empty as I sat up in bed in the dark like a child waiting to be tucked in. I wished that I’d accepted Gordana’s offer of company. She was always such a rock – I once overheard Mum saying that the hardest thing about moving back to Kansas was not having Gordana’s shoulder to cry on any more. (I was quite put out by that, actually. Surely, bearing in mind I stayed with Dad because of my career, it ought to be me she was upset at being apart from?) All of us in different places, not being there for one another: Mum in Kansas with Billy; Dad in a place somewhere inside his head that nobody has access to; Gordana at the club getting drunk; me here with old Anorexic Annie – although she’s about as much support as a custard bra.
    I eventually lay down and closed my eyes, willing my overactive imagination to put a sock in it. I tried to sleep by conjuring up my alternative, imaginary family, but somehow they wouldn’t come, not tonight.
    They were as flat and lifeless as paper dolls. Then I tried listing all the former Wimbledon Ladies title winners, chronologically, in my head.
    Just as I got back to Billie Jean King, and was finally drifting off to sleep, the elderly Blu-Tack holding up my signed Steffi Graf poster gave up the ghost. One corner drooped down with a disconsolate flapping sound next to my head, which woke me up again with a jerk. I sat up, peeled off the dry grey lump and squeezed it to try and activate some life into it, then pushed the poster back up into position over my bed.
    For heaven’s sake, I’m twenty-three years old today. I ought to be investing in some proper art, not sticking posters on walls like the naïve kid I was when Steffi signed it for me.
    It occurs to me that Mark didn’t mention my birthday when I saw him earlier. The Swisscom tournament in Zurich is a WTA one, so of course he won’t be entered in it; which means that unless he seeks me out at training tomorrow – today – I won’t see him until I get back. Great ...not.
    Perhaps I’ll skip training, for once. It’s my birthday, after all. And I’m flying in the

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