by Lola Keeley
“She dived in the way of a smash! It wasn’t my fault!”
Toni and Alice hugged each other hello, cheek kisses and all. Eventually Toni made her way to my side, and I felt an instant lift as she folded herself into the armchair with me, all shower fresh and a little flustered from rushing around.
“Hey,” I murmured, patting her thigh. “I missed you today. Sorry I couldn’t come watch in person.”
“It’s okay, you missed Mira shouting my head off after, so probably for the best. She says I can beat you Saturday if I ‘sort my head out.’ Little does she know, right?”
“You two are really going to play each other and fight it out, aren’t you? The media must be having a fit with the engagement and all.”
“Yeah, about that. I got so many questions,” Toni said. “And Parisa says we have a bunch of joint interviews tomorrow on top of the other things. Should we talk about what we’re going to talk about?”
I gave a brief nod. “Later. We don’t have to get our stories straight; they’re not the police. I trust you not to completely embarrass me on television.”
“Cool, because I don’t trust myself. Can we eat in tonight? I know we have to be apart tomorrow, so I want to make the most of it. Alice, did you want to join us?”
Alice was watching us with an odd, fond little smile. I hadn’t seen her look at me that way in a long time; it seemed like something left over from our childhood. “Are you nerds actually separating the night before your final, like it’s a wedding?”
We both just stared at her. Of course we were.
“Okay, you should just tell people that story. Then anyone who has any doubts about you being made for each other will be totally sold. And don’t worry, I won’t crash your dinner. I’ll take Mamma out on the town so she can stop stressing about your leg exploding.”
“Hip,” I corrected automatically. “And thank you for that. I suspect it’s only a matter of time before she comes in here to talk the same strategy that we’ve been talking for two weeks. Like I don’t already know how to beat this one.”
“Hey!” Toni protested. “Just for that I’m going to beat you in three instead of doing it in straight sets.” She followed up with a kiss, and I let her get away with it. It was a good sign she could joke around.
Alice got up to leave, picking up her jacket and bag from where they’d been abandoned on the coffee table.
“Have fun, you two. Can’t wait to see you all over the sports pages.”
Where had joint interviews been all my life? With Toni at my side I actually enjoyed the experience. I was relaxed, I cracked jokes, no question felt too repetitive or too intrusive. It was unheard of.
She, on the other hand, got adorably flustered. “Well, uh, we haven’t really planned the wedding? Have we?”
I shook my head, smiling at the idea she might have just missed the entire planning somehow.
“I mean, I wasn’t thinking about that when I asked. Yes, I did ask! Okay, uh…” Toni trailed off, her eyes silently begging me for help.
I stepped in to save her, turning the conversation back to the match ahead.
“So I’m guessing this is a first? A couple playing against each other?” I asked, as if we hadn’t already been told a hundred times.
“Well, in doubles, actually,” the presenter answered. She picked up her notes and carried on, letting us both silently heave a sigh of relief.
“We could just do it, you know,” I said, as we sat to one side in the media centre, waiting for the setup of the next promo spot. Most had been done at the start of the Wimbledon fortnight, but there was always an extra bunch of footage to hype up the finals. Some years they had the finalists read poems and other times dressed up in ridiculous costumes—it was really whatever the BBC felt like putting us through.
“Do what?” Toni asked, missing her mouth yet again with the raisins she’d been tossing up and trying to catch. Hard to believe she had a career built around her coordination.
“Get married,” I said, as calmly as I could manage. “I need to go home for surgery next week, once I’m up and walking again we could just…go do it. Before New York, even.”
“Wow.” Toni bumped my shoulder with hers. “Do you mean it?”
“I’m not changing my mind about you,” I said, turning to face her. “Win, lose, playing, retired. When you asked me, all I wanted to be was your wife. I’ve never seen the point in waiting around once I know what I want.”
“People will say we’re nuts. That it’s fast.” Toni was trying to argue, but her grin matched my own. “But I think I’m learning not to care what people say.”
“Then we’ll make a plan,” I said, kissing her softly. “After the match.”
“After the match,” she agreed. We were still smiling when they called us for closeups.
We stuck to our plan, spending the night before the final in separate houses. With all the pre-final activity, I didn’t set eyes on Toni again until we were ready to be led out on court. Just as I had with Celeste the year before, I got to lead us out.
But there was time for a quick word first, as the announcements got the crowd settled.
“Hey,” I said, not quite able to reach out and touch her. Match mode was quickly descending, and I wanted to get a little human moment in before it settled in. “You look good. Ready.”
“Elin?” She looked panicked for a second. “I know how important today is for you, but I spent last night thinking how right you are. This might be my only chance.”
I smiled. “I knew you’d get it. Whatever happens, may the best woman win.”
Toni gave a curt nod, her shoulders dropping a little in relief. Before we could say anything else, we were being led out, bouquets in our arms like every other year.
By the time we were hitting back and forth over the net, it was almost as though we didn’t recognise each other. The buzz in the crowd was different to other times, the notes of gossip underlying the cheers and applause. We were a novelty, and unless some other seeds were hooking up, it was likely to be a one-off situation. Partner versus partner, fiancée versus fiancée.
The umpire called time on our warmup rally, and I rolled my shoulders one more time. Toni had won the toss and chosen to serve first, so I got to the baseline and took up position. My hip felt good as I moved a little in anticipation, or at least it didn’t feel much of anything, which was all I could hope for.
The crowd simmered down, ready for the first play to begin. Breaking the record was in my grasp, but Toni’s stance across the net radiated a danger I wasn’t familiar with. The ball came rushing towards me, and the old instincts kicked right in. The worry and the moralising disappeared, and I swung my racquet to make the return.
Toni wasn’t kidding about her change of heart, or her commitment to what we’d agreed. She played me like she hated me and gave me one of the biggest challenges of my career. Short of the engagement ring safely stowed in my racquet bag, it was the greatest gift anyone had ever given me.
She took the first set, which got the ripples of surprise rolling around the stadium. It took a tiebreak, but she pulled it off. I was as proud of her as I was angry at myself. I should have nailed down that first set to rein her in and given myself a chance to win the match in two. No, it was destined to go to three; I could sense it the way other people could tell when it was about to rain.
The first twinge from my hip came deep in that second set, right after I broke Toni for the first time all match. She’d been serving much harder and faster, part of Mira’s coaching no doubt. If she noticed me pull up for a second, Toni gave no indication. The blankness of her expression said she was deep in the zone by that point, and I was relieved.
When I clinched the second set to level matters between us, I took advantage of the natural break to call for a medical timeout. After a cursory examination, I got my painki
lling injection topped up, a ton of Ezi’s magical ice spray, and a change to rehydrate without rushing. Toni glanced over a few times, but I was too busy making sure the pain had subsided to watch her reactions.
I’d know how it affected her by how she came out serving to start the third set. I retied my laces and swapped out my racquet for good measure. It was all coming down to this.
Maybe I was imagining it, but the crowd seemed to be living and breathing every hit with us. My worries about Toni being rattled by my treatment were misplaced. She kept sending rockets across the net at me like she was sponsored by NASA, and we forced each other to every corner of that green grass to win each point.
At one point, having only just rescued my service game with a dangerous sliced return that had me on the ground, I almost wished I’d let her go easy on me. Then the competitive demon that lived somewhere in me took charge again, and all I cared about was winning the next point at all costs. And the one after that.
On a sunny Saturday in July, we were really leaving it all out there. Sweating through our shirts, grunting with effort, it wasn’t going to win points for attractiveness. It was, as the excitement in the ground proved, some excellent tennis. Some matches didn’t seem that way at the time, but this one had been an epic from the first game.
We made it to 4-4, and it already felt like the longest match I’d ever played, though the time on the scoreboard said it couldn’t be. The atmosphere crackled like a storm was coming in, but that was just the anticipation in the crowd.
It took every trick in my personal arsenal, but I broke Toni’s serve just when I thought I might be outplayed. I saw the moment her head went, used to spotting the signs from across the net in just about everyone I’d ever played. Had I been watching her from the stands, I think my heart might have broken. As it was, her obvious slump only lifted my spirits. It was in sight at last. The fucking record. The win to end it all on.
The crowd’s wave of support crested then. They smelled blood and threw their fickle love behind me and my slim advantage. That was the Wimbledon I knew and loved. I let it lift the ball as I threw it up to start serving out what might well be my last game in my last match.
Which, naturally, was the point my body decided the pain in my hip was strong enough to push through the fog of painkillers. It wasn’t so bad through the first point, but it made me stumble by the time I got to 30-0.
I couldn’t take another medical timeout for the same issue. I could fake a second injury, but I hated that unsporting bullshit. Even if I had a legitimate cause, it would give Toni every chance to recover from the rhythm rolling my way, meaning she might well claw her way back after any break.
No, just like with the French, I was going to have to play through it. In my distraction, Toni pulled a point back.
Shit.
How I got to 40-15 I couldn’t remember. I just knew my serve was weaker than milky tea, and it took angling myself in a weird way to misdirect Toni where my shot was going to land. But I was there. The Promised Land. Serving for the match, with a two-point cushion.
Which led to a double fault at the worst possible moment. On the second serve I felt the pain radiating up my side. I wasn’t going to be able to serve again. I wasn’t. But I absolutely couldn’t retire the match there. It would be snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Even thinking it made me want to throw up. I tried lifting my serving arm, careful as I could be. Even that gentle motion made me almost black out. It wasn’t going to happen.
The crowd were hushed like a congregation, but my delay meant a few nervous coughs were creeping through. The service clock had almost ticked down when it hit me: my last hope.
I took up my serving stance as normal, as if simply willing it would make my body cooperate. Toni was ready to receive, but she had already felt the match slipping from her. The hope had all but died in her eyes, and I needed that to get through, as awful as it was to see.
To her surprise, and the crowd’s shock, I served my last point underarm. Nobody had done that in decades, because it lacked power and precision. It was something ladies at a garden party used to do or kids at the beach.
It fell well short of where a normal serve would hit, but it landed within bounds. Toni scrambled once she realised what was happening, but the lack of power in my shot meant she only fluffed it into the net.
The crowd roared so loudly it felt like an explosion. No one seemed to believe what they’d just seen, and I couldn’t believe I’d just done it. The noise alone wasn’t confirmation though. I needed the umpire to do his final job of the day.
“Game, set, match, Miss Larsson. 6-7, 7-6, 6-4.”
I didn’t fall to my knees this time, just stood there with my head dropped forward, letting it all crash over me. I shoved my racquet under the arm on my good side and clutched at my hip as though it would help.
The moment absorbed, I looked up to see Toni approaching the net. I tried jogging across to meet her, but my hip insisted I go slower than that. She leaned in for the customary cheek kiss. and I let my racquet drop as I grabbed for her, clutching her shoulders.
“Is it bad?” she asked, our foreheads pressed against each other’s. “Oh Elin, please tell me you’re okay.”
“It’s over,” I whispered back. “Get me through this?”
The kiss we shared wasn’t exactly chaste this time, but we kept it mostly PG all the same. The crowd went wild for that too, and Toni rushed around the net to support me as we shook hands with the umpire. She gathered both our racquets and shoved them next to my chair before helping me sit down. Usually the runner-up would retreat to her own chair, maybe hide her head and her tears behind an official towel. Instead, Toni sat on the grass by my side, motioning for the medical team to come back out to me.
The head of the presentation ceremony noticed right away and came over as the preparations kept unfolding, all of it live on television around the world.
“Ladies?” was all he asked. Ezi had her miracle spray out again, and that gave me some instant relief. There was some arguing over whether I could have another injection so soon, but I grabbed the doctor who was wavering and told him to give me anything he had.
“I’ll be fine in a minute,” I told the official through gritted teeth. “Give Toni her moment and I’ll be ready for mine.”
The show really had to go on. No way was I missing my twenty-third one of these because I was off in a treatment room somewhere. There’d be plenty of time to recover once this ceremony was over.
I was cheering and applauding as loudly as anyone by the time they finally got to presenting Toni with her runner-up’s trophy. They didn’t linger over it, knowing nobody truly wanted second place, but I had tears in my eyes as I watched it all unfold. How lucky I was, not just to have made it through this day, but to have done it all with this magnificent woman right there with me.
The guard of honour seemed a mile long when they called my name, but I stood on slightly shaky legs to walk through it, just like every other time. The pain was receding with every second, and the end was finally in my grasp.
Step by careful step, I made my way towards the end of an era, and my future.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The coverage of the final was absolutely nuts, and I knew it had to piss off the guys that it so completely overshadowed the men’s final on Sunday. By that point, I was all tucked up in my private hospital room, full of opiates and sleeping as if it had just been invented.
Toni was by my side the whole time, which probably made her a far better person than me. If I’d gone through the day she had, I would have taken at least a day alone to deal with most of it. Her only concern had been making sure I hadn’t pushed myself too far in sealing that record-breaking win.
“It would have been okay,” I told her in one of my more lucid spells. “If you had won. I would have been okay with it being you.”
“Yeah?” Toni had asked, peering at me over her magazine. She had folded herself into the chair at my bedside, soft and relaxed in her shorts and T-shirt. “I think you’d have thrown your racquet at my head, you big liar.”
Celeste and Keiko dropped by to see me before they headed home on Monday and updated me on all the gossip from the Champions’ Dinner that I’d missed.
“I knew something was off with you,” Celeste said, squeezing my hand for a minute. “That speech sounded like you were bowing out, but you were just injury-freaked. You gonna make it back for Melbourne?”
I tried to shake my head, but it just made me dizzy. I wasn’t ready to have the full conversation with my fellow pros yet, even if my acceptance speech had been full of very big hints about last times and looking back at my career. “I’m done, C. Bowing out on top. I knew going in that it was my last one.”
She looked at Keiko in surprise, and I let them have a moment to react. We’d talk again; it was inevitable. I’d also have to do a ton of exit interviews to keep all my sponsors and everyone else happy too. God, that sounded exhausting. I could feel the pull of sleep tugging at me again. It was good to give into it.
“Elin, are you feeling up to talking?” Dr Huppert was leaning over me, immaculate as ever. I opened my eyes, and that was encouragement enough for her. “Thank you for the tickets, mmm? Those were two fantastic matches I saw you play. I feel very lucky.”
“You’re complimenting me,” I realised. “Which means you have bad news.”
“Ah, yes. The hip is very angry with you. We’re going to operate here, today, so no long flight for a few weeks.”
“Will I… Oh, wait.” I’d been about to ask her if I’d make it back in time for the US Open. Force of habit, or at least half a lifetime of conditioning at work. I didn’t have to do that anymore. I cast around a little for Toni, absent from my room for the first time since I checked in.
