Page 63 of Ace My Heart

I smiled back at him. “Yeah, that’s me.”

“I was at Indian Wells, and I saw you in the final – that was too bad, you deserved to win.”

I shrugged. “Well, thanks. Maybe next time.”

He cleared his throat. “Would you be able to autograph something for me?” he asked timidly.

It would never cease to weird me out that there were random strangers out there who were in awe of me. I smiled at him and rummaged in my bag for a pen. Joel passed me one, and a piece ofthe airline paper that they give you in business class if you have the urge to leap a few decades back in time and write a letter to someone.

“Here you go, Stink.”

I took the paper and pen from him with a quick smile.

“Who should I make it out to?” I asked the man.

“Can you make it out to Natalie, please?”

I looked at him questioningly.

“She’s my daughter. She’s twelve and she thinks you’re amazing – she has pictures of you all over her bedroom. She wants to be a professional tennis player when she grows up, but she’s not all that well at the moment … Leukaemia.

“We were supposed to be on holiday together; we had tickets to Indian Wells and Miami, because she was doing so well, but then she got sick again. She’s back in hospital. I didn’t want to go without her, but she wouldn’t hear of me staying at home. She wanted me to go so I could tell her all about it when I got back.” The man’s eyes were watering. I found my own prickling as I put the pen to the paper.

Dear Natalie,

Be brave and keep fighting. Can’t wait to see you competing at Wimbledon one day.

All the best,

Mel Black

I passed the paper back to the man, blinking the tears from my eyes. He read it and his own overflowed.

“Thank you so much, Mel. This will make her day.”

Joel leaned forwards. “Would Natalie like it if Mel came and visited her in the hospital?”

The man’s face lit up. “Oh, would you? That’s something she would remember for the rest of her life!” His eyes clouded over – possibly wondering how long that would be.

“She’d love to, wouldn’t you, Mel?” Joel said.

I nodded. “Of course I would!” I smiled at the man, who beamed back at me. Joel captured the man’s attention then, exchanging details and asking him to get in touch when his daughter was well enough for a visit.

“So, Mel,” Joel started, changing the subject. “Let’s talk about your loss to Abigail Petersen. I want you to tell me what went wrong.”

I rolled my eyes and sighed. “Well, not much that I could see. I mean, come on, Joel, I took it to a tie breaker! It was that close it’s not funny!”

Joel grinned at me and squeezed my hand.

“That’s exactly what I wanted to hear you say, Stink! You’re far too hard on yourself sometimes. You played a great game. You can’t win them all, you know.”

I grunted. Of course, I still wished Ihadwon them all. It would have been nice to be able to go home saying I’d won my first tournament since going pro.

“Stinky, you playedreallywell. All you need to do is be ready to go out and do it all again in Miami.”

I would almost be happy to bow out in the first round in Miami – I was feeling the burn out from competition in a way I never had before.

Steve. I kept thinking about him. And not just because of my nightmares, or the random times when images of that morning forced themselves into my brain. It was little things, like wanting to debrief with him about a tricky shot I’d aced, only to remember he wasn’t there … he’d never be there again.

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