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the truth and I
wish I'd said 'no' when Gwen asked the boyfriend question
initially.
    "I'm just
going to do the lounge, Gwen."
    "Lounge?" she
barks, her mouth open and cornered with spittle which makes me
thirsty just looking at it. "You make it sound like a saloon
bar."
    I dust and
polish and plug in the hoover which roars to life, and I sing as I
push it back and forth but then I hear knocking above the song and
the hoover.
    It's Gwen,
rapping her stick against the chest of drawers in her room. She can
get a good grip then, when it suits.
    "Oh, thank
goodness you've turned off that racket. Anne never hoovers when
I've got a headache. Get me my paracetomol, will you?"
    Funny that,
how quickly Would-you-be-so-kind has become Get this, Do that.
Crack crack. Jump to it.
    No good
letting it get to you. Keep cool. You don't see umpires getting all
hot under the collar. Where would the game of tennis be if they
lost their rag? If they were still concentrating on the last point
and getting caught up in players' tantrums?
    Crack crack,
the sound of the paracetomol lid. Crack crack. Crack on.
    *
    Back upstairs,
Kournikova is playing an Argentinian, and I'm missing June. I keep
thinking she'll come through the door, a suitcase in each hand, not
able to miss Wimbledon. Except she wouldn't because she doesn't
know I'm here. Perhaps it's not June I'm missing, but someone to
share it with - another devotee.
    I slouch
across Gwen's lumpy bed with the fraying quilt. I can't imagine it
looking tip-top, though it must have once. Same with the snagged
damask curtains coming out of their runners, which I haven't
bothered to reinsert them and there it goes again. Rap rap
rap.
    "What is it?"
I hear the snappy edge in my voice as I open Gwen's
door.
    "Could you
turn the television down? I'm trying to get to sleep."
    Soothing
tennis balls should help her kip if anything.
    "And can you
take these away?
    "What, your
photos?"
    "Which
photos?"
    "Your pictures
of Rosemary."
    "What do you
know of her?"
    "Nothing.
D'you want to tell me about her?"
    "You're
watching your tennis."
    "I can soon
catch up."
    She's pointing
at one of the schoolgirl photos. "This one here ... this was taken
when she went to the grammar school."
    I see a dead
ordinary snap - stripy tie, dark regulation pullover, schoolgirl
smile.
    "These are all
old ... these are all I want ... to remember her as she was ...
take them away now would you, Robina?"
    I put them
back in Gwen's photograph box and return them to their home in the
sitting room cupboard. These are all old. So there must be some
recent ones then, upsetting ones, taken just before Rosemary
died.
    The clock
chimes and I make drinks for myself and Gwen, and upstairs I lower
the volume because the crowd is getting noisier. It's a Brit
playing, isn't it? Danny Sapsford against Pete Sampras and I fall
into a daze. I need something to wake me so I go to the left-hand
drawer of the dressing-table where I've stashed some of my most
personal bits and bobs, like photos and letters from June. Maybe I
should write to her in Copenhagen. All I've had from her is a
couple of postcards. Short and not so sweet. Business-like. She's
the one who’s turned her life around.
    And here I am,
up here, with my secret life. Secret from Gwen, I mean. But if she
just poked around a few drawers and boxes she might find out who I
really am, and perhaps if I did the same in the bedroom at the
other end of the landing I'd find out who Rosemary is.
    But it's
sacrosanct, Rosemary's bedroom, with its divan and light wardrobe
and wicker chair. I wouldn't want someone snooping around my
private things, so Rosemary will just have to be a mystery for now.
The black and white girl who grew into a sandy, good-time seventies
girl before disappearing from the picture altogether.
    The phone
rings.
    It's Anne.
She's surprised to hear that Gwen's flat out under her bedcovers.
And she's coming back she says. Hooray! Afternoons and evenings
free again, in time for the