It took me years to
realise that Sarah had been fucking Michael's tennis coach. I suppose
I did always think it strange the frequency with which Michael was
going to tennis—three or four times a week on occasion, and at
varying times. The impromptu tennis lessons sprung upon me out of
nowhere; I always thought he was just developing urgent and
capricious desires for emergency tennis coaching. 'What a promising
young sportsman,' I used to think. I was so proud of my little
McEnroe.
I think I really
started to suspect something was wrong when Sarah started taking
Michael to tennis lessons but forgetting to take him with her. I
would come home late to find Michael sitting on the sofa with a bag
of crisps in one hand, the T.V. remote in the other and his mother
nowhere to be seen.
“Where's your
mother?” I would ask.
“She's taking me to
tennis,” was his reply.
Things weren't quite
adding up. I was fairly sure that going to tennis coaching usually
involved some sort of combination of tennis and coaching, but then I
never was very good at sport. Michael used to bamboozle me with tales
of his sporting victories; stories of how he'd back-slapped the
T-ball into the back of the net from thirty-five yards out. It all
sounded so impressive.
It finally clicked
when one day, in a naïve attempt at familial bonding I challenged my
son to a game of tennis, hoping to witness the fruits of my huge
investment in lessons.
He didn't even own a
racket.
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