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whispered, thankful that the sommelier had returned to fill her glass with more champagne. She needed it. It was hard thinking of Jonah having a child. It felt wrong. They should have had a child together. Things should have been different.
     
    Stop. This was a dangerous path to tread, even if it was only in her head, so Claire quickly changed the subject. “Right, your turn,” she said. “Now I don’t think you won Wimbledon, but did any of your dreams come true?”
     
    Jonah’s dreams had been part of the problem. It had always been about him. When they’d met he’d already been ranked number ten in America, but he’d been plagued by knee injuries and an operation had forced him to take time out from competing. He’d taken a job as a tennis coach on the Greek island of Kos to recuperate. What he’d ended up with - a long distance girlfriend – had not been part of the plan. If anything, she’d been a hindrance, and Jonah’s coach had a gift for making her feel unwanted. But Jonah was smitten. “You’re my lucky charm,” he’d told her. “The coach knows nothing. I need you by my side.” It was a testament to how they felt about each other that their relationship had lasted as long as it did. Claire, who was studying Fine Art at St Andrews University just a few years before Prince William and Kate Middleton put the place on the map, had pulled pints overtime in pubs to pay for transatlantic flights so that she could accompany Jonah on the road at every possible opportunity. She’d been a dutiful tennis girlfriend, turning up to support him at some of the remotest and pithiest satellite tournaments. And, of course, once he’d started winning more and earning better money, he’d paid for her to join him. Bit by bit he’d clawed his way up the rankings. He’d been number three in the U.S by the time they’d split up. Not quite Andre Agassi standard but still bloody impressive! His pretty face had made him popular among female tennis fans, which was something else that Claire had found hard to deal with. 
     
    “My dreams,” he paused, reflecting. “Maybe as we get older we recalibrate our dreams.”
     
    He reminded her that anybody who’s crazy enough to want to compete in the world of tennis does it because they want to be No.1. He was no different. He’d wanted to be a champion. It was all or nothing. But his body had let him down. He’d had three more knee operations since they’d last met and his right elbow had also started packing up. He showed her the new scar on the back of his arm and it took all the strength she could muster to not reach out and run her fingertips over it. There once had been a time when she’d known every faded stitch and wound on his body and they’d jokingly graded each surgeon for their sewing capabilities. Some of the wounds were botch jobs and Miriam could, quite frankly, have done a better running stitch.  “Did you see me play Federer in the quarter finals at Melbourne?” he asked her. She shook her head without elaborating. She didn’t want to admit that she’d refused to watch or follow his career at all, because it was just too damn painful. Wimbledon had been the hardest to avoid, and she’d hated doing so because she’d been passionate about watching tennis and there was no other tournament in the world quite like it. Their relationship had, to a degree, ruined Claire’s love of the game.
     
    He told her that this match against Federer in the Australian Open had caused a huge upset at the time and had been a nail-biting one to both watch and play. As the underdog and seeded more than thirty places behind the Swiss player, Jonah hadn’t been expected to win. “It was some of the best tennis I’ve ever produced,” he said, “and whenever it rains it’s still one of the classic games they broadcast until play is resumed.”
     
    “But,” he said, as he sipped the remainder of his champagne and paid the bill, “I got into the world’s