If you were to listen to her mother, Anna possessed all the attributes required to make millions from the sport of tennis. 

She had raw talent – though, God knows, she was wasting it. She was pretty too: long legs, a good bust. Still, a pity, her mother said, that she had that silly tattoo on her wrist. So ugly.

Anna disagreed with her mother on the attributes issue. If she had talent, how come she hadn’t won a match for three months? Maybe she was pretty: that’s what her earliest sponsors had told her. But there were other players more beautiful, less ungainly, less insecure. She wore more make-up than she needed to and though no longer a teenager, her face still had an adolescent roundness that she would probably be stuck with for ever.

Anna and her mother sat in adjacent rattan chairs in the vestibule of an inexpensive hotel in Morocco. They were eating a light dinner – mostly olives and breadsticks – from their laps and would not look at each other. Their conversation travelled along the same rails it always did when Anna had been knocked out of a tournament early.

Her mother said she ought to pull her socks up. Because there was a limit to patience and kindness. And not many mothers – single mothers to boot – would invest so much in their child’s sporting development for so little reward.

“I mean, the Lawn Tennis Association has wiped its hands of you, Anna, and I must say I sympathise. You’ve lost your ranking. You’re twenty now, not some child prodigy. By your age, Emma Raducanu –

Anna put her plate down. “Please, not Raducanu again.”

“Think of me for a change. I organise our flights, book us into a hotel for a week and you lose on the first day of qualifying. It can’t go on.”

Anna said not going on would be fine. She would happily never see a tennis court again.

Her mother leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Anna. As it happens, at your match today I met a quite striking Frenchman who might be able to help you. He’s one of those – you know – sports psychologists.”

“Oh.”

“He was watching your game closely. Said he had a theory about why you lost.”

“It doesn’t take a genius, mum. Let me guess: the other player was better than me?”

Her mother sighed. “He said it’s in your head. Seen it before. Didn’t go into details, but he offered to meet you on the practice courts tomorrow, if you were interested. I said you were. It’s not as if you have anything else to do now.”

Anna sighed. “Mum, I’ve no money. I can’t even afford to pay you. You keep reminding me.”

“This psychiatric person is retired. He’s not looking for money.”

“Then he must be looking for something else.”

“Don’t be vulgar, Anna. He doesn’t look like that sort of man. I asked around: he seems to be respected. Oh, now – who was that French player in the nineties? Skinny thing? Used to absolutely throw matches.”

Anna shrugged. “No idea.”

“She’s on the tip of my tongue. Anyway, he got involved with her and the change was spectacular. Got her to a Grand Slam quarter-final. So there’s hope for you.” Her mother bit into an olive, and added: “After all, what have you got to lose?”

*

Anna, in an all-white tennis outfit and weighted down by a cumbersome bag, reached the doors of the tennis courts on the stroke of nine the following morning. A tall, tanned Frenchman, hair greying at the temples, strode over confidently to introduce himself.

“Gilles Campistron. We haven’t met, but maybe you’ve heard –”

Anna walked past him onto the court. “This was my mother’s idea. Not mine.” 

Gilles cleared his throat and followed her. “Why don’t we play a set, Anna. To see if you’re any good? I’ll serve first.”

Anna stopped. “Any good? I was one of the most promising…”

But Gilles was walking on towards the service line, swinging his racket, practicising his backhand, his eyes following the imagined trajectory of a perfect winner down the line.

Wordlessly, Anna stomped to the opposite end. She swung from side to side, ready to receive his serve and it came towards her forehand at medium pace, with a little spin. She batted it away for a winner. On the next point, after a brief rally, she lured Gilles to the net and passed him down the line. Anna was on fire: a delicate volley left Gilles stumbling, out of breath, at the back of the court. She found the lines perfectly and broke him to love.

Her turn to serve. She bounced the ball a couple of times, tossed it high and her powerful service game clicked immediately: an ace. Gilles returned her next serve weakly; she put away a confident backhand. Then another unreadable ace. At the other side of the next, Gilles paced the service line between points, muttering. Anna won point after point and, without breaking sweat, soon ran into a 5-0 lead. She only had to hold her serve to win the set, and prove a point to Mr Gilles Campistron.

Gilles waved his racket in the air to grab her attention.

“Your mother was right,” he called. “You have all the attributes. You’re talented. You have immaculate timing. I think you’re going to beat me comfortably.”

One game to win. Anna readied herself. She slapped her thigh with her racket and told herself not to look at him. Not to relent. She tossed the ball high – and smacked it harmlessly into the net. Her second attempt met the same result. Her third serve cleared the net, but only just. Gilles swatted it away into the open court.

“Bad luck,” Gilles shouted from the other end.

Anna became aware of the familiar symptoms. She was strangely listless, minutely conscious of each rivulet of sweat now running down the valley of her spine. She was no longer in complete control of her muscles – instead her body relaxed and she swung wildly: the ball flew off her racket, directionless, with the following shot even more hopelessly off target. Gilles won the next game, then the next, and Anna began to rush her play, her body increasingly limp, her breathing ragged. She knew she was rotating her body too much on each swing. It lent power, not direction and each time it threw her skirt up above her waist. She made no adjustment. When she looked down – at the sweating, limp length of her body – the outline of her nipples poking through her sports bra and top could surely be seen from his side of the court. So let him look. She could hardly grip her racket.

She lost game after game; it was a catastrophic collapse. When Gilles struck a casual forehand winner to claim the set, Anna did not even move from mid-court to chase it.

Gilles walked slowly towards the net to shake her hand.

“I am sixty-two years old,” he said. “I should not beat you. You feel sorry for me?”

Anna reached behind her to pinch her top away from her sweaty back. “No. Just didn’t play well.”

“What ranking are you?”

“I was as high as two hundred in the juniors.”

“I’m not talking about the juniors. I’m talking about now.”

“I’m – well. I’m unranked. For the moment. It just hasn’t been working for me recently. My performance is all – off.” Anna illustrated by waving her racket in a figure-of-eight movement.

Gilles lifted his own racket and tapped it on the net.

“I think you like being beaten, Anna. That’s what I saw yesterday during your match. That’s what I saw today.”

“Like losing? I’m a professional player. Nice meeting you, though.” Anna turned and walked over to her chair to retrieve her bag. She kept her back to Gilles.

“I see it in one in a thousand players – male or female. So much talent, yet a self-destructive desire to lose. It can destroy careers. Often it can be explained by a desire to escape from the stress of one’s ordinary identity. The competitiveness of modern tennis is burdensome. But I’ve only seen a case like yours once before. It’s extreme.”

Anna dabbed at her face with a towel. “That’s just so stupid.” But a few moments later, she asked: “How is it extreme?”

“Let me think how to phrase this. Because, Anna, you have what is termed a masochistic tendency.”

Anna blinked. “That’s – that’s insane.”

Gilles shrugged, walked over to his tennis bag, and bent awkwardly to replace his racket. “This is my diagnosis, Anna. Masochism. Throughout the match I see the tension building. When you are close to winning, you play childishly, and you mean to. Your shots are careless; your face turns red. Your breathing changes: I hear it. But you don’t get angry with yourself, like you should. Instead you have a distant look in your eyes. It deepens with every lost point. You look for more ways to lose. The more complete the defeat the better. You derive sexual pleasure from your own humiliation. Masochism.”

Anna held her towel in front of her top. “I don’t know how you can say that.”

“Perhaps. My mistake then, Anna. In which case, I wish you luck with your career.” Gilles lifted his tennis bag to his shoulders and, gripping the wire mesh of the door to the court, pulled it open and left. He had walked several steps down the path when Anna shouted after him.

“Even if it were true, how would you cure it?”

Gilles turned. “The first step is to admit it, Anna. The longer it goes untreated, the worse it gets. In the short term, the simplest way to release a little tension is to return to your room, undress, put some quiet music on, et voila.”

Anna flushed. “What about my tennis career?”

Gilles considered for a moment. “Long-term, you have to address your urge. Embrace it. Or give up.”

“Thank you for your advice,” Anna said. “But I’d rather die.”

*

“How did it go,” her mother asked, at lunch.

“With that man? It was awful,” Anna said, her voice tight with anger. “He just wanted to humiliate me.”

“He’s a widower, I hear.”

“To be honest, mum, I feel I’m worse than ever.”

“I wonder if he has much money. He looks wealthy, but Frenchmen always do. I find. The way they dress, I think.”

“Anyway, I won’t be seeing him again.”

Anna’s mother abruptly turned. “Nonsense, Anna. He knows what he’s doing. You don’t. You’re stubborn to a fault. It’s about time you had someone who could lead you with a firm hand. Do what he says.”

*

Sometime after lunch, Anna stood in front of Gilles’ hotel room door, staring at the brass room number – 407 – and pulling at the hem of her tennis skirt. She exhaled, a long, slow escape of breath like a whistle. She tapped once, then a second time, more decisively.

Gilles answered. Unlike Anna, he’d showered and changed and was dressed in jeans and a linen sports jacket. He did not look surprised to see her, but simply opened his palms in a gesture that made it clear he was unsure what was expected of him.

Anna cleared her throat. “It appears that I have issues.”

Gilles stood aside to let Anna enter and he closed the door behind her. He flicked off the TV with the remote in his hand.

She stopped at the foot of the bed and bowed her head. “You said you’d seen someone like me, once before.”

Gilles nodded. “A player I coached many years ago. In some games it seemed she lusted after defeat. She was a masochist, like you.”

“Was she that French player?”

Gilles nodded.

“How did you cure it?”

Gilles considered for a moment. “Like I told you, it builds up unless you treat it. So I taught her how to get it out of her system. Then she could relax and concentrate on winning.”

A silence followed. Anna ran a finger across the top of the TV set as if checking for dust. Then she looked at Gilles.

“How did she get it out of her system?”

“If I must be blunt, sometimes she masturbated. But she needed something more to embrace the self-hatred, so she asked me to spank her. In the end we did it before every tournament. I used to pull her panties down and bend her over my knee. It released the tension.”

Anna rubbed her fingers against the palm of her hand. “It worked?”

“Results-wise, yes.”

There was another long pause; an almost perfect silence, apart from the low buzz of traffic outside and the noise of a fan, which seemed to be coming from the en-suite bathroom.

Anna sighed. Her eyes had a remote look. “I never have time to myself. My mother breathes down my neck.”

“Treat this room as yours,” Gilles said. “Take your clothes off. You crave vulnerability. So make yourself vulnerable.”

“Here?”

“Here. In front of me.”

“Now? I can't.”

“I think you can. You trust me. That’s why you knocked on my door. You’ve been thinking about me since we left the tennis court. You want to expose yourself to me. You’ve never wanted anything more.”

Anna swallowed and pushed a stray strand of blonde hair away from her face. She breathed out loudly. “Can we take this one step at a time?”

“Sure.”

Anna dropped her arms to her sides, then, in a movement as measured as the second hand of a clock, she turned to Gilles and, pinching the hem of her skirt between two fingers and her thumb, she lifted it towards him. At the same time, with her other hand, she grabbed the waistband of the lycra shorts underneath, pulling forward and down. The effect was to expose the triangle of her pubic hair, dark and curled against her skin.

“I’m not even a natural blonde,” Anna said.

“So I see.”

Anna was conscious of a pool of saliva in her mouth. “Is this what you want me to do?”

Gilles looked at her. “It’s what you want, Anna. Now, the rest.”

Anna rolled her eyes, as if reluctant, but she didn’t let go of her undershorts. She began to work them down, one side at a time, past her knees, before they dropped. Then, hesitating only for the briefest moment, she reached behind her to unzip and undo her tennis skirt. That too fell to the floor and she stepped out of it. Gilles watched as Anna unclasped her bra and gripped her top and drew them over her head together. The action dragged her ponytail out of place; she painstakingly fixed it.

She stood in her tennis shoes, otherwise naked. Gilles took a step back and stared. She was tall – almost as tall as him – and lithe, with the familiar, distinctive complexion of every tennis player he had known: her arms and legs, from ankle to thigh, were the tawny colour of wet sand. But her torso was as pale as milk. Anna’s nipples sat large and erect on large, pert breasts, and between her legs, her pussy was like a tiny silhouette of a tree against the backdrop of winter snow.

Anna’s face was flushed. She did not look up.

“That’s the first step, Anna. You’ve given up control. And it excites you, doesn’t it?”

No answer.

“Doesn’t it? Tell me.”

No answer, and then: “Yes.”

“Now lie back.”

Anna sat on the mattress and shuffled up the bed a little. She finally looked at Gilles – her blue eyes were almost watering – and he nodded. Anna reclined slowly, arms at her sides and legs kept tightly together, until she was lying flat.

“Now,” Gilles said, “tell me about the match you lost yesterday.”

Eventually, Anna said: “I played badly, didn’t I?”

“Very, very badly.”

“I was doing so well,” Anna began, “I’d beaten her before and I thought I’d win easily. But that feeling came over me. It’s been happening in every match recently. I looked at her and she looked forlorn and I wanted to feel like that; I wanted to lose instead. Every bad shot I played from then on made me happier.”

“Happier?” Gilles stood at the foot of the bed, hands in pockets. “I don’t think that’s the right word, is it Anna? Describe how it felt.”

“Every bad shot –”

“Come on. Describe it.”

“I missed on purpose, and every time I felt excited.”

“Sexual excitement?”

“No. Maybe. Yes.”

“It made you wet, didn’t it?”

A sigh. “Yes.”

“Then say it.”

“It made me wet.”

“What part of you?”

“Between my legs.”

“And how did you feel when she won?”

Anna closed her eyes and bathed in his imagined gaze. “After the last point, I wanted to lie where I was standing, with the red clay from the court covering my back and legs. I wanted to be filthy. I wanted her to come to the net and see me as I opened my legs and pulled my panties to the side and played with myself until I came …”

Anna’s hand had begun to move across her body in staccato bursts, as though controlled by a foreign body. It drifted over her stomach, and for some time her fingertips trailed in a lazy circle around her belly button. Then her palm flattened and went lower and her legs nudged apart to accommodate the movement. Two fingers worked through her pubes and began circling anew. By bending her knees, Anna could open her legs further; a reflective sheen covered the inside of her thighs. She began to flick her middle finger delicately against her pussy. Her other hand went to her breast, where a fingertip caressed her nipple into life.

“Dirty clay, all over my body,” she said, almost to herself.

“And why did you lose to me today? You’re better than me, fitter than me.”

Anna did not answer. She was still masturbating, purely conscious of the noise she made and its intimacy; the soft wet sounds that only she and Gilles could hear.

“Why, Anna?”

One of Anna’s legs slackened and flapped to the side, like a book cover falling open. “Because I wanted to be humiliated.”

“What did you think about?”

Anna gulped.

“I wanted – I wanted you to knock me to the ground and tell me I was the worst player in the world.”

Anna’s finger flickered faster. She could smell herself. She rolled on the bed, from side to side before turning completely, so her tummy was flat against the sheets. A second later she rose to her knees, keeping her head pressed to the mattress. Her fingers were glued to her; she did not relent; she kept masturbating, one wet finger brazenly curling into her only inches from Gilles.

“You like me seeing your pussy, don’t you Anna?”

“Yes.”

“And after I’d knocked you to the ground. What then?”

“I wanted you to pull my shorts down and hit me.”

Gilles lowered himself to kneel on the bed, directly behind Anna. He placed his palm on her bottom. It was cold and wet to the touch, like a pebble you might find on the shoreline. He caressed her for a moment, then patted her a couple of times. “Playful spanks, like this?”

Anna’s head was half-buried between the mattress and the pillow, but she tried to turn her head.

“Harder.”

Gilles slapped her with a little more force, then harder still until the contact made a sharp wet noise, almost like that of a bullet being fired. As his slaps grew more forceful, the two of them found a rhythm: his palm cracking against her ass; Anna falling forward then recoiling, absorbing the blow, still masturbating. He struck one cheek, then with the back of his hand, the other. The livid imprint of his hand branded her anew each time.

“Is this what you wanted me to do?” Gilles said.

Anna’s teeth set together so her breathing was a series of hisses. Her knees were drifting apart, her body lowering.

Gilles reached forward and pulled Anna’s ponytail, jerking her head back. “I said, is this what you wanted me to do?”

“Yes,” she said, pulling her hand away from herself. “I wanted to lose to you and be smacked by you – and be fucked by you. Right there, on the court.”

“So you want to be fucked hard?” He muddled around with his belt and worked down his trousers and pants and pulled his blossoming erection out. It touched her skin at the back of her thighs.

He spanked her again and the momentum rocked her forward and he almost fell on top of her. When her body found its balance again, his penis was poised at the centre of her, resting at her pussy lips.

“I need to … wear protection,” Gilles said. “I don’t have any. I should stop. Really. I hadn't expected this.”

Anna reached above her head and blindly sought out the bedside cabinet drawer.

“Sometimes…” she said, pulling it open and clawing frantically inside. It was empty.

“Fuck,” she said. “But don’t worry. It’s perfectly safe.”

Gilles had hovered outside her so long that he was drawn in without meaning to. He gasped as he entered; Anna blinked. A rising, unmodulated moan escaped her. Now his body smacked into her in a series of thrusts, each inching her body forward towards the headboard; each accompanied by a wild slap against her bottom. One of her cheeks was now a scarlet map. Yet she was soaked; he was sliding inside her thighs.

“I’m such – an awful – player,” she whispered. But her breathing was laboured now, her body limp and warm and reckless, save for her fingers, which gripped the bedsheet. An orgasm began to work its vacant way through her hopeless limbs. She shuddered repeatedly, and gasped into the pillow.

Behind her, Gilles had climbed almost on top of her. “Je viens,” he said. “Je viens.” As he said it, Anna was curving her spine and pulling forward. His cock popped out and slapped into the crack of her ass just as a long thread of his cum shot out and was lost in the glistening whiteness of the length of her spine.

Afterwards, they lay side by side, both staring at the ceiling, 

“Are you very sore?” Gilles asked.

Anna began to laugh. “You hurt me so much.”

“And you feel okay?”

“Okay?” She breathed out. “Right now I feel like I could win Wimbledon.”

She turned to him.

“Gilles?”

“Yes?”

“What happened with the other woman? The French girl? After she got to the quarter-final, I mean?”

Gilles sighed. “It was a relationship that was intense – you know us French. Unfortunately, I was careless. She got pregnant – it was my fault. That ended her career. That’s why I am careful now. I’m glad you have protection.”

Anna smiled. “I don't. But you needn’t worry. After all, you told me, remember? I have immaculate timing.”

*

Anna was late for dinner. Her mother, already at their table, fixed Anna with a disapproving stare as she approached.

“I’ve already ordered,” her mother said, putting down her iPhone, before her eyes widened. “Why on earth haven’t you changed out of your tennis gear? Your make-up is smeared. You’re all flushed. What have you been doing all afternoon?”

“Don’t worry mum. I won’t sit down. I’m not hungry. I saw Gilles again.” Anna rested her hands on the table and leaned over. “You were right, as always. He made me see sense. I think things will be different now.”

Her mother drew a napkin across her mouth. “Good. You know, I’ve always told you, you have all the talent, Anna. Did Gilles tell you there are millions to be made on the tour and with modelling –”

“No, he didn’t mention that.”

“Did he mention me?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Huh.” Another wipe of the napkin. “Well that’s typical. You’re lucky to have me, you know. I hope he doesn’t think he can just swan in and take over from me as your coach, now you’re beginning to take things seriously. ”

“He didn’t mention that either, mum.”

“Good,” her mother said, delving into her handbag to retrieve her iPhone. “Because I’ve had enough of this place. I’ve been checking to see if we can get a cheap flight home. I think we might be able to. If we’re up early tomorrow –”

But Anna was no longer by her side. Instead she was weaving between the restaurant tables, heading for the exit, and from her mother’s angle, it looked like she was running.

*

Gilles answered Anna’s knock almost instantly.

“Gilles,” she said, breathlessly, “If I asked you, nicely, would you come on tour with me? Be my coach?”

Gilles laughed. “Oh Anna. I’m so flattered. But I’m retired now. I can’t.”

Anna looked at him for a long time, working her way through what he’d said.

“That’s okay,” she smiled. “It doesn’t matter. Just a thought.” She squeezed past him, back into his room. The bedsheets were still all over the place.

“Gilles, what I really came to tell you is that I still feel pent up.” Anna turned to the wall by the bed and leaned over, resting her head against it. “I need to be humiliated again,” she said.

“You are … something special,” Gilles said, but he sensed she was not listening, because she was already taking off the same clothes, the same simple way she had done an hour before. First her undershorts, then her skirt, then her top and bra as one. The lurid scarring on her bottom made Gilles draw breath. But it was a beautiful sight for its vulnerability: brought into sharp relief by the paleness of the skin that surrounded the marks; offset further by the golden colour of her legs below.

He touched her backside, where he had hit her. Anna winced, but brought her arm up to hide her face in the crook of her arm.

“You’re making me hard again, Anna,” he said, and it was true. He was erect at the sight of her and at her aquiesence, his cock straining inside his trousers. He grabbed Anna’s wrists with one hand to pin her against the wall and unzipped himself.

He was inside her moments later, flattening her carelessly against the wall as his cock plunged in. His body smacked against her, against her raw ass. He told her how weak she was, how easy it was to beat her, and a moment later he tugged her ponytail to draw her neck back to bite it. Her mouth hung open, her tongue lolling wetly around inside it. He was like an animal and his orgasm was approaching like a train.

Recognising this, Anna wriggled free. She turned to push Gilles onto the bed. He fell on his back and his cock stood in the air, waving like a tree. She crawled over and straddled him. 

They fucked like that. At one point, Anna looked over her shoulder and glimpsed the mirror on the wall at the end of the bed. It seemed to have been placed there solely to frame them. Through the mirror she watched his fat cock entering, looking far too big, but she was taking the whole slick length of it. On either side his dark hands clutched and flailed and pulled at her scarlet ass cheeks.

Though he was now underneath her, he continued to slap, sometimes catching her on the same spots, sometimes recklessly hitting her lower back. She did not feel much pain any more, instead the sensation drove her on. That joyful, liberating feeling of hopelessness was coming over her.

“Je viens,” he said, but Anna’s fingers had already reached back to work their way into the meagre gap between them and curl around his cock and hold it in a western grip.

But she did not pull him out. She held his cock, locked inside her, and he moaned like a trapped animal. She felt him release somewhere deep inside her. When she looked down at him he was watching her eyes, trying to make sense of her. His thrusts grew weaker, his rhythm slowing and then finally stopping.

Anna said, “Maybe my timing isn’t as good as I thought it was.”

She leaned to kiss him softly and rested her forehead against his. They inhaled each other’s hot breath, and their bodies were golden and fragile in the evening light. She turned her head towards the window and, from where she lay, she could see the sea and above it the horizon and the sun setting: a point of light.