Page 30 of Match Point

‘Late,’ he confirms, before giving a who-cares shrug. ‘Or early. One of the two.’

He stinks of booze and he looks dishevelled and sweaty, his forehead moist, his hair sticking up messily, his eyes red and glazed.

‘Sorry, I seem to have lost my keys,’ he says, his words coming fast and slurred. ‘Oh hang on.’ He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his set of keys, staring at them in amazement as he jangles them from his fingers. ‘Well, what do you know? Here they are! I swear they were not in there before. Lucky I found them.’

‘God, Kieran,’ I say, noticing the time on his watch. ‘It’s almost three in the morning. Don’t you have training with Neil first thing?’

‘Probably. But whatever – it’s cool,’ he insists, pushing himself off from the wall and zig-zagging his way down the hall and turning into the living room.

‘I’m not sure he’ll see it that way,’ I mutter, following him nervously. ‘I think you need to go to bed.’

‘Neil is always cross at me about something, so it’s no big deal. I can’t please him, I can’t please anyone.’ He chuckles, although I don’t know if anything he’s said is funny. Slumping down onto my makeshift bed, he kicks off his shoes and rests his head back against the cushion. ‘Didn’t you read the news today? I’m a washed-up loser who is setting myself up for disappointment yet again. It’s all good. You know what they say?’

I raise my eyebrows at him, unimpressed. ‘No, what do they say?’

‘It is what it is,’ he says, nodding gravely. ‘That’s what they say.’

‘Okay, you really need to go to bed,’ I decide, chewing on my thumbnail. ‘I’ll get you some water, yeah?’

‘None of that tap shite. Get me the good stuff.’

Leaving him laughing to himself, I go to get him a bottle of Evian and when I return he’s squinting at his phone screen as an unsaved number calls.

‘You need to get that?’ I ask haughtily, passing him his water and picking up his shoes to carry them into the hall and place them neatly on the stand.

‘Nah, it’s someone I met tonight at the pub. She’s very nice and all, but—’ He shrugs. ‘She’s not for me.’

‘She’s not a model or not famous enough?’ I mutter, placing my hands on my hips.

He snaps his head up to glare at me. ‘What does that mean?’

‘Nothing, sorry.’

I wave my hand to dismiss it, wishing I hadn’t said anything. I honestly don’t know where it came from. Not only is it absolutely none of my business, but he’s too drunk and it’s way too early in the morning to go into this.

‘No, come on,’ he challenges, sitting himself up properly. ‘You think I only date certain women, is that it?’

I shrug. ‘I don’t know, Kieran. I’m sorry, it was an offhand comment. I didn’t—’

‘You don’t think very highly of me. You’ve seen pictures of me in the press and you think you’ve got me all figured out, that it?’

‘No, Kieran. I can’t figure you out at all. You’ve been training really hard and now you’ve gone out and got pissed. Neil is going to kill you.’

‘Especially when the video of me yelling starts circulating.’ He sighs.

I wince. ‘You yelled at someone?’

‘A guy followed me into the toilet with his phone in my face asking me questions about Courtney,’ he says, his voice venomous. ‘So I told him to fuck off.’

‘That… actually seems fair.’

‘I needed to blow off some steam tonight,’ he mumbles, unscrewing the lid of his water and taking a couple of glugs. ‘Tomorrow, I’ll be fine.’ His phone rings again. He declines the call, inhaling deeply through his nose and turning to look at me. ‘By the way, it’s not because she’s not famous enough. In fact, she’s an influencer of some kind with, like, a million followers.’

‘Kieran, you really don’t need to—’

‘She thinks I’m someone I’m not,’ he states, his eyes moving from me to stare straight ahead at the cherry blossom art. ‘And while sometimes it’s fun to lean into it, play the part and enjoy that kind of—’ he flays his hand around as he searches for the word ‘—misplaced admiration, I didn’t feel like pretending tonight. She was fun, though, her and her friends. They were a good laugh. I needed that.’

Watching him as he swigs glumly from his bottle, his shoulders slumped forward, any lingering irritation at being woken up by this drunken idiot fizzles away into sympathy. He seems a bit… sad.

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