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Introduction:

This story may be a bit difficult for those unfamiliar with the game of cricket.

Also, there's no sex until well over 14000 words into this more than 23000 word story.

So read at your own discretion.

Five balls left. Eight runs to win. And the ninth wicket’s just fallen.

I walk down the stairs from the pavilion and onto the field, passing Susan on the way in. She’s muttering furiously to herself, but takes a moment to glare at me. “Don’t you dare cock this up,” she hisses. “Take a bloody run somehow and give Jen the strike.” Slamming her bat on the ground for emphasis, she stalks off back to the pavilion.

The pitch looks very far away as I walk over the grass towards it. God, or the devil, knows I’m no batswoman – I can accurately be called a weasel (goes in after the rabbits, ha ha) – even at the best of times.

So going out last wicket, with the match, and more, at stake isn’t exactly calculated to fill me with confidence.

Jen shakes her head slightly as I walk past her, not saying anything. Jen doesn’t often say anything, but her gestures are eloquent. Right now she’s thinking that she’d rather have had literally anyone else at the other end. And I sympathise, I don’t want to be here either.

The wicket keeper, a pretty black girl whose name I haven’t caught, grins as I take guard. “Going to get out first ball, I’ll bet you a tenner.”

I block her out. I’ve had some practice in blocking out negative comments – practice stretching back the whole twenty two years of my life. A little sledging is nothing. Besides, my mouth is dry and my heart hammering as I watch the bowler swing her arm a couple of times before starting on her run up. I doubt I’d be able to say much even if I wanted.

At least there isn’t a crowd. Not that there ever is for women’s matches, but the turnout is even thinner than usual today, just a smattering of people with nothing better to do. We’re both visiting teams, so there isn’t even the usual contingent of family members and boyfriends. But, empty stands or not, this game is important. Everyone knows that after the disastrous couple of years the national side’s had, the ***********ors are planning on major changes for the coming series against India, not to mention the World Cup after that. A lot of places are going to open up on the team, and this is one of the tournaments they’ll be watching keenly.

I’ve done my bit with the ball, taken five for forty in my ten overs, without conceding a single extra. But their bowlers didn’t fail either. And so here we are.

Their captain has scented blood, and moves the field in closer. Two slips, silly mid on and off, and the wicket keeper right behind the stumps. I’m surrounded.

The bowler trots up to the bowling crease, the ball floats through the air towards me, and as it pitches at good length, I forget all my plans of how I’d handle it and swat clumsily at it cross batted. And, incredibly, feel it connect hard and heavy, right in the middle of the blade; it soars past silly mid-on’s frantic grab, bounces near the leg umpire, and begins rolling towards the ropes.

Jen is sprinting towards me, screaming for a run, but I am so astonished at actually hitting the ball that she’s halfway down the pitch before I start to move. Not that it matters; by the time I’m at the other end the ball has rolled over the boundary, defeating the fielder racing to stop it.

Four balls to go, four runs to win. I trudge back up the pitch, crossing Jen.

“Run faster, you stupid cow,” she mutters out of the corner of her mouth. “Don’t bloomin’ daydream.”

The wicket keeper grins again. “See, glad I am that you didn’t take the bet. But I’ll bet you that you get out this time!”

Their captain has realised that her field’s set too close, that if anything passes the close-in fielders it’s open ground all the way to the boundary. She pulls back the close-in fielders, so I’m not crowded in. So when the bowler sends down the next ball and I poke at it, the ball hitting the edge of my bat and lobbing towards gully, there’s nobody to snap up the easy catch.

And Jen and I manage to scramble across for a single, too.

Three balls to go, three runs to get.

The next ball is a monster. It rears up from good length to chest height. Jen somehow manages to raise her bat to block it, and it falls to the ground at her feet like a dead bird. The wicket keeper collects it and tosses it to the bowler. Two balls to go, three runs to get.

In the time before the bowler begins her run up, I take a quick look around at the pavilion. Everyone in the team is standing at the balcony, staring at us. Wonderful, no pressure at all, then.

“Bowl a no ball,” I whisper desperately under my breath. “Please bowl a no ball.”

No such luck, naturally. The bowler pitches outside the off stump, the ball cutting in, but Jen manages to knock it towards cover point. Even before the ball’s fairly cleared the pitch, she’s sprinting across, and I rush past her, touch my bat to the crease and turn, hoping we’ll be able to take another. No luck. The ball slaps into the wicket keeper’s glove.

“Getting a mite interesting, innit?” she laughs as she throws it back to the bowler.

One ball to go, two runs to get, and I’m the one who’s supposed to score them.

‘Interesting’ isn’t what I’d call it. Terrifying, maybe. Adrenaline-flooding, yes. Some other words along those lines. ‘Interesting’ doesn’t make the grade.

The other side’s captain and the bowler hold a conference, glancing at me every few words. They move the deep field around a bit and then she begins her bowling run.

The ball leaves her hand, floats towards me, and I’m already stepping forward to meet it, feel the shiver of the bat as I strike it, the ball rising over her head before bouncing towards long off, and Jen is already partway down the pitch when I take off running.

Time seems to slow down. My feet hitting the ground at every stride seem to take an eternity. In the distance I see the other side’s captain running after the ball, swooping as she runs to pick it up and turning to throw, the umpire moving out of the way to the side, Jen in my peripheral vision racing past me, the crease coming up, I’m already stretching my arm and the bat to touch it…

…and then a piece of dry earth spins away under my foot, and I’m slipping, falling on my hands and knees, crawling desperately to get my bat across the crease.

Too late. I don’t even need to look up. The clatter of ball on stumps tells me all I need to know.

We’ve lost. By one single bloody run.

____________________________

I’m sitting in a far corner of the bar room on the ground floor of the team hotel, nursing a violently coloured cocktail the name of which I don’t even remember; I’d pointed it out at random on the drinks menu. It tastes about the same as it looks. I’m hoping to be able to stay there all evening until it’s time for bed.

No luck there either, apparently. A shadow falls across the table.

An offensively cheerful voice: “Drowning your sorrows in drink, are you?”

I look up slowly. It’s the pretty black wicket keeper. She slips into the seat opposite me without asking. “I wouldn’t recommend it. The bloody things can always swim.”

I make a noncommittal noise. I don’t want to ask what she wants, but she answers as though I had, anyway.

“Saw you sitting here all alone from across the room. You were just radiating misery. Slagged you off, did they?”

“You have no idea,” I say.

“Ace, you can actually talk!” She grins that brilliant grin. “I thought you’d gone mute or something. So, they didn’t like it that you didn’t score one run? Well, the ten of them put together couldn’t score two hundred and fourteen, so why blame you?”

“It’s not just that…we’re on the verge of getting eliminated from the tournament. And once we’re out, there goes the chance of national ***********ion.”

“Oh, come on. You’ll win the next match, easy. Just keep bowling like you did today.” She pulls an exaggerated face. “I didn’t even see the ball with which you got me.”

“Uh…sorry about that.” I sit back and take a good look at her. In a T shirt and without her helmet she’s extraordinarily eye-catching. Her short hair clings to her scalp, emphasising the clean lines of her face; the tiny studs of her earrings only show off the elegant shapes of her ears, a thin silver chain hangs between the gentle swell of her breasts. I feel a faint stirring inside me, but push it down. This stunning girl could never be interested in me that way. “I might have hurt your chances for ***********ion.”

She scoffs. “Oh, naff off. Next you’ll tell me you should’ve only bowled full tosses at me so I could score a century. What the hell are you drinking?”

“I don’t know. I picked it out at random.”

She picks it up and takes a sip. “Good lord, it’s awful. Wait, I’ll get us beer.”

Before I can even answer that she doesn’t have to, she’s gone, and reappears in a minute with two tankards of foaming bitter. “Here.”

I take a sip. The taste of it rises with the bubbles into the back of my nose. I bury a sneeze. “I’m sorry, but I didn’t get your name.”

“No worries! I didn’t get yours. I’m Karizma Davis.”

“Charisma?”

“With a kay and a zed.” She spells it out, grinning. “Fancy, innit? And you are?”

“Zhang Do…” I begin automatically, then as automatically switch it around to Western name order. “Dongmei Zhang.”

“Ace. From China, are you?”

“Well, my mum is, from Shanghai. My dad was born in Hong Kong. They came here before they met and got married. I was born in this country.” I take a quick look at her, but see none of the guarded expression that comes over so many people’s faces when they hear my name and realise I’m not Korean or Japanese as they’d assumed. “They’re really very conservative in a lot of ways, so they insisted on giving my sister and me Chinese names.”

“Nothing wrong with that.” She swigs her beer. “Imagine being called Vicky or Penny or something Zhang. Horrible. So what does it mean?”

“Dongmei? Winter Plum Blossom.” I brace myself for the usual quick mocking smirk, but it doesn’t come.

“Now that’s a proper brilliant name, if I do say so. You should be proud of it.” She glances at my beer. “You aren’t drinking. Are you all right?”

I sigh. “It’s just that…you know, this whole thing is getting me down a bit. My parents aren’t exactly thrilled about me playing cricket. They want me to give up this waste of time, as they call it, and start helping out in the family business. The only way I can reply adequately is make my way into the national team. Then, hopefully, they’ll lay off the pressure. I am,” I proclaim, “really a terrible disappointment to them. My elder sister, now, she can’t do any wrong. And she’s already handling the accounts and all that, while I waste my time running around a field with a red leather ball, as my mum never ceases to remind me.”

Karizma – I run the name over in my mind – nods. “That’s hard cheese. But don’t worry, you’ll go places. Not just the India series, either. You’re going to the World Cup.”

Despite myself, I laugh. “The World Cup! That’s about as likely as my becoming the first girl on Mars.”

“Don’t run yourself down. Leave that to all the pillocks. They’re good at it and that’s all they’re good at.” I chuckle at that, and she laughs again. Her laugh is infectious. “What’s the family business, then?”

“They run a Chinese restaurant. The last thing I want to do is spend my days taking orders for Hakka noodles and wonton soup. Can you see me in a restaurant kitchen in an apron and hairnet, all red faced in the steam?”

She cocks her head like a terrier and looks at me. “I don’t know, that’s a pretty interesting image, really. Now come on and drink up so I can get us another round.”

When she returns, she hands me a beer and sits back. “Now tell me about yourself.”

“What about me?” I’m surprised.

“I mean, what do you like? Movies? Music? Your taste in books?”

I shrug. “I’m not really one for movies. Especially not romcoms or action movies. I can watch an occasional horror movie, just as long as it’s funny.”

“Ha! I love those. Especially when they try very hard to be scary and end up doing the opposite.” She raises her arms before her, lets her wrists droop, tilts her head and lets her tongue loll out. “Braaiiins!”

I laugh so hard that I snort beer up my nose.

We talk about books and music and things for a while, and cricket recedes, and we aren’t on opposite teams anymore, just two young women chatting in a hotel bar room.

“So it was tough for you growing up?” she asks, when we get around to talking about school. “I mean, you know…”

“Yes. You can imagine what people said during COVID, not to my face but so I could hear.” I shrug. “I’ve grown good at ignoring stuff like that, but it still hurts.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, and looks as though she really means it. Maybe she’s gone through some of the same things, as a black person. “My parents said they had it tough, too, years ago.”

“What do your parents do?”

“Mum’s a college professor in economics. Dad, well, Dad…” she begins to laugh.

“What?’

“He’s a sportscaster. He literally did the commentary on today’s match!”

I do a facepalm. “Oh god. How he must have laughed at me for falling like that, last ball.”

“Oh, he doesn’t do that kind of thing, unless if I fall. Then he has a right good chuckle.” She raises her beer. “Here’s to falling together!”

I raise mine and she knocks our tankards together. That is the first time I’ve done it. I’ve only seen it in the movies. “Shall we go have something to eat?” I ask. “I’m suddenly a little peckish.”

“Aye, totally. I could murder a dinner. Drink up and let’s get to the restaurant!”

It’s late when I go back upstairs to my room. I’m lucky that I don’t have a roommate, so I don’t have to worry about noise. I undress, brush my teeth, and am in bed in ten minutes.

Only then does it occur to me to wonder what she meant by saying it was an interesting image when I mentioned being red faced in an apron and hairnet in the kitchen steam.

____________________________

Early the next day we have net practice.

I’m bowling to Claire in the nets, sending down leg breaks and an occasional googly for her to catch. She’s our ‘keeper and not very good at recognising what I’m going to bowl from my wrist action. She’s missing or dropping a good quarter of what I bowl at her, and that’s though I’m not exactly feeling up to giving my best. Claire was one of the most vocal of those yelling at me for losing the match yesterday.

After twenty minutes she’s had enough and goes for a water break. I stretch and rub my back muscles, and swing my arms around to ease my shoulders. Then I see someone watching, who gives me a little wave when she sees I’ve noticed her.

It’s Karizma, of course. I walk over to her. “Hi. You’re playing tomorrow, aren’t you?”

She nods. “Yeh. And nets after you’re done. I hate nets.”

“How did you ever become a wicket keeper?” I’m genuinely curious. “Did you not ever want to be an all- rounder or bowler?”

She laughs easily. “Simple. When I started playing cricket back at school, the only slot left open on the team was for the wicket keeper. I could either be the ‘keeper or not play. I decided to be the ‘keeper.”

“And good at it,” I said. I remembered how yesterday she’d taken spectacular diving catches worthy of Adam Gilchrist or Mark Boucher. Out of the corner of my eye I see Claire glaring at me impatiently, waiting for another round of humiliation. “I’ve got to go. Duty calls.”

“I noticed.” She hesitates a moment. “Dongmei?”

“Yeah?”

“Can we meet again this evening? I’m a bit lonely.”

This dazzling girl, lonely? I can’t believe it. I swallow.

“Yes, of course,” I say, and the voice that emerges from my throat doesn’t sound like my own.

____________________________

“See,” Karizma says, putting her beer mug down on the table with what might be a mite excessive force, “I don’t make friends easily.”

“You don’t?” I shake my head, confused. “But you didn’t have any problem approaching me last night, so…”

She goes on as though I’ve not spoken. “You don’t make friends easily either, don’t you?”

“Is it that obvious?”

“Fuckin’ aye it is.” If she notices me wincing at the swear word, she doesn’t let on. “I noticed that last night right off, Dongmei. We’re the same kind. That’s why I came over to you, because I saw the signs.”

“Now that you put it that way…” I nod. “Are we friends?”

She sits back and regards me with a tinge of wariness in her eyes. “Do you not want us to be?”

“Hell, yes! Of course I want to be friends!” An unbidden flash of my schooldays appears to me; the odd girl whom nobody really wanted to be with, the last one to be picked to partner on projects, the one who by being good on the cricket field only made it worse for those who were nowhere near as proficient. “I just…” My mind drifts away, a raft on a sea of memories.

“Dongmei?” Karizma waves her hand in front of my face. “Are you still here with me?”

“Uh…” I nod. “Yep. I was just thinking that I never really had any friends.”

“What, none at all?”

“None at school, at least none that took. None outside school either. Not even in my family. My sister and I aren’t close.”

“I don’t have a sister,” she replies quietly. “Nor a brother either. I wonder what it would be like if I had any.”

“Not particularly nice if they’re Miss Perfection like Biyu.”

“That’s your sister?”

I nod glumly. “I’m not saying she’s bad. She’s quite nice to me, really, most of the time at least. It’s just that she can’t do any wrong in my parents’ eyes, you know? When she was in school she couldn’t fail an exam if she tried, she doesn’t ‘waste time’ playing games, she’s already helping manage the restaurant and I don’t even want to cook or waitress there, she…” I shake my head. “When I was growing up I kept wishing I was an only child. That’s horrible of me, I know.”

Karizma leans back, amused. “You didn’t take a pair of scissors and stab her in her sleep, I take it? There you are, now that just might have been horrible. Perhaps. Maybe. Depending on the situation.”

There are things I can’t tell her, of course, so her joke doesn’t cheer me up. I draw a deep breath, proud of how calm I’m managing to keep my voice. “Anyway. So I don’t have friends and was a bit, uh, taken aback when you all but said that we are friends.”

She doesn’t say anything for nearly a full minute, and then leans across the table and takes my hand between hers. “Dongmei Zhang.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Hmmm?”

“I promise to be your friend, if you’ll have me as one.”

I swallow the lump that forms in my throat, and try to keep my voice light and carefree. “Absolutely,” I say. “You can be my friend for as long as you want to be.”

____________________________

The next day we aren’t playing, and the team’s supposed to go on a trip somewhere, a team building exercise, but I beg off, and nobody tries to persuade me. Instead, since Karizma’s playing, I go back to the stadium.

“Hey, you.” She grins and waves as soon as she sees me climbing the steps to the pavilion. “Come to cheer the other gang on?”

“Of course. I hope they wipe the pitch with you.” Unthinkingly, without knowing that I was going to do it before I did it, I give her a hug, and immediately try to break away, thinking it’s too much. Instead, she wraps her arms around me and pulls me close.

“I’m glad to see you,” she whispers in my ear. “I’m a bit bricked about today.”

“Why? You’re going to win.”

“Are we? They’re a tough lot. Defending champions and all.”

“You’re still going to win,” I say, and realise that I’m not just trying to cheer her up. “And, anyway. I’ll be here cheering you on.”

“That’s what I meant,” she replies. “With you here I’ve something to play for.”

“Oh, give over.” My face heats up with my furious blushing. “You’ll be in the World Cup team next year, yourself.”

“We both will, then.” She grins, and swats my shoulder. “Now sit here and grow moss. I’ve got to go get to the pre match pep talk and that.”

She gets back just as I’ve managed to find a seat with a good view. I’ve seen her teammates throw curious glances at me but nobody has yet come over and ordered me out of the pavilion. She plonks herself down next to me. “Huh well. We lost the toss, so I can sit here while we bat.”

She looks less than bothered at the prospect, so I go on. “That’s great, get your rest in before their innings. So, tell me something.”

“Yeh?”

“You aren’t playing cricket full time, obviously. So, what do you do the rest of the time?”

She laughs. “I’m a postgraduate student of mathematics. My thesis is on Boolean algebra. Not the stereotype of black females, is it?”

For a moment I can’t speak with astonishment. “Uck. I can’t even say what Boolean algebra is when it’s at home. If I said I was impressed, would you think I was taking the mickey?”

Karizma turns to me with total seriousness in her eyes. “From some people, yes, but not from you. Can I ask you something in return?”

I shrug. “Ask.”

“What made you take up cricket?”

I take a moment to compose my thoughts. “When I was at school, and being compared to Biyu in everything by my parents, the only thing I wanted was to be not like her. Since she didn’t play games, I decided I’d start playing. But I’ve always been rubbish at all the sports we Chinese are supposed to be good at…” I gestured. “You know, badminton, or table tennis, or any individual sport, really. So it was between cricket and hockey, and I didn’t like hockey. I just decided to volunteer to be picked for a class game.” I still remember how I was only reluctantly chosen to make up the full eleven for the second team because there was literally nobody else interested. “It’s not as though I’d no idea how to play, of course. I’d bowled a bit by myself, but I’d never actually played in a team before.” I rubbed my face, remembering. “I was just supposed to make up the numbers, not actually do anything. But our side was being hit all over the place, so I was given the ball just so the other bowlers could take a break from being belted all over the field.”

“Ah. And you discovered you were good at it.”

I nod. “I discovered I was good at it.” Not that it won me any friends, but it did mean I started getting picked as one of the first choices for class games, and, then, eventually, for the school. “And so...that’s how.”

“Brill. So what do you do when you aren’t playing? I mean, since you don’t help out at the restaurant.”

I chuckle. “Website and graphic design, some basic animation. I sit at my computer and do things for people I’ll never meet. At least it pays my rent and living costs.”

“You don’t live with your parents, do you, I suppose not.” She nods understandingly. “Where do you live?”

“I have a bedsit. It isn’t much but then it’s not as though I ever have any visitors.”

A clatter of stumps and a cheer from the field. Their first wicket’s fallen.

“Bugger,” Karizma sighs. “I’ll have to go get my pads on. Can’t tell when this bunch will begin collapsing like a landslide.” She gets wearily to her feet. “We’re on for tonight, aren’t we?”

“If I say we are, will that give you incentive to win?”

She grins that brilliant grin. “Totally.”

“Then,” I say, “we are on for tonight. Now go get them.”

____________________________

“Whoo.” Karizma flops down opposite me. “I’m knackered.”

“But you won, so that’s all in a good cause.” I’ve already got beer ready for her. “Through to the semifinals already, just look at you. And we’re going to get rolled over tomorrow.”

“No you won’t.” She sighs contentedly and puts her mug down. “I needed that. No, you plonker, you’re going to win, and you know why? Because I’m going to be there screaming my throat out for you.”

I feel myself blushing scarlet. That’s the first time anyone’s ever told me that they’d cheer for me. “Kazzie.”

“Yeh?”

“Suppose we lose tomorrow, all the same. We’ll be eliminated. I’ll be going home.” I look up at her, trying not to show the desperation in my eyes. “Will we keep in touch after?”

She blinks at me as though this was the most ridiculous question she’s ever been asked. “Of bloomin’ course we will. Why did you ever imagine otherwise?”

I swallow, feeling embarrassed. “I don’t know. I’m just stupid. And a little bit insecure.”

“You don’t need to be. I said I’d be your friend, didn’t I?”

I take a deep, shuddering breath. I feel like some underground creature that’s been tunnelling its way up through the earth and suddenly realised that there was open air and blue sky up above, only then to be faced with the threat of a boulder being rolled over it to block out that air and sky again.

“I know,” I say, looking at my hands, fingers twisted around each other, on the table before us. “It’s just that I’m not used to people making promises to me, let alone keeping them.”

“You aren’t bloody well getting rid of me, I can tell you.” She glances over my shoulder. “Oh, look, her nibs just came in.”

I turn. It’s the star player of the tournament, Sally, captain of the defending champions, face like a movie star, built like a boxer, lovely Sally, darling of the photographers, leave us alone, Sally, go away now. She looks across the room at us, her upper lip curls, and she comes over. Oh no.

“Well, well,” she says, hand on hip, head thrust forward aggressively, “fancy seeing the two of you together. Plotting to throw matches, are you?”

We just stare at her. I’m yet to play against her, our teams are due to play tomorrow, but Kazzie caught her behind today for three, and she’s shirty. Apparently I’m to be collateral damage.

“Well?” she demands. “Cat got your tongue?”

Kazzie and I exchange glances. “Let’s go have dinner,” I say.

“Yeh,” she agrees. “This room suddenly got a bit…stuffy. Can’t clock why.”

Sally glares after us as we leave. I throw a glance over my shoulder and think I can see the steam coming out of her ears.

“She’ll try and hit you for six first ball you bowl to her tomorrow,” Kazzie says. “You should get her stumped, easy.”

“As long as Claire doesn’t muck it up,” I reply moodily, “but she probably will.”

It’s only when I’m in bed later that I realise I’ve started thinking of Karizma as “Kazzie”, and calling her that, too. When did that happen?

____________________________

I wake to a WhatsApp message from her. “Remember I’ll be watching and cheering.”

“Won’t forget,” I reply, and then add, “thank you.”

She replies with a hearts-eye emoji. It’s nothing, but it still sends a thrill through me.

Get a grip, I tell myself. She’s a friend. A friend. She isn’t and won’t be interested in you…that way. Don’t act like a little child. You have a game to play.

At which she’ll be watching and cheering for you, another traitor part of my mind informs me. For you, specifically. What do you suppose that means?

I don’t know.

And there’s nobody I can ask.

I sigh and clamber out of bed. I’ve not even brushed my teeth yet, and I’m already confused. Great start to the day.

An hour later we’re at the stadium and Sally gives me a death glare from across the pavilion. What did I ever do to her…yet?

Susan is lecturing us about our strategy, as though we didn’t have a meeting about this last night already. I’ve already decided to ignore everything she’s telling us. If she knew what she was talking about we wouldn’t be on the verge of being dumped out of the damned tournament, would we?

We win the toss and, not surprisingly, send them in to bat. And so it begins.

By the time I come in to bowl, we’re already in trouble. Twenty overs in, they’re 115 for 3 and Sally looks all set to score a century. She’s at the non-striker’s end but gives me another glare while I’m marking out my run-up. What, exactly, is wrong with this woman? The fact that I’m a friend of Kazzie’s? So what? It’s not as though…

A sudden thought makes me pause. Is Sally mad at me because she wants Kazzie for herself? Does she think Kazzie and I are together, I mean, as an item? Can this even be possible?

I squeeze my eyes shut and shake my head. Don’t think about irrelevant rubbish, I tell myself. You’ve got a game to play. A game that, as it looks like, is already threatening to get out of our clutches.

So I focus on what has to be done, go to the top of my (brief) run up, and trundle in to bowl.

I’m a leg spinner. It isn’t something I chose deliberately, just something I discovered I could do better than anything else I tried on the cricket field. I’m no Shauna Warne, but at least I can – usually – turn the ball a few degrees, and I can – usually – pitch it roughly where I want it to.

Is that good enough? It’ll have to be.

Gloria is facing me, a fierce redhead who has already played for the country but got dropped and is desperate to claw her place back. The first ball I send down, she blocks, but the second she deflects to mid-on for a single. And that leaves Sally facing me.

I’ve already had a word to Claire in the morning about Sally all but certainly going to try to belt me over the top first ball, and warned her to stay ready for a stumping opportunity, but looking at her now, I doubt she even remembers any of that. Ah, hell, I think, as I come in to bowl, if she misses, at least it won’t be my fault, and may the ***********ors remember that.

Oh yes. Sally steps out of the crease as soon as the ball leaves my hand, out to reach it on the full toss and knock it over the fence. Too clever by half, my dear, I’ve pitched it short, and the ball breaks away from her questing bat, flashes past the wicket…and speeds by Claire’s fumbling glove, and rolls on to the third man boundary for four byes.

Fuck, I think, bloody fucking fuck, as Kazzie would say.

As Jen is fetching the ball back from under the sight screen, I call on all my willpower to not say anything to Claire, looking away from her so as to control my temper. My eyes go to the pavilion, where a dark-skinned figure in a red T shirt is standing at the balcony, her hands held to her mouth. I tell myself I can hear her cheering from all this way, and feel a little better.

Things don’t get that much better. I do finally get rid of both Gloria and Sally, but not until they’ve added another thirty runs to their partnership. Then their side has a mini-collapse to Pashtana’s left-arm swing bowling; we’re lucky that this girl managed to get out of Afghanistan before the Taliban takeover and come here. And then I get to come on again and roll up the tail with not too much trouble at all.

It’s a steep ask, but not undoable, as long as our batting doesn’t collapse to the point that I have to bat, of course. But for Claire’s incompetence it would’ve been a lot easier.

When we go in for the lunch break, Kazzie hugs me. “You were great!”

I snort. “That makes no difference if we lose.” But every nerve synapse in my body is tingling at her touch. “Are you sure you want to spend the day here shouting at me?”

“Do you doubt it, you nutter?” She reaches up to pat my head. “What would I rather do than cheer for my best friend?”

Her best friend; the words strike me harder than I thought any could have. This incredibly beautiful, talented girl thinks I’m her best friend. My eyes fill with involuntary tears.

“Petals?” she asks. “Are you OK?”

“What?” I blink, tears forgotten. “What did you call me?”

She bites her lip and looks away for a moment. “That’s how I think of you,” she replies eventually. “You know, Winter Plum Blossom, so, flower, so, Petals. It’s a natural progression. Or,” she glances at me quickly, “don’t you like the nickname?”

I realise I’ve been staring at her open mouthed. “No, no,” I manage. “I mean, I love it. I love that you thought enough of me to…” I bite my lip to stop babbling. My face is hot to the roots of my hair. “Please keep calling me that.”

“That’s ace.” She lets out a breath. “I wouldn’t have wanted to call you Ding-Dong or something like.”

“Oh, please, no.” I shudder. “Because I’m tall, some idiot back in school began calling me Long Dong. Stop laughing!”

“I’m…sorry…” she’s still giggling. “You should’ve seen your mug when you said that!”

I push her, she pushes me back, and we roughhouse for a minute, until I can stop being afraid that her nickname for me wasn’t making me go weak at the knees (and wet between the thighs, but of course she doesn’t know that and never will). “You’re going off this evening, aren’t you?” I ask eventually.

“Yeh, travelling for the semifinal.”

“I’ll come cheer for you,” I say.

“No, you blinkin’ well won’t. You’ll be getting ready for your own semifinal.”

“That’s only if we win today, you silly cow.”

“Yeh well, you are going to, you loony bitch. Sue me if you don’t, go ahead.”

And, to my astonishment, we somehow did.

____________________________

I’m not going to go into details about the rest of the tournament. Suffice it to say that we won our semifinal, Kazzie’s team won theirs, and we faced off in the final…where, though Pashtana and I picked up four wickets each, our own batting held up like a wet biscuit and her team wiped the pitch with us. Kazzie herself got rid of me with a spectacular diving catch. Oh, well.

So in the evening I’m packing to go home when my phone buzzes. “You want an evening out with me, Petals?” Kazzie asks cheerfully. “You’ll want some solace for the whipping we gave you today.”

“You floozy! How did you know I was desperate for an evening with you?”

“Um…it was kind of obvious. You can’t resist my charms.” (If only you knew, I think, if only you knew.) “Get the hell down to the bar room. Or should I come up to your room?”

My heart seems to stop in my chest as I think of us being together in private for the first time ever. “I…”

“Petals?”

For one wild moment I seriously contemplate inviting her here to this room, telling her exactly what I feel, of laying myself open to her. Then I think of how she’ll inevitably shrink away with disgust, and that’ll ruin the only thing I value now, our friendship. “Just give me a minute to shower and change,” I say. “Then I’ll be down there. I’m half packed, my room’s a mess.”

“Don’t want me to see your sex toys, do you then?” Her laugh makes my heart wrench. “Yeh, I’ll wait for you. I’ll order drinks for us in the meantime. Clearly you can’t be trusted with ordering them.”

“Hey, now, I got the beer the other day.”

“I need something stronger tonight, and so do you.”

“Not celebrating with your mates, are you?” I ask when I’m sitting opposite her. “Why not?”

She shrugs with one shoulder. “I wanted to celebrate with my mate. After all I get along a lot better with you than I do with them.”

I can’t bear to meet her eyes for a minute when she says that. I pick up my drink and take an experimental sip. It’s a bit too sweet, but that’s all right, I’m not going to say anything to spoil the mood.

“You played well today,” I say. “I’m sure the ***********ors will at least consider you now.” Talking about cricket is safer than other things at the moment. I can’t trust my own reactions around her.

She raises an eyebrow. “Just me? What about you?”

I’m confused. “How do you mean? We lost, and pretty badly, too.”

“No, you plonker,” she laughs. “They’d have to be blind to overlook you, and that Afghan girl, whatever she’s called. We’d have finished off the match in thirty overs without the two of you.”

I swallow the rest of my over-sweet drink at one gulp rather than risk showing my reaction to her praise. “Let’s go for a walk,” I say on an impulse. It’ll be easier to hide my emotions in the dark.

“Sure thing,” she says, jumping to her feet. “Let’s go, Petals. I’d love to be out and about with you.”

We walk out of the hotel. It’s a warm night. Young couples are strolling along the streets. I feel a barb in my heart just looking at them. “Kazzie…”

She glances at me. “Yeh?”

“I…never mind.” I feel like an idiot. I am an idiot. I’m torturing myself by falling for this unattainable girl, when she’s given me her friendship. I should, I have to, be satisfied with that.

“Petals, you’ve been acting odd all evening.” Kazzie takes my hand, and her touch sends a shock that thrills through me to my heart. “Is there something you want to say?”

“Just…” Inspiration strikes. “I’m just thinking that tomorrow on we won’t be seeing each other. I’ll be back at my bedsit, and you…”

“I’ll be in my flat right across the city from you.” She squeezes my hand in hers. Her wicket keeper’s fingers are hard and strong. “What are you worried about, you pillock? All you have to do is hop on a bus to the Univ and get off one stop before.”

“You’ll be studying. Boolean Algebra and all.”

“Oh, sod all that. The Univ year’s long and they do like their sports. Besides, I like your face. I want to see it all the time.”

“You must be blind as a mole, then, or fit for the loony bin. Who in her right mind would like my face?”

“Petals.” All the banter is suddenly gone from her voice. “You do know you’re gorgeous, right?”

I laugh aloud at that. “Now you’re just making fun of me. My sister’s the pretty one; she doesn’t even have the decency to be plain.”

“No I’m not. Listen to me carefully: you’re very, very, good looking, as well as sharp as a tack. Any sane boy would snap you up in a minute. I have no idea why none has.”

My tongue freezes. Tell her, my brain screams at it, tell her now and get it over with, tell her what you are. You can’t keep it secret forever. But my mouth and larynx refuse to cooperate. I make some kind of noise, like a grunt.

“I suppose it’s just a matter of time.” Kazzie sighs. My hand is still in hers. Our sweat mingles. “If only…”

I get my mouth to work. “What?”

“Never mind, I was just thinking out loud.” We’re just passing a bench set into the pavement. “Shall we sit here for a bit?”



We perch on the bench and watch the street. If only my heart and brain weren’t hammering at each other, if only my hand wasn’t desperately feeling the texture of hers so as to remember it, I would have thought it a perfect evening. Before us a huge yellow moon hangs in the sky, behind us lovers wander hand in hand, kissing casually, and above our heads the stars wheel on, proving that one day all my yearning will be as dust in the wind.

That’s comforting, right? However bad you think they are, your problems don’t really matter in the scheme of things. You don’t matter.

“Petals?” I hadn’t realised Kazzie has been looking at me. “You’re crying.”

“I’m sorry,” I sob. “I’m ruining everything, aren’t I?”

“No, but you do need to tell me what’s going on. You’re not like this normally. Are you on the rag or something?”

“No, it’s not that.” I swallow. “All right,” I say, “I’ll tell you. But not tonight, not when I’m fragile like this.”

“I’ll wait.” Her voice is kind and gentle, so unlike her usual light hearted tone. “Should we go back to the hotel, or would you rather that we sit here a little longer?”

I rub at my eyes. “Let’s just sit…” I stop as Kazzie’s phone buzzes. She pulls it out of her pocket.

“I’m sorry,” she says, “I’ve to take the call. It’s Dad.”

I nod. “Don’t mind me.”

She smiles briefly as she lifts the mobile to her ear. “Hi, Dad. Yeh, thanks…well, with any luck. I suppose it depends on what mood the ***********ors are in at any given moment. We’ll just have to see…going home tomorrow. No, I’m not with the team. I’m out with Dongmei.” She glances at me. “Yeh, Dongmei Zhang…right, we’re friends. Dad…” (Long pause) “She’s brilliant and really, really easy to get along with. You’d be surprised.” (Another long pause) “Dad. She’s a friend, all right?” Her voice takes on an exasperated tone. “Yeh, we can all get together sometime so you and Mum can talk to her and see for yourself. Right, I’ll call you later. Bye.”

She puts the phone back in her pocket and is quiet for a little while. Finally, I break the silence.

“Does your father…not want us to be friends? Doesn’t he think you can’t be friends with someone on another team?” (Or with a Chinese, my stupid brain asks.)

She shakes her head and turns to me. “Sorry, I was thinking about things. No, it’s nothing like that. Dad…well, let’s not go into that right now. I’ll just say he didn’t think I could make…friends.” She shakes her head again and gets up. “Are you feeling better, Petals? Should we get back to the hotel now?”

I’m totally confused, but nod and get to my feet as well. “Yes. I still have my packing to finish.”

She hugs me goodnight at the lift. I have to restrain myself from clinging to her as though my life depends on not letting go.

____________________________

I reach home by mid-morning. I didn’t get to meet Kazzie before leaving, so we just sent WhatsApp messages to each other. I spend a couple of hours vigorously cleaning everything, getting rid of dust and all that. To be really honest, there isn’t that much dust. I just need to do hard physical work to not think of Kazzie.

It doesn’t work, so when I’m done, I sit down at my computer table and get started on all the accumulated projects and new commissions that had piled up while I was out gallivanting playing cricket. That works for all of fifteen minutes until my phone beeps.

“Got home safe, then?” she asks.

“Well, I’m about to start making a website for a gym, so obviously I’m at home,” I type back.

“A gym website? Sounds boring. Maybe you can jazz it up a bit. Add some pictures of naked women using the equipment.”

I burst out laughing. “The steroid junkies are too much in love with themselves to appreciate that kind of thing,” I type back. “Are you nice and comfortable?”

“As much as I can be when you aren’t around, you harlot.” She adds a superfluous smiley. “You doing anything on Sunday?”

I glance at the calendar on my desk. “No, I don’t think so. Why?”

“Good, so you and I are going out together. Don’t bother coming up with excuses why you can’t.”

I grin and take a selfie to send her. “I wasn’t going to, you hussy. Where are we going?”

“Haven’t made up my mind yet. I just want to spend the day with you.”

“That sounds nice.” I hesitate a moment. “I’ll pack a picnic lunch, just in case.”

“Only if it’s Chinese food.”

“Of course.”

“Cooked by you.”

“Naturally.”

When I put the phone down my cheeks are hurting with smiling.

____________________________

“You’re quite a cook,” Kazzie says, wiping her mouth.

I snort. “Not if you hear my mum’s opinion on that. She claims my cooking is only fit to feed pigs.” I look around the park. Children run by, shouting to each other. “Maybe you’re really a pig pretending to be a woman.”

“I will be, if you keep making food like this.” She stretches. “I love sitting like this. Not going to a movie or a museum or concert or a guided tour. Just sitting here with my best friend in the world.”

Her words hit me again and make me look away quickly so she won’t see the raw emotion in my eyes. A drone buzzes towards us. “Look at that.”

We both watch the drone. It dips, rises, goes straight towards a tree, then at the last moment sways to one side, hangs in the air for a few frantic seconds on thrashing propellers, and then thumps on the grass next to us.

“I thought it would hit the tree for sure,” Kazzie says.

I gesture towards a small group of teens running in our direction. “Here comes the search and recovery party.”

Kazzie waves stiff armed at them. “It’s here!” she shouts.

The teens come up, panting. There are four of them, a boy and three girls, all aged about fourteen or fifteen. “Sorry about that,” the boy pants. He’s holding a controller in one hand. “I’m not used to it yet.”

“You told us you were an expert, Bill,” one of the girls says, rolling her eyes. “An expert in making up tales, more like.”

Bill, the boy, hands the controller to one of the other girls, picks up the drone, and inspects it anxiously. Apparently it passes muster. He rubs his forearm across his forehead and glances at us. “It’s my older brother’s drone. He’d kill me if I’d lost or damaged it.”

“Best you give it back to him then,” the first girl says.

“Yes, well, maybe I should practice a bit more…or,” Bill looks at her and back at the drone. “Maybe you’re right.”

“She’s right, Bill,” the girl with the controller says, “and you know it, you berk.”

“I’m always right,” the first girl announces.

I grow aware that the third girl has hardly been paying attention to them, and instead has been staring at us with a puzzled expression on her face. Suddenly her mouth falls open. “You…you’re Karizma, Karizma Davis, aren’t you? The cricketer?”

Kazzie looks taken aback. “Uh…yes. You know me?”

“Oh my god,” the girl screams, so loudly that Bill drops the drone again and only rescues it with a frantic grab. “You’re my heroine! I play cricket in school and I want to be just like you!”

All of them are staring at Kazzie now. She swallows, and rises to the occasion. “Well, that’s good to know. You keep wickets too?”

The girl is still gabbling. She probably hasn’t even heard the question. “I watched the final the other day and cheered for you all the time. Especially the way you caught that last one out, it was so brilliant! Oh my god! The way she stood looking as though she couldn’t believe that you’d caught her like that!”

I can’t control my amusement any longer and burst out laughing. “You’re right,” I say. “I still can’t believe it!”

The girl stops mid-sentence and turns slowly to me. Her eyes bulge. “You…you’re her.”

Kazzie chuckles. “Oh yes, she’s the one, all right.”

“Carrie,” the girl holding the controller says, “sit down before you pass out.”

I think it’s good advice. Carrie’s gone pale and her mouth’s working but no words come out. I get to my feet and put my arms around her shoulders. “Come, sit.”

They all sit, the other three keeping a cautious distance from Carrie as though she’s an unpredictable wild animal. The first girl looks apologetically at us. “She gets a little keen sometimes.”

“So I see.” Kazzie gives Carrie a little hug. “Are you all right, love?”

“I…” Carrie begins crying and wipes her eyes frantically. “I’m, I’m sorry, it’s just, meeting you both, I can’t…”

“It’s fine,” I tell her. For an instant I’m aware of how we must look from a distance, like parents comforting a distraught daughter. “Catch your breath. You’ll be fine.”

“I can’t believe it,” Carrie says again. “Just meeting you, both of you, out in the park, just like normal people, it’s…”

“But we are normal people,” Kazzie says gently. “We go to the park, too, we have classes or jobs, too, and we make friends as well.”

Carrie doesn’t seem to really believe that, but at last calms down a little. “I’m sorry,” she says. “You must both think me an awful wally.”

“Nobody thinks that, Carrie,” Controller Girl says. They’re all looking a lot more comfortable now that the crisis has clearly passed. “We all know it already!”

All of them laugh, even Carrie. “But, seriously, no, we don’t think anything like that,” Kazzie says. “Though I must say it’s something new for me to come across an actual, you know…”

“Fan?” I supply. Kazzie nods. “That goes for me too,” I say. “I never actually met anyone who even heard of me other than my teammates.”

“And me.” Kazzie takes my hand. I notice that all four of the kids notice that and First Girl and Controller Girl exchange glances. “But you can be sure that everyone’s going to hear of her soon, when she’s bowling out India.”

I snort. “Make a note of this, Carrie,” I say. “This woman here will be keeping wickets at the World Cup while I’ll be sitting at home watching her on the telly.”

“No you won’t, you prat. You’ll be doing the bowling I’ll be keeping to.”

The teens begin to get to their feet. Bill has gone bright red. “Uh…we should be going.”

I have a sudden impulse, one of those I sometimes get and almost always immediately regret. “Carrie?”

She looks at me, blushing as well. What’s wrong with these kids? “Yes?”

“Your school team. Where do you practice? We could arrange it so I could come and give you some coaching sometime.”

“We both will,” Kazzie says. I’m unspeakably grateful for her immediate response. “Talk to your teammates and your teachers and let us know. Do you have a mobile phone? Good. Here’s my number.”

We wait until the four have gone before let out the bubble of laughter I’ve been holding in. “Never could I have expected such drama in the park on a Sunday!”

I see Kazzie regarding me with a faint smile on her face. “Petals,” she says, “you are the most extraordinary human being I have ever come across.”

“What did I do now?”

“The way you offered that girl coaching…it’s exactly what she needed to hear.”

“You’d have done the same. You did do the same.”

“But only after you thought of it first.” She sighs. “I suppose it’s time we start getting ready to leave.”

I don’t want to be away from her. “Can…you come to my place? It’s not far. We can walk.”

“As long as your fame doesn’t get us mobbed by autograph hunters.”

I snort at that. “The only fame is yours. Come on, let’s go.”

“Sorry about the mess,” I tell her shortly afterwards, as I usher her in through the door. “It’s, um, rather small and so…”

“Petals!” she exclaims. “Stop apologising. It’s completely fine.” With a sigh she throws herself down on her back on my bed. “Now I can spend time digesting all that food you shovelled down my gob.”

“I shovelled it, did I?” I spin around the chair at my computer desk and sit astride it with my elbow on the back, hand propping up my chin, watching her. “Is that what I did?”

“Might as well have,” she yawns. “It’s your fault for cooking so well. I…” she yawns again. “Where did that come from? I’m so sleepy.”

“My mother says it’s natural after a meal.”

“Tell me about your parents,” she says. “How they came here, how they met, and that.”

“I don’t really know all that much. My mum was a student and chose to stay back here because China wasn’t that economically developed in those days. Dad came from Hong Kong because…” A soft snore stops me. She’s asleep.

I sit there for the next hour, watching her, thinking how it’s the very first time we’ve been together in private, and how her sleeping has kept me from making a fool of myself. I watch her sleeping, adore her, and tell myself that I can manage my emotions if we can stay like this, if I can pretend to her that all I have for her is friendship and nothing else.

By the time she wakes I’ve half convinced myself of it.

The rest of the afternoon goes fine. I lie and tell her I’ve been working while she’s slept. I brew green tea for us, which she makes a face at – that’s a coffee girl, I should have known – and we watch a few videos of the Indian women’s team playing, just in case. When she finally leaves I walk her to the bus stop, and fantasise that I’m kissing her before she boards, but it’s just a quick hug, and then she’s gone.

That night, I lie in bed, in the very spot she’s occupied, with the faint smell of her perfume still on the sheets, and I stop pretending to myself that I can manage this. My hands sneak of their own accord between my thighs, and I stroke and rub myself till I come to a shuddering orgasm, my eyes leaking tears as I whisper her name.

____________________________

The next week settles into a routine. I jog every morning, as usual, with headphones on playing one or other symphony – soothing music – and then go straight to the gym, changing to pounding hard rock as a more appropriate soundtrack as I sweat it out on the machines. The gym is just round the corner from my bedsit. After coming home and showering, I call Kazzie for a few minutes while I vacuum. Then it’s time for breakfast and thence to my computer, earning my food and rent.

On Tuesday Kazzie messages to tell me that Carrie, the girl in the park, called her and said could we please go over to her school on Wednesday afternoon. So we do.

Her school team is already there, waiting at the entrance, when we arrive, talking excitedly to each other. They surround us like a flock of starlings, and the questions hit our ears like hail.

“See, I told you I knew them!” Carrie shouts excitedly over the babble.

We’re already having autograph books, scraps of paper, pens and pencils thrust at us when a couple of teachers turn up and manage to establish some order. We go over to their school ground, where there’s a cricket pitch of sorts, and I demonstrate bowling leg breaks while Kazzie fields them. It feels good, better than I could ever have thought it might, and I’m genuinely sorry when it’s time to leave.

“Will you come next week, Miss Zhang?” Carrie seems to have transferred some of her worship of Kazzie to me. “I want to try batting to you!”

Kazzie and I exchange glances. “Well, the team for India’s visit is going to be announced next Monday, so if either of us is ***********ed she mightn’t be able to…” Carrie’s face falls. “…but,” I add quickly, “…she’ll be back once the series is over. Assuming one of us is ***********ed, of course. The other one will keep coaching you in the meantime.”

“Of course you’ll be ***********ed. Both of you.” Carrie looks from Kazzie to me and back. “I mean, I can’t imagine you apart from each other.” As though she’s said something inappropriate, she claps her hand over her mouth and blushes like a tomato.

Again, what on earth is the matter with these kids?

As we’re walking to the bus stop to go our separate ways, Kazzie and I discuss the team ***********ion. “Let’s be together when it’s announced on Monday evening,” she suggests. “Then we can celebrate if one of us is chosen, or comfort each other.”

“That’s a right good idea,” I agree.

“So, your place or mine?”

“Yours,” I say immediately. I haven’t yet seen her flat, and I don’t think I can manage to keep myself under control if I have her back in my little bedsit where I masturbate every night to thoughts of her. “I want to have space for the excited cheering I’ll be doing when I see your name on the list, don’t I?”

“Ha ha. I’ll be keeping throat lozenges ready for myself.” She raises herself on her toes and plants a peck on my cheek as her bus arrives. “See you soon, you pross.”

The touch of her lips is like fire. I’m impressed with myself for maintaining control. “Get home safe and let me know when you get there, you tart.”

The bus takes her away from me, leaving my heart feeling as though it’s been scooped out with a spoon.

____________________________

Monday crawls around at last and I’d be lying if I say I’m not burning inside with stress. The sports pages are full of speculation about the team ***********ion, and none of them seems to think Kazzie has much of a chance. Even Claire – incompetent, fumbling Claire – gets more mentions than she does. I, of course, hardly get any mention at all, but I wasn’t really expecting any.

At three in the afternoon I board a bus for the University and get off one stop early, as I’d been told to. I’ve already seen Kazzie waiting at the bus stop through the window. She rushes at me enthusiastically as soon as I’m off and hugs me so tightly that the air rushes from my lungs in a squeak.

“You mouse,” she says, when she releases me. “Come on, my flat isn’t far away.”

“You don’t live in the students’ residence hall.” I say. “I was wondering why not.”

Kazzie shrugs. “I told you I don’t make friends easily. And what with travelling for cricket this is much better.” She leads me up a side street to a building not dissimilar to the one where I live. “It’s only a one-bedroom flat, but at least I’m on the top floor.”

We go up in the lift. As Kazzie’s unlocking her door, I take off my sandals.

“Why are you doing that?” she wants to know.

I shrug. “It’s my parents’ programming. It’s disrespectful to wear your shoes indoors in someone else’s home. Besides, it keeps the floor clean.”

“You could’ve told me that when I visited you. I wouldn’t have minded.” She glances at me curiously and slips off her own shoes. “You do actually love your parents with your heart and soul, don’t you? Even though you don’t live the way they want you to.”

I sigh. “It’s…complicated. I want to make them happy, but not at the cost of my own happiness. Somehow there seems to be no middle ground. I wish there were, but there isn’t, so I have to settle for making me happy to whatever extent I can. Does that sound selfish of me?”

“No, you pillock, that just shows that you’re a thinking human being.” Kazzie throws an arm around my neck, unconscious of the thrill that flares through my body at her touch. “Come on, let’s go sit down for a bit.”

Apart from the bedroom and bathroom, her flat is open plan, so it seems a lot bigger than it actually is. She’s got potted plants under the windows and batik hangings on the wall. I examine them curiously.

“These are really very good. Where did you get them?”

She says nothing, so I turn to repeat the question, and the answer comes to me. “Kazzie! You made these yourself, didn’t you?”

She bites her lip, clearly embarrassed. “Yeh. When I was in school, I had a lot of stress I needed to work off, and cricket wasn’t enough. This helped.”

I want to hug her, but I’m worried I won’t be able to keep it within friendly bounds. “Stress? About studies? But you’re clearly excellent at studies.”

“Well, stress. Doesn’t matter now about what exactly. It was just a bit much.” For some reason she’s avoiding my eyes. “So I taught myself batik and it helped to calm me down when I wanted to do nothing more than lie down and cry, you know?”

I swallow hard. “I can’t say I don’t know.” I sit down beside her. “Look…if you want to tell me anything, you can. I can’t change anything, maybe, but at least I can listen. What are friends for?”

For a moment I think she’s going to unburden herself of whatever’s bothering her, but then her eyes go to the clock on the wall. “It’s almost time for them to announce the team,” she says, jumping to her feet. “I’ll get the booze so we’re ready for whatever happens.”

“Right.” I want to tell her how I wish I could believe in some kind of god so that I could have prayed for her ***********ion. I want to tell her that I’m terrified that when she’s a famous international cricket star she’ll forget me. I want to tell her how just the sound of her voice sends chills down my body from the nape of my neck to the tips of my toes. But all I can do is just say, “Fine, right.”

She fetches glasses and bottles from a cabinet under the sink. “So, you want to listen to the announcement on the telly or check it online?”

I think for a moment. “Online. I’d like to read the names one by one so I can prepare myself.”

“Good idea.” She sighs and settles next to me on her sofa, drawing up her legs so that she leans against me. “I like having you here, Petals. Do you know something?”

“Hmm?” The feeling of her against my arm, the scent of her in my nose, make it hard for me to concentrate.

“You’re the first person I’ve had in here since I moved in.”

“Pull the other one. That can’t be.”

“And why not?”

I turn to look at her in astonishment. “Why not? Because you’re beautiful, and talented, and desirable, that’s why not.”

She laughs. “Well, that’s a new one on me. But I’m not joking. You’re the first person, male or female, who’s ever visited me here since I moved in.”

I’m still astonished. “What about boyfriends, then? Don’t tell me you don’t have one?”

She sighs and picks up her phone. “Let’s check if they’ve put the names up online yet.”

They haven’t, or the sports media haven’t updated their websites, until Kazzie refreshes her browser several times. Then we see the headline:

SEVERAL UNEXPECTED NEW FACES IN WOMEN’S CRICKET TEAM VERSUS INDIA

We exchange glances. My heart is thudding and my mouth dry. “Well, go on then,” I say. “Let’s see what they came up with.”

By mutual unspoken agreement, we scroll quickly past the initial text to the team names.

“Captain: Holly Newhart. Well, that’s not exactly a surprise.” She’s been captaining the team for the last year and lost almost all the matches, but the ***********ors seem to have a soft spot for her.

“Vice-Captain: Dorothy Chadwick,” Kazzie replies. Well, that’s mildly surprising, if only because she’s never captained anything, not even a club team, as far as I know. Still, she’s at least a competent opening batswoman. “Number Three…oh my god, Sally Richardson.”

I actually, literally, slap my forehead. “Please tell me this is a joke.”

But, no, it isn’t. I sigh. Well, at least she’s not the bloody captain. “Gloria McGrath. Oh, she got ***********ed again, did she? Good for her.”

I nod in agreement. Gloria, the flaming redhead, is someone who I actually have a lot of respect for. She’s one of the older ones, in her thirties, and I’m genuinely happy at her comeback.

The next few names are people we have no particular opinion about, and then…

“Pashtana Stanikzai.” I squeal and hug Kazzie hard. “Aaaaah! She really deserves it!” I can barely control myself for excitement. “Her whole family needed this!”

She smiles at me. “You’re such a good person, Petals. Let’s see the…” her mouth falls open and she gasps. I twist the screen so I can see what she’s looking at.

10. Karizma Davis (Wicket Keeper)

I scream so loudly that I almost deafen myself. I crush her to my side. “KAZZIE!!!!!!!!!”

We hug as hard as we can. She’s shaking and gasping. “Let’s see the rest…”

Julia Langdon. Zoe Smith. Jennifer Gaffney.

Jen. I wince. At least she’s better than Claire, not just as a player but as a human being. Thirteen names down, one to go. I wonder who it will be. Susan, maybe? I take a deep breath and rub my thumb up the screen.

For a long moment my brain literally blacks out, and I have to read what’s on the screen multiple times.

14. Dongmei Zhang

I can’t believe it, I can’t even begin to process it. I stare at the screen, dumbfounded.

A shriek in my ear breaks me out of my catatonic trance. “PETALS!!!!!”

I’m trembling, shaking, tears running down my face, barely being able to register Kazzie hugging me. The buzzing of her mobile phone interrupts us as we hang against each other, hugging and crying.

She takes the call and even without the loudspeaker I can hear the ecstatic screaming.

“Yeh,” Kazzie says, after a while, when her caller finally runs out of breath. “I know. We both know. Yeh, she’s here with me, you don’t need to call her separately. Yeh, maybe calm down a bit? Listen, can I call you back a bit later? Maybe tonight, or in the morning?” She smiles at me and puts her hand over her phone. “It’s Carrie.”

“Of course,” I reply, wiping my eyes. “I understood that already from the screeching.”

Kazzie’s just about managed to get Carrie calm enough to ring off when her phone buzzes again. “Dad. Yes, we saw already…thanks, Dad… right, we means Dongmei and I…yes, she’s here with me. Oh, Mum’s there? Did you both sit waiting for the team announcement?” She laughs, and my heart twists with happiness for her. For us. “You want to talk to her? All right.” She puts her mobile on loudspeaker and holds it out to me. “My dad wants to talk to you. Here.”

“Hello, is that Dongmei?” A familiar voice, one I’ve heard many times on sports programmes on the telly without ever connecting it with Kazzie. “I wanted to congratulate you.”

“I…thank you, sir.” I gulp. “I still can’t really believe it.”

“Oh, believe it. I’ve seen you bowl, you know. Besides there’s literally no other good female leg spinner in the country right now and…” he pauses. “Wait. Karizma’s mother wants a word with you.”

The voice on the other end could have been Kazzie’s own. “Dongmei! Or may I call you Petals?”

“You know what Kaz…I mean, Karizma…calls me, ma’am?”

“Oh, of course I know. She doesn’t stop talking for one moment about you, does she?”

“She talks about me?” I look at Kazzie, astonished. She bites her lip and shrugs.

“Of course she does. It’s always Petals this, Petals that, Petals and I did this today, mum, I can’t even tell you how much I adore Petals.” I can feel my mouth hanging open as I listen to her. “The poor girl is head over heels in love with you. I can’t wait to meet you.”

I’m staring at Kazzie, astounded, as her mum goes nattering on. It’s she who finally takes the phone from my hand. “Mum,” she says, “I think you’re getting a bit ahead of yourself, mum. Can we talk a bit later? I think Petals has blown a fuse in her brain.”

She puts the phone down on the table as gingerly as though it were a bomb. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

I find my voice finally. “Whatever for?”

“That you had to find out like that. That I love you.”

There are moments when the world shifts on its axis. It’s hard to adjust. “You…love me?”

“I’m sorry!” She’s sobbing. “I didn’t mean to! It just happened! I can’t help it!”

“Wait…” I’m still processing this. “You mean you…like girls?”

She nods, wordlessly, still crying.

I shake my head to try and clear it. “Kazzie…” I pull her close to me. She’s shuddering. “Kazzie. Listen…I love you. I’ve loved you from the beginning. From that first evening you told me sorrows can swim.”

She starts, looking at me unbelievingly. “You what?”

“I’ve been through hell trying to keep my feelings from you.” I look down at her. Suddenly so many things make sense. How could I have been so blind? “Kazzie…”

I don’t get to say another word. Kazzie crushes me in her arms and her lips are pressed to mine. She pushes me back on the sofa, kissing me desperately over and over again.

Her hand’s on the back of my head, holding it up, her breasts crushed against mine, her tears falling on my face like rain just like her kisses on my lips. I’m gasping for breath when she finally pulls away a little.

“Kazzie,” I manage. “Kazzie, darling…”

“I’m such an idiot,” she moans. “I was so terrified of losing you if I said what I felt.”

I make a choking noise. “You weren’t the only one.” Something occurs to me. “Oh. Now I understand.”

She plants another kiss on my mouth and tilts her head. “What?”

“Carrie and the other kids. Why they began getting so embarrassed when you took my hand and we were joking at each other.” I felt myself blushing. “They must have seen it. Everyone must have seen it except for the two of us!”

She laughs a little at that. “We’re both twits. We’re totally suited to each other.”

I wrap my arms around her and for the first time, I kiss her, instead of letting myself be kissed. She opens her mouth, inviting my tongue in. The electric shock from the touch of her tongue tip on mine thrills through me all the way to my vagina. I feel my entire pelvis pulsing with want for her.

Kazzie feels it too. She takes my hand and pulls me up. I’m astonished at her strength. “Come to the bedroom. I’ve waited far too long. I need you, Petals. I need you.”

Meekly, standing by her bedside, I permit her to disrobe me. I’m not wearing much anyway; a white blouse and tan skirt over white bra and knickers. Her fingers fumble as she tries to unhook my bra and I move to help, but she shakes her head. “No, let me do it. I want to unwrap you like a gift. You’re my gift.”

“Yours,” I breathe, as she finally gets my bra off and my breasts come free. “Yours,” I sigh again as my skirt falls to the floor around my bare feet. And my breath catches in my throat and I can’t say a word when she pushes her hands under my knickers from behind and cups my bottom.

“I’ve dreamt of this for so long…” She moves her hands to the waistband of my knickers and pulls them down, over my thighs and down to my ankles. “Petals…”

I wrap my arms around her as she stands back up. She’s still fully clothed, I’m totally naked, and I want to undress her, but everything that’s been happening suddenly catches up with me and I begin to tremble. I hold on to her for dear life.

“Petals, darling?” Her eyes are wide with concern. “What’s wrong?”

I shake my head. “Nothing. Nothing. It’s just…this is the first...the first time I’ve…”

“You’ve never been with a girl before?”

“I’ve never been with anyone before,” I confess. “I’ve never even been kissed before.”

“Oh my god…I’m so sorry. I’ve been rushing things. I swear, if I’d known…” She reaches for my clothes. “Let me help you get dressed again.”

“No!” I protest. “That’s not it. I want to! I want to make love to you. I just…I just never expected this would ever really happen…and I don’t know how to.” My voice rises in a wail at the unfairness of it all. “I don’t know how to make love to you!”

“Oh, love.” She pulls me to her and kisses me all over my face as far as she can reach on tiptoe. “Don’t worry. I’ll show you. I’ll teach you everything about it, just relax now and let me touch you.”

Numbly, I allow her to push me down so I’m sitting on her bed, and watch as she strips. Her body is like a sculpture in ebony wood. Her breasts are twin peaks of black marble, her belly a lava plain ridged with muscle, the V between the twin pillars of her thighs covered with short trimmed curls. She looks like a goddess from the birth of our species in the savannahs of Africa. I want to worship her.

“Kazzie?” I whisper, or maybe I imagine I whisper. I’m no longer sure of what my body’s doing. “Are you really that beautiful? I’m not dreaming, right?”

“You aren’t, you prat.” Her voice pulls me back a little. She grins that heart-twisting grin. “And look who’s accusing me of being beautiful! You’re lush as a fiddle, my love.”

Standing between my parted legs, she pulls me in for a hug. My face is pressed against her breasts. Instinctively I kiss the nearest one. She gasps. “Do that again.”

I kiss her breast again. She shifts slightly so that her nipple comes within reach of my mouth. My parted lips enfold it. I nibble lightly at it and probe it with my tongue.

Her arms tighten around my head and I feel her entire body jerk. “Oh, Petals.”

The feeling that I’m giving her pleasure is like a jolt of electricity. I lick and suck on that nipple, trying to gauge what I’m doing by the slackening and tightening pressure of her arms holding my head to her chest. All of a sudden she clamps her arms tight, crushing me to her, and cries out.

“Oh,” she whispers, when her arms slacken enough to let me breathe again. “Do you know what you did just now? You made me come.”

“I did?” I ask, stupidly.

She takes a deep breath and chuckles softly. “Yeh, you did. I don’t think you need to have any worries about how you’re going to shag me! Now just lie back, darling, and let me enjoy you.”

I have no conscious feeling of ordering my body to obey, but a minute later I’m on my back, my legs apart, and Kazzie is lying on me, her face above mine, our breasts pressed together, and the hot wet throbbing core of her sex pressed against mine. Her breath wafts in and out of my nostrils. I reach up, blindly, like a baby bird waiting to be fed, questing for her lips with mine.

“Petals…love…” her whisper is hot against my lips. She begins rotating her hips, her vulva slipping and sliding over mine, her short curly pubic hair rubbing on my clitoris, sending jolts of pleasure through my body. I gasp and instinctively begin trying to thrust up against her.

“Not now, love. Just lie still and let me do everything, yeh?”

At this point I don’t even know what I’m doing any longer. The sensations of her lips rubbing on mine, her breasts rotating against mine, her nipples rubbing on mine, her vulva and clitoris rubbing on mine, all merge together into a single enormous sensorial complex that overwhelms my brain. I can only writhe and gasp as she strokes and rubs and kisses me until my nerve endings reach out and grab hold of the most intense orgasm I’ve ever had in my life. It blazes from my vagina to the furthest reaches of my body. I come, bucking, moaning, and crying out inarticulate words that make no sense to me.

The tempest temporarily past, we lie together, her eyes tenderly gazing into mine. “Petals…”

“Yes…” I whisper in return.

“I love you more than anything that I can imagine.” She rubs her toes down my shin. I sigh.

“Oh, Kazzie, if you even knew how many times I’ve dreamt of being with you like this...” I shake my head. “I’m an idiot. I should’ve known you’re lesbian when I heard you talking on the phone that evening when we walked together from the hotel. Your dad was asking if we were an item, wasn’t he?”

She chuckles softly. “Yeh. I came out to my parents years ago. It wasn’t easy, but I was right gobsmacked when they just accepted it. It wasn’t as though I accepted it half as easy.”

I trace my fingers down her side and up the curve of her hip as one more bit of the puzzle falls into place. “The batik…” I whisper. “It was a coping mechanism, wasn’t it?”

She sighs. “You’re right. I was bloody muddled about my own sexuality back in school. Couldn’t rightly understand why blokes didn’t interest me at all but lasses did. So I tried to take my mind off it with batik. It didn’t work, but…” she giggles, “…it did teach me batik.”

“Will you teach me? How to do batik, I mean?”

Kazzie looks at me with a kind of wonder in her eyes. “Petals?”

“What?”

“Each moment you show me more of what a jewel you are. You really want to learn it, just for me?”

“I want to do batik with you, you moron.” I twist my legs around hers. “And someday, when we’re famous, our batik will hang on the pavilion walls of every cricket stadium in the land.”

She kisses me deeply as though she never wants our lips to part. I kiss her back, desperately, unable yet to fully convince myself that she’s real and not just part of a cruel dream. My hands wander over her body, and find the folds of her labia. She purrs. “Yes, rub it. Now put your finger in.”

She’s hot, wet, and clenches around my finger and begins to slowly thrust her hips against my hand so I go inside her all the way at each thrust. And a little after that, I find myself rolling on her, and then rubbing myself against her thigh while she twitches and gasps, ending in a crescendo of moaning passion as we both come like rollers breaking on rocky shores.

Later, when our heart rates have dropped to something like normal, we wander, still naked, back to her living room. My phone, lying on her table, shows a plethora of messages and one missed call. I pick it up curiously. “Well, this is unexpected.”

My darling raises an eyebrow. “Who is it?”

I raise the phone to show her. “My sister, the perfect one. I wonder what she wants.”

“Biyu, right?” She cocks her head in that terrier gesture. “Well, call and ask her.”

“Can’t I put it off?” I whine.

“No. Call her.”

“My girlfriend for…” I glance at the clock. “Two hours and you’re already ordering me around?” I sigh. “All right, here goes.”

Biyu picks up on the second ring. “Hi, Meimei. Saw you got ***********ed.” She’s speaking English, which she always does with me, since I’m much more comfortable in it than in Cantonese. “Celebrating, I suppose, which is why you didn’t take my call?”

“You could say that,” I reply cautiously. Biyu is someone I’m always careful around. She can take one inadvertently spoken word and run with it until you’re in a place you never wanted to be.

“Great! What’s her name?”

“What? Whose name? What are you going on about?”

She laughs. “Come off it, Meimei, I know you’re lez. Everyone always knew you’re lez, except you.” She pauses. “And Mā, of course.”



“Never you mind what her name is, if she even exists.” I’m blushing, probably as red as Carrie. “How is Mā?”

“Neat deflection. Is she there with you now?” My uncomfortable silence tells her all she needs to know. “Oh, I see. That’s why you didn’t take my call earlier. Say hi to her from me.”

“Uh…” I look at Kazzie. “My sister says hi to you.”

“Hello, Biyu,” Kazzie replies, loudly. “I love your sister.”

“And your sister loves her,” I add into the phone, suddenly set free by her words.

There’s a brief pause. “Glad you figured yourself out at last,” Biyu says. “I was wondering if it would ever happen. As for Mā…I told her you made the team, and she grunted.” She pauses again. “Meimei, she misses you. They both do.”

“I know,” I sigh. “But what can we do about it?”

“Come and see us sometime when you’re free? I know you’ll be all busy with cricket now, but once the series is over?”

“All right,” I agree, softly. “But this will only be a visit, fine? I’m not going to move back in or anything.”

“We’re not expecting you to. But it would be nice to see you sometime. Well, so, congrats on making the team. Is your girl on the team too?”

“…What makes you ask that?”

“She is!” Biyu squeals with pure joy. “I wonder which one it is. No, don’t tell me, let me guess.”

“Keep your guesses to yourself, then,” I snort. “It’s not as though you’ll guess right, anyway.”

“Wait…” there’s a long pause. “One minute.”

“What on earth are you up to?”

“Just checking the team photos and bios. Ah.”

“Ah what?”

“I’ll bet it’s the wicket keeper. I’m right, aren’t I?”

I say nothing.

“I’m right,” she crows. “Don’t muck it up, Meimei. She’s far too good for you.”

“I know,” I whisper. “Tell me something I don’t already know.”

“You’ll need to tell Mā sometime, you know.”

I sigh. “I will…when the time’s right. Thanks, Biyu.”

“Well, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Kazzie looks at me triumphantly. “You should listen to me every time.”

“Oh, ha ha,” I say. “You aren’t going to have to put up with her teasing whenever she calls.”

“I’ll tease you too if you want.” She kisses me. “What did she call you? It sounded like Meimei?”

“Yes. It means younger sister. She started calling me that when we were both children, and then my parents began calling me that as well.”

“It goes with your name, too.” She hugs me, one armed. “You’re going to stay over tonight, of course.”

“Am I?”

“You are.” She gets to her feet and holds out her hand for me to take. “Let’s get dressed and go out to dinner. My treat.”

____________________________

That is the last time we get to have some time to relax. The next day onwards we’re in a frenzy of activity. I have to finish pending projects before we leave for the pre-series training camp and practice. Kazzie puts in work towards her thesis and also arranges for time off from classes from the Univ.

On Wednesday afternoon we go over to Carrie’s school, more to give ourselves a break than to teach anyone anything. Half the school seems to be waiting for us. Carrie drags us to the field and insists on my bowling to her while Kazzie keeps wickets.

She isn’t bad. Of course the pitch is far from competition level, and the ball is old and scuffed and slightly lumpy on one side, so that the bounce is uneven and unpredictable, but even with all that she’s promising. She knows how to watch my wrist action and anticipate the kind of delivery I’ll be sending down the pitch, and that’s the most important thing. The rest is just practice, unless you’re someone like me, who’ll never learn to bat no matter how much you practice.

“You’re good,” I say eventually. “You’re much better than I anticipated, honestly.”

Kazzie nods. “She’s right. You can go all the way to the top with some hard work.”

Carrie blushes bright red and stammers something that’s probably thanks.

Of course after that we have to bowl and keep to the lot of them, but it’s also valuable practice for Kazzie and me. We’ve never played on the same side. She’s never kept wickets to me, even in the nets. We don’t have the synergy a wicket keeper and spinner should develop, where the former already knows where the ball’s going to go before the latter’s finished releasing it. We have to develop that synergy before the series begins, and the more I bowl to her the better.

We’re all flushed with exertion and the sun is sinking below the horizon when we’re done. Carrie’s parents have arrived to pick her up, and she shyly introduces us. As we turn to leave, she suddenly runs after us. “Miss Davis? Miss Zhang?”

We turn, surprised. “What is it, Carrie?”

She begins to say something, decides against it, then visibly argues with herself and says it anyway. “Can I…when you two marry each other…could I be your bridesmaid?”

Kazzie and I glance at each other and both bite down smiles. This girl is perfectly serious. “Yeh,” Kazzie says. “That’ll be a mint idea.”

“Of course you will,” I add. “If we get married. It’ll be a while before we’re at that point, though.”

“You will,” Carrie says, solemnly. “I said you’d be in the team too, and I’m saying you will. Remember what I said.” Then she turns round and runs back to her parents.

“I suppose our fate is sealed, then,” I say.

Kazzie laughs. “If your sister knew, you’d never hear the end of it.”

____________________________

Saturday night is when it all falls apart.

Tomorrow morning we’re supposed to leave for the training camp. We’re in my bedsit, eating a dish I scraped together from shrimp, noodles, shredded cabbage, lemon juice, chopped chillies, and black salt. Kazzie professes that it’s delicious.

I scoff. “My mother would call it an abomination. And she’d condemn you for praising it.”

She swallows the last of the stuff. “Well, I’ll just have to tell her that it’s great because you cooked it. Petals?”

I pause in the middle of gathering up the dishes to take to the sink. “Hmm?”

“Isn’t it time you told your mum about us? Once we get to the camp we’ll hardly have time for that kind of thing.”

I bite my lip. “Or we can wait till after the series.”

“No, Petals.” Kazzie touches me under the chin to make me look up at her. “We should do it now, so she doesn’t feel we’ve been hiding it from her. That you’ve been hiding me from her.”

I take a deep breath. “Well…Saturday night’s busy time at the restaurant, but she should be home by now.” It’s half past eleven. “I’ll call her, then.”

“Put it on the loudspeaker, will you?” she asks, as the phone on the other end begins to ring.

The old, familiar voice, the voice that always fills me with love and anger in equal measure. “Hello?”

“Mā? It’s Meimei.”

“Meimei?” A sharp intake of breath. “Is something wrong? Are you all right?”

“Nothing’s wrong, Mā. We’re leaving for the cricket training camp tomorrow. I’m fine.”

“Hmm.” She sounds non-committal. “Your sister told me about that. I suppose I should be happy.”

“Well, Mā…there’s something else I wanted to tell you. I’ve met someone, Mā. We’re serious.”

There’s a long pause. “Is he a nice Chinese boy?” she asks eventually.

“No, Mā. It’s not a Chinese boy and…it’s a she.”

“Hello, ma’am,” Kazzie says brightly, in her unmistakably feminine voice.

The silence on the other end goes on for so long I wonder if the connection went down. Then my mother explodes in a storm of Cantonese.

“Mā,” I say, “Mā, please slow down, you know I can’t understand you when you speak so quickly.”

She slows down, her voice quiet and venomous. She’s still speaking Cantonese. “I suppose I can’t stop you from doing what you want, but you have just disgraced not just yourself but your entire family. Don’t you even have the slightest consideration for family honour at all?”

“Mā, wait –”

“No, you wait, Meimei. For once in your life, wait and listen, because this is the last time I’m ever going to talk to you, so I intend to make myself heard. I can forgive a lot of things, I can even suffer a lot of things that I can’t forgive but I can’t change, but I will not ever accept you defiling yourself and our family by lying with another woman. You can’t ask that of me.” She draws a long breath. “Do whatever you want, but never ever contact me again.”

“Petals!” Kazzie’s staring at me with shocked eyes. “What is it? You look as though you’re about to faint. What did she say?”

I tell her through lips that I can hardly feel. By the time I finish tears are running down both our faces.

“I’m so sorry,” I finish. “I’m so sorry she’s like this.”

Kazzie hugs me, and kisses me once on my forehead. “No, Petals. It’s I who should be sorry.”

“Why?” I look at her, astonished. “Whatever did you do?”

“It’s not what I did, it’s what I have to do.” She stands up and begins gathering her things. “I can’t do this any longer with you.”

“What? Kazzie – it’s my mother, not I who…”

Kazzie shakes her head. “That’s not it, is it? I know quite well that you love me, that you – wait, let me continue. I said I know quite well that you’ll choose me over your mum, but that’s not what I want. She’ll always be there between us, Petals. You’ll never forget that you dumped her for me, and neither will I.” She draws a long, ragged breath. Her voice breaks on a sob. “No! Don’t touch me, Don’t make this even more difficult for me. I’m, I’m sorry for being so weak, that I can’t put my happiness over yours, but there it is.” She rubs furiously at her eyes. “No need to see me down. I’ll call an Uber or something.”

“Kazzie…I implore you.”

“Petals…Dongmei, please. You don’t know how hard this is for me. Please don’t make it harder. I’m already at breaking point. I’m so sorry, Dongmei. I’ll see you at the training camp.” She looks at me over her shoulder, and then she’s gone.

I collapse to my knees, screaming, maybe soundlessly, maybe not, I don’t know, the pain flows over me like a wave, and I fall and fall into a pit of despair and the falling never stops.

____________________________

I’m at the training camp. I bowl at the nets, I do fielding practice, I get to know my new teammates. I even attempt to bat at the nets.

It’s all at a vast remove, as though someone else is operating my body. I’m no longer alive, I’m a robot, or a vehicle controlled by someone else in the driver’s seat. This person is good at her job. She plays the part of me quite well, bowls vicious turners at the nets, runs after the ball and slings it back to the wicket from the boundary, even smiles at appropriate times. She’s a consummate actress, but she’s not I. She’s just playing me.

Kazzie…no, I can’t think of her that way anymore, I’ve lost that right; Karizma keeps wicket to my bowling at nets, and slowly we develop that unspoken language between wicket keeper and spin bowler that we need, the codes that I can use to let her know what I’ll be bowling next. At one time I’d have rejoiced at it, but no longer. It’s just another thing, like bowling googlies at Sally or diving to catch balls thrown by Gloria at fielding practice.

Holly Newhart isn’t a good captain. I already suspected this from her record and watching matches of the team during the last year, but she’s even worse than I expected. I think she once heard the term “bull dyke” and adopted it as her model both in appearance and behaviour, being deliberately offensive when she doesn’t have to be. Ironically, in reality she’s straight as the day is long. For some reason she singles Sally and me out for special attention, maybe because while she’s tall, Sally and I are taller. It makes Sally switch her hostility from me to Holly, and even try to be cordial with me, but the actress playing me doesn’t care either way.

I’ve already decided that once this series is over, when I’m dropped from the team afterwards, I’m going to leave cricket. I can’t do this anymore, watch Karizma throw herself after a ball or face my leg breaks during batting practice and not be able to do a thing to mend my shattered heart. I’ll give up this part of my life completely; what I’ll do next I don’t know, and I no longer really care.

I’m dead. I’m just pretending to be alive.

I share a room with Pashtana; lovely Pashtana, so sweet and beautiful, so lethal on the field with her left arm medium pace and not half bad with the bat besides. One evening, I’m back in the room as usual instead of mingling with the rest of the team, when she comes in and stands there looking at me.

“Uh, Pash?” I ask eventually. “Did you need something?”

“Dongmei…it’s not my place to say this, of course, and if you tell me to shut up I’ll understand.” She sits down on her bed and looks at me cautiously. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it? Something’s badly wrong.”

I make a noise and swallow. “How do you mean, something’s wrong?”

“It’s obvious. You’ve lost something or someone, your heart is broken, and you’re in despair. All the signs are there.”

Hot tears burn behind my eyes at the compassion in her voice. “Pash…”

“When we left Kabul,” she said evenly, looking down at the floor, “I was just the same way. Everyone was saying how lucky we were to have got out in time, but I didn’t think so. I still, you know, yearn to see my Kabul mountains on the horizon, walk my old street, laugh with my old friends. Every night I dream I’m back there, or visiting the Paghman gardens with my brothers and sister.” A single glittering tear trickles down her cheek. The old me would have wanted to brush it away. The actress playing me doesn’t move.

“But,” she says, still not looking at me, “I couldn’t show what I was feeling, how heartbroken I was, because my parents had with so much difficulty managed to get us out in time, leaving everything behind. I still can’t show it in front of them. So I pretended I was happy and content. I became very good at pretending. But…” her head rises finally, “…I know what the signs are like. I saw them every day in the mirror, for years. And I see them all in you.”

I can’t take it anymore, the dam has built up too much pressure behind it, and I collapse beside her on her bed, shuddering and crying. Pashtana’s arms are around me, and I’m sobbing into her shoulder, shamelessly and desperately. “I’m sorry,” I manage, between paroxysms of sobs. “I’m so sorry for being such a fool.”

“You aren’t,” she says, her voice full of sorrow. “It’s just grief. There’s nothing foolish in grieving for what you’ve lost.”

“It is, when it’s all my fault,” I manage. “It’s my fault that I drove her away.”

“Her…oh.” Pashtana draws away slightly. “It’s a girl? Dongmei, is it Karizma?”

I nod through my tears. “How did you know?”

“I thought I saw the same signs in her. I wasn’t sure, because I don’t know her very well.” She sighs. “I suppose it won’t be of any help if I tell you that at least being in the same team means you could mend things at some point?”

I shake my head. “It’s beyond repair.”

“Please, Dongmei. Nothing’s beyond repair, if you only have hope.” She hugs me again. “Can you at least promise me to have hope?”

“Do you have hope…of someday being able to go back to Kabul?”

She smiles a little. “Only every minute of every day. It keeps me breathing and functioning. Will you promise me to have hope, Dongmei?”

“I’ll try,” I whisper. “I’ll try my best to hope. That’s all I can promise.”

She pats my shoulder as though she’s much older instead of one year younger than me. “That’ll be enough to work with.”

____________________________

“So,” Holly says, tapping her list with her pen, “we’re going with five bowlers. That means there’s only room for one spinner.”

The first one day international versus India is tomorrow. Ironically it’s going to be at the same stadium where Karizma and I’d first met. The team’s staying at a different hotel, of course; at the international level we rate higher facilities than a mere club or provincial team. It’s before morning practice, and we’re at a strategy session, which I can already tell isn’t getting anywhere fast.

“Since we can only have one spinner…” Holly stares right at me, “…it’s between Sharon and Zhang.” Sharon Donne is our off-spinner, a lanky holdover from the old team. “Now Sharon’s played India before, and she can bat. Zhang’s never played anyone, and can’t bat at all.” She’s still staring at me. “So we’re going with Sharon.”

It’s nothing more than I expected, so I’m neither surprised nor disappointed. I look around the team; only Pashtana and, surprisingly, Sally look as if they want to say anything. Karizma’s sitting with her back to me so I don’t know if she reacted in any way at all.

“Right,” Holly slaps the rolled up list on her palm. “Let’s go down and get to practice.”

Sally sidles up to me as we’re headed down the stairs. “What a bitch,” she whispers. “You deserved the spot much more. Sharon got demolished by India last time round. It’s just her way of keeping her cronies on the team.”

“She didn’t keep you out,” I reply mildly. “Congrats, Sal. I hope you score a century.”

“Yes, well, we’ll just see, won’t we?” She trots quickly down the stairs and out on the field.

Since I won’t be playing, I only bowl a few overs at the net and then throw the ball around for the others’ fielding practice, and after that walk to the boundary to drink some water; the day is hot. As I stand sipping at my water watching the practice, I hear a sudden voice behind me. “Dongmei Zhang?”

I turn, and my heart seems to stand still. The woman behind me is an icon in the women’s cricket world, someone I grew up hero-worshipping, whose posters were among those that I would have put up on my bedroom wall if my mother had permitted posters. Even now, in her late thirties, she’s devastatingly lovely with her brilliant smile and dark glowing skin.

It’s Radhika Pandey, the captain of the Indian cricket team.

“Ms Pandey!” The water bottle falls to the grass. My hands fly up to clasp each other under my chin. “Oh my god! I can’t believe it’s you.”

She tilts her head and looks up at me quizzically. “Well, first thing, drop this ‘Ms Pandey’ stuff. You call me Radhika like everyone else. Anyway, you’d have met me tomorrow, wouldn’t you? I just came looking for you to make it sooner.”

I swallow. Despite the water I’ve just drunk, my mouth’s dry again. “You came looking for me? How do you even know I exist?”

She snorts. “A poor captain I would be, if I didn’t do some basic research on the opposing team. So, a little birdie tells me that you aren’t in the eleven to play us tomorrow. Frankly, I’m relieved.”

“You are? Why?”

“Because you’re good, Dongmei, you are very, very, good and you’d be a major headache for us. No, don’t bother denying it, I’ve watched the videos. But, since you aren’t playing, I’d like a favour.”

“You’ve got it.” For her I’d walk barefoot on broken glass. “What do you need?”

“We’re holding nets across on the other side.” She points. “I’d like you to come and bowl a couple of overs to me. Will you?”

Oh yes, I think. Oh yes, yes, yes.

I accompany her to the Indian side, where I get a lot of curious looks as Radhika pads up and pulls on her batting gloves. A tall and muscular woman I recognise as Rukhsana Ansari comes over to me. She’s a fast off-spinner and a dangerous middle-order batswoman. “So you’re the new sensation?”

“Sensation?” I blink at her. “I just got picked by pure luck.”

“Not to hear Radhika talk of it. She’s held entire strategy sessions on how to counter you.”

“She did?”

“She did.” Rukhsana gives me a friendly slap on the shoulder. It feels like being slapped by a brick. “Right, then, go ahead and show her what you’ve got!”

It feels strange to see Radhika facing me in the nets, as though she were my own teammate. I start off with a leg break which she blocks with no apparent effort, and then another she drives in the general direction of mid-off. I pitch the third delivery a bit short, and it jumps a bit, almost at chest height, and she opens the face of her bat to it so that it drops to the ground at her feet.

The fourth delivery is one of those I wish I could bowl whenever I want to. I pitch it in line with her legs, and as she comes forward, it breaks viciously, almost square, hits the upper corner of her bat blade, and arcs over her shoulder as a catch even Claire couldn’t possibly have missed.

She smiles at me. “See, I told you you’re good.”

Her teammates are watching as I bowl a few more leg breaks and straight ones. Then, on an impulse, I decide to try my secret weapon.

Long ago I discovered that I could bowl a googly using the exact same grip and movement as for a leg break, with only my fingers delivering the rest of the spin. It’s not something I can do easily, and it’s murderously difficult to pitch exactly where I want it to, but when it comes off well it can do wonders. So I decide to just try it here for once.

I bowl with full flight, Radhika steps forward to strike it as it rises from the pitch, only it’s not where she expects, and the ball turns in, keeps low, and whacks her on the back pad. A clear leg before wicket call, even with a one-eyed umpire. She looks at it disbelievingly, looks at me, and shakes her head. “How did you do that?”

Suddenly I realise that I’ve got something that Radhika Pandey can’t handle. I have something that the queen of women’s cricket batting can’t handle. “It just happened,” I say. “I must have landed on some uneven spot on the ground.”

“Uneven spot on the ground, my foot,” she says, good-naturedly enough. “My word, I am glad you aren’t playing us tomorrow!”

After bowling a few more overs I go back to our side, where nobody seems to have even noticed my absence. India thinks I’m dangerous, my own team can’t be bothered to notice I’m there, I think, story of my life. Just as I reach the table with the water bottles I hear a cry of pain.

It’s Sharon. She’s holding her right hand in her left and grimacing. Everyone rushes over to her and I do, too.

“Fucking ball,” Sharon gasps. Her right hand’s already swelling. “It hit my finger and bent it back. I think the bone’s broken.”

“Get her to hospital right away,” Holly orders. She’s looking more disgusted than concerned. “Let me know immediately what they say.”

The verdict is back in half an hour. Sharon’s middle finger’s fractured. It’s her bowling hand, too.

Holly turns a purplish hue at the news, and then turns to me. “You. Zhang. Since we’ve no alternative, you’ll be in the eleven tomorrow.” She waits, perhaps for me to express gratitude or something. If so, she waits in vain. “Get down to practice,” she says. “If you’re playing you need to act like it.”

So I get down to practice and start acting like a player.

It’s only when I’m getting ready for bed at night that I realise that the actress playing me seems to have gone on holiday the moment Radhika came up and called my name.

Am I starting to live again?

____________________________

Fifteen overs into the Indian innings, and Radhika’s on fire.

We won the toss and Holly chose to field first, a decision Sally, the only one of us with captaincy experience, had derided in a whisper to Pashtana and me. “This pitch’s going to crumble in the afternoon,” she’d said. “Any fool can see that. It’ll be a nightmare to bat on at the end of the day.”

And now Radhika’s on 85 runs from just 57 balls, and has blasted our bowling all over the ground. Even Pashtana’s been hit all over the place. One of Radhika’s drives, a lofted six over long-on, sails so far over my head that I don’t even attempt to jump for it. I’m not Superwoman.

Holly stands with the ball in her hand as we change over. Then she calls me to her.

“Zhang. You’ll bowl the next over, so Stanikzai can switch ends. Try not to give too many runs away.”

I take the ball. Story of my life, again. Just as at school, I’m the one who’s only in the team on sufferance, because there’s nobody else. This time yesterday, I wouldn’t have cared. I was dead then.

But I’m starting to come alive again. I’m starting to care again.

Unlike the last time I was here, the stadium is packed. This is, without a doubt, the largest number of people I’ve ever played in front of. I block out their existence. There’s me, there’s the ball in my hand, and there’s Radhika watching me swing my arm to loosen it.

And there’s Karizma, behind Radhika, bouncing up and down on her toes. I look at her and she looks at me, and I try to send a message across the pitch by my eyes alone.

Please, I beg her, just be mine for this over, remember what I told you about my secret weapon when we were together. Just this once, please. And, stupidly, I imagine I get a response.

Holly, as I knew she would, has set an ultra-mega defensive field, without consulting me. I don’t even bother looking at it. Radhika is going to run away with the game unless she’s stopped. I’m the only one who can stop her. Well, then.

I decide to bowl round the wicket, a move that I’m sure is going to send Holly’s blood pressure soaring. It’s the first ball I’m ever going to bowl in international cricket. I block that from my mind, as I block out the crowd and Holly.

I’m good at blocking out things.

I come trotting in, the ball leaves my hand, angling across the pitch to land in line with middle stump, and Radhika steps forward, all set to cover-drive me to the boundary, and instead the ball breaks viciously in, clips her bat, and Karizma takes one of the best tumbling catches I’ve ever seen, diving to her left at full stretch.

I can’t believe it. I drop to my knees a moment before the entire team throws itself on top of me and flattens me to the ground.

When they finally get off me I see Radhika’s still there, standing next to me. She shakes my hand. “Congratulations. You’re really going to have to teach me how you do that.” She smiles and walks off to the pavilion.

Sally walks over as I watch Diana Pinto, India’s number three, exit the pavilion and trudge towards us. “You jammy bitch. How does it feel to take a wicket off your first ball in international cricket?”

I shake my head. “I still haven’t processed it.” I nod my head towards Diana. “She’s good, and you’d better get ready for me to be belted across the ground, now.”

I don’t get belted across the ground, but Diana does get a couple of runs off my third ball, and a single off the fourth, so on the fifth ball I’m faced with India’s other opener, Sharmishta Talukdar, a short round woman with more muscle power and wrist flexibility than one would imagine looking at her physique. She stares at me impassively.

She’s not so impassive one delivery later, when I bowl her round her legs with one of those square turning leg breaks I wish I could summon whenever I want to.

One dot ball later, and my first international over is done. Two wickets for three runs.

It’s when I’m walking back to the boundary that I wonder if Karizma had been among those rushing to pile themselves on me after I’d got Radhika. I certainly hadn’t gone to congratulate her on her brilliant catch.

Once again, I’m wrecking things for myself. It seems to be all I can do.

The game goes on. After my two-wicket first over, Holly can’t exactly take me off the bowling, so I continue for my full ten overs and end up with two more wickets, taking four for thirty seven. Not bad, not bad at all. Pashtana has success too, in her second spell, ending up with figures of three for fifty. In the end India are all out on the last ball of the 49th over and we’re left to score 285 to win.

Not good. On this pitch, not good at all, but a lot better than it would have been had Radhika and Sharmishta been able to continue belting our bowling for another ten overs or so.

During the lunch break, Holly gets down to instructing our opening batswomen, Dorothy and Gloria, on what they should do. I can see that they aren’t listening, and neither am I. If the game goes down to the point where I have to go to bat, strategy won’t mean a damned thing anyway.

Instead, I take a deep breath and go over to Karizma. “Hi.”

She smiles briefly at me. “Hello, Dongmei. You did well today.”

“So did you. It was a brilliant catch, that first one.” I want to say everything in my heart, to put it all into words, but I can’t. The haunted look in her eyes pierces me to the soul. This isn’t the Kazzie I knew. I can feel the pain inside her. “I’ll be cheering for you when you bat,” I say.

She nods. “I know.”

“Well…” I remember with a pang like a spear to my breast how she and I sat talking and laughing during other matches while she was waiting for her turn to bat. “Best of luck, then.”

“Thanks.” She looks down at her hands. I hesitate, then walk away.

The match goes on. Dorothy and Gloria, magnificently ignoring Holly’s instructions, hang together for the first eighteen overs, posting an opening partnership of 119 runs. Then Dorothy gets a mite overconfident, just a smidgen, and drags an outswinger from Poonam Singh back onto her stumps.

After that things begin going to hell quite fast. Sally comes in and manages to hang around for a while, throwing her bat around and scoring fifty off forty deliveries, but, just as she’d predicted, the pitch’s begun to crumble. Holly herself manages to reach the magnificent score of two runs.

And then, suddenly, we’re eight wickets down for 249, with Pashtana and Karizma at bat and three overs to go.

“Zhang,” Holly calls, quite superfluously, “get your gear on.”

I’m long since in my pads and gloves, also well aware that this is probably futile, and yet watching as Pashtana drives Rukhsana to the extra cover boundary for two consecutive fours. Sixteen balls to go, 28 runs to win.

Eighteen hours ago I wouldn’t have cared. Now I’m leaning on the pavilion balcony wall, staring down at the field, my heart racing.

Rukhsana finishes off her over, conceding two more runs off the last ball. Twelve balls to go, 26 runs to win.

Poonam Singh comes back to bowl, after being held back by Radhika for the death overs. Her first ball is short, almost a bouncer, and might have counted as a no-ball, but Karizma pivots like a dancer, her bat flashes in the air, and the ball goes first bounce over the deep square leg boundary. Eleven balls to go, 22 to win.

The crowd roars as though it’s watching us come back from the dead.

I bite my lip as I watch Poonam start running up for her next delivery. She’s very, very fast, very, very, good, and I’m still telling myself this when the ball smacks into Karizma’s bat, soars through the air, and crashes into the wall just under my hands.

Ten balls to go, sixteen runs to win.

A totally irrelevant thought goes through my brain. I hope Carrie isn’t hyperventilating.

Two dot balls later, I’m the one who’s in danger of hyperventilating, and Karizma square-cutting Poonam for three runs isn’t calculated to make me breathe easier. Six balls to go, thirteen to win.

It’s Rukhsana who’s going to bowl the final over. I’m vaguely aware that one of the television cameras is zooming in on my face. I can imagine the commentary, maybe by Karizma’s father: “Dongmei Zhang, awaiting her turn to bat. She’s probably hoping she doesn’t have to.”

Correct. I’m hoping I don’t bloody have to, and so is my entire team and anyone else who knows what my batting is like.

Radhika and Rukhsana hold a quick midfield conference, and rearrange the fielding. I can’t even make myself look round at the others in the pavilion.

The first ball of the final over. Rukhsana trundles up, swings her arm, the ball breaks in sharply and Karizma just helps it along with her bat to the fine leg boundary. It’s one of the most perfect leg glance shots I’ve ever seen.

Five balls. Nine runs. This is why cricket exists, why it’s a game.

The next ball’s just a little short, Rukhsana probably hoping to make it rise enough to force Karizma to play it defensively, but she steps out to meet it as it rises and lofts it to the long on boundary. The ball clears the ropes by a metre.

And suddenly like magic the situation’s reversed. Four balls to go, just three runs to win.

The crowd is silent. Everybody’s waiting to see what happens next.

Rukhsana doesn’t crack under pressure. Her next ball is a beast. It barely rises from the pitch, and Karizma has to dig her bat down in a hurry to keep it from going through to the wicket.

Three balls to go, three runs to win.

I don’t bite my fingernails, but my teeth are buried in my lower lip.

Rukhsana’s next ball, the fourth of the over, pitches on off stump, keeps straight, and Karizma, who was clearly expecting an off break, swings at it but only gets an edge. It streaks past wicket keeper Diana Pinto towards the boundary, and Karizma and Pashtana race past each other as Poonam rushes in from third man, picks up the ball and flings it on the go, Karizma and Pashtana going for the second run, Diana taking Poonam’s throw and hurling down the stumps at the non-striker’s end with a throw that might almost have broken the sound barrier, leaving Pashtana over a metre short. The third umpire isn’t even necessary.

My body floods with adrenaline. Two balls to go, two runs to win, and I’m in.

I collect my bat and start for the stairs. “Dongmei,” Sally calls. “Helmet.”

Oh, heavens. I forgot my helmet and the last thing I want to do is waste time going back for it. There’s one on a chair next to me, though, so I just pick it up instead. After all, I’ll be at the non-striker’s end and probably won’t need it anyway.

I pass Pashtana on the way, and she offers me a smile. “Best of luck,” she calls, just loud enough for me to hear over the roar of the crowd.

“Thanks,” I tell her. “You played brilliantly, Pash.”

The helmet’s much too large for me, and I re-buckle the strap tight as I reach the wicket. Karizma nods at me from the other end, and takes guard.

There’s only one thing that Karizma can do. She’s not going to try and defend, she’s going to hit whatever Rukhsana sends down wherever she can. So I’m ready to run, only the tip of my bat keeping me anchored to the crease.

Rukhsana is wickedly fast, almost as fast as a medium pacer. From the pavilion I’d not realised just how quick she is. Her delivery streaks past me towards Karizma, she swings her bat and I’m already running before I’m even sure she’s connected. The ball’s hit the bottom of her bat and rolls towards mid-off, and Rukhsana picks it up on her follow-through. But in the meantime we’ve just managed to get across for a single.

The scores are level, 284 each. One ball to go, I have to face it, and I have to score one run.

Everything is déjà vu again. Same field, same situation, same everything.

Maybe I won’t muck it up?

Who am I fooling?

Of course I’ll muck it up.

There’s nothing I can’t muck up if I put my mind to it.

I take a deep breath and try to calm down.

Diana Pinto behind the stumps puffs out her cheeks. “This game isn’t doing my blood pressure any good,” she tells me.

“I doubt it’s helping mine either,” I say, before turning to ask the umpire for a leg stump guard. I feel like an idiot, because I barely have any idea where my leg stump is at the best of times, and this time I’ll just have to swing my bat at whatever comes my way.

Rukhsana takes her time, looking around the field and gesturing square leg forwards, for all the world as though I were a competent batswoman who knew what she were doing. If I can get my bat to touch the ball, that’s already an accomplishment for me.

Briefly I cross glances with Karizma, who’s standing as I’d been, on the pitch with her bat held back to touch the crease. Behind her, Radhika is standing at short mid-on. She sees me looking at her and gives a little wave.

I remember, sharp as though it were happening right now, standing right here at this same spot, running, falling, hearing the clatter of ball on wicket. I squeeze my eyes shut and shake my head. That was then, this is now.

Here comes Rukhsana, ambling in with that deceptively slow run up which disguises the blistering speed with which she bowls. Her arm goes up, then the ball is streaking towards me down the pitch and I step forward and swing the bat in the general direction of the ball as hard as I can.

Karizma is already sprinting at me when the ball hits the bottom edge of my bat, bounces hard on the pitch, and rolls down towards mid-on. I take off down the pitch, running as fast as I can, past Karizma, the crowd’s roar a waterfall of noise in my ears, Radhika racing in from short mid-on, picking up the ball on the run and throwing it as hard as she can at the wicket, and I’m still short of the crease, I dive, reaching out with my bat, and the ball is growing in my peripheral vision, the ball is getting bigger and bigger, the ball streaks in between the peak and face-guard of my too large helmet and smashes into my head.

There’s an instant of white light, a flash of agony, and my world blinks out.

____________________________

Somewhere, a voice is speaking.

“She’s got a bad cut and possible concussion. That’s all I can tell you. We’re still running tests.”

It’s an interesting dream, I think. I’m floating in fuzzy warm darkness, the darkness is enfolding and comforting, listening to the voice.

A broken-hearted sobbing somewhere, in the distance.

“Ma’am, please control yourself. There’s nothing to do but wait.”

Wait for what, I wonder lazily. I want to comfort whoever’s crying. Surely it can’t be as bad as all that, I want to say.

But the warm darkness is so comfortable. I just lie back and let it carry me away.

____________________________

There’s a blur in front of me when I open my eyes. I blink and it resolves itself into a plump face in a nurse’s cap, looking down at me.

“Doctor, she’s awake.”

Doctor? What do I need a doctor for? I look around. I’m in a hospital bed.

Why am I in a hospital bed?

An elderly man in a white doctor’s coat appears next to the nurse. He’s got a fuzz of white cotton-wool hair and wire framed spectacles. He looks down at me and holds up three fingers. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Three.” Is this some kind of game? I’m not a child.

“Can you raise your head? Do you have any discomfort?”

I raise my head experimentally. “I’m fine.”

“Pulse and blood pressure normal,” the nurse says.

“You’re a very fortunate young lady,” the doctor says. “It could easily have been a much worse injury.”

What injury? What have I done to myself? I just remember that I was getting ready for the cricket match and…

The cricket match! Memory comes flooding back. Running for the crease, diving, Radhika’s throw, the ball, my head. I reach up to touch my head and my fingers encounter a surgical tape bandage. I wince.

“You’d better leave that alone,” the nurse says severely. “You’ve got stitches.”

“And lucky at that,” the doctor says. “You could’ve had concussion, bleeding around your brain, or a skull fracture. As it is all you’ve done is lose a bit of blood and get a gash on your forehead.” He turns to leave, the nurse trailing in his wake.

“Wait!” I call. “Did we win?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” The nurse looks back at me over her shoulder. “I don’t follow cricket. I have a lot of better things to do.”

____________________________

Soon afterwards I get visitors.

My teammates trickle in one by one. Pashtana hugs me gingerly, as though I were a fragile vase. “Did we win?” I ask her.

She smiles. “Yes, we did. But it didn’t matter so much at the time.”

“You gave us a proper scare,” Sally says, handing me a bunch of grapes and tearing off a couple to pop into her mouth. She glances at Pashtana. “This one fainted when she saw the blood.”

Pashtana blushes like a schoolgirl, like Carrie. “I…don’t like blood much.”

“It’s all right, Pash,” I reassure her. “So, are you all going to practice now?”

“Right, now that we know you’ll live.” Sally gives me a friendly slap on the shoulder. “Your veterinarian out there says you’ll be let go sometime this afternoon if you don’t relapse or anything, so don’t imagine for a moment that I’ll give you an easy time at the nets tomorrow.”

I grin. Under all that attitude she carries around, she’s actually a very nice girl. Someone should let her know that.

The team leaves, one by one, and only after they’ve all gone, when I know for sure that no more are coming, that I admit to myself that the one person I was looking for, the one I’d needed, wouldn’t be visiting.

The pain of that in my heart is so much worse than the pain of the injury in my head.

Before I get a chance to wallow in it, the door opens again and a beautiful brown face looks in. “May I come in?”

“Of course, Radhika.” I smile at her. “How are you?”

She steps quietly to my bedside. “I’d like to…apologise.”

“Whatever for? You didn’t mean to do it.”

“Not about that.” She looks startled. “You mean you don’t know?”

“Know what? I don’t know anything.”

“Oh…right. Well, let me just tell you that there are certain people in India who…” she takes a deep breath. “Let’s just say that there are people who were cheering me for ‘trying to kill a Chinese’ on social media, and regretting only that I ‘failed’.”

I think about that. “Radhika…there are idiots in every country. You know that. It isn’t your fault.”

“We couldn’t stay silent, anyway.” She fumbles her phone out of her pocket and looks for a file. “Our team, at my suggestion, released this statement an hour ago. Here.”

I take the phone. “We, the members of the Indian Women’s Cricket Team,” I read, “unanimously and in the strongest words condemn the indefensible comments of a certain section of the populace against our friend and worthy opponent, Dongmei Zhang. We apologise in the name of the country to her and assure her that these comments have no connection with the warm regard in which we hold her personally.” I look up at Radhika, a lump forming in my throat. “Thank you so much.”

She nods. “You’re more than welcome, my dear. I hear you’re to be released today? I’m glad. You’re going to be the best leg spinner the world’s seen since Anil Kumble.”

“Oh come on, that’s a bit much.”

“It’s nothing but the truth. You’ll see.” She looks towards the door. “I should go. You’ve other visitors waiting. Your family, I think.”

My family? I’m astonished. Why would they come here? “Thanks for the visit, Radhika.”

“Oh, wait, before I go, one last thing.” Radhika turns back at the door and walks back to my bedside. “Dongmei, could I ask you a very personal question?”

I blink. “I suppose.”

“Are you, ah, in any way…romantically involved with Karizma Davis?”

I sigh, the pain fresh again. “I was. She broke it off.”

“Oh? That surprises me.”

“It does? Why?”

“When the ball hit you yesterday…” She looks at the bandage. “We didn’t at first know you were injured. We thought you were, you know, just lying on the pitch for a few seconds before you got up and celebrated. Then she, you know, Karizma, came rushing over from the other end and threw herself to your side and began screaming for help. She was there before even the umpire could take a look.” She hesitates a moment. “I think you’ll find that she didn’t really break it off after all.”

____________________________

I finally track her down to the same hotel barroom where we’d first had drinks together, sitting in the same corner where I’d been sitting, her head bowed over a tankard of beer.

I watch her for a moment before speaking. “Drowning your sorrows in alcohol? It doesn’t work, the bloody things can swim.”

She looks up and gives me a wan smile. Her eyes are pools of pain. “Dongmei.”

“May I sit down?”

She nods. “How did you find me?”

“I thought you’d be here when the team said you’d gone out and wouldn’t say where. I did call first, but you’d turned off your phone.”

“I…didn’t want calls. I didn’t want to talk to anyone.”

“Karizma…Kazzie.” I reach out to touch her hand. “I’m here. Talk to me.”

“I can’t!” she sobs.

“Why not?”

“Do you have to ask? I thought you were dying. I look at you and at every moment I feel how much I love you, and I know that I can’t do anything about it because I’m so weak, and I can’t deal with it anymore. It’s tearing me to pieces inside.”

“You aren’t weak. You’re the strongest woman I know. Much stronger than me.”

“Come off it.” She glances at me and down at her beer. “I can’t even get my noggin straight. If I could I’d have just taken you and let your relationship with your mum work itself out however. But I can’t even find the strength to do that.”

“You don’t have to, Kazzie.”

“I don’t? Why?”

“This morning my family came to visit me at the hospital. Let me tell you what happened.”

____________________________

FLASHBACK; THE HOSPITAL VISIT

Bàba and Biyu enter together, my lovely sister, looking even more ethereal than ever. She looks back over her shoulder. “Come on, Mā.”

It’s the first time I’ve seen Bàba since I left. He’s not changed, still square-faced, slightly gaunt, slightly stooping. I get my height from him. “Meimei,” he says hesitantly. “How are you?”

“I’m fine, Bàba. The injury isn’t bad. They’re letting me out this afternoon and I’ll be back at practice tomorrow.”

“So you’re…going to continue playing this game?”

“Of course she is,” Biyu bursts out. “Did you even read the articles I showed you? Everyone’s saying she’s one of the best new prospects in cricket in years. They say she’ll be a legend before she’s through.”

“They are?” I look at her. “That’s strange. Are you sure you aren’t just having me on?”

“No, I’m not, but don’t you get a big head,” she snaps at me. “It’ll just make it easier for people to smack you with the ball on your noggin.”

I laugh. Then I look at Mā, who’s said nothing so far. Normally she dominates any conversation. “Mā? Are you all right?”

For a moment I think she’s not going to say anything, but then she sighs and almost deflates. “Your sister told me you were hurt. I was so frightened. I’m glad you’re fine.”

“That’s not the only thing you have to tell her, Mā.” Biyu glares at her. “You know that.”

Mā nods. “It’s just…it’s private. Between her and me.”

“I understand.” Biyu takes Bàba by the arm. “We’ll just wait outside for a few minutes until you’re done.”

Mā waits till the door’s closed behind them. “Meimei…tell me something, seriously. Do you really love this girl, or were you just trying to shock me?”

“Oh, Mā.” My breath catches in my throat. “You know I wouldn’t do such a thing to you.”

Mā nods, and then slowly fetches her phone from her jacket pocket. “Your sister showed me a photo. Here.”

I take the phone, and gasp. It’s of Kazzie, helmetless, crouching over my unconscious body, screaming at the viewer, eyes dilated with fear. Underneath is the caption: “Karizma Davis calls for help after her teammate Dongmei Zhang was injured during the One Day International match against India.”

Mā takes hold of my hand and the phone. “That’s the face of a woman in mortal terror,” she says quietly. “Only the terror that’s born of absolute love can make one look like that.” She sighs. “I won’t lie to you, Meimei, I still can’t understand how a woman can love another woman, you know, that way, but she loves you and she loves you unconditionally.”

“Mā…there’s no way to put into words how much I love her…and I love you, Mā.”

She reaches out to brush her fingers down my face. “I know, daughter. I know.”

____________________________

Kazzie is sobbing helplessly into her beer by the time I finish.

“Oi,” I say, “if you’re going to ruin that by watering it, I’d better order more.”

She snorts through her tears. “I missed you so much, you prat.”

“As did I, you lunatic.” I go off to get the beer for us. When I return she’s turning on her phone. “You want to talk to people again, now?”

“Just to you. And maybe to one person who’s probably beside herself worrying about you.”

“Carrie,” I say.

“Carrie,” Kazzie agrees. “We’d better put her out of her misery.”

“Does she…you know…know about our, uh, break?”

“No, I didn’t tell her. I was…” she hesitates.

“…hoping it would work itself out, somehow?” I chuckle. “Pash was right. It must be that Afghan wisdom.”

“What are you gabbling about?”

“I’ll tell you later. Let’s call Carrie and get it over with.”

Later, after Carrie’s screaming has finally stopped echoing in our ears, we walk out on the street, hand in hand. We see the bench we’d sat on the last time. Another couple is sitting on it now, a boy and a girl, talking softly.

“It reminds me of us,” Kazzie says.

“Hmm,” I reply, looking up at the stars in the sky. The universe whirls on, not noticing you, but that doesn’t mean you are nothing.

It doesn’t mean that at all.

____________________________

THREE MONTHS LATER:

Kazzie and I stand side by side in the pavilion as Gloria and the Sri Lankan captain go out to toss for our opening match of the World Cup. Behind us, Sally and Pashtana are throwing a ball back and forth to each other, so quickly that it seems incredible that neither has dropped it yet. It seems to be their favourite game; they can keep it up for half an hour or longer.

My phone buzzes. “It’s Mā,” I say quietly.

“Take the call, Petals,” Kazzie says, squeezing my hand.

I do, putting it on loudspeaker. “Hello, Mā?”

“Meimei. I see your World Cup is starting.”

“Yes, Mā.”

“Your sister insisted on putting a big screen on the side wall of the restaurant and projecting the telecast there. We’re doing a World Cup theme for now, I think.”

“That’s…nice.”

“Oh, don’t you imagine that I’ll be watching it instead of seeing the customers are kept fed and happy.” She snorts. “I have more sense than that in my old age.”

I laugh. “We both know you’re lying.”

Mā grunts. “Is your, ah, friend, there?”

I look at Kazzie. “Yes, she is.”

“Once this foolish World Cup of yours is done, you bring her here. I want to meet her and give her some real Chinese cooking. I shudder to think what poison you’re feeding the poor girl.”

“Come on, Mā, I’m not that bad.”

“You are, and you know it. And so will she when she eats my cooking.” My mother pauses, and I think she’s going to disconnect the call, but then she surprises me. “Now let me talk to her.”

Surprised, I hand the phone to Kazzie. “Hello, ma’am,” she says.

“Hello, Karizma.” My mother’s voice is warmer than I’ve heard it in a long time. “I need you to do a couple of things for me.”

“Of course. Whatever you say.”

“First, take care of my foolish daughter. Don’t let her get hurt again.”

“I’ll try my best, ma’am, but she’s, ah, headstrong. In more ways than one. As I’m sure you know.”

Mā chuckles. “You’ll find it’s a family trait. The other thing…”

“Yeh…I mean, yes, ma’am?”

“No more of this ‘ma’am’ rubbish. You’ll call me mother, or mum, or Mā, as a good daughter-in-law should.”

“Daughter-in-law?” I burst out. “Mā, aren’t you jumping the gun a wee bit?”

“No, I am not. Now you keep out of this and let me talk to her. Karizma? You understand me?”

Kazzie laughs. “I do…Mummy.”

“Good. Now go and win us this World Cup of yours.”

They’ve tossed the coin. I don’t know who won, and for the moment I don’t care.

Kazzie and I’ve already won what we needed to, and for the moment nothing else matters.

Nothing at all.

____________________________

EPILOGUE:

CRICKET STARS WED

AP, Nov 18.

Members of the World Cup winning women’s cricket team, Karizma Davis and Dongmei Zhang, were married in a private ceremony yesterday. Apart from the brides’ immediate families, the only attendees were members of a girl’s school cricket team the two players coach in their spare time, who acted as bridesmaids.

Davis is a wicket keeper and Zhang a leg spinner. If, as is almost certain, they are ***********ed for the upcoming South African tour, they will be the first pair of spouses to play international cricket together for any country.

The South African tour starts in January, but final dates are yet to be announced.

[THE END. KHATAM SHUD.]

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