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Her name in Carly’s voice still did something to her, which didn’t help when she was trying this hard to be normal.
“Yeah?”
Carly looked at her over the car roof. “I did hear you. What you said earlier.” A pause. “I just don’t know what to do with it yet.”
That honesty hit harder than any easy reassurance would have. Lauren nodded, once.
“That’s okay.”
And for the first time since she’d started trying to apologise, it might actually have been.
Carly pulled away, Berkeley’s huge head in the back window. Lauren climbed into her own seat, and her phone lit up in the cupholder.
Paige. Finally.
Sorry. Sam fed forever then sicked up on Becky. Reggie looks deranged. You surviving?
Lauren looked at Reggie, flopped sideways across the back seat as if the walk had nearly killed him. Then at the empty space where Carly’s car had been.
Yeah. I think so.
I said sorry properly.
Paige’s reply came almost instantly.
And?
Lauren thought about it, then started the car.
And nothing exploded.
22
Carly
Jenna was wearing full kit.
Not training kit. Match kit. Royal blue shirt with the club crest, white shorts, socks pulled up to her knees, and her captain’s armband, which no one on earth needed at a gym open day. She’d planted herself beside the club discount sign-up sheet with a stack of flyers and her widest smile, and every time someone walked past in trainers, she pounced.
Carly watched from behind the Starship Enterprise, unsurprised. She’d played alongside Jenna long enough to know that the kit wasn’t team spirit. It was a billboard.
“Do you play at all?” Jenna was asking a tall girl in a netball hoodie, who had come in for the free spin class and was now trapped. “Because you’ve got the legs for it. Have you ever thought about defending? We train Wednesdays. I’ll text you.”
The girl took a flyer, mostly in self-defence.
“She’s poaching,” Beth said, appearing at Carly’s elbow with the handheld tally counter she’d produced at nine that morning and refused to put down since. “From your gym. On your relaunch day.”
“I know.”
“And you’re allowing it?”
“Every player she signs needs a gym membership at the club rate.” Carly ticked a box on her clipboard. “She’s doing our marketing for free. Let her.”
Beth clicked the counter with great ceremony. “A hundred and twelve.”
A hundred and twelve through the door since nine. Twenty-eight sign-ups. Lauren’s massage tasters fully booked by eleven, with a waiting list on the back of an envelope. The leopard-print twins who’d arrived at ten announcing that they were only looking were still here, red-faced and triumphant on the cross-trainers.
By any measure Carly could name, it was working.
