“You can tell her whatever you like.”
“I hope she’s having a good day. Come on—we’ll check in here first before we try her room.”
The hallway opened into a large lounge. Dozens of small tables were dotted around, along with chairs and sofas. Chatter swelled around them from the residents present, a few of them with visiting family members or friends.
“There she is.” Lia walked over to one corner of the room, toward where a woman with long white hair sat in a high-backed armchair.
On the table in front of her was a chess board, and she gazed at it with pursed lips. As Erin’s and Lia’s shadows fell over her, she glanced up—and beamed. “Lia! I didn’t expect to see you today.” She had a deep Welsh accent.
Tension leaked out of Lia’s shoulders as she was recognised, and she swept her grandmother into a tight hug. “You know I can’t stay away from you.”
Her grandmother chuckled, patting Lia’s back before pulling away. “Sit, sit.” Her blue eyes landed on Erin. “You brought a friend?”
“I did.” Lia sat in one of the two chairs opposite her grandmother and motioned for Erin to settle in the other. “This is Erin. Erin, this is my grandmother, Iris.”
“I know who she is.” Iris looked offended. “As if I could forget one of the greatest female players of the game.” She leaned further forward in her seat. “But why are you here to see little old me?”
“I didn’t know you were a fan.”
“Oh, yes. I have been for years. We’ve already met, you know.”
Erin tilted her head. She hadn’t expected Iris to say that—did she think Erin was someone else? “We have?”
“Yes. When Lia was oh, fourteen? Fifteen? You and some of the England players came to do a coaching session for her football team and a few others in the area.”
Erin cast her mind back. She had done dozens of those events when she was younger, an attempt to try and grow the game and let more girls know they could make football into their career. If Lia was twenty-four, that meant it would have been nine or ten years ago.
“I’m sure Erin met a lot of people at those events, Grandma.” Lia came to Erin’s rescue. “She won’t remember everyone.”
“Well, I remember you. I could see how much you cared. And I have to thank you for coaching my granddaughter. She wouldn’t shut up about what you’d told her for weeks afterwards, you know.”
Amused, Erin turned her gaze to Lia.
“Erin doesn’t need to hear this, Grandma.” Her cheeks were flaming red.
“Oh, on the contrary, I think I do.” Erin was enjoying herself immensely. “What did I say to you?”
How had Lia never mentioned this before?
Although, judging from the look on her face as she stared at the chequered pattern rug like it was the most interesting thing she’d ever seen, maybe she’d been too mortified.
“It’s not important,” Lia replied.
But, much to Lia’s clear dismay, Iris remembered. “You said that she was too cocky, that she dropped her left shoulder when she was going to shoot left and vice versa—making it easy for the goalkeeper to guess which way to dive—and that she was too slow to react.”
Erin winced. The no-nonsense words certainly sounded like her, even if she had been delivering them to children.
“You also said,” Iris continued, “that if she worked on all of those things, she had the potential to make it.”
At that, Lia finally lifted her head, meeting Erin’s gaze. Embarrassment shone on her face, from her still-red cheeks to her lowered eyelashes to the way she chewed at her bottom lip.
“Well,” Erin said softly, “I wasn’t wrong.”
“Like you’re ever wrong.” Lia looked like she regretted asking Erin to join her, hiding her eyes behind the curtain of her hair.
That wouldn’t do.
She reached over to tuck Lia’s hair behind her ear, letting her fingers brush across the arch of her cheek bone as she did—but careful not to linger. Not that it mattered, given the way Iris zeroed in on the touch.
