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Lauren had started saying it in the bar after the pile-up, the day her hand had held on to Carly’s a second too long. She’d said it more after the sofa. And since the weights room, she’d said almost nothing else. Cheers, mate. Night, mate. No worries. A text every evening about Berkeley, thorough and polite, never once asking for a reply. Honestly, don’t. It’s fine. It’s forgotten, said so fast she must have had it ready.

That wasn’t someone who’d lost interest. Carly knew what that looked like. It looked like the back of someone’s head in a car park. Someone being very careful not to ask for anything.

She’d seen Lauren do that once before. On the dog walk, with the apology laid out in the frost.

“She thinks she did something wrong,” Carly said slowly. “In the weights room. She thinks I was too upset to—”

She couldn’t finish it, and Beth didn’t need to confirm it. She just held out the folded paper towel.

Carly gripped the edge of the sink.

The chicken nuggets. The car park. The laugh. She’d been reading everything Lauren did through that window for weeks, and the window was fifteen years old and filthy, and she’d never once checked she was even looking at the right person.

“You could have just told me,” she said.

“I could.” Beth shrugged. “But you’d have argued with me. You never argue with yourself. You just make a plan.” She nodded at the mirror. “Half the club could draw you a diagram, Carly. Everyone can see it. Everyone except the two of you.”

Carly took the paper towel at last. In the mirror, she was blotchy and wet-eyed, with tinsel caught in her hair from the studio doorway. Nothing like the woman who’d smiled for the toast.

Everyone could see it. Except the two of them.

33

Lauren

Carly had come back.

She’d walked out onto the floodlit cage at five to seven, kit bag over her shoulder, jaw set like she was reporting for duty. Two weeks of the old back four, standing in a line and waiting for someone else to decide, and then there Carly was, jogging the warm-up laps as if she’d never been away.

She hadn’t looked at Lauren once in an hour.

Lauren knew, because she’d been counting. Not looking back was harder than it sounded when the person you weren’t looking at was organising your defence, and every time a shot came in, it was Carly’s head that cleared it.

Now training was over. The last session before Christmas. Jenna had made everyone wear Santa hats for the final drill, and the others were drifting to the car park shouting merry Christmas and arguing about who was bringing the Baileys. Lauren was in the goalmouth, stuffing balls into the bag one at a time, slower than necessary, so Carly would be gone by the time she got to her car.

It had been a good plan. It lasted until she hauled the bag over her shoulder and turned round.

Carly was standing by the gate in the fence. Waiting.

Lauren made herself keep walking.

“Alright, mate?” It came out so automatically she barely heard it. “Need a hand with something?”

“Stop calling me that.”

Lauren stopped walking.

Carly’s face was very still under the floodlights. She didn’t look angry. She looked like someone who’d rehearsed a sentence for a long time and decided to start with the hardest word.

“You’ve never called anyone mate in your life,” Carly said. “Paige told me. Well, Paige told Jenna, and Jenna told Beth, and Beth told me in a toilet on Friday night.” Her mouth twitched, then didn’t. “It doesn’t suit you. It’s like watching you wear someone else’s coat. So stop. Please.”

Stop pretending to be someone who’d call me that. Lauren heard it as clearly as if she’d said it.

The ball bag slid off her shoulder and hit the artificial grass with a thud.

“Okay,” she said.

“Okay?”