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“Okay. I’ll stop.”

The last car pulled out with a cheerful honk, and then it was just the two of them, the empty pitch, and a tub of abandoned mince pies on the wall.

“Can we talk?” Carly said. “Somewhere that isn’t here. It’s freezing.”

Lauren looked at her Volvo, under the lamp where it had wheezed to a stop before training.

“Heater still takes ten minutes,” she said. “And there’s a spring in the passenger seat now that’ll go up your arse if you sit on it wrong.”

“I’ll risk it.”

They walked to the car without speaking, the ball bag bumping against Lauren’s leg. Carly got in on the passenger side and found the spring on the first attempt, swore under her breath, and shifted sideways.

The heater took twelve minutes. Lauren counted, because counting was easier than starting.

They sat with the engine running and the windows fogging, Lauren’s hands at ten and two as if they were going somewhere, Carly with her kit bag on her lap. The car still smelled of chewing gum, but whatever had been lemony in October had lost out to wet dog. Berkeley’s dark hair was all over the back seat now, on top of Reggie’s pale gold.

“I’m sorry,” Lauren said, to the windscreen.

Carly turned her head. “For what?”

“For the gym. In the weights room.” She made herself say it. “You were upset. About your dad, and Berkeley, and… everything. You were shaking. And I kissed you. You didn’t pull away, but that doesn’t mean you wanted it. It means you were too wrung out to stop me. And I should have known better, because I’ve been that person, the one who’s too wrecked to say no. There were nights in my twenties I couldn’t have told you whose idea anything was. I didn’t want to be the one on the other side of that.” She stopped. “So I’ve been keeping away. And when you tried to bring it up at the party, I said it was forgotten. It wasn’t. I just didn’t want to make you let me down gently.”

Somewhere beyond the leisure centre, a fox screamed.

“So I was right,” Carly said quietly. “The mate. The distance. The cold little Berkeley reports.”

“I didn’t want you to have to deal with me on top of everything else.”

Carly made a noise that wasn’t quite a laugh.

“I was overwhelmed,” she said. “You’re right about that. But it wasn’t the kiss.”

Lauren turned to look at her.

“It was Berkeley,” Carly said. “It was the fact that saying yes to you meant my dad was never going to have him back. It was standing outside his front door the night before and not being able to go in. It was the fact that I’d walked into that weights room to hand my father’s dog to someone, and the someone was you, and I wasn’t scared.” Her voice cracked. “I trusted you with the one thing I had left of him that still worked properly, and I didn’t even have to think about it. That’s what overwhelmed me.”

Lauren’s hands had slid off the wheel.

“And for the record,” Carly added, “I don’t usually grip someone’s shirt by accident.”

Lauren stared at her.

“You didn’t take anything,” Carly said. “I was there. I kissed you back. I’d have kept kissing you if I hadn’t remembered all at once that my dad’s whole life was being packed into boxes, and I couldn’t…” She stopped. Shook her head. “I panicked. I left. And then I didn’t explain, because explaining meant falling apart, and I don’t do that in front of people. Especially not people I…”

She didn’t finish. Lauren didn’t make her.

“He moved on Saturday,” Carly said after a moment. “Into the care home. I drove there. I sat in the car park for forty minutes, and then I drove home again. Samantha did all of it. The van, the boxes, his photos on the wall. I sat in the car park.”

“Carly.”

“I’m telling you because you should know who you’re dealing with.” Carly finally looked at her, red-eyed and steady. “And because there’s something else I need to say. Something I should have said in the park.”

She turned the crushed Santa hat over in her hands.

“When you apologised that day, I heard you,” she said. “I just couldn’t answer it. I was holding Berkeley’s lead, worrying about my dad, and trying to work out what had happened to you. Fifteen years is a long time to carry something. I needed longer.”

“You don’t have to—”