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“I do. Let me.” Carly straightened in the seat. “You know what you did. The kit, the boots, the clothes. The pub nobody ever asked me to. You said I’d never hack the army, in front of everyone, and they laughed, and so did you. I’m not going through all of that again. That’s not the bit I couldn’t say.”

Lauren didn’t look away. It felt like holding her hand over a flame.

“And there was one night,” Carly went on, lower, “when my lift fell through after an away game, and I ended up in the back of someone’s car, squashed into the corner, and you were in the middle seat. And we stopped at a drive-through, and you shared your chicken nuggets with me without me asking. You dipped them in my barbecue sauce. You talked to me all the way home about absolutely nothing, with your knee against mine. And then on the Wednesday, you walked past me in the car park like I didn’t exist. Went straight to the others at the back of the clubhouse. And I heard you laugh, and I knew it was about me.”

Lauren remembered. She’d never forgotten that car. The heat of it, Carly’s knee, the smell of the nuggets, and how she’d talked and talked because if she stopped, she’d have to notice what she was feeling. And Wednesday: walking through that car park with her heart pounding, seeing Carly by the gate, and knowing that if she stopped, the others would see something on her face. Something she wouldn’t let herself name until she was twenty, and even then only after a lot of vodka.

“It cost me,” Carly said. “That’s what I couldn’t say in the park. It cost me. I nearly gave up football. I joined the army half to prove you lot wrong. I’ve changed with my bag on my lap in every dressing room I’ve walked into for fifteen years, including Jenna’s. And when I met you again in that toilet at the engagement party, the first thing I felt wasn’t anger. It was eighteen. I was eighteen again, in the corner, waiting for someone to pick up my bag.”

“I’m sorry,” Lauren whispered.

“I know. I know you are. I believe you.” Carly wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, impatient. “That’s the point. I didn’t, in the park. Not properly. I wanted to, but I’d only had a few weeks of you being… this. You. And fifteen years of the other one. Now I’ve had months. I’ve watched you with Paige, and the under-eighteens, and a stranger’s bad knee, and my dad’s dog. I’ve watched you cook for him. I’ve watched you prop a door open so he could see down the hall.” She took a breath. “So I can take it now. The apology. I’m taking it. Thank you.”

Lauren couldn’t speak. She nodded, and gave up trying not to cry.

“The car park,” she managed eventually. “On the Wednesday. Can I tell you something? It’s not an excuse. I’m not saying it so you’ll let me off. It’s just true.”

Carly waited.

“I walked past you because I’d spent an hour in the back of that car wanting to hold your hand,” Lauren said, “and it frightened me to death. I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t want to know. And I thought if I stopped and spoke to you, everyone would see it on my face. So I walked past. And I laughed at something stupid one of them said, and I don’t even remember what it was. It wasn’t about you.” She wiped her face with her sleeve. “That’s probably worse than if it had been. I made you think it was about you for fifteen years because I was a coward.”

Carly didn’t say anything. She just waited, like she had on the massage table, and the waiting made it possible to keep going.

“You know I’ve got two older sisters,” Lauren said. “They did everything right. Ballet, then boyfriends, then weddings. My middle sister got married the summer before I went to City. It was enormous. A marquee. A string quartet. A white dove that was supposed to fly off into the sunset and just sat on the cake table looking embarrassed.” She laughed. “My mum cried. My dad cried. Everyone cried. Dad stood up in his speech and said it was the proudest day of his life, and he meant it. He loves my brother-in-law more than he loves any of us. He’s a plumber. He makes an absolute fortune. Dad talks about him like he invented water.”

Carly smiled, despite everything.

“And I sat at the top table in a lilac bridesmaid’s dress that made me look like a Quality Street,” Lauren went on, “and all I could think was: that’s it. That’s the pinnacle. That’s what success looks like in our house. Find a nice husband, have a big day, make your dad cry in front of a marquee full of people. And I was never, ever going to give them that.”

She stared at the fogged windscreen.

“I was always the odd one. I wanted football boots instead of ballet shoes. I had posters of goalkeepers on my wall when my sisters had boy bands. I kept trying to be like them, because I thought if I tried hard enough I’d turn into them eventually, and then I wouldn’t be letting anybody down.” She stopped, and started again. “And then I got into the back of that car with you. And it was the best hour of my whole year, and it terrified me, because it meant I was never going to turn into them. It meant I was going to let everyone down. So I spent the next two years being as loud and as careless and as cruel as I possibly could, so nobody would ever look closely enough to see it. Including me.”

The heater ticked.

“It’s not an excuse,” Lauren said. “I want to be really clear about that. You didn’t deserve any of it, and knowing why doesn’t make it hurt less. It’s just the truth. And you deserve the truth.”

Carly was quiet for a long time.

“Samantha had the wedding too,” she said eventually. “Dad cried as well. I wore taupe.”

Lauren let out a startled laugh.

“I told you I joined the army to prove you lot wrong,” Carly said. “That was only half of it. The other half was so there’d be one thing in my life nobody could say I’d done worse than my sister.” She looked down at the crumpled Santa hat in her hands. “I know what it’s like to be measured against the one who got it right. I didn’t know that’s what you were doing. I never would have guessed. You looked like the least worried person I’d ever met.”

“That was the point.”

“I know. I see that now. Do you know what I thought,” she said slowly, “when you started calling me mate?”

Lauren shook her head.

“I thought, here it is again. The car park. She got close, then she remembered who I was.” Carly shook her head. “I read everything you did these last few weeks through that window. Every no worries. Every time you left a room I was in. You were keeping away because you thought you’d hurt me. And I thought you were keeping away because I wasn’t worth stopping for. Again.” She laughed, not quite steadily. “It’s the same thing. It’s been the same thing the whole time. You were scared of what you felt, so you walked past me. And I was so scared you’d walk past me again that I couldn’t see you were standing still.”

The windscreen had fogged completely. Outside was a smear of orange streetlamp and the clunk of floodlights going off one by one.

Carly’s eyes were red, her mascara smudged, her Santa hat crushed in her fist where she’d been strangling it for ten minutes without noticing.

“I’m not walking past,” Lauren said.