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“It’s weird without everyone. Paige and Becky are home with Sam. Half the team were gone by ten last year anyway.” Jenna spread her hands. “Things change. People can’t be everywhere anymore, which means new people have to step in.” Her gaze slid sideways. “Like, I don’t know. A new under-eighteens manager.”
“Subtle,” Beth said, unwinding her scarf.
“I’m told it’s my best quality.”
Beth pulled a stool from under the next table and sat, and Lauren watched her take in the room—the empty tables, the restocked bar, the staff with nothing to do.
“He’s not sulking, you know,” Beth said, eyes still scanning. “He’s building a case.”
Jenna frowned. “Who is?”
“Greg. You’re all treating tonight like a snub. Look at it again. Biggest bar night of the year, and he’s taken sixty drinkers to a pub in town that doesn’t know their names.” Beth nodded at the till. “Who staffs tonight? Who paid for the stock behind that bar?”
“We did.” Jenna sat up straighter. “The women’s club fronts the bar this quarter. It’s our takings.”
“So in January, the joint committee reviews the figures, and the figures say the clubhouse doesn’t turn a profit in your hands.”
“So he can stand up and say we can’t run our own side,” Lauren said slowly.
“And offer to run it for you.” Beth’s mouth twisted. “Nobody votes for a takeover. Everybody votes for a rescue.”
The pool game had stopped. Abi leaned on her cue, listening.
“He’s been on about merging since before I proposed to Abi,” Jenna said, chin in hand. “Jax made him settle for the joint committee, and he’s been chipping away at it ever since. One club, one committee, every junior team and every grant under the same roof.” She pulled a face. “His committee, obviously.”
“You didn’t propose,” Abi said, chalking her cue. “I proposed.”
“I’d been hinting for months. That’s basically a proposal with extra steps.”
Abi returned to the table without dignifying that, and Lauren hid a smile in her drink. In Jenna’s version of history, she’d also personally poached Lauren from City Rovers.
“Anyway.” Jenna was already reaching under the bench, and she came up with a ring binder, the kind with dividers. Only Jenna would bring the accounts to a party.
“I’ve been through it a hundred times.” She flipped it open on the table, spinning it to face the others. “Every invoice to the joint committee since the summer. And I can’t find anything wrong. The suppliers are real, the prices are right, the maths adds up. But it doesn’t smell right, and I’m the treasurer, so if I stand up in January and say it doesn’t smell right, that’s worth nothing. Jax said it stank back in October. I told her she was being paranoid. Then they invoiced us sixty quid for warming up in a goalmouth.”
Carly reached for the binder.
Lauren watched her hand stop, an inch short, and come back. Carly picked up her drink instead.
“Walk us through one,” she said to Jenna.
Jenna turned pages. “Grounds maintenance, fine. Line marking, fine. Utilities, boring, fine—”
“Wait.” Lauren caught the edge of the page before it turned. “Go back.”
The invoice was from Athlead Medical. She knew the logo before she read the name; it was on half the equipment catalogues stacked in her treatment room.
“Adjustable treatment couch, hydraulic, with lumbar section.” She didn’t need to read the description. “Eight hundred and forty. That’s the right price. That’s a good price, actually.”
“So it’s fine,” Jenna said.
“It’s a real couch from a real supplier at the right price.” Lauren looked up. “We don’t own one.”
The table went quiet.
“I’d know. I’ve been on at the committee about one since my first week here. I price them up about once a month, like other people look at holidays. There is no hydraulic couch in this building.”
“It says clubhouse medical facilities,” Jenna read.
