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“Sunday,” Carly said. “Tell Jax I’m in.”
Lauren nodded as if it were nothing.
“I’ll tell her.”
“And Lauren?”
“Yeah?”
Carly stood, tested her hamstring with a small, cautious stretch, and looked faintly surprised when it didn’t complain. “Same time next week.”
It wasn’t a question. Lauren wrote it in the diary anyway, in pen, before Carly could change her mind.
24
Carly
Carly nudged her feet into the new pair of Crocs she’d panic-bought online at one o’clock on Friday morning and looked around the dressing room with mounting horror.
The men’s first team had played here yesterday, and it showed. Mud tramped across every inch of floor and dried to a crust. Used tape curled under the bench like shed skins. A single sock had baked overnight on the radiator into a shape that would never be a sock again, and the bin was overflowing with Lucozade bottles and a crushed four-pack. The drain in the middle of the floor smelled faintly of something that had died in it and been mourned by nobody.
“Do the showers work?” she asked.
Lauren looked up from taping her fingers. “Yeah, but I’m the only one who uses them.”
“Does that mean I’m not welcome?”
“Depends on whether you’re planning to wear those,” Lauren replied, nodding down at the offending footwear.
Carly looked at her feet. She’d gone for black, the sensible choice. They’d come with a set of charms she hadn’t ordered and had immediately put in a drawer.
“They’re practical.”
“They’re a cry for help.”
“They’re hygienic. Have you seen that drain?”
“I’ve seen that drain every Sunday since August. We’ve got an understanding.” Lauren tore off another strip of tape with her teeth. “It doesn’t come out, and I don’t go in.”
Somebody laughed further along the bench. Carly glanced over, then away again, and kept her bag on her lap.
She knew she was doing it. She’d gone straight for the corner seat by the door, wall on two sides and a clear line to the exit. She’d changed with her bag zipped between her feet and checked twice that her keys were where she’d left them.
Fifteen years and an entire army career later, and her body still remembered dressing rooms. The benches, the hooks, the noise, and the moment someone picked up your bag as a joke and you had a split second to decide whether laughing or asking for it back would cost you more.
Nobody was going to pick up her bag. The women in here were arguing about whose turn it was to bring sweets and whether Jenna’s new boots were a midlife crisis. One of the midfielders had offered her spare shin pads before she’d even unzipped. Abi had moved her coat so Carly could have a hook. It was as friendly as Jenna had promised, and Carly sat in the corner with her bag on her lap anyway.
Lauren sat down beside her without comment. She didn’t look at the bag. She just started taping her other hand, her shoulder an inch from Carly’s, and stayed there.
Carly suspected Lauren knew what she was doing. She didn’t mind.
She set the bag on the floor.
“Right.” Jax clapped her hands in the doorway. “Listen up, folks. Gather in.”
They gathered. Jax turned to the wall by the door, where the tactics board should have been, and stopped. There was a rectangle of cleaner paint, four empty screw holes, and nothing else.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”
