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“Smashing. You’ll be my right hand, then.”
“Lauren’s our coach,” someone said from the middle.
“Lauren’s been helping out,” Greg said, pleasantly, as if that settled it. “This’ll be a proper appointment.”
“Does Jax know?”
“Jax’ll come round.”
Beside Carly, Lauren had stopped, water bottle halfway to her mouth, watching the tall girl with her hand still half up. It wasn’t hurt on her face. It was the look she got in goal when a striker was through and there was nobody else left.
Carly heard Beth breathe in sharply through her nose.
“He hasn’t asked them a single name,” Beth said, to nobody.
For a second, Carly didn’t see her sister in a long black coat. She saw a younger Beth on a different touchline, tracksuit zipped to her chin, watching a teenage girl sit alone at the end of a bench while the others laughed at something on someone’s phone. Tight, uncomfortable, deciding, every single week, that stepping in would only make it worse.
Beth was making the same face now. The same decision. Carly could see it failing to stick.
“Five,” Jax called, jogging back from her car with an armful of spare balls, oblivious to what she’d missed. “Same again, guys. Same again. They’ve got nothing.”
They went back out.
The second half was harder. The opposition came at them with everything, and Carly’s legs began to protest around the hour. But the line held because she held it. Twice she headed clear from under the crossbar. Once she shepherded their striker into a corner of the pitch so tight and so useless that she finally just booted the ball out of play and swore at the sky. In the eighty-fourth minute, a shot finally got through, curling towards the top corner, and Lauren flew across her goal and fingertipped it over the bar. Somebody on the touchline actually gasped.
When she landed, she pointed at Carly.
“About time I got a touch,” she yelled. “I was getting cold back here.”
The final whistle went at ten to four.
One-nil. The Blues’ first win of the season.
The team piled on Jenna, then on Lauren, and then, before Carly could get out of the way, on her. She ended up at the bottom of a heap of mud and shin pads with somebody’s knee in her kidney and Jenna screaming I TOLD YOU into her ear, laughing so hard her ribs hurt.
When the heap dissolved, Lauren was standing over her, holding out a hand.
Lauren pulled her up, and for a moment they were too close, both breathing hard, Lauren’s glove still wrapped round her fingers.
“First win,” Carly said.
“I know.” Lauren’s cheeks were pink, and not only from the cold. “I didn’t do anything.”
“You saved that one in the eighty-fourth.”
“One.” Lauren let go of her hand. “You stopped the rest before they got near me. I’ve never been that bored in my life.” She hesitated. “It was brilliant.”
Behind them, the opposition were trudging off towards the dressing room, and someone was already pulling up the corner flags. Carly picked up her water bottle and walked to the touchline, where Beth had been standing since two o’clock.
“Well?” Carly said.
“Your left-back pushes up too early.” Beth handed her a scarf from her pocket, the spare she always carried and never admitted to carrying. “And your partner at centre-back needs to stop watching the ball and start watching the runner. Somebody should do some work with her.”
“Somebody should.”
“I’m only saying.”
“I know you are.”
