Page 101 of Safe Hands

Her jaw ached from clenching. She rolled her shoulders and told herself to focus. It didn’t take.

The door handle rattled.

She looked up too late to pretend she’d been working. Beth stood in the doorway, coat over her arm, already frowning.

“I need to run something past you.”

“Christmas party?” Carly guessed, rather than asking why her sister’s face had softened the second she looked at her.

“People are asking. Are we joining the gyms up this year or doing separate do’s?”

“Separate.” Her voice cracked on it. She cleared her throat and reached for her water bottle, which was empty. “Last year worked. Fewer logistics.”

Beth didn’t move. “Everything alright?”

“Fine.”

“Unconvincing.”

Carly pushed back from the desk and stood, because sitting still had become unbearable. Her foot had gone numb. She shook it out and hated how much that gave away about the last two hours.

“Lauren offered to foster Berkeley,” she said.

Beth’s eyebrows went up. “And?”

“And if Berkeley leaves for good, it means Dad can’t look after him anymore.”

“Well. He can’t.”

“I know. I just don’t think I’ve been ready to admit it.” Carly leaned against the filing cabinet and stared at the stained ceiling tiles.

Beth came a few steps into the room. “Have you said yes?”

“I haven’t said anything. I’ve been staring at that email since lunchtime.”

“It sounds like the ideal solution. You can’t keep running yourself into the ground walking him to keep Samantha quiet. So long as you trust Lauren with him.”

Trust, Carly realised, wasn’t the problem. She’d seen Lauren with Reggie. She’d watched Berkeley fold himself onto that rug in Lauren’s front room and stay there. The problem had never been Lauren.

The problem was the look on Lauren’s face at lunchtime when she got no answer. Bright and easy and wrong. No worries. Honestly. It was a silly idea. See you Sunday, mate. She’d backed out of the office like someone who’d walked into the wrong room.

And Carly had let her go. She’d sat there staring out of the window with the phone buzzing and let her go, because opening her mouth had felt like pulling a pin.

“I need to take her up on it, don’t I?”

She already knew. He’d be better off with someone he knew, with space and a garden and someone who’d cook him chicken on a Sunday. He deserved somewhere to stop.

Beth gave her a long look. “I think you need to talk to her. Either way. She’s finishing a workout in the weights room. Last one in. I told her she could lock up.”

Carly almost laughed. Apparently Beth trusted Lauren with the keys now. “I’ll go and talk to her.”

Beth nodded, said goodnight and went. Carly listened to her footsteps down the empty corridor and the front door banging shut before she pushed herself off the filing cabinet.

The corridor was dark apart from the fire exit signs, and light from the weights room spilled through the narrow window in its door. She stopped before she reached it.

Through the glass, Lauren was on the bench with a dumbbell, earbuds in, working through the last slow set of something, the count moving her lips, the frown of concentration that usually only came out on the massage table. She racked the weight square, the way Carly would have done it, and rolled out a mat in the corner.

Carly had watched her through a lens for weeks and called it work. She’d watched her across a kitchen on Sunday and called it nothing. She could still feel the sofa cushion giving behind her shoulders, the moment Lauren’s eyes had dropped to her mouth, and how fast she herself had pulled away.