Page 121 of Safe Hands

Her phone was lighting up on the bedside table.

She picked it up. It had been four minutes. Possibly five.

Becky: Good morning 😏

A second message arrived while she was still looking at the first.

Becky: Don’t worry, I won’t tell Jenna. Merry Christmas x

Lauren sat down on the edge of the bed and laughed.

The shower turned off. A moment later, Carly’s voice came through the wall, muffled and wary. “What’s funny?”

Lauren looked at the phone. Then at the open door, and the dog stretched across the hallway, and the bathroom door with steam curling out from underneath it.

“Boxing Day,” she called back, “was very optimistic.”

36

Carly

Eight days since Paige and the kettle. Carly had counted them.

They’d been careful. Keeping it quiet meant evenings at the bungalow with the curtains drawn and Berkeley stretched between them on the sofa, a walk round the field after dark, and Carly driving back to her own flat at eleven, because that was the sensible thing to do and she didn’t yet know how to stop being sensible. Lauren hadn’t asked her to stay again since that first night. Carly had noticed that, and noticed how much she’d wanted her to.

One evening, Lauren had apologised for letting her hear about the clinic second-hand at a party. Carly had told her the only acceptable apology was the numbers. They’d spent two hours with the spreadsheet open on the coffee table, Carly going through it line by line while Lauren pretended not to watch her, and at the end of it, Carly had found nothing to fix. Lauren had looked more frightened by that than by anything else all week.

What Carly hadn’t done was go back to the care home. Twice she’d got as far as picking up her car keys. Twice she’d found a reason to put them down again.

She arrived at Samantha’s on Christmas Day with a bag of presents for the girls, Beth in the passenger seat, and the uneasy sense that she was the only one at the table who hadn’t earned her place at it.

“More turkey, anyone?”

Carly glanced around the table. Beth on one side, Samantha on the other, her nieces opposite wearing matching Christmas dresses. Her brother-in-law carving the bird, oblivious to everything else that needed cutting.

The girls both raised their hands, waited for their food, then tucked in, chattering to one another about their presents. But on the other side of the table, it was deathly silent.

“This is a fancy bottle of plonk, Beth,” he said, lifting it to read the label. He still had a greasy carving knife in the other hand. “We don’t usually drink red.”

Beth pushed out her chair and took the bottle from him. “It’s a Gevrey-Chambertin.” She wrapped it back in tissue. “And it really should have been left to breathe.”

Samantha raised her usual glass of Prosecco. “Well, cheers. Lovely to have everyone.” Her spare arm was folded across her middle, her plate empty.

“Cheers,” Carly echoed, raising a glass of orange juice with her nieces and smiling for their sakes. She was driving Beth and wouldn’t risk being over the limit.

“Sprouts, Beth?” Samantha asked, making no move to offer them. “There’s plenty. I catered for the number I was given.”

Beth silently spooned some onto her plate.

“Dad hates sprouts,” Samantha added. “So do I, come to think of it. I don’t know why I bother buying them.”

“He only hated them after that bout of food poisoning. And that wasn’t really the sprouts’ fault.”

Samantha stared into her Prosecco glass, pretending not to have heard. “The sprouts are habit, I suppose. Tradition.”

Carly glanced at the empty chair at the head of the table, opposite her brother-in-law. Slung over the back of it was a bag of gifts her dad had sent. Another tradition, only he wasn’t here to enjoy it with them.

“Grandpa did well this year,” she said, another smile for her nieces.