Page 46 of Safe Hands

“So, is there anything I need to know before we get there? Come on, there must be some drama.”

“You want drama? Sorry to disappoint you, but there’s none.”

“I don’t want drama. I want to avoid it.” Carly shifted in her seat. “I refuse to believe a women’s football team with at least three lesbians that I already know of is all peace and harmony. There’s not a single team I’ve played for where at least one person wasn’t either cheating, plotting, or slagging someone off behind their back.”

Lauren shuffled so obviously it looked as if she had ants in her shorts. Interesting.

Carly couldn’t tell whether Lauren was lying about drama at The Blues or whether this was the past again, rerouting the conversation the way a limp reroutes a walk.

“That hit a nerve,” she said. “The Blues or City?”

A pause, then Lauren muttered, “Neither. Just worried whether the car’s going to get us there.”

She put her foot down and the engine spluttered, right on cue. It didn’t make the lie any more convincing.

Carly let out a soft hum. “Do you still keep in touch with anyone from the old team?”

“Like hell.” Lauren answered instantly this time. “I went back for a season. God knows what I thought I was going to find. It wasn’t a good fit anymore.”

“How come?”

“Because some things never change.” Lauren glanced at her, then back at the road. “And I have.”

Carly let that sit.

It wasn’t her place to pry, and dragging them backwards would help no one. Still, the answer stayed with her.

The car juddered again as it hit its limit.

“Thanks, by the way,” Carly said when she was certain they weren’t about to take off. “For the lift. And for the work you put into the videos. They didn’t come out great, but I think we can fix that next time.”

Lauren didn’t look across, but there was a quiet kind of pride in her voice when she replied. “You’re welcome. But I haven’t got us there in one piece yet. One step at a time, right?”

“Right.”

Carly smiled and settled back into her seat. The air between them wasn’t exactly light, but it wasn’t heavy anymore either. Dense, maybe. Dense enough to remind her they weren’t friends.

Colleagues, perhaps. Possibly teammates. That depended on how the evening went.

The car wheezed into a space beneath a lamp in the leisure centre car park. Its engine gave one last cough before Lauren killed the ignition. She patted the dashboard and murmured a few words of thanks, then unbuckled her seatbelt and turned to face Carly.

“Ready for this?”

“I was born ready,” Carly said.

The overconfidence covered a few last-minute jitters as she opened the door and hauled out her bag.

The smell of chlorine wafted from the leisure centre’s automatic doors, and harsh floodlights illuminated the artificial pitch beyond. On it, caged in on all sides by a low brick wall and chain-link fence, a group of women jogged lazy laps. They were probably chatting and catching up on their weeks so far.

That was the part making Carly nervous.

It wasn’t the football, or her ability. It was the walking in, and the waiting to see whether she’d entered a team or a bear pit.

She squared her shoulders and adjusted her grip on her bag. Muscle memory, not confidence. The trick was to walk as if she belonged, even when every nerve screamed otherwise.

She followed Lauren across the car park, quietly cataloguing faces, body language, and how everyone had grouped themselves. There were only a dozen players, just enough for a match-day squad, which meant it would be easy enough to break in if she stayed.

She was a long way from that decision, though.