Page 72 of Safe Hands
Carly had already looked at those brochures, at two in the morning, without being asked. The decent ones ran to the best part of seventeen hundred pounds a week. A month of today’s twenty-eight memberships at the club rate wouldn’t cover seven days of a wingback chair in a conservatory.
“Send them over,” she said. “I’ll look tonight.”
“You’ll look.”
“I’ll look properly.”
Before Samantha could find another corner to stand on, the eldest niece tugged at Carly’s sleeve and pointed towards the stretching area. The Q&A had ended. Lauren was there, demonstrating something with a foam roller to the man in hi-vis, who was nodding with the glazed devotion of someone who’d come straight off a night shift.
“Can I do that?”
“Ask her nicely.”
The girl marched over without hesitation, which she certainly hadn’t got from Carly. Lauren heard the request with total seriousness, handed over the foam roller with great ceremony, and showed her how to lie on it. The girl rolled straight off the side. Lauren rolled off beside her, deliberately, and the two of them lay on the mat laughing at the ceiling.
Samantha folded her arms. “And who’s that?”
“Lauren. She rents the back room.”
“Ah. The videos.” Samantha gave her the look she gave builders’ quotes. When Lauren brought the girl back, both of them still grinning, Samantha turned the full force of it on her. “Lovely to meet you.”
It did not sound lovely. It sounded like a verdict being reserved.
Lauren’s smile held up admirably under fire. “You too. She’s a natural. Terrible balance, but a natural.”
“She gets that from her father.”
“The balance or the natural talent?”
Samantha considered her. “Yes.”
Lauren excused herself to a queue of three people waiting to ask about hips, and Samantha watched her go.
“She’s very… friendly,” Samantha said.
“She’s good at her job.”
“I didn’t say she wasn’t.”
“You were about to.”
“I was about to say,” Samantha replied, “that I can see why it’s working. That’s all.” She gathered up the girls and the bags. “Links tonight. Look properly.”
And she left. Carly stood there. A compliment from Samantha that wasn’t secretly an insult was rarer than a quiet Saturday.
When she turned around, Jax had finally made her move.
She’d crossed the floor with her partner a step behind her and stopped in front of Beth, who was halfway through clicking in a family of four and looked up with the expression of a woman who’d seen it coming for an hour.
“Coach,” Jax said.
Beth clicked the counter one last time. “I’m sorry?”
“Your sister said you’d be in touch.” Jax’s smile was all Midwestern warmth, sincere enough to be dangerous. “You weren’t. So I figured I’d come to you. Under-eighteens. Tuesdays and Saturdays. They’re good kids, they lose every week, and Lauren’s been holding it together with tape and goodwill. I need someone who knows what she’s doing, and Carly says that’s you.”
Beth looked at Carly.
Carly had told Jax, flatly, across a table in the clubhouse bar, that her sister would do it. She will want it. She’d known Beth her whole life, the parts Samantha refused to see and the parts Beth refused to show, and she had never once misread her.
