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Sam, now dressed for the away end, was carried off towards the kettle.
Lauren made a mental note to be the one who answered the door.
“If you hang around,” Paige said, “you can watch me feed him again, too.”
“Hard no.” Leaving the bin next to the table, Lauren took the mug Carly had just offered her. “We’ll be in the living room.”
Paige and Carly exchanged smiles, then Carly followed Lauren down the hall.
“Beth just messaged,” Carly said, phone in one hand, sipping tea with the other. She sank into the corner of the sofa. “She’s got a new target in sight.”
“Please tell me it’s Greg.”
“Affirmative.”
Lauren did a little fist pump. “Using her powers for good.” She sat down beside Carly, close enough that their shoulders touched, and Berkeley, outnumbered, settled for their feet.
Carly leaned into her, just slightly. “My family can be a lot, I know.”
“I like them.”
It came out before Lauren had decided to say it, and it was true, and that wasn’t the surprising part. The surprising part was that she’d been sitting there in the care home working out whether she liked them. Not whether they liked her. She turned it over and couldn’t find the trapdoor.
“Good. I’m glad we haven’t scared you off.” Carly set her phone on the arm of the sofa. “Because this is as functional as my family is ever going to get.”
Baby Sam started up in the kitchen, and Lauren winced. “Yeah, well. They say you can’t choose your family, but sometimes your friends have screechy babies, and it works out much the same.”
Carly laughed, and then her phone buzzed on the arm of the sofa. She read it, and her thumb stopped moving.
“Samantha,” she said. “The review’s on Thursday. She wants to know if I’m coming.”
“Are you?”
“Yes.” Carly turned the phone face down on her knee. Then, quieter: “Will you come with me?”
Lauren knew what it had taken to ask.
“Yes,” Lauren said. “Obviously.”
Carly let her head drop onto Lauren’s shoulder. Berkeley shifted his weight against her leg and stayed there.
“Do you want to make a plan for Thursday?” Lauren asked.
“I’ve already made one.”
“Course you have.”
“It’s got a contingency.”
Lauren laughed, and Berkeley looked up to see what the problem was, then decided there wasn’t one.
“Thursday, then,” Lauren said. “Shall we nail this?” She held up her hand, the way she had in that toilet at the gym.
Carly looked at it. Then she took it, and laced their fingers together, and kept it.
