Page 60

Lauren didn’t answer. She just held up her hand.

Carly looked at it, and for a second, Lauren thought she’d be left hanging.

Then Carly stepped forward and met it. A sharp, solid clap that rang round the little room.

20

Carly

By the second week of November, the roof was finished, the new mats were down, and Carly had spent the afternoon on her hands and knees by the mirrors, lifting the last of the rotten tiles with a scraper. Everything on Beth’s relaunch list that could be crossed off had been. Everything that couldn’t was waiting on a man with a van.

The first video had gone up last night to a response Beth kept describing as frankly suspicious. The team had signed up in a block the day Lauren posted, all within an hour, like a bus arriving. Since then, another nineteen had come through from people Carly had never heard of in her life.

She sat back on her heels and stretched out a hamstring that had been complaining since Wednesday training. Her body used to absorb these things without comment. Now it sent an invoice.

Through the window, Lauren’s old Volvo sat in the corner of the car park, where it had been for the last hour.

She put the scraper down, washed her hands and headed for the back corridor. She’d rehearsed her opening sentence twice before she noticed the floor.

A trail of pale golden hairs led along the corridor, alongside a wet smear she chose not to examine. It ended outside Lauren’s room, where a brown mark near the handle looked remarkably like a paw print. When Carly knocked, a bark answered, followed by a frantic shushing noise.

“Can I come in?” she asked, already tipping the handle.

“Er,” was all Lauren managed before grabbing the collar of a large golden retriever with slobbery jowls.

Carly stepped inside and shut them all in. She didn’t mind a dog in the building, but one this size might give the last of the workmen a turn.

“Are you here for a massage?” she asked, ruffling a pair of velvet-soft ears.

Lauren lifted a lead off the filing cabinet and clipped it on. “Sorry. He’s just leaving, I promise. I only nipped in to pick a few things up, and it turned into paperwork. Becky dropped him off on her way to the hospital.”

Carly’s head came up. “Paige is having the baby?”

“Apparently. And until she does, Reggie here is in my care. I need to get him home before my five o’clock. She’s the other side of town, and I’ve got to lug the table in.”

Carly glanced round the room. For once, the drips on the floor were from a travel bowl of water and not the roof. Next to it was a folded blanket and a half-gnawed bone.

Nobody nipped in for a few things and unpacked a water bowl.

Carly held out her hand for the lead. “It’s ten to five. You’ll never make it. I’ll have him till you’re done.”

“I don’t want to mess up your plans.”

Reggie sat and looked from one to the other, dripping a fresh line of drool onto the floor.

“I’m walking anyway,” Carly said, beckoning with her fingers.

Lauren hesitated, then handed it over. “Thank you. This is my last one today.”

Carly waved it off. Lauren hadn’t lost a single appointment to the closure. She’d put the whole list on the road instead, in and out of that Volvo with a folding table, treating people in their own front rooms, and hadn’t complained once. “Shall I drop him back at yours after?”

“My house?”

“Yes, your house. You don’t want to sit in an empty gym waiting for him.”

Before Lauren could mount another pointless objection, Carly had the door open.

“I’ll have your address on file,” she added, leading Reggie out. “Unless you’d rather I didn’t go rummaging.”