Page 70

So why did her stomach feel like she’d swallowed a weight plate?

Because twenty-eight sign-ups was a good day, not a good year. Half would drift off by February, once the novelty wore off and January set in. The instructors run off their feet today would want more hours next month, and she’d have to say no. And underneath it all, like the damp under the old carpet tiles, sat the number she’d worked out on Thursday night and couldn’t unknow: what a decent care home cost a week, against what the gym took in a month.

Busy wasn’t the same as safe.

Her left hamstring twinged as she shifted her weight. Wednesday’s training, still making itself felt. She ignored it.

“You’re doing the face,” Beth said.

“I don’t have a face.”

“You have several. That’s the one where you’re calculating how everything goes wrong in six months.”

“Someone has to.”

“Not today, they don’t.” Beth nodded towards the corridor that led to the studio. “Your star turn’s on in five minutes. Go and look supportive.”

Lauren’s Q&A had been Beth’s idea. Carly had signed it off on the basis that it would last ten minutes and nobody would come. On her way across the floor, she passed a child trying to shake a Twix out of the vending machine like a coconut out of a tree. She respected the technique. She stopped him anyway.

As she passed the sign-up table, Jenna fell into step beside her, flyers and all.

“Did you hear what Greg’s lot have done now?”

“I didn’t, but I expect you’ll tell me.”

“Sixty quid. They’ve invoiced us sixty quid for pitch recovery. Because we warmed up in the goalmouth before Sunday’s game.” Jenna’s voice climbed half an octave. “Their under-nines had a whole tournament on that pitch the day before. Thirty kids and a bouncy castle. Nobody invoiced them for squat.”

“Can they do that?”

“Apparently they can do whatever they want, because it’s always just under the amount anyone can be bothered to argue about.” Jenna shoved a flyer at a passing man in a hi-vis jacket, who took it without breaking stride. “And they’ve put their guy forward for the under-eighteens again. They’re saying it doesn’t look good we haven’t found a proper manager yet and parents have started contacting them. Which is bollocks and Jax is furious. They’re even making a thing of Lauren postponing today’s under-eighteens match to be here.”

Carly glanced across the floor to where Jax was standing by the leg press with her partner, holding a free coffee and talking to one of the instructors with her hands. She’d been here since two. Carly had a fairly good idea what she was waiting for.

“Beth,” Carly said.

“Beth,” Jenna agreed. “You did say.”

“I know what I said.”

The studio was already full. Carly counted twice, because the first number seemed unlikely. Twenty-two, perched on step boxes and Swiss balls and the edge of the instructor’s platform. The leopard-print twins had come. So had the woman from the park café, and a man with a walking stick, and three girls from the team who had absolutely no injuries and had only come to heckle.

At the front, in her branded polo, stood Lauren, hands in her pockets, looking like she’d rather be in goal.

Then someone asked whether foam rolling was a scam, and something in her shoulders settled.

“Not a scam,” Lauren said. “But it’s not magic either. It’s more like… having a nice chat with your muscles. It won’t fix anything on its own, but it might put them in a better mood to listen.”

People laughed with her, not at her. Carly could hear the difference from the doorway.

She leaned on the frame and watched. Shin splints. Sciatica. A long, rambling one from a man who mostly wanted someone to agree that his wife made him carry too much shopping. Lauren answered every one plainly, without jargon or fuss, and the room relaxed into it.

Jenna leaned close. “She’s good, isn’t she?”

“She’s adequate.”

“You’re a terrible liar, Lloydy.”

A woman in her sixties near the front put up her hand. Carly had seen her in the massage queue that morning: neat grey bob, sensible fleece, left knee strapped. She asked whether she ought to stop walking her dog altogether, because going downhill made her knee sing.