Chapter Twenty-Nine
Georgia inched the door shut behind her, so that it wouldn’t creak.
She stood for a moment in her parents’ frosted front garden.
The cold bit at her cheeks, breath blooming white in the air, and she pulled her bobble hat low and tucked her scarf into her coat, pushed the wrapped parcel under her arm.
Her mum’s multi-coloured Christmas lights around the porch twinkled behind her.
The soft hum of Mariah Carey was barely muffled by the double glazing and laughter echoing from the kitchen as her brother shouted Pictionary guesses too loud for sanity.
It was Christmas Day, after all. Family time. She should feel bad about slipping out.
She didn’t.
The house was too full of noise, of tinsel and dogs and people. Her phone had buzzed in her pocket halfway through their annual rewatch of Love Actually, her mum sobbing into a cushion, her dad snoring in the armchair, and she’d never been so pleased to see the little notification.
Erin (Redford RFC)
Fancy escaping to the pub? Just one drink.
Maybe even a packet of crisps, if you twist my arm.
Erin had added a little winky face and the devil emoji.
Georgia pulled her phone from her jeans pocket, fumbled with her gloves, sent a running girl emoji to let Erin know she was on her way.
The pub was only a five-minute walk through the housing estate, past the dark Sainsbury’s, carpark empty for once, and across Mill Lane into the neat grid of Victorian terraces.
At least on the outside, Redford hadn't changed since she, Tam and Erin were teenagers there together.
Georgia turned down a tight alleyway along the back of their gardens, her feet squashing the icy leaves into slush.
The back gate of one of the gardens was open, and she turned her head for a glimpse.
A group of teenagers were gathered round, watching one pilot a new drone that hovered above them.
Someone’s dog barked in the distance, and the faint smell of woodsmoke curled from the chimneys of the terrace.
It was all perfectly, aggressively Christmassy.
Her phone screen lit up.
Corner booth. Get here quick or I’m drinking yours.
Georgia rolled her eyes and picked up her pace, the heat of anticipation rising despite the chill.
The last few months had been a blur. The wedding.
Matt. The matches – half won, half lost, testing her captaincy further – the media noise.
And underneath that, something bright and terrifying: this thing with Erin.
This almost-relationship. They hadn’t given it a name yet, hadn’t made it official, but it had teeth and a pull that made Georgia’s stomach do the kind of sidestep the backs in the team excelled at every time she saw Erin’s name light up her phone screen.
The day after Tam’s wedding, Georgia would never have believed it. Even by Halloween and fireworks on the seafront, she’d have laughed at the suggestion that it could be like this between them.
She pushed open the pub door and stepped down from the street into the bar.
A wave of dry heat hit her, pumped out from the wood burner next to the door.
It was busy, packed with post-lunch stragglers, smug couples in matching jumpers, and other reprobates like her escaping their families.
And there, tucked into the corner beneath a drooping strand of paper snowflakes, was Erin.
Her black wool coat was slung over the wooden arm of the booth, her hair down, and one brow arched as she sipped her ceramic mug of mulled cider. She looked too elegant for a place that probably hadn’t changed its carpets in their lifetime.
“You’re late,” Erin grumbled as Georgia slid in beside her.
“You’re impatient.”
“I’m cold,” she complained, wrapping her hands around the steaming mug.
Georgia slid in close, thigh against thigh, and tried to act casual as she shrugged off her coat. “You were the one who picked the pub.”
“I picked the only place that doesn’t have sticky tables and isn’t going to be full of drunk teenagers making out.” Erin tossed her hair over her shoulder. There was a gleam in her eye that told Georgia she was exaggerating the distaste for effect, playing up her spiky, bougie persona.
Georgia laughed, the sound slipping out before she could temper it. “How did I know you’d be a snob, even at Christmas?”
“You’re lucky I didn’t insist on champagne.”
“I’m lucky you invited me at all.” The words slipped out softer than she meant them to. And suddenly Erin was watching her. Not with the usual amusement or the half-smirk she wore when she knew Georgia was flustered, but with something gentler.
Georgia looked down, trying to ignore the flush of warmth spreading through her cheeks.
“Even luckier than that,” Erin said, searching through the pockets of her coat. “I got you something.” She slid a rectangle across the table. It was carefully wrapped, the folds in the brown paper neat and precise. “Well.” Erin shifted slightly. “It’s kind of weird.”
Georgia blinked. “Yeah?”
“I wasn’t sure if I should, but…” She shrugged and took a distracting sip of her cider.
Georgia picked up the parcel, weighed it in her hand.
It felt like a book. She slid her finger under one of the folds and pulled, the sticky tape giving up easily.
Inside, there was an old notebook, its spine creased, its lined pages contained in a green cardboard cover.
The kind you bought for school and abandoned half-used.
On the front, handwritten in careful block letters:
CAPTAIN’S LOG – REDFORD U18S – CONFIDENTIAL, OBVIOUSLY
Beneath it, Erin had drawn a doodle of rugby ball mid-explosion.
Georgia stared. “You’re joking.”
Erin shook her head. “I kept it when I was the Redford captain. Just notes. Stuff I wrote to myself. Strategies. Training plans. Rants. Total bollocks, mostly, but I thought you might like it, now the apprentice has become the master.”
Georgia flipped it open slowly. Inside were pages of sketches, diagrams, Erin’s notes on dealing with conflict, on her plans to take their teenage team to the top of the league.
There was a diagram of a lineout, stick figures in a row.
Underneath, Erin had scribbled a correction: Liv too short for this, switch to Georgia.
On the next page was a drill, titled “self-work”.
Kill the ego, it said, focus on the team.
You win when they win. Don’t let the worst moment decide the rest of you.
Further in, there were looser pages. Leaflets and ticket stubs shoved between the pages.
Scrawled late-night handwriting creeping across the page like a spider had dipped itself in ink.
Georgia kept flipping. And then:
What to do when you fancy one of your players.
You don’t. You’re normal. Remember this.
This isn’t cool, so this is what we’re going to do:
Do not think about her thighs during warm up.
Don’t write about her in here.
Do not re-read her texts, don’t ask her to get a milkshake or an ice cream.
Seriously. Stop.
Georgia’s hand froze on the page. The pen ink was different here, darker, the writing clear and careful. Erin had pressed hard into the paper, like it had been written urgently. Honestly.
“Erin…” Her voice caught. She looked up. Erin wasn’t meeting her eye.
“I wrote it right at the end there,” Erin said, her eyes still on the table in front of them. “That season just before I left for uni. Eighteen-ish? And completely out of my depth. But you made everything… brighter. And impossible.”
Georgia traced the words on the thin, lined paper with the tip of one finger. “I would never have guessed you fancied me while you were yelling at me to do another lap.”
“I fancied you especially then.”
Georgia closed the notebook and held it to her chest. It felt like being handed a secret version of herself, one that had only existed in someone else’s head. Georgia sat very still. Her chest hurt, in a good kind of way. The kind of way that meant something inside you had shifted permanently.
“You kept this all these years?”
“It was at my parents’ place,” Erin shrugged. “In a box with loads of my other stuff that they brought round last year. I almost burnt it then. Thought it was pathetic. But I’m glad I didn’t.”
“I’m glad you didn’t too.”
A burst of laughter came from a gang of lads at the bar, leaning against the wooden countertop. Georgia put the notebook on the table and reached for the parcel she’d left beside the bench.
“I feel like my gift is seriously underwhelming now. It’s not a cool as this,” Georgia said, touching the notebook on the table in front of her. “Not serious or anything. Just something I thought you’d use.”
Erin opened the wrapping paper so slowly, so carefully, that Georgia wanted to snatch it from her and rip it open. Finally, Erin pulled out the folded clothes. The sweat-wicking layer, the fleece-lined quarter zip, a beanie with the red rose embroidered on the front.
“It’s proper England player kit, not from the merch shop.
Brand new,” Georgia told her. “I haven’t worn it or anything.
I know it’s not fancy or sentimental, nothing serious, but I thought…
” Georgia scratched the back of her neck.
“You said you always get cold at training. I thought you’d use them. ”
A beat of silence.
Georgia was suddenly, painfully aware of her own heartbeat. Her gift was nothing compared to the journal. Just something she’d seen, something she’d thought Erin might like.
“No, it’s great, thank you.”
“It’s very functional,” Georgia added, half-laughing, half-defensive.
Erin nodded. “Absolutely. Very practical. Elite thermoregulation. I like it, really, thank you.” Erin bumped their knees together gently. She put the beanie on slowly, pulling it down until it covered her eyebrows. That almost made it worse.