Chapter Thirty-Two
Georgia’s inbox was a mess.
She turned her phone screen-down on the kitchen table and stared at the cartoon bananas on her phone case.
It was a Sunday morning, and Caroline was still online, flagging three different articles about the panel interview.
It was still generating content, even two weeks later.
None of it was negative, exactly, but neither was it the clean, wholesome coverage that the corporate partners liked.
A blurry photo of her and Erin, having dinner together, had been picked up by a gossip account and was now getting more traction than the match highlights.
Georgia rubbed her forehead tiredly, tried to ease the tension out of her temples, her forehead. The kettle clicked off behind her.
Erin was in the England quarter-zip Georgia had given her, stirring the milk into her tea too deliberately.
“You’re being weird,” she said.
Georgia startled. “What?”
“You’re being weird,” Erin repeated.
Georgia opened her mouth, then shut it. “Is this about me burning the toast again?”
“I don’t give a shit about the toast.”
“You were very intense about the toast yesterday.”
“You cremated it,” she protested. “My sourdough! Anybody would have been intense.” Erin leaned back against the counter, one foot propped up on the cupboard door behind her. “But it’s not about the toast. You’ve been off with me all week. Quiet. Withdrawn. Like you’re not saying something.”
“I haven’t.”
“You have,” Erin insisted. “You were weird at training yesterday. You stood about ten feet away, made me shout. You untagged yourself from the girls’ photo. You didn’t want to go out last night, you wanted to stay in where – to quote your own words back at you – no one could see us.”
Georgia rubbed a hand over her face. Her skin was tight from lack of sleep, and her eyes felt bruised.
There was nothing to say. Nothing to do, except keep her head down and get through the season.
She just had to survive until April, until the international tournaments took over and she could stop being the club captain for a few weeks.
There would be eyes on her, of course, but she could just focus on her rugby.
“I’m just tired.”
“You’re not just tired, babe. Tired means sleeping, and I know you’re not doing that. You tossed and turned all night. Kept me and Crumpet awake too.”
“Sorry,” Georgia apologised, voice low. “It’s not you. You know it’s not you. It’s everything else.”
“I know that.” Erin waved off the thought that she might be the cause of Georgia’s mood. “Doesn’t mean it’s fun to feel like I have to be hidden.”
“I’m not trying to hide you. I’m trying to –”
“You’re trying to be marketable,” Erin finished for her, as though she was slotting the puzzle pieces together. “Make yourself smaller, something less than you are.”
Georgia’s stomach twisted.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to shout her feelings from the rooftops.
She did. It was only that the rooftops had cameras, and the cameras were always on.
She was the captain of a team with – Caroline’s clipped voice repeated in her head – a delicate sponsorship ecosystem balanced precariously on a family-friendly platform.
She had media training and a marketing manager and a mental list of phrases she wasn’t allowed to say.
Sharp-edged Erin, with her opinions, her directness, made Georgia feel she could do the same. Speak up, be visible. Call out the unfairness, the double standards. Take up space in the world. She was everything Georgia wanted, and everything Caroline feared.
Erin stared at her for a long, brittle moment. Georgia caught her gaze, then pulled away, focusing on the embroidered red rose on Erin’s jumper. She wiped the back of her hand under her nose, sniffed, swallowed.
“I don’t want to argue with you,” Erin said, putting her mug down on the countertop. “I know it’s tough. I just want us to be in it together.”
Georgia nodded, tears still threatening. “Can I just have a hug?”
“Yeah, of course.”
Georgia wrapped her arms around Erin, Erin’s head tucked into her shoulder. Georgia pressed a kiss to the top of her head, where the hair parted. The solid warmth of her was unchanged, but the air between them felt heavy, charged, full of static.
“We’ll figure it out,” Erin said as she pulled away.
“Yeah,” Georgia agreed. If she repeated it enough, maybe she’d believe it.
***
By the time of the St Patrick's match, the weather had lightened. Westcliffe’s marketing department amped up overdone Celtic branding around the stadium, making the bars sell pitchers of Guinness cocktails and the team wear a special green kit.
Aoife, the club's flyhalf and only Irish player, had been roped into recording pre-match interviews that were only just the right side of cringe.
The DJ played Clannad and The Corrs over the loudspeaker, and the pitch-side announcer shouted increasingly cheesy puns about scrums of the morning.
Georgia didn't know how any of this had got past Caroline. Surely this was more likely to get the club cancelled than her personal drama.
She just had to hang on. This game, a few more weeks.
The press was starting to move on. Luckily for her, and unluckily for him, a Premier League coach had been caught up in the middle of a team-wide doping scandal.
The team had run eighteen kilometres more than usual in their last match, won seven aerial duels they had no business winning, and celebrated their winning goal with a swaying human pyramid in front of the away fans.
A very swift investigation had discovered the electrolytes he’d bought from a personal-trainer-slash-Ibiza-smoothie-bar-owner he’d met in an East End boxing gym were more than just minerals and beetroot juice.
“Honestly,” one of the players had been quoted as saying, “I thought I was just in the zone. Turns out it was drugs, who knew?” It had diverted the meme-makers and given them a whole new set of soundbites to repurpose.
Even the conspiracy gossip accounts had been distracted. An anonymous Reddit account had stirred up speculation about the Prime Minister and his private secretary, leaking text conversations, hotel bookings, and blurry CCTV footage of the carpark of the Westminster Travelodge.
Georgia had left two tickets for Erin at the box office, but she hadn’t been able to spot her in the crowd.
Her parents stood out, though, their usual home-painted Westcliffe flag readable even from the middle of the pitch.
Her dad had painted “Hotchkiss No 8” right across the blue and white stripes before her first senior cap, and they’d brought it with them ever since.
Forty minutes down, and Georgia could taste adrenaline in the back of her throat, metallic and sour. Her shirt was streaked with mud and sweat, her cheek stained blue from where she’d hit the grass right on top of the sprayed sponsor’s advertisement.
Camden were close behind. One converted try, and the scoreboard would flip.
On the other side of the pitch, Rachel had been simmering all match.
It was the first time they’d played Camden since the fight and Rachel’s suspension back in October, and she was still harbouring a grudge.
Georgia had clocked the signs early. Tense jaw.
Short answers. Muttering to herself as she fell back into the defensive line, shoulders creeping higher with each passage of play.
Georgia saw it almost before it happened. JJ’s shoulder met Rachel’s just a half-second too late in the breakdown. Just enough to be called intentional, just enough to spark.
Rachel spun, her hands already balled into fists.
“Fucking try me,” JJ snapped, stepping in without hesitation.
They were nose to nose, both breathing hard, hackles fully raised. A few of the Westcliffe players tried half-heartedly to pull Rachel back. Georgia was there in an instant, heaving herself up from the floor, stepping between them, her back to Rachel, a hand held out to calm JJ down.
“Enough,” Georgia snapped. “Both of you.”
“She started it,” Rachel spat. “Again.”
“Fuck’s sake, JJ,” Georgia said. “Didn’t you learn last time? Leave the girl alone.”
The ref was already striding over, whistle between his teeth.
JJ raised her eyebrows, amused. Behind her, Georgia felt Rachel tense and take another half a step forward, pressing into Georgia’s back.
“You wanna get benched again?” Georgia muttered, all too aware of the cameras trained on them, the altercation blown up larger than life on the stadium screens.
The last thing they needed – the last thing she needed – was to reignite the press with another red card, another unladylike show of violence. “That what you want, Rach?”
The referee reached them, fuming, hand in his pocket on his cards, but Georgia stepped in. Steady the ship, man the bilge pumps, stop it from sinking.
“It’s all good, sir,” she said. “Flash of feeling, touch of temper. Nothing more, and all gone now.”
Rachel muttered something under her breath and stepped back. JJ sketched them both a mocking little bow.
The ref kept his cards in his pocket, though just barely, calling both captains over for a dressing down instead. Georgia stood quietly, breath visible in the icy air, heart hammering. As the ref turned away JJ flashed her a scathing look behind his back that told Georgia there’d be trouble later.
Whatever.
Georgia wasn’t going to be riled. Not today.
“Don’t make me do that again,” she said, not meeting her gaze. Beside her in the line, Rachel rolled her shoulders, reset her stance, and didn’t look Georgia’s way for the rest of the match.
***