Chapter Thirty-Four
On Monday, the mood in the Westcliffe camp was buoyant.
Maggie’s post-match debrief was short and clear.
The season was mostly behind them. There was just one week left of club rugby.
Despite the dodgy season, Westcliffe was sitting just outside a playoff position.
If they won their final match – and two of the teams the top four lost - they might be in with a chance.
Around her, Georgia’s teammates buzzed with anticipation, with renewed determination. Georgia hadn’t absorbed any of the positivity.
She'd really fucked up.
Give me space. It was almost impossible to do when she was checking her phone every three seconds to see if Erin had text her.
All she wanted to do was dump training and drive to Redford to beg Erin for another chance.
Erin worked in Westcliffe – maybe Georgia could find the office, take her flowers, get down on her knees in the lobby.
But that was the very definition of not giving her space.
Georgia made it through their Monday morning drills, then she’d claimed a sore shoulder and spent ninety minutes under the silent care of Meg the Mangler.
Meg was the Westcliffe physio who – if it all went sideways in the world of pummelling people for health reasons – stood a pretty good chance of making the team herself and pummelling people on the pitch instead.
At the end of the day, Georgia sloped off home, ate a bland meal of chicken, rice and frozen vegetables with slimy carrots and too much sweetcorn, and slunk into bed.
She tossed and turned all night, unable to manage more than fitful bursts of restless sleep.
Her thoughts were chasing each other, over and over, caught in endless loops.
Rachel stayed up, and the sound of the TV clicking off in the living room at eleven thirty only served to remind Georgia that she was still, in fact, wide awake.
She’d scrolled all the way back through her messages with Erin, trying to recapture the buzz of excitement she’d felt at Christmas, that incessant pull.
She tried to lie still, close her eyes and drift, but it didn't work. She pulled the cover over her head and scrolled TikTok with the sound off, falling into a spiral of comedy clips, a puppy eating a lemon and sneezing itself off the couch, endless girls crying at a Taylor Swift concert.
There was a grainy rugby clip of some old school tackling, captioned ‘soft launch of my next breakdown’. Georgia liked that one.
She scrolled past every single one of Riley’s ‘day in the life’ videos without pausing.
She hate-watched the long video of Tommy ranting on his latest podcast episode, then went through and liked every single critical comment she could find.
Finally, at 5.30 in the morning, her phone practically burning her hand, its battery drained to below fifteen percent, Georgia decided enough was enough. It was pitch black outside, but she had training in four hours. She closed her eyes and forced herself to think of nothing.
Her alarm went off three hours later. Her eyes were gritty, her mouth fuzzy, and her head felt like she'd been stampeded by a whole safari's worth of rhinos.
She pulled her training kit on and stumbled down the corridor to the kitchen and went through the motions of making breakfast and a coffee.
While the machine whirred, she perched on a stool at the kitchen island and opened her phone.
Good luck with the rest of the season.
It sounded so final.
The urge to text Erin, to throw everything to the wind, rose up again and Georgia started to type out a message, then deleted it. She repeated the process at least four more times, each draft getting sadder, more desperate.
Instead, she took her coffee, stomped down the stairs past the bikes leaning against the wall, sat on the front step in the dark, and text Rach.
Are you awake?
She stared at her screen, willing Rach to reply.
Rach new number
Barely. Why are you texting me? We live together, Hotch. Just come in.
Georgia took a picture of the quiet street, of her coffee resting on her legs and her feet stretched out against the Victorian tiles. The rows of white, three-story houses, their bow windows glinting in reflected streetlights, stretched out on either side and stared back at her.
It was chilly, she realised now, and the morning sun was struggling to rise.
There were a few cars moving, but no-one else on foot.
Everyone else was still inside, getting ready for their day with their loved ones, warm and happy.
The cold of the concrete steps leeched through her leggings, freezing and numbing. Good. She could do with feeling numb.
There was a long pause, the three dots appearing and disappearing as Rachel drafted a message. Georgia could imagine her, scrunched under her covers, squinting at her bright screen, trying to weigh her words, balance her way between her unswerving bluntness and unwavering loyalty.
Last night, she had been on Erin’s side. Georgia would be too. Anyone would.
We deserve a holiday when the season’s over.
How does an all-inclusive on a Canary Island beach sound?
Georgia sent a thumbs up. The idea of two weeks stretched out on a lounger, towel over her head, and an unlimited supply of cheap foreign booze sounded pretty perfect. Spanish islands did tend to have mobile signal, however, and internet connection.
It wouldn’t cut her off from the world entirely.
An alternative: Timbuktu, Outer Mongolia.
An unmanned lighthouse in Nova Scotia.
Maybe the Interpol missing person’s list.
This time, the response was immediate.
Cracking. Count me in!
***
Training was always light the day after a match.
A video review of the game. A special, one-off, captains-only media training session with Caroline, just to drive the knife home.
Lunch, a gentle swim. Active recovery. Personal time.
All parcelled off into neat boxes of time.
She could get through neat boxes of time, one after another.
Georgia managed to avoid too many questions about her sullen mood at lunch.
She wolfed down her eggs and drank the green juice the nutritionist pushed her way.
She perched on the end of a table, pretended to scroll through Instagram, nodded and agreed at random intervals.
Kamsi had given her a considering look, but no-one asked her any questions.
The pool session was easier. Repetitive strokes, counting reps as she went. No banter, no laughter. Just the rhythmic slap of water and the burn in her lungs when she breathed every third stroke.
On the poolside, Mac the coach shouted something at her about slowing down, but she ignored him.
Even the team’s chatter, their playful splashing in the shallow end, couldn’t break her focus.
“Hotch is in a right mood,” someone muttered as she pushed off the wall at the end of her thirtieth lap.
There was no denying it, so she swam on.
She reached fifty laps and started to slow.
Normally, she’d slide under the lane barriers and float, but today it made her think of the disco swim and Erin waiting for her on the bleachers.
The café afterwards, the snow day. They’d been so open, so together. Nothing to hide.
Not once had she said to Erin: we can do this, but quietly. Don’t let anyone know. Keep it our dirty secret.
A whistle blew above her. "Hotch!"
She pushed off the pool wall, head down, crashing her way through another thirty lengths. She was angry. With Caroline for boxing her in, with Erin for making her want more than she could manage. With Crumpet and her sandpaper-rough tongue for sinking her claws deep into Georgia's heart.
Mostly she was angry with herself. That was okay. She’d had a rollercoaster of a season, and just as she thought she’d put herself on the right tracks, she’d come crashing off the rails.
***
In the match debrief, they skipped Rachel’s almost-fight and Georgia’s intervention. The rest of the analysis was just the usual. Missed tackles, poor discipline, one too many penalties in the second half.
While the marketing manager gave a short update on the commercials, they showed slow, panning shots of the crowd and Georgia tried not to scan the thousands of faces in the green St Patrick's kit, the background of the kiss cam footage.
The others took notes, gave themselves to-do lists for the last match. Georgia sat in the front row, jaw clenched, pen in hand.
She didn’t write a single word.
***
By Wednesday, the rest of the squad were giving Georgia a wide berth in the gym, the locker room, in the cafeteria.
She knew she was being horrible: miserable, snappy.
It wasn't very captain like, but she couldn't help it.
She was messing up everything – not just her love life, but her friendships, her rugby.
She took her buffet plate to a table for two in the corner of the restaurant, headphones on. The others took their usual places at the canteen’s large round tables, shooting her cautious looks.
Her phone rang, interrupting the music blaring through her headphones. She knew without looking that it was Tam. Tam had personalised the ringtone herself, about three phones ago, replacing the generic notes with a terrible recorder version of My Heart Will Go On. Georgia had never changed it.
She considered ignoring it, but she did that when she was messed up over Matt, and it hadn’t done her any good.
“Hey,” Georgia said, trying to sound normal.
“Hey yourself. How’s it going?” Tam sounded too casual, and Georgia knew that she knew.
“I’m fine.”
This was why she should date strangers. Stick to the anonymity of the apps. Date someone your friends knew, and they’d get themselves entangled when you didn’t want them to.
Hell, this was why she shouldn’t date at all. She was right before. Love lives were messy – they made you messy – and they interfered with your career.
There was a pause.
“What the fuck, Hotch,” Tam said. Georgia could hear how hard Tam was trying to control herself. “I'm supposed to be your best friend and you haven't text me in, like, four days and then I find out from Erin last night when she cancelled training that…”
She let the sentence hang, waiting for Georgia to fill the silence.
Georgia stabbed a piece of broccoli. “That what?”
“That emotionally avoidant Georgia's back, and she's fucking things up.”
Georgia snorted, too sharp to pass off as casual. It drew looks from her teammates, and she leant lower over her plate. She turned down the volume on her headphones and spoke quietly. “I don't need a lecture, Tam.”
Tam made a low, sceptical noise.
“I mean,” Tam let the word hang, “I think you do. You had something really good there. These last few months you've been so happy. You've played well, too. I really thought this was it, you'd worked out how to have a life and a career at the same time.”
Georgia took a breath.
“That's just it though,” she said, the words tumbling out before she could stop them.
“Apparently I can't. The club is breathing down my neck and I've already had three strikes.
" She listed them off, counting on her fingers as though Tam could see.
"The very viral interview on live TV where I made a complete and utter fucking fool of myself.
Those guys in the pub who said I assaulted them.
Blowing up at Matt in the stadium carpark and having that filmed too.
You know they told me to be bland, marketable, a family-friendly role model girls and their dads can aspire to be. "
Her voice was getting louder. She was drawing looks from the other girls. Now the words were flowing they couldn't be stopped.
"Otherwise it's been made very clear to me that I will be fired. Sacked. Thank you and goodbye. And if I don't have a club, I won't play for England, I won't have an income, I won't be able to pay my mortgage."
"I don't think that's…"
Georgia cut Tam off again.
"We were… God, we were fine, happy, and then she was about to say it, out loud, in front of everyone, in front of Caroline, of all those phones, all those people.” She laughed once, sharp and joyless. “So, yeah, I panicked. It's blander if she's a friend, not someone…”
Her throat clenched.
“Not someone I…”
She shook her head, stabbing at her food again just to have something to do with her hands.
Tam stayed quiet, letting Georgia spill into the space between them. The canteen chatter carried on around them, forks clinking, someone – Kamsi, Jess, maybe even Lucy – laughing three tables over.
“I didn’t mean it,” Georgia said finally, low. “I was just scared.”
Tam didn’t say anything for a long moment.
“I mean-” Tam began, then stopped. “No, you’re right. That’s really shit, for both of you.”
Georgia nodded, even though Tam couldn’t see her. She pressed the heel of her hand into her eye socket until stars appeared.
She had royally fucked up.
“Look,” Tam said at last, gentler now. “I’ve known her a long time. Not as long as I’ve known you, obviously. But long enough. And I can’t think of a time when she’s been as chilled, as happy, than these last few weeks. She’s been almost nice.”
Georgia laughed at that. “Check me out. Taming the wild beast. At least temporarily.”
"Erin's really cut up about this, Hotch. And I know you are too. You had something amazing and I don't want either of you to lose it. Love doesn't have to be drama, all the time. And if you stopped running for a second, I think you'd see that."
Georgia stayed silent, picking at a piece of loose skin at the edge of her thumbnail.
“Do you want me to come over? I will, if you want.”
Georgia knew that Tam would. Even if she had to slink away from work, sleep on the sofa, get up far too early and crawl into work half-dead in the morning, Tam would come if she asked her to.
The ache of wanting someone close throbbed in her chest.
“Nah. I’ll probably just go and lift something heavy and pretend it helps.”
“Alright,” Tam said. “Text me after. Even if it’s just your rep count.”
“Promise. Thanks, Tam.”
They hung up. Georgia pushed the last of her broccoli around her plate. It would be stone cold by now.
Back in Redford, Erin was probably tucked up at home with Crumpet. She’d be cooking her lunch, moving about the kitchen with her usual grace. She’d probably have the radio on, dancing as she cooked. It was what she was doing when Georgia last spoke to her on Friday night.
A whole world away.
She missed her so badly.
Georgia ate the last piece of cold broccoli and tried not to think about it.