Page 17 of A Midlife Gamble

Consider yourself invited to a delayed and much needed Christmas dinner, Sunday, 3pm. No 2 ticked off my list, over to you ladies!

It had pushed her over the line. She’d opened her laptop andDone Something Spontaneous.Booked a seven-day, all-expenses-paid trip to Vegas for the three of them. Business class flights. Good idea? Terrible idea? She still didn’t know. She’d woken the next day plagued by doubt, and more than once had gone to cancel.Trust yourself, Shook had said when she’d told him her doubts. And because she’d found herself able to trust him, she hadn’t cancelled.

‘As long as it’s not a motivational fridge magnet,’ Kay was saying now, laughing as Craig leaned across to deposit the last package in her lap.

‘You’ll see,’ Craig smiled.

Kay pulled the wrapping open and the room, as a whole, drew forward. What was visible was a mound of white, the shape and volume of meringue, the texture of fur. A furry meringue.

‘A wig!’ Kay gasped and held it up.

‘Not just any wig. It’s a Roxette wig!’ Craig winked.

Kay doubled over with laughter. ‘You idiot! I knew I shouldn’t have told you!’

‘What’s this?’ Caro asked.

‘“It must have been love”.That Roxette?’ Helen said.

Kay nodded. ‘Remember Sammy’s list? The workshop? Well I made the mistake of telling Craig.’

Caro nodded. Of course she remembered the list. The repercussions of it were burning a hole in her handbag right now. Three tickets, one travel itinerary, folded in a neat envelope.

‘You said that if you were going to go blonde, you’d want to do it like Roxette,’ Craig said. ‘That’s what you told me anyway, and as you don’t have that much hair to start with, it should fit nicely.’

Kay wiped away a tear of laughter.

‘But you also told me that this Sammy hadSee George Michaelon her list, so I’m not sure I believe a word of what you say any more!’ He finished with an exaggerated wink.

‘Isn’t he dead?’ Arms folded, leaning against the fireplace, Lawrence frowned.

‘As a Dodo,’ Craig said.

With a sideways shuffle, Kay manoeuvred herself to the edge of her chair. ‘It’s a lookalike, Lawrence. George Might-be is performing at a Butlin’s Eighties Weekend. And Sammy’s husband has even hired a DeLorean car to travel in.’

‘Oh, that sounds fun!’ Helen clapped her hands together.

‘Doesn’t it,’ Kay smiled. ‘So.’ She held the wig up. ‘Shall I try it?’

‘Yes,’ Craig said.

‘Yes,’ Helen echoed. ‘There’s a mirror in the hall.’

And moving swiftly, the three of them swept out of the room, giggly with excitement.

Inching forward, Caro moved to join them, but was stopped by the sight of Lawrence raising his arm to point at Shook.

‘Now that,’ Lawrence boomed, ‘is a great film!Back to the Future!Did you have that in Poland, Tomasz? I wouldn’t have thought that kind of western influence was allowed back then!’

Caro flinched. For the first half of this evening, Lawrence hadn’t been able to shape Shook’s real name, Tomasz, and his reticence had functioned as a brake, limiting conversation. But now that he was at least one bottle of red wine down, his tongue had loosened so the name had begun to flow as freely from his tongue as the wine into his glass. And with every slurry extraS or ZLawrence added, Caro could sense him moving closer. It made her uneasy. Twice now, slipping behind her to reach a glass, he’d rubbed up against her. If she could, she would have turned around and slapped him.

‘Not at the cinema, Lawrence.’ Shook smiled as he answered, and Caro felt his hand on her leg. Immediately she slipped her own hand over his. ‘But I saw it on VHS,’ he continued. ‘I always remember, because it cost me a fortune. Eight thousand zloty.’

‘Was that a lot?’ She turned to him. There was still so much about his past that she had no idea of, she felt she could listen to him for days. Plus, it would steer the conversation away from Lawrence’s control.

‘Well… my father was making 25,000 a month.’

Her mind went through a tumble of arithmetic. ‘Quite a lot then,’ she settled for.

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