Page 19 of A Midlife Gamble

From across the room, he looked at her and she looked back at him, taking a long moment to do so. This athletic, well-educated, supremely confident man she’d once prized so highly. ‘No,’ she said again. ‘I’ll survive. But if I lose my friends, well that’s another matter. That would make me very unhappy indeed.’ And with that, Caro stood and went across to her handbag. It was time to commit. She needed them, Helen and Kay. They were staples, helping to hold together a Caro that had over this last year been beaten paper-thin.

‘I wishI had the balls to wear this out of the house!’ Roxette wig in place, Kay sailed into the room. She stood, hands on hips, cheeks flushed, eyebrows bare, a huge puffball of platinum blonde on her head. It was as ridiculous as it was beautiful, as joyful as it was tragic.

‘Oh my God, that’s absolutely marvellous!’ Caro gasped. It was. Kay looked marvellous!

Helen and Craig followed. Caro glanced nervously across at Lawrence. He was at the far end of the room, knocking back wine.

‘I feel like a different person wearing it,’ Kay smiled.

‘You look like a different person,’ Caro said. It was true. Kay looked more buoyant than she had done for months. She was afloat again. ‘Well done, Craig! What a great present! It’s brilliant to see Kay laughing.’ Craig, it was true, seemed to bring out a side of Kay that Caro realised she hadn’t seen much of in years. Certainly not since Alex had been born and Kay’s life had settled within the parameters of his diagnosis. It emptied Caro a little. She’d taken up so much of Kay’s time with her own problems, with all her unspoken but obvious comparing and complaining and dissatisfaction with life, and not nearly enough time with just laughing. Glancing across to Helen, she wondered if Helen was thinking the same, but it was hard to tell what Helen was thinking. She was busying herself now with tidying cups and glasses. A little too busy, Caro thought, and her confidence over what she was about to do wavered, thin as a soap bubble.

Then Shook came in, and looked at her and no… she didn’t imagine it, he gave her the tiniest, almost invisible nod. It was time. If Shook thought the moment had arrived, it had. She trusted him in a way she had never trusted any other man.

She reached down for her handbag. As she straightened up she was aware that her stomach had liquefied and her legs were shaking. She was nervous. More nervous than she’d thought she’d ever been. Which was more than silly, because how many times had she stood in front of a boardroom full of men without a trace of nerves? But those times didn’t matter. No one was dying. The people were acquaintances, not friends whom she loved and relied upon and wanted only to be kind to and do the best by. That’s where this gift was coming from, and the last thing she wanted was to get it wrong. Memories of Helen’s fiftieth lunch surged. She’d gotten it wrong then, completely and horribly wrong. Her stomach flipped. Everyone, she realised, was looking at her.

‘You alright?’ Kay asked.

There was a hand on her back. Shook. He knew exactly what she was going to say. They’d even rehearsed it a few times. The objections that might need to be overcome. The protestations that it was too much, too extravagant an offer. But the sale of her mother’s house was already going through, making a rich woman even richer, while Kay kept a jacket she’d hardly ever worn, and Helen kept the lid of her ambitions down.

‘So,’ she said and paused. She felt a pressure form Shook’s hand. She thought she heard him say,Go on.

‘Confession time from me as well,’ she said, in a voice strangled by nerves. ‘I also bought a couple of extra gifts.’

No one spoke. Everyone seemed to know that whatever was coming out of Caro’s handbag wasn’t a Roxette-style wig.

She swallowed hard, pulled the envelope out, and said, ‘We’re going to Vegas. Me, Helen and Kay.’

Helen’s face was still.

‘It’s my treat. No arguments! You both know I’ve come into some money. And I—’

‘Your mother’s house?’ Kay said.

Caro nodded.

‘My jacket?’ Kay whispered, her face under the mountain of wig breaking into a huge grin. ‘I get to wear my jacket?’

And from Helen, came nothing.

8

Caro sat squashed into the corner of Starbucks, her suitcase jammed into the space between two chairs, her jacket piled on top, her brow sweaty and her ears ringing with the cacophony of sound. The café was chaos. Toddlers crying, pensioners jawing at huge muffins, sticky coffee spills, harassed staff. It was her idea of hell, and considering that on the other side of security the calm of the executive lounge waited, she had no idea why Shook had insisted on accompanying her into the terminal and then suggesting coffee. Then again, she had no idea why he’d insisted on leaving for the airport so early in the first place. So far he hadn’t put a foot wrong, but arriving for a flight three hours before it was due to leave was provincial territory and if there was one thing Caro did not consider herself, it was provincial. But she hadn’t objected, not least because she enjoyed his company so much that eking it out like this was actually a thrill. As if they were teenagers parting for the weekend. Watching his back now, as he stood at the counter, her worry subsided, replaced by warm contentment. Goodness, she was happy. Six months ago, if anyone could have told her how content this spring would find her, she wouldn’t have believed it. But yes, content was the right word.

She settled back in her seat. Overhead the tannoy system called the names of missing passengers; closer by snippets of overheard phone conversations floated past.Going through in five minutes. Let’s meet at the gate. Don’t forget the charger.At some point in her recent past, every overheard conversation like this would have been a poignant reminder, another little flag that waved back her loneliness. She’d never had someone to send that last quick text to, no one to sign off with a kissing emoji. As she looked across at Shook again he turned and smiled, a coffee in each hand. Well, she did now.

He put the coffees on the table and manoeuvred Caro’s case so he could sit down. Caro picked up her cup. She was thinking about the drive for profit that had coffee shops positioning tables far too close together, and then she was thinking about the fact they were flying business class, and how relived she was and how much she was looking forward to seeing Helen and Kay’s faces when they saw the executive lounge. So much going on in her mind that she didn’t notice until she was just about to take a sip that Shook had leaned forward to nod at her cup.

‘What?’ she said, looking down. Across the surface, the barista had swirled a heart shape. ‘Oh.’ She turned the cup so the heart was the right way up. ‘Did you ask for that?’

‘Of course.’

‘You fool,’ she said, feeling about fourteen. Then, ‘You didn’t have to come in with me, you know.’

‘I know.’

Of course he knew.

‘I would—’

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