Page 2 of A Midlife Gamble

'Christmas trees?' Kay murmured, vaguely aware that this was the first time Christmas had come into a focus clear enough to be seen. Cancer had destroyed so much, not least her peripheral vision. For weeks now, she'd been living in a tunnel, at the end of which was a sign: dissection. And after that, another narrow space in which again, there would be no room for turning: radiotherapy. Every day for four weeks. Where, in all that, was Christmas supposed to fit? ‘Will you sit down a moment, love?’ she said. ‘I need to tell you something.’

Standing by the back door, Alex paused.

'It won't take long. And it is important.' She opened the cupboard and took out his cup.

When, a moment later, she turned around and saw, her heart filled with emotion. Swelled in fact, so much that she had time to think how true it was that hearts can and do swell. What she was looking at, was her small kitchen table, framed in a square of sunshine as it always was on sunny winter mornings… and Alex, bumping his chair forward, so that he fitted inside that square of sunshine… as he always had, on sunny winter mornings. To anyone else watching, it would have appeared as if he couldn’t get comfortable. But Kay knew. Alex was shuffling himself into the square of light. He remembered. Just like she did. A memory opened, of an ordinary morning, in her ordinary kitchen. Alex, maybe five years old, insisting they both bump their chairs in, so close their slippered feet met, toe to toe, she giggling as she’d ducked forward to comply with his wishes; him waiting to start his toast until she was ‘fully’ in the sunshine. Her eyes filled with warm tears. She was dying. She didn’t feel like she was, but apparently she was, and the moment had come to tell him. She took the cosy off the teapot, placed it in the middle of the table and took her seat. Then without speaking she bumped her chair in, closer and closer. ‘Am I in?’ she said, leaning over her shoulder to check.

‘You’re in, mum,’ he answered.

Kay leaned forward. ‘I have to tell you something.’

‘Fifty percent?’

Kay nodded.

Barely ten minutes had passed since she’d begun the most difficult conversation of her life. Knowing the way her son’s mind worked, she’d come prepared, going through her diagnosis and treatment, stage by stage, always staying truthful. She had explained the procedure she would be undergoing in just a couple of days and the outcome that everyone was hoping for. She’d talked through the effects of radiotherapy and gone into detached details about the course of combination therapy it was likely she would be offered afterward. How she would be taking tablets and receiving monthly infusions. How regular scans would show the progress, or the remission of her cancer, but how realistically the best she could hope, the very best, was a fifty percent chance she’d still be alive in five years.

Spoken out loud, said simply and directly, had made it sound so harsh to Kay she was frightened anew, for both of them. She had just explained her illness in hard and non-negotiable terms, like shining the white light of a microscope upon the brush strokes of an impressionist painting. Where, she thought now, were the nuances and the shadows? Where had they gone, the softened corners from which something hopeful might emerge? She picked up her cup and sipped her tea and as the quiet minutes slipped by, a measure of calm returned. There had never been another way. If she’d hidden any part of this underifsandmaybes,Alex would have gone away and set those undefinable terms into concrete moulds of his choosing. And later, when reality had refused to fit, he’d have returned wildly angry, accusing her of lying to him.You said it worked!When what she had always said was,Sometimes, it worked.No, she had had to keep it real. ‘Fifty percent,’ she said softly.

Alex looked out of the window.

Kay didn’t speak. He wasn't avoiding her, he just couldn't look her in the eye, not as he was trying to process it. In times of extreme emotion, he needed space, lots of it.

‘Ok.’ He stood up and put his cup in the dishwasher. ‘I have to go,’ he said.

Kay nodded, her lips pressed tight together, just like her mother before her, sealing shut the hurt. ‘Ok,’ she managed, her voice tight. ‘Have a good day.’

And then there was nothing to do but sit and wait for the sound of the back door closing, for the moment in which she could drop her head to her hands and let out a grief that was becoming unbearably heavy. But the sound didn’t come, instead there was a sudden warmth, very close to her face, and Alex’s head, dropped on her shoulder, his hair brushing her cheek, one hand patting her shoulder in that stiff and childish way of his.

And without turning, Kay reached back and grabbed his hand. She could trace the child. Could still sense the way his small palm would grip her own. Hanging on for reassurance and comfort, for life itself, those times he’d been terrified – of noisy cars, or loud strangers. How was she ever going to be able to let go? How would it work? When the time came, would her fingers release his? Or would the grip remain, after life itself had left? Please, she thought, please let it be like that.

‘It’ll be alright, mum,’ Alex said. ‘It’ll be alright.’

Kay gulped back what she couldn’t allow to escape. 'Make sure you save a good tree for us,’ she managed

2

‘Are you kidding me?’

Helen stared at the face on the flier in front of her that her daughter Libby had just handed over. An infant face stared back, cheeks and forehead covered in thick black swirls, like a Maori warrior painted for war. Or a baby left alone with a marker pen.

‘Why,’ she gasped, ‘would anyone give a baby a marker pen?’

‘It’s not marker pen!’ Libby huffed. ‘It’s plant-based paint.Organicplants. Completely harmless! In fact,’ she said as she took the flier back and hammered it on the fridge door, with a loud clunk of magnet, ‘it’s edible!’

‘Edible?’ Helen watched as the aftershock of Libby’s thump sent her kingfisher notepad sliding from the fridge to the floor. She bent to pick it up.

‘If you don’t want to go, I’ll ring Leanne and cancel,’ Libby muttered.

‘I didn’t say that.’ But they both knew; she might as well have.

‘I could take him to the park?’ she tried. ‘Or the library…’

‘Fine, mum.’ Libby picked up her phone. ‘I told Leanne I’d meet her there afterwards. We were going for lunch, but never mind. Arthur will be disappointed, that’s all.’

Watching, Helen folded her arms. Arthur was Leanne’s eight-month-old son, and Leanne was Libby’s new friend and although Helen didn’t give two hoots about the imaginary hurt feelings of an eight-month-old, she did care very much about the tender and easily bruised feelings of her daughter.

At twenty, Leanne was six months younger than Libby, and had, in the last few weeks, brought a burst of fresh air and energy into her daughter’s life. The two of them had met at a mother and baby group, forming an immediate bond, Helen had guessed, upon the fact they were so much younger than all the other women. It had been a lifeline for Libby and, in some ways, Helen. Chattering away on the one occasion they had met, Helen had seen what light and easy company Leanne was, wholly unencumbered by all those lost expectations that so weighed Libby (and herself) down. Leanne, it had been clear, didn’t think it a disaster to have a baby at twenty. On the contrary, Helenhad realised, she thought it was exactly what she should be doing, and was having the time of her life whilst at it.A breath of fresh air indeed. In fact, there had been times when listening to her daughter make plans on the phone with her new friend, Helen had had moments of lonely pause in which the loss of both Caro and Kay’s company had overwhelmed her. Many times.

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