Page 24 of A Midlife Gamble

On arrival they had disembarked into an airport terminal deafening with the bells and whistles, hoots and horns of numerous slot machines. In the taxi, the driver had delivered a non-stop monologue of recommendations they had neither asked for, nor since been able to remember. And at the hotel, in a foyer even busier than the airport, they’d been handed a book of vouchers and a room key. It hadn’t actually been until the elevator doors had pinged shut, encasing her in a silence like the first silence on earth, that Caro had been able to hear herself think again. In her hotel room she had peeled off her jeans and crawled into bed more exhausted than she thought she’d ever felt in her life.

Twenty-four hours in, felt like twenty-four years. At some point the pace had to slow down.

As the escalator came to an end, Caro stepped off and looked up to see another Rialto bridge, overlooking another canal with bright blue water. Either side, murals of eighteenth-century Venice stretched away, offering dimensions and scenery that she knew did not exist, but appreciated the artistry of anyway. If her feet hadn’t been hurting so much she might have taken more time to admire them. As it was, a huge cheer went up from the bridge and drawn by the sound and the general flow of people, they wandered along towards it. As they neared she saw, on the water below, a gondolier applauding his customers.

‘What’s happened?’ she whispered.

‘They survived the ride,’ Kay laughed.

‘Really?’

Kay turned to her. ‘It’s a marriage proposal!’

‘Oh.’ Caro looked first to her left, and then to her right. Five people she counted, filming this event. And beyond that, lined up all along the bridge, people were whooping and cheering. Strangers, childishly excited by the sight of more strangers making what was, what should be, a private decision in a private moment. She pulled her shoulders together, straightened up and turned away, her mouth making a hard line. She was exhausted and irritated. She’d barely had five minutes to herself to consider her own private decision. Shook’s question. A question that required the kind of space and silence sorely lacking in Vegas. ‘Why does everything have to be so bloody public!’ she sighed, looking at Kay.

But Kay was another world away, caught up in the moment, smiling a very goofy and un-Kay-like smile. ‘I think it’s lovely,’ she murmured.

‘Really?’ Helen said.

Kay sighed. ‘Martin slapped the Argos catalogue on my desk. Told me to take my pick… From the pages he’d folded over.’

Chuckling, Helen turned away to watch the newly betrothed couple on the gondolier.

Caro too turned to watch. ‘How long had you known him?’ she said suddenly.

‘Martin?’

‘Yes.’

‘Mmm.’ Kay frowned. ‘I can’t remember. A few months I suppose.’

‘Just a few months?’

‘That’s long enough isn’t it?

‘Is it?’

A slow smile turned the corner of Kay’s mouth upward, she put her head to one side and looked at Caro as if she was looking at a painting. ‘I don’t know, Caro,’ she said finally. ‘I could say when you know, you know, but I’m divorced, so maybe I didn’t know.’

‘And maybe you did?’ Caro said quietly.

‘Or maybe I just took a chance,’ Kay said and the look she gave Caro was so loaded, it could have carried lead.

12

Back in the cool of the air-conditioned foyer, Helen made a beeline for the elevator. The damage wrought upon her feet by her choice of footwear was incalculable. Three blisters that she’d counted so far and a bunion the size of a doorknob. So focused was she on the cushioned plasters in the first aid kit she’d sensibly packed (old habits die hard) that she snapped as she felt Kay’s hand on her arm, pulling her back. ‘What?’

‘It’s Marianne!’ Kay said.

And standing behind Kay, Caro now nodded across the roped-in rows of queueing arrivals, towards the front desk.

Helen looked up. She recognised Marianne immediately. The military-style severity of her haircut, and the bulky shoulders squeezed into a sleeveless dress so tightly, red marks where the straps cut into her flesh were clearly visible. She was wearing white sneakers, carried a white hat and had a huge straw handbag slung over her arm. All in all, it was the kind of holiday-in-the-sun-outfit that belonged in the pages of a woman's magazine, circa 1983. She felt a pang of sympathy. Kay had said that one of the reasons she’d asked Marianne was because she hadn’t had a holiday in years. Next to her stood a tall, grey-haired man who looked familiar. Very familiar, like a relative she hadn’t seen in twenty years. ‘Who’s that?' Helen whispered, leaning in to Kay.

Kay shook her head. ‘No idea.’

‘He looks an awful lot like Blake Carrington,’ Caro said.

‘John Forsythe’s been dead for years now,’ Helen muttered.

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