Page 46 of A Midlife Gamble

‘Did what?’ Kay laughed. ‘Honestly, Caro, you look like the cat who got the cream.’

‘I let go,’ Caro answered.

‘Let go of what?’

‘Control!Gabe didn’t know it, but when he called Jangles a career trail-horse, he put my mind at rest. It just made sense to me. I mean there I was, a career woman, on a career horse. He’s terrified of plastic bags; I was terrified of him! And who could honestly say which one of us was being irrational?’ She lifted the stick and pointed it at Kay. ‘Don’t answer that.’ She laughed. ‘It doesn’t matter. What matters is that it started me thinking. I mean, the first time Jangles left the trail and headed towards a tree, I panicked. I was an absolute bag of nerves, but thankfully, Gabe was behind me and he said Jangles was doing that—’

‘Because the ground is less stony there,’ Helen said, her voice flat. She kept her chin lowered as she looked across the flames toward Caro. ‘It’s less painful on their feet.’

’Exactly! Anyway…’ Caro leaned forward, picked up the half-empty bottle by her feet and topped her glass up.

And something in the flourish of the wave from the stick she held sent a warning signal to Helen. She rubbed her foot back and forth in the dust, concentrated on burying a few glowing embers with her sneaker. Caro, she sensed, was building up to saying something of importance. Something significant. She could tell from the increasingly excited tone of her voice, the fluttery movements of her arms, the confidence she obviously needed from the wine. Well, whatever it was that Caro was getting excited about, Helen did not want to hear.

‘And then when we reached the plain, on the way back, Gabe said, I should go faster, let Jangles stretch his legs. I won’t deny it, thatreallyscared me, but I think it was then that I decided. I remember quite clearly making the decision in my head.I’m going to release the reins and let go!It was quite an epiphany.’

‘An epiphany?’

Caro turned, stick upright. ‘Yes, Kay. For me, an epiphany. I don’t think that’s too strong a word. And, I honestly think, in that moment, I’ve never trusted anyone quite like I trusted Jangles. I put my life in his hands… well hooves. I really did.’

‘Trust?’ Helen said, her tongue thick with the weight of the word.

‘Yes!’ Caro put her hand on her chest, the stick angled now across her face. ‘I know it might sound silly. And I think it’s ironic that it’s taken me coming all the way out here to experience what it’s like to relinquish the reins.’ She laughed. ‘I know why they say that now! Fifty-one and I’ve finally let go of the reins! But you both know me. I hate not to be in control, not knowing what’s going to happen next. Trusting a horse? Well, trusting anyone hasn’t been easy.’

Helen looked down at her glass. The way Caro held the stick, it cut her face in two. Divided it into the two faces of Caro. On one side a friend of thirty years, on the other a person who would deceive anyone and everyone to get what she wanted. She stared at her wine and tried desperately to take herself out of the moment. To remember the warmth of her own horse’s neck as she’d leaned in during the ride. The skin soft as it was tough, tiny wiry hairs that moved under her palm like ocean waves. The warm and earthy smell that was a childhood smell, producing memories of Saturday mornings, when her mother was alive. Before she grew up and did grown-up things, got married, had children of her own, forged grown-up friendships that were so much more complicated than childhood friendships. Before anything got complicated.Trust?If she said any of what she was actually thinking on the subject of trust, it could never be unsaid. It would mean, quite simply, the destruction of everything.

‘So anyway,’ Caro continued, blithely unaware. ‘As you both know, Shook has asked me to marry him.’

Kay nodded.

‘And, I’ve been thinking about it a lot. The trail ride really gave me time. And…’ Caro paused. Lowering her glass to the ground, she rolled the stick along her jeans. ‘Helen?’

Helen looked up. A strange vibration starting in her ears. Was Caro going to bring it all up?

‘Do you remember what I said that day at Stonehenge?’

Her eyes flicked across to Kay. ‘No,’ she answered carefully. She was thinking about Kay, and about how all that was going to be said should not be said here, should not be said now. Could probably only be said when Kay was gone… as in never coming back gone… as in dead. Stonehenge? She frowned. The day, just weeks after Caro’s miscarriage when Kay and she had driven down to find Caro, worried sick. And Caro had been fine. Or she’d said she was fine, and then she’d driven back and taken Libby’s baby and stayed out so long the police had been involved. So she hadn’t been fine.

‘No,’ Caro murmured. ‘Of course you don’t remember. With everything that happened… after.’

Helen stared into the fire. The flames, fluid as water, melted and separated her thoughts. Everything that had led up to the night Caro took Libby’s baby, had been a runaway-train wreck, fuelled by heartbreak and loneliness. Caro’s heartbreak and loneliness. And as much as it had hurt, it had, Helen knew, been a hurt she should learn to navigate. That all the good people of the world would learn to navigate. So she had begun to. But she wasn’t perfect. Libby had walked through fire that night. They all had, and they were all still a little scorched and every time she saw again her daughter’s stricken face in the hours Ben and Caro were missing, she found another layer of resentment that she’d worked hard to keep buried. But those feelings were diluting. Caro and she were, tentatively, back on the same track… Until, that is, she’d come to the dead-end of that overheard conversation.It was a mistake.His hand on Caro’s knee and Caro just sitting there, allowing it. How could she find a way to water all that down? She hadn’t even tried. The fact that her marriage was over, she accepted, and had in fact instigated. The fact that it had been a sham all along was harder to swallow. But even worse (because having had time to think it through, Helen understood that she had expected more from Caro than she ever had from Lawrence) was the fact that Caro had played the role of friend on the one hand, and been so ready to betray her on the other. The dual nature of her best friend distorted the view of her own life. Turned it upside down, placed her on the outside, like a spectator.

‘I made a promise that day,’ Caro was saying. ‘And it was to be more like you, Helen… But… It’s complicated.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s just so complicated.’

‘Like me?’ Helen whispered. The vibration in her ears was constant now, a relentless thrum. Was this the moment Caro was going to tell her that she was in love with Lawrence? And that Lawrence was in love with her? And that all those years ago, they’d both made the biggest mistake of their lives? Half of her wanted to laugh. A physical response to the unbearable constraint of social conformity. The way some people laugh at funerals, the way naughty kids laugh in front of the teacher. She got that now. The more she knew it would bring everything crashing down, the stronger the urge to tip her head back and laugh out loud at the absurdity of it all. Which would be the last time any of them laughed. Ever. Because if…ifCaro opened this can of worms… which would have to be opened, would surely one day need to be shown the light of day… how would they ever get them back in? Tramp them down, silence and squash them? Panic scored her, and again the urge to giggle was ridiculous. They couldn’t close the lid on this. They wouldneverbe able to do that. And it didn’t matter. Here underneath galaxies of stars, in the great scheme of life, amid all the blood and heartbeats of this world, it really didn’t matter. Except it did. And how would they get through the next two minutes, let alone the next two days? She didn’t speak. She stretched her legs out and stared at the fire. She was thinking of Kay, whose outline she could see next to Caro, whose holiday it was and who was dying. ‘Why would you want to be more like me?’ she said, her words dripping out loud and resonant, like water in an empty space. ‘So you could take my place?’

The shape in the darkness that moved was Kay. Not much. A sway backwards, and definitely a movement.

‘You’re brave Helen!’ Caro laughed. She swirled her stick in a merry wide arc. ‘You always have been! And on that day, I made a promise to myself to be more like you. To be braver. But it’s so hard when—’

‘I am not brave!’ Helen’s hiss was laser sharp. It decapitated Caro’s sentence, which was fine by Helen. Just fine. Because whatever Caro was going to say next, she wouldn’t hear it. For a long time now, there had been a part of herself that she’d hated, that she’d been trying to starve into submission. It was the part that had been aware of Caro’s jealousy and had, in an awfulawfulway, fed off it. All those years when she had had the house, and the husband, the right kind of tableware and the right kind of newspaper. When she had thrown the best kind of parties and had the best kind of fun (she was fun!Didn’t all those fun Facebook photos prove that?), this part of Helen had grown comfortable. And the fat lazy lie she had told herself, the version that had proved more palatable, because it didn’t involve addressing that very deep, but very constant seam of dissatisfaction, was that if someone else wanted everything she had, was jealous of it, and, more, was someone she actually admired, then those things – the house, the husband, the plates, the parties – must have had value, mustn’t they? For so long she’d held onto this like a talisman, clutching it long after it was obvious that what she was clutching was an empty pod, the seed of life within it long since dispersed on wind after bitter wind of disappointment. Well, enough! She didn’t want Caro to be jealous, because there was, and never had been, anything to be jealous of. And she certainly didn’t want to stand and hear Caro say how she wanted to be more like her. Who the hell was she to be emulated? What the hell had she ever done? Married a man whom, it turned out, had never loved her? Nurtured a long and close friendship with a woman who was quite capable of deceiving her? It was all… It was all so fucked up! ‘I am not brave,’ she said again, the words slow with finality. And she saw how Kay had put her glass down and leaned forward to cover her face with her hands.

‘You are!’ Caro smiled.

‘When,’ Helen seethed, ‘have I ever been brave?’

‘You went sailing!’ Caro exclaimed. ‘I couldn’t have done that. And today, you climbed right onto your horse without even a second thought. You’ve always been braver than me, Helen.’ And suddenly Caro stopped talking, the stick lowering. ‘What did you say?’ she said slowly. ‘Take your place?’

‘I heard you,’ Helen whispered.

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