Page 50 of A Midlife Gamble

The fire crackled. Helen watched as deep within its depths a tiny explosion of sparks fired up and vanished. A birth and an extinction of energy. There was, she felt, more life in that single moment of combustion than she feared she might ever possess again. Neither Caro, nor she herself, had seen Kay leave. Kay whose peace of mind they had managed to fracture. What did that say about them? She felt dull. Flattened by the understanding.

‘I always liked British people,’ Marianne said. ‘They have a good sense of humour. No dress sense, but a good sense of humour.’

Helen looked up. ‘What happened?’ she said. ‘You saidhad.Youhada friend.’

‘Louise got herself an American boyfriend, and then a visa. She was going out to live with him.’

‘You lost touch?’

‘No.’ Smiling, Marianne shook her head. ‘Her plane never arrived. This was December 1988.’

‘Oh my God.’ Caro covered her mouth with her hand. ‘Lockerbie?’

Marianne nodded. ‘It can happen so fast,’ she said and her left eye twitched, like a speck of dust had blown in. One twitch and nothing more. ’It’s been over thirty years and I still think about her. I didn’t have another close friend after that. When you’re young, and so many people are in your life, you don’t understand. You don’t know what makes a friend, so you think everybody you meet is your friend. But they’re not. They’re just passing through. Louise though?’ Marianne smiled. ‘I like to think that the troubles we had, we would have got over them. We would still be friends. We had already been through so much together.’ She looked up. ‘History. You call it history? Who else was I going to get that from?’

Helen took a long and deep breath. Once upon a time history had been her subject. And Marianne was right. It was non-transferable, it couldn’t be peeled off and stuck onto the next likely candidate that came along. She stared at the flames. She had no idea what to think, or what Caro might say next. What part of their shared history she was going to re-write. In the end it didn’t matter, because whatever it was, she was going to have to face it.

‘When you all stayed at the hotel in Cyprus,’ Marianne continued, ‘I was envious. You seemed such good friends. I watched you and then I went home to my little house and I thought about Louise. I wondered what our friendship would have been like, if she had lived. I was jealous of her. That’s all it was. We were not on good terms when she died and that was my fault. She was on her way to America. Maybe a whole new life, and I felt like she was leaving me behind.’ Marianne sighed. ‘I hope that she would have come to forgive me. I hope that I would have been mature enough to apologise, that we would, in time, have laughed about it.’

Caro looked up. ‘About what?’

‘My jealousy,’ Marianne said simply. ‘The fact that I was jealous, when there was nothing to be jealous of. Life isn’t a race. I know that now. There was no prize between us and nothing to win. She would have had her life, and I would have had mine, and just to have had such a good friend through it all, would have been prize enough. Anyway…' She lifted a hand, waved an open palm to the sky and then let it fall again. 'When Kay emailed me, after your holiday, it was a little miracle. Yes.’ Nodding, Marianne looked from Caro to Helen. ‘She doesn’t have so much time left. Is it really so unforgivable, Helen? What happened with the baby?’

‘No,’ Helen whispered. ‘But it’s not as simple as you think Marianne. There’s—’

‘Your husband said something to Caro?’

Helen looked at her.

‘Kay told me.’

She nodded.

‘What did he say?’

But Helen shook her head. She didn’t want to repeat it. Not ever.

And across the other side of the fire, Caro stood up. ‘You only heard half the conversation, Helen. Yes, he had his hand on my knee, but did you see me take it off?’

Helen didn’t answer.

‘Because if you didn’t see that, then you didn’t hear what I said after. And I need you to know. I need you to know what I said.’

Still Helen didn’t respond.

‘I said, I pitied him, Helen!’ Wringing her hands together, Caro took a step forward. ‘That’s what I want you to hear. It’s not a pleasant thing and I’m sorry. But that’s what I said.’

‘Pity?’

‘Yes.’

Confusion clouded Helen’s face. Her body hadn’t caught up with her mind. She could feel her head shaking, refusing the rest of the conversation, whilst knowing that everything depended upon hearing it. ‘Why?’ Her mouth made the shape anyway.

‘Because he was losing you, Helen, and I wasn’t!’ Caro’s voice was a plea, a cry to be heard. ‘I told him that the only mistake I ever made, was in risking our friendship by sleeping with him in the first place. Risking the friendship of a loyal and funny woman. A brave woman, who always told me the truth. And not because she wanted to hurt me. I knew that, Helen! I never wanted to hear it, but I knew it was because you wanted the best for me. You’re loyal. You’ve always been loyal to me.’

‘But you slept with him?’

‘Yes.’ Caro nodded. She thrust her hands into her pockets and as if the admission were too awful to face, twisted away to look at the sky. ‘That bit is true,’ she whispered in a voice whittled bare. ‘I’m so bloody sorry it ever happened. If I could rewind thirty years and take it back, I would. And I’m even more sorry it’s taken me so long to work this all out.’

---