Page 51 of A Midlife Gamble

In between them, Marianne drew in a long and silent breath.

‘When,’ Helen managed. ‘When did you sleep with him?’

‘Three weeks before graduation,’ Caro said flatly. ‘I don’t have an excuse. I was twenty-one and still a virgin and I was jealous of you. It was so easy for you.’

The corner of Helen’s lips twitched. A storm of emotions pushed through. ‘To lose my virginity!’

‘No! I mean, life! I mean, everything! But I don’t think that now. I understand now. Nothing has been easy. I’m talking about my twenty-one-year-old self here, Helen. What she was thinking!’ Looking at the ground, Caro sighed. When she spoke again, her voice was heavy with regret. ‘Please try to forgive her. She envied you so much.’

Helen leaned forward and dropped her head into her hands. She was trying to find a response, but it was like trying to scratch fire from wet wood. The only thing Caro’s admission had sparked was a dull nothingness. No white-hot anger, no throbbing wound… nothing. In an ironically detached way, it occurred to her that another lifetime ago, there might have been some moral high ground available, to which she might cling. And do what? Sit in righteous and cold solitude? Because it would be cold. Any heat of emotion that belonged with this episode had long since died away, like ripples on a lake, melting back into the darkened surface from which they had arisen. The only thing that remained now were Caro’s last words,she envied you so much.Raising her head, as if to memorise those words before they disappeared forever, Helen stared into the fire. Envy, envy, envy. How much of her life had she wasted at her own kitchen sink, indulging in that same four-lettered utterly useless pastime? And what would it have taken for her to stop envying the choices Caro had made with her lie? Losing Caro completely, like Marianne had lost her friend? Her voice was quiet, but nonetheless perfectly clear. ‘I’ll forgive her,’ she said, ‘if you will do something for me?’

Caro turned to her.

‘Tell her,’ Helen continued in a croak, ‘tell her, that she will have nothing to envy? That Helen will get married to a selfish and shallow man, who she will stay with long after she should have left…’

‘Helen—’

Helen raised a hand. She wouldn’t be stopped. What was going to be said, had to be said. ‘Tell her, that the Helen that Caro admires so much, will grow into a coward. That life will swing her such a blow…’

‘Daniel?’

Tears streaming down her face, Helen nodded. ‘Such a blow, she whispered, remembering the stillbirth of her first child. ‘She’ll lose herself. She’ll spend years and years, terrified of her own shadow. I’ve been hiding for years,’ she said hoarsely. ‘Whereas you? You went out and got what you wanted, Caro. You put the effort in. So tell her,pleasetell her that she’s got it all wrong. That it’s Helen who should admire Caro. That it’s Helen who will be envious of Caro. It’s Helen who’ll spend weekends at the kitchen sink, wondering about you. Where you are, or what you were doing. You always seemed so free. You were always true to your course, when sometimes it has felt as if I have let everything and everyone, blow out everything I thought I was, and anything I ever wanted.’

Beside her, Marianne nodded, put a hand to her eye and wiped away what might have been a tear.

‘I’m sorry, Helen. I was so jealous.’

‘I know,’ Helen whispered.

‘Of the life you had.’

Rubbing at her forehead, Helen stood up. ‘I want to stop this,’ she said. ‘I don’t care about what happened thirty years ago, and I want to be able to put last year behind us. Completely behind us. But I don’t know how… I don’t know what to do.’

‘Start again,’ Marianne said.

Both Helen and Caro looked at her.

‘I have had so many dreams,’ Marianne said, and her voice cracked. ‘So many nights when I have woken up with a wet pillow, because every time the dream has always ended the same way.’

‘With what happened?’ Caro whispered.

Marianne shook her head. ‘No. I never dream about that. In my dreams, Louise and I are always starting again. It is always at the beginning. We are young and we are in London and we have always just met.’

Caro looked at Helen. ‘Modern philosophy,’ she whispered. ‘Remember?’

Helen smiled. ‘You looked like the kind of girl who was determined to do well. That’s why I sat next to you.’

‘I’m so glad you did, Helen,’ Caro cried. She took a wobbly step forward and so did Helen and they met in front of the fire and held each other, and behind them Marianne nodded as she used her thumbs to blot her eyes.

22

The radio was playing country music, one mournful vibrato after another. In another time and place, Kay would have turned it off. The last thing she needed right now being lament after lament about the sadness of life. But here, cocooned in the air-conditioned comfort of the SUV, the Mohave desert flashing past on either side, the music felt perfect, made it easier to forget she’d left the others behind and easier to pretend she was a twenty-first-century cowgirl, a pioneer, a someone other than herself. Because the unease lingered. She’d left, with no warning. And she’d left to come back and gamble. Tony, who seemed subdued but none the less more at ease than herself, had tried to reassure her several times now. Lula would let the others know and Gabe would drive them. Kay hadn’t felt wholly comfortable with the idea, but who was she to intervene? Hidden Valley Ranch wasn’t her ranch and Lula and Gabe weren’t her staff. She leaned her elbow against the rim of the window, and stared out into the black of the desert. There wasn’t much to see – the occasional outline of a tall spiky yucca against the mauve sky, sometimes the elongated glow of approaching, but still distant, headlights. To distract herself from the discomfiture that lingered, she turned to Tony. ‘Why don’t you carry on?’ she said, forcing a lightness into her voice at odds with the darkness they were surrounded by.

‘Carry on?’

‘Yes, from where you left off the other day.’ Kay tried to laugh. She was nervous and the more she allowed herself to think what they were heading back to, the more intense that worry became. The chips she had won earlier were still in her purse. She hadn’t cashed them up, because… She’d told the others that there hadn’t been time. There had been plenty of time. She hadn’t cashed the chips, because she wanted to do it again. An itch, which didn’t sit comfortably. It was obviously much easier to walk away from a pile of matchsticks than a pile of genuine Vegas chips. ‘You were telling me about your work. We got up to when you were cast inDays of Your Lives.’

‘Oh, you don’t want to know about that.’ And in Tony’s voice, perhaps for the first time, Kay recognised a deep and rather sad note of authenticity. It surprised her. It had her turning to study his profile, but his expression was… expressionless.

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