Page 61 of A Midlife Gamble

Helen turned back to the empty square. There was no one in sight and if there was one thing she was sure of, it was that Kay wasn’t fine. 'I'm going down,' she said, and, without hesitation, she hurried across the bridge, slipping off her sneakers as she did and hitching up her sleeves. When she reached the railings, again she didn't pause. She swung one leg as high as she could, made an odd wheezing sound and hoisted herself up.

‘Helen!’ Caro hissed.

Perched atop the railings, Helen looked up. ‘It’s just like getting on the horse,’ she giggled. Actually, it was much harder. The iron-work of the railings was a lot more unforgiving than the flank of a horse. She had a moment to wonder how Kay, who was so much shorter, had managed, and then she leaned forward, swung her back leg over and landed clumsily on the other side. Her hands stung. Standing upright, she shook them loose and called up, ‘Are you coming?’

Marianne and Caro looked at each other. A moment later they were facing her, on the other side of the railings.

‘You know, there are cameras everywhere,’ Caro whispered.

‘Why are you whispering?’ Helen whispered back.

Caro giggled. ‘I don’t know.’

‘I’ll get deported,’ Marianne moaned.

‘We all will,’ Helen said. ‘And no one wants to end their professional life with a deportation notice. Do they?' As she finished, she looked at Caro. The words had slipped out before she could stop them. Parroting back to Caro, almost the exact same words Caro had used herself, all those years ago, the night she’d wanted to sleep under the stars at Stonehenge,and Caro had said,No one wants to start their professional life with a police caution.‘Stonehenge,’ she said now, a glint of a challenge in her eye.

Caro looked at her. ‘I didn’t say that!’

‘As good as!’

And again Caro held her eye. ‘Well fuck it!’ she whispered. ‘I’ve had my professional life, it’s time I started my real life!’ And she bent down and pulled her sneakers off.

And as Helen watched, a feeling of immeasurable lightness lifted her. Kay was here, safe. Caro was back and Marianne…

‘How am I going to get over that!' Marianne cried, waving at the railings. ‘I’m not even as tall as Kay.’

‘Use your hands,’ Helen whispered to Caro. ‘Give Marianne a lift.’ She made a cradle of her own hands, to show Caro, the action reminding her of lost summers, decades ago, of fences that smelled of creosote and the tingling feeling of stepping over boundaries, every bit as real now as it had been when she was ten years old.

Marianne wiggled out of her jacket and kicked off her sandals. ‘Ready?’ she asked Caro, and didn’t wait for an answer, placing instead the whole of her dusty and manicured foot into Caro’s hands.

And watching Caro’s frame stagger sideways and listening to the urgent whisperings ofWait. Try again. You have to lift!Helen bent at the waist, tears of laughter smarting her eyes.

‘Wait,’ Caro hissed again, but Marianne had already stepped forward into the thin air of a cradle that wasn’t ready. Her foot came down on nothing, her balance went and she fell into a sideways hop, skip and shuffle, landing on the wet-not-wet tiles, legs splayed.

'Hassiktir!' she gasped.

Helen clutched her stomach with laughter. ‘Stop it. I’m going to wet myself.'

‘I already have,’ Marianne muttered.

‘Are you ok?' Caro managed, but she too was laughing.

Marianne wobbled to her feet. ‘Catch me this time?’ she said, her eyes narrowed at Caro.

‘Wait, this time?’ Caro responded.

And up Marianne went, Caro’s cradle holding her. She landed, with a stumble, on the other side of the railing next to Helen. Within another moment Caro had joined them and they stood, looking at each other, faces flushed with the excitement of adventure.

But when they turned to Kay, the excitement evaporated. She hadn’t moved. In all of the stumbling and the whispered giggles, she hadn’t turned to watch, hadn’t shown any interest. She was sat, still as a stone.

Helen went first, sitting herself, very quietly, beside Kay. She leaned forward, to roll up her leggings, before dipping in her feet, one by one. The water was as deliciously cool as she had anticipated. Calming and fresh. Caro joined them. Then Marianne. So now they sat, on the landing board. The four of them, side by side by side.

No one spoke. Helen looked down at her feet. The water distorted and blurred the edges, still it was plain to see that they were not the feet of a young person. Underneath the little toe of her right foot, a bunion had spread sideways. She twisted her leg, to see more clearly. No wonder her shoes hurt so much. And now she looked across at the row of feet in the water. Even Marianne’s pedicure couldn’t disguise the cracked skin and crooked toes and gnarly joints of middle age. Together these feet had borne the weight of two hundred years, and for a brief moment she thought of her babies’ feet, remembering how, when Jack and Libby were tiny, she would hold their toes, so clean, so pink, so uncontaminated by life. ‘Kay,’ she whispered. ‘Caro and I have sorted it all out. I’m so sorry you ever had to hear any of it. It was a stupid misunderstanding. Just stupid.’

‘We’re both sorry, Kay,’ Caro said, leaning to her. ‘This was meant to be such a special trip for you.’

Marianne frowned at the water. ‘I am too. I should never have introduced you to Tony.’

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