Page 70 of A Midlife Gamble

They didn’t get far.A few ideas about dress colour or length that moved quickly onto food and Helen thinking firstly about her appetite and secondly about a recipe she hadn’t used in years, for shortcrust pastry and then whether she might take on the food completely, or if Caro would want her to, or if she really could be bothered… And as the peaks of Colorado became the depths of the Great Lakes, and the drawl of Iowa became the French of Quebec City, the Atlantic Ocean began its great three-thousand mile roar. Until hours later the first weak squibs of orange light peeking over a domed horizon were the sign that they were finally catching up with the sun.

Helen was the first to wake. Stirring from under the folds of her blanket, she opened her eyes. The cabin was still mostly in darkness. Her right shoulder ached and her foot was cramping. Sitting up she flexed her toes and looked first at Caro, and then across at Kay. Both were still sleeping. Pushing her feet into the slippers she’d acquired from the hotel, she made her way to the toilet and, on her return, stood looking along the aisles of sleeping, silent passengers, her eyes moving back to Kay over and again. It was Kay’s hand that drew Helen’s attention. The way it lay curled across her lap, still and luminously white. Her Vegas jacket was crumpled on the floor, her eyes were closed.

‘Kay?’ Helen moved to kneel alongside Kay’s seat.

Kay didn’t stir.

Tentatively she reached her hand to Kay’s. It was ice cold. ‘Kay?’ she managed again and her bladder, although she’d just been to the toilet, loosened in terror, her arms filling warm and heavy with blood. ‘Kay…’ Helen’s voice failed. It failed because now she was close, she could see. Kay’s eyes weren’t fully closed, a line of white lay exposed, just underneath the lid, lifeless as a statue. And her face was alabaster, the blood gone. Dread balled in Helen’s throat, closed it up and pressed it shut as sure as a boot on her windpipe. ‘Caro,’ she whispered, as she tried to turn, her voice a scrape, her legs wobbly with terror. ‘Caro,’ she persisted, because something was wrong…

Caro murmured as she opened her eyes, saw the expression on Helen’s face and in an instant, sat up and looked across at Kay.

And forever after,whenever she tried to remember, Helen wouldn’t know and could never recall the order of events that followed. How it had started.

Was it the air steward whispering through the slightly open door to the cockpit?

Or the galley lights going on? The white and blue of the crew uniform as they scuttled into life?

Was it the pilot’s announcement, asking if there was a doctor on board?

Or the man, in a black tracksuit, two rows back, leaning to the aisle, staring at her?

Or was it the doctor coming forward from economy, a small woman in loose linen trousers and hair in a ponytail, who had pushed Helen aside to bend low over Kay. On her knees, flicking her ponytail back and holding Kay’s wrist, pressing fingertips deep into Kay's neck again and again, waggling her fingers impatiently as she reached an arm back for the stethoscope the steward offered… and then, what had seemed an age later, shaking her head sadly, at the red box he held, the tubing of the stethoscope limp around her neck.No pulse to shock back into rhythm,she'd explained, and the steward had nodded, his face white, his eyes glassy with shocked tears.

Long after, Caro had told her that this was when she’d screamed. That it had taken two stewards to pull her back from Kay and move her forward to the galley, where they had yanked the curtain across, leaving Caro in the aisle, staring at the doctor. Helen could not remember. At the edge of consciousness, she had a muddled awareness of her hands at her ears, her mouth open, but more than that she could not remember.

She remembered the whispered questions the doctor had asked them both. Questions about medications Kay was taking, about the shortness of breath she’d complained of. How long? How frequent? How severe?

She remembered scattered words of conversation they had had with the pilot, who had stood in the aisle, his white shirt bright against her eyes.Clot, pulmonary embolism, no pulse.She remembered the steward, replacing his little red box and closing the overhead compartment in which it lived, that action, like a conductor’s final downward sweep of the baton, bringing it all to an end.

And she remembered clutching a tumbler of something, a drink the steward had placed in her hands, and Caro, and the way he had crouched, one hand on the back of Caro's seat as he talked them through what would happen. How, with only a couple of hours left of the flight, they would leave Kay in her seat. There was no one next to her and she would, of course, be covered with a blanket, but as per normal procedures, it was best now to leave her. Would they like to move into first class?

No!Sometimes in her memories, this image came first, the steward indicating the curtain that separated first class from business. But of course, that could not have been the case; it's funny the tricks a mind in turmoil can play.No!They had responded together, Caro and herself, equally adamant thatNo,they did not want to move.No,they would not leave their friend.

The one memory she was sure of, was that when the cabin lights had been dimmed again, she had slipped out of her seat and had taken Kay’s jacket and spread it over her cold shoulders and her cold cold hands. And that, hours later, as the grey light of another London dawn had seeped into the cabin, and the ancient meandering of the Thames had made itself visible, Helen had closed her eyes and reached out for Caro’s hand and sat thinking only one thing. Alex. How were they going to tell Alex?

PARTV

31

‘Cheers,’ Caro said and chinked Helen’s glass.

‘Cheers,’ Helen returned.

They were back in Cyprus. In a coffee shop, on the crescent-shaped waterfront that was Kyrenia harbour. On the table between them lay a few crumbled remains of the giant slab ofshamalicake they’d shared. A few feet away, the sea wall and then the turquoise-blue of the Mediterranean. A thousand sailboats strained at their creaking ropes, masts jiggling, booms humming, canopies fluttering like ribbons. Helen felt the breeze on her face, heard the percussion of the boats and remembered the day she had launched one. Launched it and helped right it after it had capsized. It was only two years ago. It felt like a lifetime.

‘To your divorce,’ Caro smiled.

‘To your wedding,’ Helen answered.

She’d done it. She was Helen Winters no longer. A single woman again after two and a half decades, and back to her maiden name of Crossley. She had a small flat, with a spare room and a small balcony that caught the morning sun and had space for a few pots and a hanging basket, in which she had planned to grow strawberries but hadn’t yet managed to do so. Libby too had her own place and although Helen wasn’t comfortable with the location, she hadn’t said a word. Libby had re-taken her finals, had a place for Ben in the nursery, was halfway through her master’s degree and nearly all the way back to resuming her role as Number One Giver of Unwanted Advice to her mother. Jack, she never saw. Two thirds of his way through his degree and now a summer in America before his final year. Still, she had his favourite cereal in for the times he did make it back. But she had to face it, the balance of her relationship with her children had changed, because they had changed. Whenever she saw them, it took her breath away. It was as if the dough from which they were made had been re-rolled and thicker, more substantial forms cut. Every time, they were that bit less her children and that bit more their own people. It was a maturity of mind, a switch they were making themselves. It didn’t do to dwell on this, so she tried not to and although the first few weeks in her new flat had found her scrolling through her laptop, searching for photographs of children who no longer existed, the habit was loosening its grip. Maybe because she tried hard to remember what Kay had said. The love never dies. And because she knew that she loved her children as much as she ever had, she also knew that, yes, somewhere in this universe, or the next, they were still there.

‘Can you ever imagine doing it again?’ Caro asked.

Slowly Helen turned to her. ‘Marrying?’

‘Yes.’

Helen shook her head. ’I don’t think so. I suppose I should never say never, but I’ve changed too much.’ She put her glass down and looked out at the water. ‘When I was younger,’ she said, ‘I bought into the fairy-tale hook line and sinker. You know, the soulmate for life idea. Now? Now I wouldn’t even buy it if it was half price in Tesco.It’s a lie. Unless someone changes in exactly the same ways that you do yourself, how can they possibly be a soulmate?’ She shook her head. ‘No, it’s a lie, and I don’t know why it’s peddled so hard to young women.’

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