Page 42 of A Midlife Gamble

‘Marianne’s here. We’ll just take a seat on the porch and wait there.’

Wistfully Caro glanced across at the swing chair, the quiet spot she’d intended to claim, the space in which she needed to make perhaps the most important decision of her life. Half of her wanted to explain this, point by point, make her case. The other half was already resigning herself to the inevitable. She folded the arms of her sunglasses together. And then there was another consideration, which there could be no denying, Kay, she was sure, would rather have Marianne’s company. This place was so peaceful. Why would Kay want it tainted with the fall out of tensions from earlier?

‘Don’t you want to try?’ Kay asked now.

‘It’s not that.’ Caro turned to look back at the horses. It was entirely that. She didn’t want to try. She was scared.

Gabe was still talking to Helen. ‘Keep the ball of your foot on the stirrup,’ she heard him say. ‘That’s important. Without a heel you got nothing to stop your foot getting caught.’ And to emphasise his point, he jiggled the stirrup. ‘If your horse decides it’s gonna run, and your foot is caught, you’re in trouble.’

Caro stretched her foot forward. ‘I don’t really have the right shoes,’ she said, as she looked at her sneaker.

‘Neither does Helen,’ Kay answered.

‘Noo…’ She turned her sunglasses over in her hand. ‘But Helen’s done this before, Kay. She had riding lessons as a child.’

Kay tipped her head back and laughed. ‘Forty years ago, Caro.’

Pressing her lips tightly together, Caro didn’t answer.

‘Are you scared?’

‘Yes,’ she said, then, ‘you know Helen, she’s always been braver.’

‘I wouldn’t say that.’

‘About things like this, I mean. Sailing and…’

‘Bravery,’ Kay smiled, ‘comes in different forms.’

Unintentionally Caro glanced down at Kay’s puckered scar, the tail end of which was visible from the neck of her t-shirt. A feeling of shame arose. Courage? What kind of courage did it take to live under the threat of death? Turning back to watch Helen, a thought struck her. The years of her life in which not much happened were gone. Those times when ten or twenty years might pass, with nothing more dramatic than a change of address. When her parents still lived and the shape of her own future was still malleable. She put her sunglasses back on and turned to watch the horses, shuffling dust, flicking their tails. In the space of twelve months, she’d been pregnant and had a miscarriage that had ended any chance of her becoming a mother. She’d become an orphan, quit her job, and miraculously stumbled upon a new relationship, unlike any other she’d ever been in. She’d been proposed to. For the first time in her life, she had been proposed to! And her best friend was dying, and her other best friend was retreating, irreversibly as a glacier. What on earth would it matter if she got on a horse or not? And if she didn’t do it now, when would she ever get the chance again? Probably never, and this she knew because if there was one thing this last year had taught her, it was that chances are finite and the last one rarely bothers to make itself known.

‘I think it would be good for you,’ Kay said softly.

Caro nodded. From the beginning, the very beginning when they were gauche eighteen-year-olds, Kay had always seemed to know what was going on in her head. Blinking back a tear, she nodded again. What on earth was she going to do without her?

But just gettingin the saddle was such a finely choreographed dance, fraught with so much danger and so many rules, that if she could have pressed abort, she would have. Last chance be damned.

Gabe called instructions.Approach from the left side. Come in at the shoulder. Hold the reins in the left, keep them loose. Check your girth.

What did that mean? She had no idea.

Don’t kick the horse as you swing your leg over.

Why would she do that? Panicked, her mind shifted a gear, throwing up image after image of the horse bolting, her foot catching, her body dragging. To calm herself, she concentrated on its quivering warm flank and tried to ignore the wild white of its eye, all the time acutely aware that on the other side of the corral, Helen was already astride her horse.

‘Foot in the stirrup, Caro!’ Tony grinned.

But when she lifted her foot, her supporting leg went to jelly. Knees shaking, she clutched at the reins.

‘Atta girl,’ Tony said. ‘Now press down.’

‘Press down? What do you m—’

But Tony’s hands were on her bottom, hefting her up like a sack of potatoes, so now she was rising… up… up… and it was all too late.

‘Swing your leg! Keep a hold of the reins!’

And what could she do? She was well past the point of no return. Setting her jaw in grim determination, she swung her leg over the bridge of the horse’s spine and landed with all the finesse of a wet towel, plumb in the saddle. She had a moment to cherish the relief of finding herself on the horse, rather than in a heap on its other side, before the animal snorted and began a jolting shuffle sideways. Caro froze. It was one thing to know in theory that this was a live animal, quite another to experience how powerless she felt now, sitting atop. The ground was suddenly a long way down, and the realisation that she had ceded control to such a huge and powerful creature filled her veins with ice. She was terrified. If she could have slipped off, she would have done so. But this wasn’t a fairground carousel. What if she got it wrong? Got her foot stuck in the stirrup, angered the horse and… Panicked, she looked around for help. Someone needed to tell her what to do, and how to do it.Now.Things had to be learned, spelt out, planned, but Tony had moved away and up ahead Helen’s horse was walking slowly out of the paddock, tail flicking, Helen astride, looking as comfortable as if she’d been born on it.

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