Page 55 of A Midlife Gamble

Hands at her face, Marianne looked up. ‘What do we do?’

‘There’s nothing we can do. Gabe will take us back?’ Helen said, looking at Lula.

‘When I wake him.’

‘So we wait,’ Helen said.

Now Caro came and sat the other side of Marianne. ‘We wait. We’ll send Kay a text.’ She was looking at Helen. ‘Explaining that we’ve sorted things out. Between us?’

‘Yes.’ Helen nodded. ‘I’ll bet they’ve gone back to play cards. She was buzzing this afternoon.’ And thinking this, her face drained. ‘What if she loses all that money she won?’

Caro had leaned froward to rest her chin in her hands. ‘We can’t do anything about that. We can only be there, if she does.’ Leaning back against the cushion she sighed. ‘You know, I’m glad she’s gone actually. This is her trip and if she wants to play, great. She’d have a lot more fun that sitting here listening to us argue!’

And at this Helen laughed. It was true and now she too was glad that Kay had taken herself off. In fact she was delighted. Good for Kay! Tony might be all sorts of things, but he wasn’t an axe-murderer. Kay would be fine. In fact, once Caro and she were able to reassure Kay that it was over, all the misunderstandings and the tension, she would be more than fine. Close by, she heard a stifled sob. Marianne was weeping quietly. Helen stretched her arm out, letting her hand come to rest on Marianne’s shoulders. She felt both lighter and larger than she had in a long time, newly equipped somehow to carry the weight of Marianne’s disappointment, buoyed up with relief. Turning to Caro she smiled. And in return, Caro stretched her hand along Marianne’s shoulders to clasp Helen’s and they sat, fingers entwined, waiting for Lula to wake Gabe.

24

Standing in a hotel room which could swallow the entire ground floor of her house, Kay stood exposed as the last soldier on a battlefield.

Everything about what she was doing in the instruction manual of life that had been handed down to her, felt wrong. But how quickly it had been done. How easy to close that book, and turn to another one.Don’t get addicted,Helen had joked on the way to Tony’s ranch. Yet here she was, with an urge stronger than any chocolate craving, ready to risk the money she’d won earlier. Five hundred dollars. The most she’d ever won, and that included every raffle she’d ever entered her entire adult life. So what else could explain the ease with which she had agreed to Tony’s suggestion, other than the beginning of an addiction?

She turned, walked across to the bed and picked up her handbag, opened it and looked at the pile of coloured chips nestled inside. There they were, and the urge to double, triple them was so powerful, it scared her. She hadn’t known she could be so greedy. The kind of addiction that disrupted lives wasn’t for the likes of her. She was too sensible, too busy, too happy with her lot. Even Alex, and all the difficulties that had come with him, had never tempted her to want more, to chase things she didn’t already have. She’d never had the ambition of Caro. In fact, in the smallest of ways, it had always amused Kay to see the perpetual chase Caro’s life had been. All the upgrades and improvements she’d undergone, both to herself and her material surroundings and still, she’d never seemed entirely satisfied. Which was all the more astonishing to Kay now that she too had flown business class, she too had used an executive airport lounge, stayed in – she turned to look around the room – such magnificent surroundings.

But five hundred dollars? In less than an hour?

Double that, and it could be a holiday.

Triple, or even quadruple, and she could make a real start on Alex’s fund. The kind of start that, by the time it was needed, might at least be a bulwark against the harsh realities of life on a state pension.

Behind her, hanging from a hook on the wall, exactly where she’d placed it on the first day, the sequins on her Vegas jacket caught the overhead light and winked. Kay turned to face it and the jacket winked again.

You’ve got guts, Kay.Those were Tony’s exact words.

Did she? It had been easy and, she had to admit, very pleasant, to nod and smile and go along with him, but alone now in her room, staring at her jacket, she understood it wasn’t true. Not really. Her mother had been a teacher, so she too had become a teacher. Her mother had moved up to head, and that had been Kay’s intention as well… before Alex. This wasn’t making choices, or taking chances, this was following an example set. A good example, but nevertheless an example already set. Turning away, she caught sight of herself in the full-length mirror on the opposite wall. If they knew… If her parents could see how she was considering placing hundreds of dollars on the turn of a card, they would be horrified.

Minutes passed. Minutes that felt like hours, as she stood staring at her reflection. Minutes in which she fully expected the door to burst open and Caro and Helen to fly through. For someone to come and rescue her from a choice she was equal parts terrified of and excited by. A choice she really was making herself. A chance she really was going to take.Who are you?she whispered. Who was she? What would they say about her… afterwards?

She was a nice person. A good mother. A competent mathematician.

‘I’m Kay Burrell,' she said to the mirror. ‘The kind of woman who buys a glittery jacket and never wears it.’

Six is the worst card, Kay.

Keep a count of those high cards.

‘Why shouldn’t I, dad?’ she said, answering the echo of memory, and in the empty room, her voice was loud. But why shouldn’t she use the natural advantage she had? That innate memory for numbers and ratios and proportions? She’d spent her life trying to pass some of her ability onto hundreds, thousands of kids. Those that never stood a hope of getting past a few basic equations and the few that she’d pushed and cajoled all the way over the finishing line. Why shouldn’t she be selfish now? Swap out those matchsticks for hundred-dollar chips?

Like a signal, a beam of light flashed off her jacket again. Slowly, Kay walked across and slipped it on and turned once more to face the mirror. And despite everything, despite her cancer, despite the decades that had passed, despite her weight and her weariness, despite the slog of the years, her mother’s dementia, her father’s frailty, despite Alex… wearing it, she felt very, very different. She felt as she had the very first time she’d tried it on in the cramped changing room of BHS, a different century and another lifetime ago – as if the world was hers for the taking. And just as they had then, the thousand sequins whispered their possibilities, reflected their light, opened up vista after unseen vista for her and made it so very easy to believe that she was, and could be, someone else. A child playing dress-up! An actor! A woman ready to mix it up with the high rollers! Ridiculous. She was an overweight, fifty-plus, maths teacher from suburbia, who’d had a lucky streak… She dropped her head to one side and frowned. Tony had said something, on the way back. Well, he’d said a lot. He did a lot of talking. But one thing particularly had struck true and she was trying to remember… Something about pretending, about…

If you’re uncomfortable doing something, pretending to be someone else makes it more comfortable.

She turned on her heel, and went straight to the tall bureau, where she’d unpacked her clothes. From the top drawer, she pulled out the Roxette wig Craig had given her at Helen’s house just the other week. She didn’t use the mirror as she tugged it on. She was careful, making sure it was fully in place, had covered all the tufts of her own close crop, as if instead of an empty room behind her, an audience awaited. And eventually, when she did turn, jacket on, wig on, the image that presented itself in the mirror had Kay gasping in disbelief. Had her pressing her hand to her mouth.Be blonde,Sammy had written, and together they’d laughed at the foolishness of that old adage,blondes have more fun. A hair colour, was a hair colour, was a hair colour. But how different she looked! How much more indeed like Roxette and less like Kay the schoolteacher. She grabbed her handbag and swung it over her shoulder, looking back at herself one last time. If only she’d known! Thirty odd years she’d had the same hairstyle… thirty odd years.

Tony was waitingdownstairs in the foyer as arranged, by the golden sphere. She saw him as soon as the elevator doors opened, but he didn’t see her. Or if he did, he didn’t recognise her. So she did look that different! The realisation excited her. ‘Over here,’ she called.

As he turned, his face broke into an enormous smile. ‘And you said you couldn’t pretend!’

Fighting a wave of uncertainty, Kay smiled. Her hand went to the back of her ear. The wig was itchy, but apart from that no one was giving it, or her, a second glance. Was it really this easy to slip your skin?

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