Page 63 of A Midlife Gamble

‘Oh, shit!’ Caro, leading the way, had stopped.

It didn’t take Helen long to see why. The escalator had deposited them at the far end of the slots room. One hundred and twenty thousand square feet, filled with over one thousand slot machines, which they would need to navigate their way across to find the elevators to get back – finally – to their rooms. And nothing to guide them! Not a sun or moon in sight, rather, wave after wave of ceiling-mounted multicoloured neon lighting and a carpet busier than her grandmother’s curtains. At least Columbus had had a compass, Odysseus a few friendly gods! The scene ahead, although slightly more muted than it was in daytime hours, had Helen’s knees bending like rubber. It was more than she could manage, at the end of this longest of days, too much. If it hadn’t been for Caro, striding into the fray, she might have just found the nearest corner and curled up there.

‘Where are you going?’ Kay called weakly.

Caro stopped and turned to them.

Thank God, Helen thought, because where had she been going? Surely she wasn’t going to try and…

‘Just follow me,’ Caro called. ‘Stay close and follow me.’

Helen and Kay looked at each other.

‘Does she know where she’s going?’ Marianne said, close behind.

Helen shrugged. There were, and always had been, some areas of life in which she wouldn’t ever have tried to test Caro. Compound interest, or whatever it was. The going rate for a good dry-cleaner. ‘Wait!’ she called. Because it was clear, from the confident way Caro was moving ahead, they were in that kind of territory now. Or at least Caro thought so.

Caro smiled. 'Don’t you trust me?'

‘I do,’ Helen said, but she was looking at the rows and rows of identikit flashing slot machines. She did trust Caro, she definitely did, but she was also remembering those brief twenty minutes she had been lost in this mega-room. It couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes, but it had felt like twenty hundred, and she had been hopelessly lost and the thought of wandering forever, or at least until dawn, had her faint. She was fifty. She needed her bed. ‘Just…’ And turning the ends of her knotted shoelaces, she lowered her chin and looked down at them, an idea forming that was as silly as it was sensible. She turned to Kay. ‘Give me one of your sneakers.'

Wordlessly, Kay handed her sneaker over. She did not ask why, and she looked so tired and so small Helen had the feeling she would have handed tomorrow over, in order to get to a bed. Leaning over, Helen knotted the lace of Kay’s sneaker to the lace of one of her own. When she was done she handed Kay her sneaker back so now they were joined. ‘I’ve got you now,’ she said and turned to Caro. ‘Your turn.’

Offering no resistance, Caro handed her sneaker over.

Helen knotted it with her remaining shoe. Wiping a clump of hair from her forehead, she handed it back, saying, ‘And if you tie your other sneaker to Kay’s, so Kay and Marianne can use it.’

Caro nodded When she’d finished, Helen dipped forward, checking that they were all joined.

‘If the laces were a bit longer we could skip,’ she said.

‘My relationship with gravity has changed since those days,’ Kay said wearily. ‘I don’t think I’d leave the ground.’

‘I haven’t skipped since 1969,’ Marianne muttered. She looked at Helen. ‘This is one of the many things they never tell you about having a baby.’

Helen smiled. ‘No skipping. I promise. Right!’ And jiggling the laces, she turned to Caro. ‘We’re ready. At least,’ she added cheerily, ‘if we perish, we’ll perish together.’

‘It could take days.’ Marianne shook her head. ‘I’ve never seen such an enormous hotel. It makes me miss Cyprus.’

‘Well, if it takes days,’ Helen said, ‘I give you all permission to feast off my body. I’ve eaten enough since we’ve been here to keep everyone going at least until morning.’ And turning, she was rewarded by the sight of a smile creeping across Kay’s face. ‘Onward, Caro?’

Caro must have seen Kay’s smile too, Helen thought, because she wasn’t imagining it. No, it was real. The sense of renewed lightness, of determination and belief that had them – linked as surely as girls with skipping ropes – following on into the mighty labyrinth ahead.

And Caro did knowthe way! Tugging them all along, past slots that Helen had never seen before and would be happy never to see again. Slots depicting women with breasts as round and viciously hard as medicine balls; men with far too much facial hair. Until, quite abruptly, Caro came to a halt, stopping in front of a slot and staring at it, an inscrutable expression on her face.

‘What’s the hold up,’ Marianne called from the rear.

Caro turned. ‘You’re not a loser, Kay,’ she said suddenly.

‘Oh… don’t—’ Kay started weakly.

‘No,’ Caro interrupted. ‘You’re not.’

‘Caro…’ Helen's voice was edged with caution.

But Caro turned to her. ‘How much cash have you got on you?’

‘I… I don’t know.’ She was thrown by the question. Thrown by the urgency with which Caro had asked. ‘Not much,’ she said. ‘Maybe twenty dollars.’

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