Chapter 21
21
‘T wenty quid!’ Helen seethed. She turned to Kay. ‘You can’t even get close to the bloody stones!’ With Caro safely accounted for, Helen's mood had grown lighter. Sean had said that Caro was fine and although, judging by his messages, she strongly suspected that he didn't know about the miscarriage or about Caro quitting her job, just the fact that he was able to confirm Caro’s whereabouts (and yes, existence) had felt to Helen like someone lifting a stone from her chest. Added to this, the fact that Stonehenge held such a special place in her memory, it had been with a sense of quiet expectation that she’d approached the ticket desk. Stonehenge, after all these years! But twenty quid! She couldn't have been more outraged than if she was being charged to watch Top of the Pops 2.
'Twenty-one,’ the woman behind the counter corrected. ‘And that’s the off-peak price.’
‘We’re not here to see the stones, Helen.’ Kay bumped her aside. 'Two,’ she said, slapping her handbag on the counter.
‘I’ll pay.’ Helen slapped her own bag alongside.
‘I’ve got it?—’
‘You paid for the petrol?—’
‘I’ve got my purse out?—’
‘Mummy!’ chirped a small boy standing behind them. ‘Why do grown ups always argue about money?’ His thin voice carried high as birdsong.
'Shhh,’ his mother whispered, and Helen and Kay looked at each other.
‘Alright.’ Kay dragged her bag off the counter. ‘You get them.’
'Two then?’ the woman said flatly.
‘Two,’ Helen repeated and stuck two fingers up.
In response the woman slid a brochure and two tickets across.
‘What’s this?’
‘A map.’
‘A map!’ She turned and looked across the open vista of the visitor centre, through the thin steel rods that supported its floating roof and out to the wide expanse of Salisbury Plain where the massive slabs of stone stood, prominent and unmoved for the last few millennia. A map? ‘Is that strictly necessary?’ she said turning back.
In response, more leaflets were slid across.
‘And this?’
‘Safety information. It’s a four-kilometre walk there and back.’
Helen’s eyebrows rose up. She turned to Kay. ‘I don’t remember that bit, do you?’
‘We were drinking cider the moment we got on the bus.’ Kay grimaced. ‘I don’t remember anything.’
‘And we do advise,’ the woman intoned, ‘that you’re suitably dressed, with sturdy shoes and a sunhat. And that you carry water and sun cream which you can purchase from our shop.’ She indicated the shop, the only shop, across the foyer.
Helen’s nostrils flared, releasing two tiny jets of frustration. She wanted to ask if there was a map to find the shop too.
‘And just to remind you, there are no toilet facilities at the site.’
No shit, Sherlock, she didn’t say. She turned to Kay and pulled as childish a face as her fifty-year-old features allowed. They hadn’t seen the sun all day and menopause or not she really did believe she could hold her bladder for more than an hour. Think of all the energy saved if public institutions stopped all the ridiculous namby-pamby that seemed to be standard procedure these days.
‘Why do we need sun cream when it’s not even sunny?’ the boy behind them asked his mother.
‘My point exactly,’ Helen muttered.
And once again Kay nudged her aside as she leaned into the counter and swept all the useless bits of paper into her cavernous handbag. ‘Come on,’ she hissed, linked her arm through Helen’s and steered her away.
Outside, the pathway to the monument was roped either side. ‘For God’s sake!’ Helen cried. ‘Are they worried we’re going to get lost?’
‘It’ll be health and safety,’ Kay muttered.
‘It’ll be fucking ridiculous. Whatever it is.’
‘Excuse me.’ A white-haired couple nudged her aside, the man brandishing his phone at a speaker set in a post. Is it working? the woman asked, as he frowned and adjusted his headphones and thrust the phone forward again. Is it working? Her voice got louder.
They moved away. But boy, was Helen pissed! Ever since the visit Kay and Caro and she had made for the summer solstice, that glorious long-ago summer, with uni finished and the grown-up world only beckoning, not smothering, Stonehenge had remained a sun-filled corner of her heart and, so far, the 21st century was spoiling it. She exchanged a look with Kay and then, head down, began trudging along. Bumping and brushing against the other tourists, most of whom were dutifully wearing sunhats and carrying bottles of water. And looking around at them Helen was seized by a tremendous urge to run. Just turn and run as far away from this pageant of conformity as her legs would take her. To Acapulco or New York. Amazonas… Vegas even! Instead, like a pebble in water, she allowed herself to be jostled and rubbed along and this, she thought ruefully, is how you ended up as a doctor’s receptionist for nearly a decade. Someone nudged her shoulder, a particularly sharp jab and she looked up to see a man move in front of her. She gave the back of his neck the strongest scowl she had, but the man remained oblivious, hands in pockets, elbows wide, two white snails of headphones jammed in his ears as he jabbered away. Get it on the market pronto, bud, she heard him say. What? Stonehenge? And looking at his hairy fat shins and his white sports socks as he plodded ahead, Helen had no doubt that yes, if it was for sale, this man would be getting Stonehenge on the market. Pronto. And that notched her levels of irritation up to top gear. She wasn’t pissed now as much as she was furious. Who were all these people? And why were they allowing themselves to be herded, like cattle? The last time she was here, she’d been twenty-one years old in cut-off denims and a skinny-rib vest. There was no rope and no path. But there was R.E.M. on ghetto blasters and Strongbow cider and God, it had been glorious! And so much fun! They’d laughed, from morning to night, because back then it was very, very easy to laugh. She turned to Kay, her mouth a long flat line. ‘It’s changed.’
‘ It? ’ Kay answered, ‘or us?’
Helen turned away. ‘I don’t remember ropes,’ she said and took hold of one as she passed, giving it a good swing. They were really pissing her off.
Kay smiled. ‘There were fences, Helen. Not ropes.’
‘Fences? No!’
Kay nodded. ‘The police fenced the roads. We couldn’t get anywhere near the stones. Don’t you remember we spent the afternoon with that group of boys from Portsmouth?’ At this, Kay turned and began walking backwards. She raised her arm to point across the fields of Salisbury Plain towards the woods. ‘I’d guess we were over there. You had a snog with one of them.’
Stepping aside of the flow, Helen looked to where Kay pointed. Sweet patchouli oil, sweat (he was bare chested) and a gold earring in his right ear. Instantly she was lost in the eye of a favourite, well-preserved memory. ‘He was cute,’ she murmured, and another photograph turned over in her mind. Swinging blonde ponytail and a narrow waist, the bumpy ridges of his back melting into the dark like a fossil buried in sand. ‘Last I saw of him was when they stormed the barriers.’ So Kay was right! There had been fences.
‘Oh no.’ Kay smiled. ‘The last you saw of him was when the police started rounding everyone up. He ran away and you tried to go after him. You wanted to sleep under the stars. Caro pulled you back.’
Helen turned towards her, her mouth open with mild amazement. ‘I did, didn’t I? I’d forgotten that bit. She literally pulled me back. I’m not sure what she saved me from, but she saved me.’
‘A police record? Devizes?’
‘What?’
‘They bussed them all out to Devizes in the end. Caro probably saved you from a life in Devizes.’
‘Straight into a lifetime with Lawrence.’
‘Half a lifetime.’
‘Mmm.’
‘You were happy though, Helen.’
‘I was.’ Helen nodded. Kay, as always, was right. That kiss and that boy she’d always remembered, but that was only because it had been kept in a safe and special place. A polished ornament of memory, spared from the gritty attrition of everyday life. At twenty-one, her impulsive nature might have led her into all sorts of dead ends far more stifling than the cul-de-sac she felt she was in now. Caro had pulled her back; she had, as usual, toed the line, gone home to resume that burgeoning relationship with Lawrence and yes, she had been happy. But if there was one thing she’d learned in the intervening years, it was that if she ever really was going to sleep under the stars, she needed to be leading, not following. However scary that might feel.
‘There she is.’ Kay’s cry cut through her reverie.
Helen snapped her head up. ‘Where?’
‘I think it’s Caro. Over on the far side. Dark trousers, cream shirt.
Forgetting that there was no sun, and heavily influenced by all the floating sunhats, Helen shielded her eyes as she looked up. Sure enough, on the far side of the stones she could see a lone figure. Caro. Set apart from all the other tourists by her taut concentrated stance. Arms crossed, chin lowered, she was stood staring right into the middle of the ancient circle, under a spell seemingly every bit as powerful as any conjured by the people who built this temple.
Kay, who was already ahead, stopped and looked back at Helen, and both of them, Helen knew, were thinking exactly the same thing. Caro was not fine. Caro was not over it. Caro had not moved on.
* * *
They were only a few yards away when Kay called out.
Caro turned and looked at them and it felt to Helen as if she didn’t know them. As if they were two strangers approaching. It sent a shiver of cold through her and she hung back. The last time they’d seen each other was the day she’d abandoned Caro on a stretcher outside the hospital entrance. And although she knew there was nothing about that day, or the decisions made, that Helen would or could have changed, the image of a stretcher-bound Caro, the way she walked away, was like an invisible energy force that she couldn’t cross. As if she needed forgiveness to step across it. Or at least understanding.
‘How did you know I was here?’ Caro said, more to the stones than anything or anyone else.
‘Your brother.’ Kay, who was now by Caro’s side, put a hand to her shoulder. ‘We messaged him through Facebook.’
‘And I rang Danny,’ Helen added. ‘Not about you but… Anyway…’ Fighting to catch Caro’s eye, Helen paused until she had. ‘He told me about your mother. I’m so sorry, Caro.’
‘Everyone’s been terribly worried,’ Kay said quietly.
Caro didn’t speak.
Taking half a tentative step forward, Helen said, ‘Danny said you've quit your job.’
‘I have.’ Caro didn’t say anything else. She stood and looked at the stones and, a step away, Helen stood and looked at Caro.
‘Caro,’ she started. ‘We’re worried?—’
Caro lifted her head. ‘I switched my phone off,’ she said quietly. ‘That’s all. I just didn’t think to message, but I would have told you both. And I will… I just needed some time.’
No one spoke. Kay and Helen looked at each other.
‘OK,’ Kay said. ‘We… we needed to see for ourselves, but if you…’ She was stopped by the sudden movement of Caro swinging her handbag forward and opening it, searching, with obvious determination, for something.
‘Look at this,’ Caro said. She was holding a photograph.
‘Is it you?’ Helen leaned in. She was looking at a photograph of two small children. Bucket fringe haircuts and tiny shorts. Suntanned limbs, carefree, sitting on a fallen stone.
Caro nodded. ‘I found it. I was going through some old albums.'
‘When was that?’
‘1976 I think,’ she said. ‘Before the stones got fenced off.’
Kay smiled. ‘1976 is beginning to have the same ring as 1876.’
‘We used to come up here on day trips,’ Caro continued. ‘Other families went down to the coast, but this is as far as we got.’ She stretched the photo away to arm’s length and then drew it close again. ‘When I look at this,’ she said, ‘I can’t actually believe I’m the same person. I mean, is that really me?’
‘It’s you,’ Kay said, rubbing Caro’s back.
But Caro shook her head. ‘I don’t think it is, Kay. I really don’t. We share the same body, but apart from that… we’re strangers.’ Her voice became quiet and fragile as a moth. ‘Isn’t that sad?’ she whispered. ‘How strange we become to ourselves?’
Instinctively Helen opened her mouth to speak, but over the top of Caro’s bent head, she saw Kay mouth a no. Face burning, she turned to the stones, reaching down to grip the rope, which was warm, the fibres hairy and rough on her palms. It didn’t matter. She didn’t know what it was she had been going to say anyway.
‘I’d started wondering what it…’ Caro stopped. She was still looking at the photograph. ‘I’d started to wonder what the baby would look like.’
Again Helen looked at Kay, whose hand was still on Caro’s back. She didn’t need another mouthed no this time. What she needed, what perhaps she’d always needed, was a tenth of Kay’s intuition – Kay who, just by being present, had allowed this space to open up for Caro to step into. Kay the eternal peacemaker, negotiator, maker-of-everything-right-again. No wonder it was Kay Caro had told about her therapy. No wonder it was Kay she’d first confided her baby plans in. What bloody use would Helen have ever been with her Emma Bridgewater pottery and her selfish streak? Swallowing down the lump in her throat (because the only person allowed to cry here was Caro) Helen held herself tall, like a shield. That’s all she needed to do. Be. A shield. A presence to protect her friend, struggling to find a foothold in this tortuous maze of impossible tomorrows and unrecognisable yesterdays. From somewhere very nearby and still faraway, she heard a man’s voice. Going to meet with him tomorrow, bud. She shut it out.
‘I hadn’t done that since the very beginning,’ Caro murmured. ‘Because it felt like playing God. Picking out two people, one who I would never meet, and who would never meet each other. Using them to create a third person. That was more playing God than I’d ever dared and so after all the decisions were made, I deliberately didn’t think about noses or hair colour until…’ She tipped her head to the sky. ‘Until in Cyprus, when the doctor treating me said something.’
Unconsciously, on either side, Helen and Kay closed ranks.
‘He said,’ Caro continued, ‘that just carrying a baby shapes their personality. The stresses a mother has, the things she does, and the hormones released… all this starts to shape a baby’s brain before it’s even born. So I would,’ she whispered, ‘have been a mother. In some ways I really would have.’
‘You would,’ Kay echoed.
Caro turned to her. ‘So then it didn’t matter so much. It didn’t matter if the baby looked nothing like me, because it would still be my child. And knowing I would have helped form it, freed me. It’s hard to explain but I started to wonder about eyes. The donor, the male donor, had brown eyes.’
I always said it was undervalued, bud. From day one. That’s what I said …
Helen spun round. There he was. Fat shins, white socks, snails in ears. Briefly he caught her eye and turned away, hands in pockets, jaw working.
‘I saw it,’ Caro whispered.
Helen spun back. She had a horrible idea that she knew what Caro meant, but she didn’t want that idea to be true. She looked at Kay.
‘I saw the embryo.’
Helen stared at her.
‘In the kidney bowl. It had an eye, but it was black not brown.’
‘ Caro .’ Kay’s mouth had pinched shut, white at the edges. She kept her arm around Caro’s back, her own spine hunched and shaped by the moment.
And less than half a half-step away, Helen couldn’t move. Couldn’t reach out to Caro or help in any way. The hour she had spent with her own stillborn son was one of the most precious hours of her life. His eyes had been closed, she never got to see what colour they’d been either, but at least she had gotten to hold her baby, to trace with her fingertip the smudge of gold that was his eyebrow, feel the imprint of his tiny body in her arms forever. Forever . And suddenly it all seemed so unfair. The whole universe. Because as well as her dead son, she’d held and loved two living healthy babies and now she got to hold and love a living healthy grandchild. Couldn’t Caro have had one moment to hold her baby? One tiny moment?
Yep and if he’d listened to me he’d be walking away with 50k profit.
‘ Would you … ! ’ The words spewed from her mouth like volcanic lava. She twisted to Mr White Socks, strode forward and thrust a finger, rigid with rage in his stupid, stupid face. ‘ Take that damned phone call some place else! ’
Astonished, he stopped talking, his jaw retaining the shape of the word he was halfway through.
‘We…’ She had to stop and take a breath. Because her anger was out of control, a raging inferno quite capable of torching everything in sight – this man, his socks, even 5,000-year-old rocks! The inherent unfairness of life! The terrible random cruelty of it! The stupid senselessness of idiots with mobile phones. Of ropes and twenty-one quid off-peak charges despoiling her memory. Of trees felled to make brochures to tell people to wear sunhats, the roping in of common sense and spontaneity, the awful understanding of how life was tightening in on them all like a lasso… or a noose. And Caro. Dear Caro, who never even got the tiniest moment with her baby. ‘We,’ she started again, her chest swelling like the prow of a galleon, ‘are having a spiritual moment here!’ And now the tears fell, because they were. Goddamit! Her two dearest friends and herself, and spiritual moments in this life were few and far between. She knew this now. If there was one thing she knew, it was this! ‘Stonehenge,’ she hissed, ‘is a spiritual place!’
The man didn’t speak. He did manage to close his mouth.
And from nowhere, a tall woman dressed in a pink tracksuit appeared. ‘Thank you very much, pet!’ she said to Helen in a Geordie accent broader than the Tyne bridge. ‘I’ve been saying the same bloody thing to him all day! One more –’ she turned to the man – ‘one more fucking call, Adam, and I’ll flush that bastard phone down the toilet. See if I don’t!’ And she turned and stalked off, the man following behind with a last sheepish look at Helen.
Helen watched them go. She was shaking, physically shaking, and behind her all was silent. She turned to Caro. ‘I’m sorry, I had to say something. I?—’
But the corner of Caro's mouth had turned up, in the smallest of smiles. ‘I’m fine, Helen,' she said. ‘Spiritual moment is over, and… I’m fine.’
‘Are you?’
Now Caro's smile grew a touch deeper. ‘Yes. Today, right now, I’m fine. Tomorrow I may not be… but it will pass and…’ She turned to Kay. ‘It really helps to be able to say all this, if you can bear to hear it?’
Kay nodded. ‘We can bear it.’ She looked at Helen. ‘Can’t we?’
As Helen nodded the forcefield that separated them dissolved. She stepped forward, and Caro must have done so too, because before she knew what was happening, they were embracing. ‘I had to go to Libby,’ Helen whispered. ‘You understand, don’t you? I had to.’
Against her shoulder, she felt Caro’s nod.
‘And I’m always here. I may not have been before, I can see that now, and I’m sorry. But I am. I really am.’
‘Ditto, Helen. Ditto.’
Back at the car park, Helen opened the passenger door and swung her bag onto the back seat. Caro and Kay were still talking.
‘Matt has asked me to do this last conference,’ she heard Caro say.
Helen turned. ‘When is it?’
‘Tomorrow morning. I’m heading back to the house to pick up a few things and then I’m driving home.'
‘And after that?’
Caro shrugged. ‘I’m coming back to Salisbury. For the foreseeable future anyway. My mother’s condition is stable, but not hopeful. I can’t really think beyond that.’
‘Is there no hope?’ Helen whispered. ‘Your brother said it didn’t look good.’
Caro sighed. ‘No. I don’t think so.’
For a long moment the three of them stood, gazing at the ground.
‘Was she…’ Helen started. ‘Did you get to speak to her?’
Caro shook her head.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I’m so sorry.’ She was thinking of own mother’s last days. It was the end of September and her room in the hospice had been filled with the autumn colours of asters and gladioli, with a steady stream of visitors. Aunts, uncles, friends, cousins, Helen’s two brothers, their children, her children, her parent’s dog, Brodie, even the cactus that had sat on her mother’s dressing table for as long as Helen could remember had been brought in and had managed to flower. Every last living thing, it had seemed to Helen, had gotten the chance to be seen and heard, to pay witness to the loving relationships that had tied them to her mother. To make peace, if peace needed to be made, apologise, explain, pay tribute or simply be. And none of it was necessary anyway, because her mother was already at peace with everyone. So why was it that once again, the most fractured relationship she knew of, that between Caro and her mother, was destined to remain so? In death, Caro’s mother was going to achieve what she’d striven for in life – the ultimate pushing away.
‘Helen?’ Kay took a step towards her.
But tears streamed now. Suddenly she was lost in the maelstrom of grief the source of which was as untraceable as the wind on her face. Because who was she crying for? Caro? Or her mother? Or Caro's mother’s mother? The grandmother who’d made the ultimate sacrifice? Or was she just crying for herself? She looked up. Caro and Kay were dry-eyed.
‘Here.’ Kay handed her a folded-up map.
She took it, unfolded it and blew her nose all over the ring of ancient stones.
‘What are you doing!’ Kay cried. ‘I meant this!’ And now she produced a packet of tissues.
‘Helen,’ Caro murmured, looking at the snot covered map. ‘Stonehenge is a spiritual place.’
Slimy map in hands, Helen looked up and as she did an enormous mixed-up sob of laughter and grief escaped. And then another. ‘It’s the only thing it’s useful for,’ she said screwing the map into a soggy ball. ‘A map! You can see them from space!’
‘That’s the Great Wall,’ Kay muttered.
‘Whatever!’ Shaking her head and using the tissue now, Helen said, ‘I’m sorry, Caro. I know how difficult it’s always been with your mother. I thought… if you could have made your peace somehow.’
‘I did,’ Caro said simply. She pushed a lock of hair back and tucked it behind her ear. ‘I really think I did. I mean I haven’t been able to talk to her in the way that you mean, but I have talked to her.’
From across the plain a breeze blew in, stirring a discarded wristband that skipped and hopped across the car park to land against the wheel of a parked motorcycle. Unconsciously they turned their backs, shouldering the wind.
Caro opened her handbag and took out her wrap, slinging it across her shoulders. ‘I sat for over an hour, and I didn’t stop talking. I didn’t mean to, but once I’d started, I couldn’t stop.’
‘Oh, Caro.’ Now it was Kay’s turn. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s OK.’ Caro batted the concern away. ‘You’re thinking it would have been awful?’
‘I don’t know…’ Kay stammered. ‘I…’
‘It wasn’t,’ Caro said. ‘Because when all the things I’d wanted to say had been said, there was only one thing left.
No one spoke.
‘I told her that I loved her. I gave her a kiss and I told her that I loved her. Because I meant it.’
Helen took a deep breath. The breeze wasn’t a warm breeze, even so she knew it wasn’t the reason for the spread of goosebumps along her arm. She swallowed hard. Kay had never moved more than a mile from her mother. Love had never been in doubt there. And it was the same with her. Although she had moved away, that hadn’t left space for doubt. But Caro? How might it have felt to reach the age of fifty, uncertain of whether you loved your mother? Apron strings had to be cut in life, but the bonds of love? Weren’t they what held you in place? A compass, with which to explore both the world and yourself, a constant reference point? And if you’d never been shown, how were you supposed to learn to love? She thought of Caro’s lost baby and a dreadful thought escaped. Perhaps it had been for the best? Because what kind of a pattern of motherhood would Caro have had to follow? Helen blinked. Her mouth turned down at the edges into a hard-upside-down U. She would, she promised herself, never think that thought again. Ever. Next to her Kay was equally silent.
‘Guys!’ Caro smiled. ‘It’s OK. There really is only so much time in one day for the spiritual, and I think we’ve reached the limit.’
Slowly Helen raised her head. If Caro had had any idea of what she’d been thinking…
‘Thank you,’ Caro continued, ‘for coming to find me. I wasn’t lost, but thank you anyway.’
And they stood waiting as Caro removed her sunglasses and wiped them clean.
‘Where are you parked?’ Helen said eventually.
Caro indicated across the car park.
Kay smiled. A beeping sound rose up from her bag. Instantly she swung it around her hip and reached in for her phone. ‘It’s Alex,’ she muttered, then turned the phone round to show a photograph of a smiling Alex, sitting astride his motorbike. Shook standing beside.
‘When’s the race?’ Helen asked.
‘In about half an hour. Let’s just not talk about it, OK?’
‘OK.’ Helen reached out and put her hand on Kay’s arm. ‘He’ll be fine. He’s got whatshisname with him, hasn’t he?’
‘Shook.’
On hearing the name, Caro leaned in to squint at the phone. ‘Is that Shook with him there?’
Kay nodded. She slipped her phone back. ‘He remembers you, Caro.’
‘Does he?’ Something passed across Caro’s face, as conspicuous and unknowable as a cloud on an otherwise clear day. She reached into her bag for her keys and as she pulled them out, said, ‘I nearly forgot to ask, Helen. Forgive me. How is Libby getting on?’
‘Oh.’ The question threw Helen off balance. ‘Well…’ What could she say? How wonderful everything was, when it wasn’t? How difficult Libby was finding the adjustment, how she mourned the loss of her former life? How could she dangle all that in front of Caro’s nose? ‘She’s fine,’ she said.
‘Good,’ Caro declared, oblivious. ‘I’m happy for her. Personally, I’m glad she took this chance.’
Helen blinked. Take this chance? Was getting yourself pregnant at such a young age really a chance? She made a terse unconvincing nod.
‘I don’t think I ever took a chance my whole life.’
Helen didn’t speak. Having a baby at twenty-one wasn’t taking a chance. It was a life-long, irreversible commitment. The polar opposite of the caprice-like nature of chance. Caro still didn’t seem to get it!
‘I mean it,’ Caro continued, unaware, or ignoring Helen’s tension. ‘I’ve always been tunnel-visioned. From school onwards. The idea that there would be aspects of my life that I couldn’t plan or control… It never occurred to me.’ She looked at Helen. ‘I know it wasn’t what you wanted for Libby.’
‘That’s an understatement,’ Helen murmured.
Caro nodded. ‘Well… You asked me what I was going to do? I don’t know!’ And she laughed. ‘When have you ever heard me say that? But I don’t know. In fact, there’s only one thing I’ve decided and that is that the second half of my life will be far less about decisions and much more about chances. Taking them. Saying yes to whatever comes along!’
‘Mmm,’ Kay managed.
‘Mmm,’ Helen managed. A laid-back, chance-taking, easy-going Caro was an oxymoron. More impossible than Barbie’s waist size.
‘So.’ She turned to go, stopped and turned back. ‘Talking of chancers,’ she said. ‘How was Danny? You said he told you?'
‘Umm, he’s good.’ Helen stumbled, and added, ‘Worried about you, of course.’
‘Really?’ Caro’s face softened.
‘There’s a lot to tell you,’ Helen blurted. ‘I’ve seen a flat. A new development on the river. I rang Emir initially. You know he said to ring for tips?’
Caro nodded.
‘Are you surprised?’ Helen asked, almost shy.
Again Caro nodded. ‘Yes…’ She paused. ‘But it’s a good move, Helen. We’re all moving on, one way or another. And that’s good.’ She raised her hand to shield her face from the sun that had finally appeared, her gaze taking her over the top of Helen’s head and across the fields to the ancient stones. ‘Do you remember our trip here?’
Helen and Kay looked at each other.
‘Of course,’ Kay said.
‘Helen wanted to sleep under the stars with that boy with the nose-ring.’
Helen frowned. An earring, yes, but a nose-ring? There was so much she didn’t remember.
‘Remember?’ Caro turned to her.
’Yes… and no.’
‘You should have,’ Caro said.
‘What?’
‘You should have slept under the stars, but I persuaded you not to.’
‘But that’s not the whole story, Caro. Kay said?—’
‘I was wrong,’ Caro interrupted.
‘No.’
Caro shook her head. ‘I was wrong, and you were right. Not any more. I’m going to take a leaf out of your book, Helen. I’m going to live. Take it all less seriously.’
‘Is that…’ Helen trailed off. Caro had already turned and with a wave of her hand was walking away. ‘Give my love to Libby,’ she called. ‘I’ll get flowers. I’m so sorry I didn’t before.’
And a moment later she disappeared among the sea of cars.