Chapter 35
35
C aro stood with her hand at her eyes, straining to see across a square crowded with people out to enjoy the warm evening. ‘She’s definitely not outside,’ she said.
‘I can’t say I blame her,’ Helen muttered, and closing her eyes she leaned back to lift her face to the sun. The patio they sat on was a mix of brightly painted tables and mismatched chairs. It had an outdoor bar and an unlit chimenea. Strings of fairy lights had been strung along the wrought-iron fencing and above each table a soft white lantern glowed. A distinctly youthful vibe, she was thinking, for the distinctly youthful crowd that surrounded them. Caro and her had to be the oldest customers by at least a decade. ‘Did you see anyone likely going in?’ she murmured, mostly to play along with Caro. Kay would be fine. It was Caro that she was concerned about. She was as jumpy as a frog.
‘It’s hard to see anything,’ Caro said. ‘Should we position ourselves a little nearer? We could sit on one of the benches in the square?’
‘We’ve just ordered drinks.’ Helen opened her eyes. ‘Sit down, for heaven’s sake. She’ll text when she needs us.’
‘It still doesn’t feel right. Why would she choose to meet someone who calls themselves Goose?’
‘It’s a joke, Caro.’ Helen nodded at the chair opposite.
‘Well, I don’t get it.’ And reluctantly, Caro sat down.
‘Goose,’ she sighed as she leaned forward, ‘was the sidekick in Top Gun. He wasn’t the hero. I’m guessing that’s what this guy sees himself as: a sidekick.’
‘Oh.’
‘You don’t remember Top Gun ?’
‘Not much, no.’
‘Never mind.’ And leaning back to allow the waiter to place their drinks, Helen shrugged. She didn’t think this was the best idea Kay had ever had either, but she could understand the reasoning behind it. ‘He makes her laugh,’ she said. ‘And let’s face it, Kay’s had precious little to laugh about lately.’
‘I see.’ But Caro looked so lost in thought, Helen wasn’t sure she saw anything.
Picking up her glass, she held the straw at her lips. ‘Lawrence never really made me laugh.’
‘Never?’
‘Not that I recall.’ Helen frowned. ‘That’s amazing, isn’t it? That I married a man who took himself so seriously.’ She took a long slurpy sip of her diet coke, put the glass down, stretched her arms and looked at Caro. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that when I met him, my life was so full of laughter I didn’t notice it was missing in him. I was so young.’ Helen smiled. ‘Nothing awful had happened. My mother was still alive. Friday nights were still exciting and …’ Drifting off, she looked down at her hands. ‘My guess is,’ she said, ‘that I thought there were more important things.’
‘Looks?’ Caro said quietly. ‘Status.’
‘Status,’ Helen murmured, ‘perhaps.’ Status, she might have replied, was more your thing, Caro. She didn’t have the heart. Not on this warm evening, not with the wedding just two days away and not with Caro so subdued. She looked away to the next table where a young couple sat, the man meticulously groomed, the girl, obviously entranced. ‘I’ll tell you something,’ she said. ‘Laughter would be right at the top of my list now. Whoever it was could look like Quasimodo, and I wouldn’t care, as long as he made me laugh. If I’d known,’ she added, and paused. ‘If I’d only known how scarce laughter becomes, I would have placed so much more value on it.’
Caro didn’t speak. And in the space where she might have, Helen dived in. ‘Children laugh every day,’ she said. ‘And look at them!’ She nodded at a group in the far corner of the patio. ‘That crowd have been laughing non-stop for the last ten minutes. I mean what’s so funny? When does life stop being funny, Caro? And why? Why does it stop?’ The questions rattled across the table. ‘Does Tomasz make you laugh?’ she said, one final, fatal shot.
Caro looked up. ‘Tomasz asked me to leave.’
Helen stared.
‘That’s what the change of plan is. That’s why I came back early.
‘What!’ She put her glass down, leaned forward. ‘What on earth has happened?’
But Caro had turned away, her eyes blinking rapidly. ‘It’s nothing,’ she said waving a hand.
‘It’s obviously not nothing. What’s happened? Are you still ––’
‘I slept with another man, Helen. That’s what happened.’
Helen put her hand to her mouth and held her breath. Of all the things she had expected Caro to say about the ‘change of plan’ it had not been this. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting. Nothing much. Last minute arrangements at the venue, perhaps? A change of booking at the hairdressers? No drama, nothing that, as Caro had texted, couldn’t wait for an explanation. How contained then Caro had been on the journey over. How composed she had been, sitting on this bomb. Hands pressed together now, she held them at her chin, watching as Caro sat, twisting her engagement ring. She shouldn’t have expected anything less. The girl she had met at university all those years ago, had kept her emotions as buttoned up as her cardigan, and so it had been all Caro’s life. Thinking this, watching, Helen pressed her lips together. She was trying to remember a time she had seen Caro cry; she wasn’t sure she could. The day Caro had come to tell her of Kay’s diagnosis? Perhaps then? But when else? The revelation was a shock. The realisation that this was the only time she had ever seen her friend of thirty years lose her composure. ‘When ––’
‘After I left your place the other week.’ Caro’s interruption was gentle as a tap, a paw without claws.
‘Who ––’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Caro shook her head. ‘It really doesn’t matter who it was, Helen. I met him through work. He was very charming and … I was just going for a drink. That’s what I told myself.’ Head dipped, she pressed her hand to her nose.
Helen waited. Maybe she had never left enough space for tears. For Caro’s tears.
‘It’s never happened to me before. No one has ever told me I was beautiful.’
‘Caro, you ––’
‘Don’t say it, Helen.’ And pinching the bridge of her nose, Caro shook her head again. ‘Please don’t say that I am. We both know it’s not true.’
‘Caro.’ But she didn’t say it, because Caro was right. She didn’t say anything, because this was no time for inauthentic consolation either. For pointing out everything else that Caro had been granted; it was beauty she had strived after, beauty, that had always remained out of reach. And Helen understood: the right comment, from the right person, at the right time.
‘It’s OK.’ Hand on her chest, Caro shuddered. ‘It’s OK,’ she said again.
‘Did you tell him?’
‘No.’ Caro’s smile was tiny. ‘I was going to.’
Helen frowned. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘Does he know? Are you still …?’
Caro nodded. ‘This is only about the move,’ she whispered. ‘He said I needed space to decide if I really want to go through with the move. The wedding is still on.’
‘And do you?’
‘I think so.’ Caro pinched her nose. ‘But he’s talking about the smallholding, Helen. And I don’t know how to tell him about ...’ Her voice drifted away.
‘I see.’ Helen looked across the patio. There was so much she wanted to say. She had doubts herself about the move Caro was making, but she hadn’t voiced them. Cyprus had taught her that. The day she had found out that Caro had been planning to conceive a baby at the age of fifty, had been the day their friendship had almost crumbled. She hadn’t held back then, telling Caro everything she thought about the folly of her decision, the selfishness of it. And it wasn’t so much that she regretted what she had said, it was more that she understood now, in a way she didn’t then, the limits of friendship. Caro wasn’t family. She had no claims to stake on the way she chose to live her life. At a loss, she picked up her glass. So much she wanted to say, and so little that she could.
‘You must think … well, I don’t know what you think.’
‘I think,’ she said as she reached across and squeezed Caro’s hand, ‘that everyone makes mistakes.’ She squeezed harder, because the pain emanating through Caro’s fingers was tangible and she wanted to take it away. Because she’d only added to it before, raging at Caro in Cyprus when she should have tried so much harder to understand, dismissing her in disgust the terrible night Caro had walked too far and too long, with Ben. Thirty years they had known each other, and she had only ever seen Caro cry once. And then the tears were for Kay, not for herself. Thirty years in which she had never given her friend the space to be vulnerable. ‘What matters,’ she said, her voice urgent. ‘What matters, Caro, is if you think you can be happy with Tomasz. And if you think Tomasz can be happy with you. Life is very short …’ Choking up, Helen put her fist to her mouth. ‘It’s too bloody short to choose a path towards anything other than happiness.’
Eyes glassy as orbs, Caro sat, her hand in Helen’s. ‘So, you think I shouldn’t tell him? You think I should let him believe it’s the move?’
‘Yes.’ And as a tear finally broke free and fell down Caro’s cheek, Helen took a napkin and reached across to blot it dry. ‘If you truly believe,’ she said, ‘that you can put this behind you, if you think you can make him happy, then don’t tell him. You have to grab your chance when it comes, Caro. It may not come again.’