10

Soon after, the lunch ended on a sadly subdued note, and by the time they got back to the hotel Helen felt far enough away from the morning’s sailing that it could have been someone else’s experience entirely.

Kaveh dropped her off at reception, full of apologies and concern about the repercussions his mistake might have caused, and Helen was not graceful. Not at all. She was curt and cold – so cold that by the time she reached the hotel room she was warm with shame.

Inside, the room was cool and dark. As Helen eased the door open, she could see the shape of Caro in bed. She paused, hand clasping the doorknob. A baby? How could she even say that out loud? For a few years now, between the three of them – Kay, herself, Caro – a tacit understanding had grown, under the terms of which nobody mentioned the subject of having children. Complaining about the ones that were already had was fine, but the possibility of more? Caro never brought it up, so they had learned not to talk about it, and the feeling Helen had (and she was sure Kay thought so too) was that that ship had sailed and Caro had come to terms with it. Which Helen admired. There was, after all, a lot more to life than having children – something she wished she’d learned a little earlier. So how could she break that now – this wall of quiet and mutual understanding that had worked so well?

Certainly not by waking Caro and blurting it out. Tiptoeing, she made her way across the marbled floor towards the balcony to sit and wait, to find a way of beginning. But she was only halfway across when Caro pushed up on her elbows. ‘Did you have fun?’ she said, her cheek creased with the folds of the sheet.

Helen looked down at her hands. ‘Yes,’ she managed. ‘It was great.’

‘Oh.’ Caro yawned. ‘And you’re angry with me for leaving you with him?’ Her voice was muffled and lazy with sleep.

‘Him?’

‘The sailing man.’ She waved a hand. ‘Karim—’

‘Kaveh,’ Helen said quietly.

‘Right.’ Caro looked at her.

And because she couldn’t bear to meet Caro’s eye – because it could be true – Helen turned to the chest of drawers and put her hat and bag down. ‘I’m not angry,’ she said.

‘You are,’ Caro laughed.

The hairs on the back of Helen’s neck went stiff.

‘It’s written all over your face!’ Caro eased the sheet back and swung her feet to the floor. ‘I’m sorry, Helen, I just had this headache and I really didn’t feel—’

‘You can’t even see my face!’

‘Okay.’ Caro nodded. She looked down at her feet. ‘Well,’ she said quietly. ‘Even if you’re not, you have a right to be. I was pretty selfish this morning…about everything. So…well, I’m sorry.’

Helen swallowed. The words she was going to need to say were gagging her, jumping around in her throat like fish in a net. They wanted out, but she just couldn’t say them. And looking back at Caro through the mirror – her slim figure and expensive haircut – the whole idea became even more fantastical. Caro, embarking on motherhood? This was Caro, for heaven’s sake! Strong, successful, sensible Caro, not some deluded—

‘Helen.’ Caro’s voice was suddenly loud. ‘You’re swaying! Come and sit down.’ She patted the bed next to her. ‘Now.’

It was the simplest thing to do, so she went over and sat down.

Caro smiled. ‘Reverse sea legs?’

Helen shrugged.

‘Was it good?’

‘It was…yes…’ She closed her eyes. She had neither the energy nor the will to try to explain how extraordinary the morning had been. How beautiful. Not now, not in the face of this.

‘This was never going to be straightforward, was it?’

Slowly Helen opened her eyes.

‘You and I, going away together?’ Caro sighed. ‘I know I can be selfish.’

‘Caro—’

‘Please, Helen, let me say this.’ Caro stretched her legs out and flexed her feet so her toes were looking back at them, all ten, glossed pink. Helen stared at them. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d painted her toenails.

‘I’m so glad you decided to come,’ Caro said, her voice quietly serious. ‘I really am, and I’m really looking forward to Kay coming, but…’ She turned to Helen. ‘Please don’t get upset. I’ve lived on my own for so long, I just feel I need some time to myself. To get acclimatised, you know? To company again?’

Helen didn’t speak.

‘So.’ Caro shook her head and laughed. ‘I’ve decided that tomorrow the best thing would be if I take myself off. It will give us both some space. You might go sailing again?’

Slow as an owl, Helen turned to face her. 7am, Kaveh had said. 7am.

‘I need to unwind,’ Caro continued, running her fingers through her hair. ‘Work has been worse than usual. Really hectic. I’m sure you’ve noticed how tense I’ve been?’

She didn’t answer. She didn’t nod and she didn’t shake her head. She held Caro’s gaze and she sat and waited.

‘So…’ Caro said lightly, colour spreading across her cheeks. ‘Well, if you don’t mind?’

‘Why would I mind?’ And by the time Caro looked away, Helen knew she was lying.

‘Okay!’ Caro stood up. She looked around the room as if something from the moment was missing. ‘Okay,’ she said again. ‘I’m going to take a shower.’

The bathroom door closed, the toilet flushed and the thin clatter of water raining down started the sound of the shower. Only when it had widened out, when the clatter became a broad hiss, did Helen unclench her fists and fall back on the bed. Outside, a bird swooped to sit on the railing of the balcony, its little chest pumping, its head twisting all sorts of unlikely angles. Helen watched it.

Caro was lying.

There was no forethought to what she did next, no stopping to contemplate the right or wrong of it. She simply got up and walked across to Caro’s handbag. Tucked away in the back pocket were the white packets of medication she’d seen the day before. She took them out, fingers numb at the tips as she read through the labels: oestrogen patches, progesterone vaginal pessaries… Caro wasn’t so much keeping her engine lubricated (as per Dr Ross’s description) as rebuilding it from scratch. But…it wasn’t proof of anything.

She turned, scanning the room, and through the partly open door of the wardrobe she caught sight of a corner of blue: Caro’s suitcase. Three strides had her across the room, one fluid movement had her swinging the empty case onto the bed, and a quick, sharp pull had the zip open, the inside of the case displayed, the brochure tucked into the back pocket revealed.

She pulled it out. Dilekler IVF Clinic.

There it was. Her ears rang, her legs went to water, her stomach to lava. Hands shaking, she took the brochure out onto the terrace, sat down and opened it up. And as she read, Helen could think only one thing: how right Kaveh had been. Dilekler was surely a place where miracles were made.

Age.

Biology.

None of these things mattered. This was a place where babies were manufactured, and if you couldn’t provide the right ingredients they were provided for you. Babies made. Not out of love or commitment or passion. Not out of duty or violence, revenge or even that dullest reason of all, sheer stupidity. Here babies were simply made to order, and somehow… She leaned forward, fist at her mouth. Wasn’t that worse? A baby made to order, like curtains? She snapped the brochure shut. Her heart was racing and her brow was sweaty. And Caro? Caro had been lying to her!

A minute later, as she heard the bathroom door open, the first thing Helen thought was that she’d left the suitcase open on the bed. The second thing was that she didn’t care.

‘Hel—’ Caro’s voice cut off. There was a silence, then the swift and expected pad of bare feet across tiles, and another silence.

Caro was standing behind her. Helen could feel it. Neither of them turned, neither of them moved, like an odd middle-aged version of musical statues.

And because she could see it – how Caro’s face would be shutting down, the thinness of her lips, the raised drawbridge of her jaw – something very heavy bloomed in Helen’s chest. A great lead-petalled flower of dread.

Silently Caro moved into her line of vision, picked the brochure up and folded it back into its envelope.

‘When,’ Helen breathed, ‘were you going to tell me?’

‘When it was done.’

When it was done. The shock was physical, compressing the air in her lungs so she had to sit upright, put her hand to her chest and forcibly inhale. ‘When it was done?’ she gasped.

Caro didn’t answer.

‘You lied, Caro,’ Helen said, her voice shaking with the effort to contain a fury that fed on a myriad of emotions. Anger at being lied to, confusion at being lied to, frustration and disbelief, a deep sorrow and, somewhere, shame. Caro wanted to be a mother. She hadn’t come to terms with anything, and she hadn’t found a way of telling them that.

‘And you went through my things, Helen,’ Caro said, and her voice trembled too.

Helen’s jaw set, as stiff as leather. ‘Is that where you’re going tomorrow?’ she whispered. ‘Is that the time you want to yourself?’

Caro nodded.

‘And you’ve booked a taxi for seven?’ Now they were facing each other. ‘Kaveh told me. He thought I knew. He presumed that, as your friend, you would have told me.’

And without a word, Caro turned and went back inside.

How long Helen sat, numb with shock and disbelief, she had no idea. Eventually the sound of the hairdryer stirred her. Had her staring at the open balcony doors. So that really was it! Caro wasn’t going to say another word. She wasn’t going to come back out and explain herself. And she wasn’t going to apologise for all the deceit – because deceit it was – that had brought Helen to Cyprus in the first place. Would she have come if she’d known? Of course not! Weak with confusion, she stood up. So – all their years of friendship were worth only this? Agitated and panicked almost, as shaken as a bottle of fizz, she went to the doorway and watched Caro finishing her hair.

The hairdryer switched off. Caro bent to unplug it, and in the new silence Helen’s words were loud. ‘You can’t do this,’ she said, because if Caro wasn’t going to ease the door an inch, allow any kind of discussion, what choice did she have, other than dive in like this?

Caro returned the dryer to the drawer. Looking at Helen in the mirror she said, ‘Why? Why can’t I?’

Helen opened her mouth. Why couldn’t Caro do this? ‘Because it’s not right!’ she gasped. ‘It’s not natural. It’s not normal. You can’t just take another woman’s egg… I mean, I presume that’s what you’re doing… You haven’t…’

Caro had turned away.

‘You can’t!’ Helen cried, and her voice rang around the room, so pained, so desperate to be heard it had Helen gripping the door frame, shrinking away.

‘And this,’ Caro sighed, ‘is exactly why I didn’t tell you.’

Helen looked at her.

‘You sound like my mother. Judgemental.’

Like. My. Mother. It was a slap. Nasty. Swift. Stinging. She slumped down on the bed, burning with fury now. She wasn’t like Caro’s mother. She wasn’t like anyone’s mother, and it wasn’t okay that Caro, of all people, should keep shoving her back into that mother box. As if that had been her only role in life, as if that was the only prism through which she could ever be seen. It wasn’t anyone’s mother who’d thrown herself off the boat just a few hours ago! Who’d jumped into an ocean. ‘That’s not fair, Caro,’ she said, a ticking bomb in her voice. ‘And what’s more, it’s childish, which tells me exactly how little you actually know about kids. The compromises you’re going to have to make. You’re doing something I disagree with, and because you don’t want to hear, that’s how you react?’

For a moment Caro didn’t speak, but Helen saw the way her shoulders dropped. Knew she had bought herself a moment. She watched as Caro came and sat down on the bed next to her.

‘Well,’ Caro said quietly, ‘how much did you know? Before you had your kids?’

Helen kept her chin down, her voice tight. ‘It’s not the same, Caro.’

‘Isn’t it?’ There was a lightness to Caro’s voice now, a joking tone almost, that was nails on a blackboard to Helen. ‘Tell me, is there some sort of exam I should be taking?’

‘I can’t,’ Helen seethed, ‘believe that you think this is funny.’

‘I don’t,’ Caro said. And she stood up again. ‘Quite the reverse, Helen. I know it’s a shock for you, but actually I’ve thought long and hard about this. A lot longer and a lot harder than most people. I mean, you didn’t exactly plan your first, did you?’

Helen snapped her head up; her jaw had dropped and her mouth was open. ‘I can’t…’ But her breath failed her. ‘Don’t do that, Caro. Don’t go there—’ Daniel hadn’t been planned, but Daniel hadn’t lived either. And every reference to him was a precious bauble to be handled with exquisite care. Not a curve ball, thrown in like this to make a cheap point, to advance an argument. A selfish, blinkered argument.

‘All right!’ Caro pressed her hands to her temples. Her head was shaking. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t… I’m sorry. Forget I said that.’ She dropped her hands, clasped them together and held them under her chin. ‘But why?’ she pleaded. ‘Why shouldn’t I? I have the money to support—’

‘Kids,’ Helen hissed, ‘need a lot more than money, Caro.’

‘I know that.’

‘Do you?’ Helen stared at her. ‘Do you really?’ She shook her head. What did Caro think she knew? What did anyone think they knew before they became a parent? Whatever it was, it was as worthless as a glass hammer. And wasn’t that the problem with this whole baby-made-to-order service? Like trying to solve a maths problem when you’ve started with the wrong equation. Trying to get a square shape to fit into the big, blank, round hole of your life? ‘A baby,’ she sighed, ‘doesn’t stay a baby, Caro. It’s not like a chihuahua that you can keep in your handbag and take out and cuddle when you want. It walks. And then it runs. And then you spend every spare moment of your life running after it. It talks and it shouts and you spend every minute shouting back at it. Picking up after it, cleaning up after it. Worrying yourself sick making sure it’s eating right, not taking drugs, not getting run over, not getting abducted. Sometimes just trying to like it. Just making sure it’s okay is a lifelong marathon and…’ Her mouth fell open, all out of words, all out of energy, all out of everything. She sat and looked at her hands. Was that what she thought?

For a long while neither of them spoke. Then very calmly Caro said, ‘With all respect, Helen, that is only your experience.’

She shook her head, feeling the dismissiveness of Caro’s words like soft but persistent blows to the head. It was true. Motherhood for her was and always had been exhausting. When her children were younger she’d spend daylight hours yearning for space from them, only to crawl into their beds just to feel the warmth of their sleeping bodies. She couldn’t wait for them to be off, and now they were she wasted hours checking Facebook to catch a glimpse of them. They were the sum of her and completely separate from her. Aliens, with Lawrence’s nose, her eyes, arrogantly naive opinions and disgusting habits, whom she loved more than herself. Twenty-five years – half her life – desperately trying to anticipate their needs and wants. A high-stakes game whereby if she loved them well enough, her only reward was that they would be free and safe to leave her. No wonder she was exhausted. She fell back on the bed. She wanted to laugh. Yes, it was only her experience, but how naive Caro was! For all her wealth and success, how ridiculously naive. She closed her eyes. How could she tell her what it was like? How could she possibly begin…? The bed sagged as she felt the weight of Caro sitting down very close by her shoulder.

‘Helen,’ Caro whispered. ‘I’ve worked so hard all my life. I have a beautiful home, money in the bank, a job I love. You know I tried. I really tried waiting for Mr Right to come along, and maybe he did. But he was too bloody early and I wasn’t ready.’

Helen opened her eyes. ‘You make it sound like a bus, Caro.’

Caro tipped her head as she looked at the ceiling. ‘Michael wasn’t a bus. He was a coach with reclining seats and a toilet and a big screen TV, and my tragedy was that I didn’t know he was the only one coming. That it really was only buses after that. Damaged, useless buses with graffiti. Cranky, unreliable, with no bloody wheels. And you know what the funny thing is?’

Helen shook her head.

‘Even with no wheels,’ Caro sighed, ‘I always thought I could make them work. Remember Lewis?’

She nodded. Lewis, the most boring man Caro had ever dated. Nice to look at, but only one topic of conversation: himself.

‘I’d made everything else in my life work, hadn’t I?’ Caro said. ‘So I really thought I could, and would, make it work, but…’ She smiled. ‘In the end it turned out that I was as much of a crappy bus to him as he was to me. Difference was…is…men don’t have to compromise.’ She shrugged. ‘And then it was too late.’

They stayed like that, Caro sitting, Helen staring at the ceiling.

Lewis had been unbearably boring, that was true, and the idea that he’d chosen to leave Caro for a younger, even more boring version of himself was ludicrous; but lying back, hands behind her head, Helen knew that Caro had missed a chapter. And, as hard as it was going to be to mention it, the story wasn’t complete without it. She let her gaze wander across to the open balcony doors, the rise of the mountains beyond. ‘What about Singapore?’ she asked quietly.

Caro nodded. ‘Do you know how long it’s taken me to come to terms with that? That I missed my only chance?’

No, no. That was wrong. Talk about rewriting the past. Helen sat up. Her hair had fallen across her face. ‘You didn’t miss your chance, Caro. Having an abortion isn’t missing your chance.’

For a moment Caro looked at her. Then she half snorted. ‘Helen. If I hadn’t, I would have lost everything. My job, my career… There would have been no coming back. Every single thing I had ever worked for—’

‘I get it!’ Anger warming again, Helen lifted a hand. Caro hadn’t rewritten anything. This was an original recording, learned by rote, recited word-perfect. ‘It happened to me as well,’ she said. ‘When I fell pregnant with Daniel, it wasn’t that convenient for me either. Remember?’

‘Oh.’ Caro looked at her. ‘But that’s not the same, Helen. You weren’t—’ Abruptly, she stopped talking and turned away. ‘It wasn’t quite the same situation,’ she finished quietly.

‘Maybe not.’ Helen stared at the back of Caro’s head. ‘I mean, I was only a marketing assistant with an organisation I truly believed in. I wasn’t earning six figures and flying business class. Not the same at all.’

‘I didn’t intend to sound—’

‘You made your choice, Caro,’ she said flatly. ‘And I made mine. And for better or worse, we have to live with that.’

Caro nodded. She stood up and walked over to the open door. ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘And maybe not. The goalposts have been moved now, haven’t they?’

Helen swung her legs to the floor. As surely as if they’d been darts, Caro’s words still stung. Not quite the same situation. No, it hadn’t been the same. She had given up a career dedicated to preserving old buildings. How could that ever be compared to the hard and glittering reality of Caro’s bank balance? Chin lowered, hair falling forward, she watched Caro move out to the terrace, and an idea that she didn’t want to shine light upon stepped forward anyway – clearly formed, visible, complete: Caro nurtured a superiority over both her and Kay. She was better than Kay because of her income and she was better than Helen because of her career. How else could that comment be explained? Not quite the same… Now she tingled with rage. ‘Moved!’ she said, spitting the word like a glob of phlegm. ‘Ha! Caro! That’s the biggest understatement of all time. The goalposts have been ripped out and thrown away! It’s a different game now. Women of seventy having babies? That’s obscene!’

Caro turned. ‘I’m hardly seventy.’

‘No!’ Helen stood. ‘But you will be when the child is still a teenager! Who’s thinking of that, Caro? Who’s thinking of the child? The doctors? You? You’re fifty, for God’s sake! If you go ahead and have a baby, it won’t have any family other than you. No aunts, no uncles, no grandparents. And what’s more, it’ll be lucky to still have you!’ Her hands came to her face, pressing her cheeks together. What she was saying she truly believed in – had felt herself in those pockets of grief she still fell into since losing her parents. ‘God, Caro! The world is a lonely enough place as it is!’

Caro’s response was as swift as it was simple. ‘Don’t you think I know that?’ she said.

Hands still pressing at her face, Helen stared. And stared. A terrible realisation surfaced. ‘So,’ she said, and paused. ‘You’re having a baby for company? To make yourself less lonely?’

‘Is that,’ Caro said quietly, ‘so terrible?’

‘Yes,’ she gasped, because the detachment in Caro’s voice was obscene. ‘At your age, yes it is! Can’t you see that? Can’t you—’

But Caro had turned away.

Arms flailing, Helen looked around the room. Caro at the school gates? At sixty? ‘It’s wrong and it makes me furious… That people can be stupid and selfish, and others who should know better are making a fortune from it!’

‘Is that what you think, Helen?’ Now Caro turned back to her. ‘That I’m stupid? And selfish?’

Helen slumped onto the bed. Tears sprang up, warm on her cheeks as they rolled down. She’d often thought Caro was selfish, but selfish in ways that were forgivable and unimportant. They went back a long way. Caro was Caro, and their friendship easily trumped the last-minute cancellations she sprang upon them, or the utter lack of awareness she had regarding their familial responsibilities. But this? How could she forgive this? ‘You made your choice, Caro,’ she said sadly. ‘Like I made mine. We have to take responsibility for the choices we make. We just have to!’

Leaning against the door frame, Caro looked up at the sky. ‘I want someone to love, Helen,’ she said, and her voice cracked.

‘Don’t we all,’ Helen whispered.

‘Helen.’ Caro sighed. ‘You don’t know how lucky you are. You never have. You have Libby and Jack. You—’

‘No.’ Helen shook her head.

‘You do!’

‘No. I don’t!’ She dropped her head to one side, all the fight gone. ‘You can’t get beyond the baby, Caro, so you don’t understand! I don’t have Libby and Jack, any more than I have the stars and the moon. And that’s exactly the way it should be. They go off and leave you, and what’s left is…what’s left is me and Lawrence, and half of that, the me bit, I don’t even recognise any more.’

‘Well.’ Bending her head to look at her nails, Caro said quietly, ‘I’ve had enough time to find me. I’m pretty sure who I am.’

‘Are you?’ Helen leaned back against the bedstead. She looked at Caro. ‘Well, good luck with that, Caro, because I’m telling you now, a child will chew you up and spit you out when it’s done. And afterwards, if you can still recognise any last bit of yourself, good luck.’

Caro raised her palm. ‘Enough,’ she said quietly. ‘Enough.’ And she went out to the balcony.

For a long moment Helen sat looking after her, the note of reproach in Caro’s voice reverberating around the room, ringing in her ears. Had it been that bad, what she’d said? Was there something wrong with her? She loved her children, but wasn’t it true? She wasn’t the same person, for better or worse, good or bad. Her children had reshaped her. Stamped all over the mould and squeezed out something else altogether. The best and worst of her. And perhaps that’s what would-be parents should face. Vows of parenthood, not marriage. Are you prepared, for better or worse, to face what you may find in each other afterwards? She pushed back on her hands, stood up and walked across to the door.

Caro turned.

‘Look,’ Helen said. ‘You’re going through a wobble. I’m going through a pretty big one myself. It’s scary and it’s really fucking sad, actually…knowing so many things won’t come round again.’

The smile Caro managed was enough for Helen to continue. ‘It’s the second half,’ she said. ‘We’re beginning the second half of our lives and we all know how it ends…’ Suddenly she stopped talking. ‘Why are you shaking your head?’

Caro had crossed her arms and was shaking her head. ‘We don’t have to accept that ending, Helen.’

‘Caro!’ Helen felt her jaw fall open. ‘You’re not immortal.’

‘You say I made a choice?’ Caro answered. ‘What you’ve never understood, Helen, was that I didn’t. There was no choice to make. You honestly think I could have stepped aside from my career and taken the time out then to become a mother?’

‘You never tried.’

‘Because I saw what happened to those who did.’

‘Right.’ Helen blinked. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘if it was so important you could—’

‘Everything was important! It was all equally important. And it’s not fair, Helen, because men don’t and never have had to choose. So now things have changed. Now I do get a second chance. Now I’ve got the time, the money and the wisdom, and most of all it’s my life. I get to choose.’

Helen blinked. Caro really couldn’t see it. Then again, who could? Who could really understand the awesome responsibility of creation? ‘It’s not just your life, though, is it?’ she said. ‘You will be an old woman when—’

‘SPF, Helen,’ Caro said lightly. ‘Yoga. Sixty is the new fifty.’

‘Wow.’ Helen’s mouth tightened to a tiny ball. ‘Wow,’ she whispered. ‘I never thought you’d be capable of something so selfish. For once, just once, Caro, can’t you think of someone other than yourself?’

Her words were bullets, hitting their mark with silent and deadly precision. She was out of the door before Caro had even fallen.

It was the most hurtful thing she had ever said, and she had known in advance. Chosen her poison with precision, tipped the arrow perfectly. But wasn’t it true? Wasn’t it what she and Kay had discussed secretly for years? Caro lived as she pleased. Caro was number one in Caro’s life. Whatever Caro wanted, Caro got.

Among the blue and white sunloungers and the yellow umbrellas, Helen stopped in the middle of the lawn. A waiter approached. He was carrying a tray of food – charred chicken kebabs, with slices of lemon at the side of the plate. As he passed, the sweet, rich smell that filled her nostrils was nauseating. How could anyone be eating at a time like this? When her best friend, a woman she had known for most of her life, had turned out to be…a stranger? Behind her, ice chinked against glass. Helen turned to the sound, then turned back and looked up at the room she had just left. The balcony was empty. Caro would be inside, wounded, and there wasn’t a single part of Helen that wanted to go back and help. She felt tremendously sad and overwhelmingly weary.

She scooped her hair, still matted and rough with sea salt, up from her neck. Now she’d come to a halt she couldn’t think where to go. In the shaded corner of the patio an elderly couple were sitting playing cards. On the other side of the pool a woman sunbathed. Helen narrowed her eyes. The sunbathing woman was also of a certain age and she didn’t seem to be with anyone. Was she here for the same reason? She glanced back up at the room. She needed to get away, and there was only one person on this whole island who could help her do that.

Head down, she hurried across the lawn towards the hotel entrance. Standing behind the reception desk was the same woman who had greeted them on arrival yesterday. Was it only yesterday? So much seemed to have happened – compared to twenty-four hours back home anyway.

The woman looked up. So like Kay, same all-knowing eyes.

‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I was wondering if Kaveh was here?’

‘He has gone home.’

‘Oh.’ Helen hovered by the open door. Of course he’d gone home. She knew that, and that wasn’t the question she’d wanted to ask. But how could she just come out and ask for his telephone number? She cleared her throat and tried again. ‘It’s just that I had a sailing lesson with him this morning and I think I may have left something on the boat.’

This time the woman raised her head. Black plates of eyes that looked Helen up and then down and then up again and then went back to her papers.

Embarrassed, Helen didn’t move. Women of a certain age. She was one of those as well, and heaven knew what this woman was thinking now. If they came and went, came and went, all these women of a certain age. Was she mistaking Helen for one of them? Or worse – the idea swept through her – was she thinking that Helen wanted Kaveh as some sort of sperm donor? She had an urgent desire to hold up her hand. Point out the ring. I’m married! I already have kids. Behind her a couple came in, brushing past her shoulder.

The woman behind the desk lifted her head to greet them.

Hopelessly undecided as to what to do next, Helen moved across to the sofa.

‘Here.’

And she looked up to see the woman holding out a piece of paper with a number written on it.

Outside in the courtyard, hands trembling, she stood by the fountain and watched a dragonfly zip through the silver water. Its tiny, iridescent wings shimmered small oceans of colour, just like the kingfisher on her magnetic Wilko notepad stuck to the fridge back home. Helen’s mouth turned down. She was a long way from home, a long way from fridges and reminder notepads and… Fuck it! She took out her phone and dialled the number.

‘Helen,’ Kaveh said, after she’d (unnecessarily) introduced herself. ‘Another sailing lesson?’

‘Umm, no. I owe you an apology.’

Kaveh stayed silent. (How wise he was.)

‘You were right,’ she said.

Again he didn’t speak.

‘I can’t believe it!’ Not trusting herself not to cry, she swung away from the hotel and began walking up to the entrance gates, gravel grinding through the thin soles of her sandals. Her free arm was across her mouth, her eyes blurry. ‘She’s going there tomorrow morning and we’ve just had the most terrible row.’

‘Helen?’

‘So…’ Helen tipped her head to the sky. ‘So I’m ringing to say I’m sorry, Kaveh. I’m sorry I was so angry. I… I didn’t want to believe it.’

‘Where are you?’

Where was she? She turned and looked back. She’d walked through the hotel gates, a hundred yards or more along the road. ‘Outside the hotel.’

‘And where is Caro?’

‘In the room.’ Helen looked back at the gates. ‘I can’t go back,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t face her. And I know she doesn’t want to face me.’

There was a long pause and then Kaveh said, ‘Would you like me to come and get you?’

It didn’t take him long. Ten minutes, maybe twelve. He came on a moped, stopped in front of the hotel, took out a spare helmet for her, and if the woman behind the desk saw or noticed, Helen didn’t give a fig. She wrapped her arms around his waist and dropped her cheek against his back. And as they sped off she didn’t think about Caro or Lawrence or her children. She didn’t think about anything at all.