Page 8 of A Midlife Marriage

‘She wants us all to do something called,Excellence- in-Servicetraining.’

‘At least it’s in working hours,’ Tina muttered.

Helen looked from one to the other. ‘It doesn’t sound that bad.’ She was playing for time.Excellent in Servicetraining didn’t sound like a barrel of laughs to her either, but if Dr Ross, had suggested they all take a course inModern Nail Art,orHow to Go Viral on TikTok,it would, she suspected, have resulted in the same wash of indifference.

‘Actually, I don’t mind doing it,’ Daisy said.

Helen smiled. ‘It might be interesting?’

‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ Daisy said pulling her mouth down as she handed Helen a cup. ‘But there’s a free lunch. You’re on phones, by the way.’

In the small,windowless phone room Helen logged into the computer, then the phone system, her work email, the filing system, clinic access, patient records and appointments system. As she took a headset from the top drawer of the filing cabinet she glanced at the clock.

07:56.

She had four minutes. At 08:00 the telephone lines would open, and she would spend the next two and a half hours answering non-stop calls from people trying to get an appointment, only a few of whom she would actually be able to help. Her coffee break was at ten-thirty. After that she would swap one windowless room, for another, larger, windowless room, where she would work on the front desk, talking to people trying to get an appointment, or people complaining about the appointment they had just had … only a few of whom she would actually be able to help. She finished at one o’clock, ready to repeat until the end of the week … the end of the month … the end of the year. She took a pen, a notepad and a block of yellow Post-it notes from the drawer, sat down and twirling thepen between her fingers, stared through the open door to the corridor beyond.

Was this someone else’s life? The moment felt surreal enough for her to believe that it was. Someone who would have been delighted by Tina’s thoughtful gift, whose morningshadbeen consumed by the thought of eating cake, when all the time just outside the door, the world had waited.

The clock was noisy, she could hear the seconds pass … tick, tick, tick … She had years yet. At the very least a decade before retirement, and suddenly she was thinking about Kay and the irony of the fact that Kay was retiring, just as she was just returning. And Caro, with her chipped nails and her new life. It wasn’t jealousy. She didn’t begrudge them the changes they were making, and she didn’t want them for herself. So, what did she want? Looking down, she drew a circle on the top sticky note, and then another and another, smaller and harder until the circle was nothing more than a dot. Caro and Kay had both had fulfilling and demanding careers, while she had simply passed the time waiting for Libby and Jack to grow up. Ten years she’d been at the surgery. A decade in a job she’d never intended to do longer than twelve months. What was that, if not passing time?

07:59.

Slipping the headset over her ears, she clicked a window open on the computer, staring without seeing the grids of typeset. Now Libby and Jack had grown up, and what a shock! What an outrageous, painful shock to lift her head and find that while she had been treading water, they had learned to swim. The minute-hand shifted; she heard it as a crypt door closing, heavy, solid, final. She reached for the mouse and clicked. ‘Rosehill Health Centre,’ she said. ‘How can I help?’

8

Five hundred and fifty feet above one of the wealthiest square miles in the world, Caro stood, seven centimetres of reinforced glass separating her from fresh air. Hands by her temples she pressed closer, all the better to see a thousand years of London: the Gherkin and St Pauls, the neo-classical facade of the Bank of England, the great wheel of the turning Eye and if you knew where to look, which she did, small but stubborn chunks of Roman wall, left behind like the broken teeth of a giant.

How had she not remembered this? How had she not made the connection when Helen had tried to explain just a couple of days ago. She smiled, so close now her nose was almost pressed to the glass. What Helen had been talking about as she’d described the view from high in the Rocky Mountains, how powerful it had made her feel, was exactly this. The feeling she had – had always had – every time she had stood and looked out over London, or Singapore, or New York. Stepping back, she let her hands drop. It hadn’t clicked, her head had been too full of wedding dresses, and it simply hadn’t clicked.

‘It’s quite some view, isn’t it?’

She turned.

‘I can never decide if I prefer this, or the view from the Observatory.’ The man who had spoken was tall. Half an inch of snow-white shirt peeped from the precisely cut cuffs of his suit, his grey hair held the sheen of top-end products, and his face was clean shaven, carrying the kind of healthy glow that spoke of time in the sun. Every inch of him whispered wealth.

‘Ah, but there are no Roman ruins in New York,’ she said, and the expression of surprise that crossed his face was exactly what she’d been aiming for.

‘There are none here …’ He leaned to the window. ‘Are there?’

‘If you know where to look.’

‘And I presume you do?’ There was a challenge in his voice, that she didn’t hesitate to accept.

‘Here.’ She held a finger against the glass. ‘Can you see? You have to know what you’re looking for, but along the base of that building you can just about make out a tiny grey line. See how it juts out? That’s a roman wall.’

The man leaned closer and suddenly she was light-headed, an exquisite note of cedarwood in his cologne sending all sorts of signals through her head.

As if he sensed this, he took a step back and stretched out his hand. ‘Spencer Cooper.’

‘Caro Hardcastle,’ she said regaining her composure.

‘Caro? As in Caroline? You’re giving the presentation?’

‘I am.’ And as she shook his hand a maelstrom surged. Relief that she had had a manicure, anxiety that he would still feel the coarseness of her weeks in the garden, confusion that she should be feeling anything, and a deep, deep desire to press her nose to his neck and breathe in.

‘Well,’ he murmured, an amused expression lighting his eyes. ‘Thank you for showing me something new. That doesn’t happen very often.’ He was still holding her hand.

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