Mine To Lose

by Lockhart, Cate

  ‘We are, aren’t we, sweetheart?’ Jordan said, whispering in my ear.

  I crossed my fingers behind my back. ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘I checked your AAD myself,’ Mike said, coming to a standstill in front of me. ‘That’s the automatic activation device. Don’t look so worried. You’re jumping with me.’

  I drew a deep breath and exhaled a long sigh of relief. Well, partial relief. It was so much better to know that I had an instructor doing all the work for me, but still, leaping from the ledge of a plane into a colossal atmosphere of nothingness wasn’t a pleasant forethought.

  ‘Let’s do this!’ I faked, but it caught in my throat like a piece of dry bread.

  ‘That’s the spirit!’ Mike shouted, hauling me off by the wrist with Jordan trotting behind us.

  It just isn’t fair, I thought, as we boarded the plane single-file. I had finally made it to thirty and was really looking forward to not giving a toss about the odd grey hair here or there or the fact that I had my first wrinkle. All of my friends said the same thing – once you reached thirty, the real you begins to shine through. Confidence comes in abundance. That may well be for some, but as the narrow door of the plane snapped shut, I found myself wishing Jordan had booked this jump for my 31st. At least that way I’d have known for a year what it felt like to finally be free from the worry of what others thought of me. But no, I’d stupidly agreed to join him on an overpriced suicide attempt.

  I was stuck in an aluminium tube they generously called a plane, packed in among a bunch of adrenaline junkies and waiting to be hurled into the sky with nothing to protect me but a few yards of fabric.

  All because I was in love with a man who wanted adventure.

  The engines on the wings roared to life, the plane lurched forward, and my heart lodged itself in my throat, declining all invitations to return to its original position. The rest of the half-dozen skydivers chattered excitedly amongst themselves, and as I clutched at the armrests of my chair, I stared at Jordan sitting quietly and looking out the side window with a dreamy, almost serene look on his face. I followed his gaze to the dwindling landscape below, distant trees and open fields shrinking from sight as the plane slipped from gravity's shackles.

  It was a beautiful sight; I couldn't argue that. I would have been thrilled if sightseeing were the only purpose of this little excursion. Unfortunately, it was all too soon that Mike rose from his seat at the front, turned and began to address the lemmings, and in so doing, shattered my happy fantasy. I glanced at Jordan again and was dismayed to see a familiar, excited expression taking root on his face. It was the one he always seemed to have whenever he was about to do something incredibly stupid, or as he called it – ‘fun.’

  I knew I really should have tried to pay more attention to Mike on the off chance that he was giving some last-minute, life-saving information, but I was too busy muttering prayers under my breath. Finally, the dreaded moment came when he stopped talking and gave a smile similar to Jordan’s, and my heart dropped from my throat all the way down into my stomach as he pushed open the little door. A deafening wind filled the plane and drowned out my scream of terror.

  Jordan reached over and laid his hand over mine as I gripped the armrest and gave me a reassuring squeeze. I looked back at him, at his calm but eager smile and those playful green eyes I’d fallen in love, and for a moment I was almost calm. Jordan shouted something, and although the shrieking wind suppressed his words, I was able to discern the message.

  We'll be okay. I love you.

  I managed a weak smile for Jordan as we rose from our seats and shuffled for the open door. Mike gave each diver a few final tips, and one by one, they each leaped from the door into the open sky. Jordan and I were the third-and second-to-last in the line, and once Mike passed on his wisdom to Jordan, he turned and kissed me with childish enthusiasm.

  ‘See you down there!’ Jordan shouted, then turned and flung himself out. I barely had time to whisper goodbye before Mike pulled me to the door. I wanted to protest, wanted to bolt myself onto the plane floor and never let go, but my body was too frozen with fear to resist. I stared out into the empty blue, the dominion of the birds where humans were visitors at best, and squeaked with gut-wrenching terror. Mike attached himself to me and shouted to make himself heard.

  ‘Remember! Step off! Nothing to it!’

  I would never be sure if Mike actually dragged me out of the plane or if I simply heeded the call of the void and stepped out on my own. Whatever the case, it was irrelevant. There was no going back.

  I’d thought the wind had been loud inside the plane, but it had only been whispering my demise. Now it was screaming at me as I hurtled toward the earth, and I screamed with it. The descent was so fast, I couldn't register anything but the horror of my own impending doom, and in the back of my mind, I wondered if it would hurt. I prayed it would be over too quickly to feel the pain.

  As the ground raced up to meet us, I tried to guess how long it had been since we’d left the plane. It didn't matter, I supposed, not when I was about to die. We simply fell and fell. I forgot everything but the fear. This was the end.

  Memories overwhelmed me: my wedding day; Jordan drunk at the reception, tripping over and landing face first in our wedding cake; Jordan and me white-water rafting in America; Jordan lighting hundreds of candles in our apartment on Valentine’s Day, rose petals covering the bed; Jordan making love to me. Over and over again, the visions flashed through my mind, blinding me with one simple truth: if this was the end, I hadn’t done enough with my life.

  I’d missed something. Tears leaked out of my tightly shut eyelids and were whipped away by the wind. All I had was Jordan, and all he had was me. But was that enough? I realised with a start that it wasn’t. The only thing that would have completed us was … was … a child.

  Mike gripped the handle and yanked it from his chest, and my body was rocked by the sudden loss of momentum. My eyes, squeezed shut for much of the dive, opened slowly to survey the extent of the damage ... and widened in shock as I took in the beauty that awaited me. Floating to earth, carried aloft by the same wind that earlier had pronounced my end, I watched as beneath me the rest of the divers' chutes blossomed and deposited them one by one gently on terra firma. I was no longer thinking about death – I was thinking about life. My life.

  If I died today, what legacy would I have left behind? People would have remembered me as Jordan Winston’s wife, Rosemary Hilton’s daughter. Other than that, once the hand of time and the will of weather had wiped my name from my gravestone, there would be no trace of me, that I ever existed.

  We touched down with a rush of adrenaline and a hearty cheer of victory.

  ‘Well done, birthday girl!’ Mike panted with a great big smile.

  I could not stop laughing with glee. Exhilaration possessed me, and my mind felt like the horizon at dawn. I knew what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to be remembered. I wanted to matter. I fell to my knees with a quiet smile and whispered, ‘I want a baby.’

  Chapter 3

  ‘Terrible thing happened to Carol over the weekend,’ Martin said as he closed my office door on Monday morning. I had arrived at work early, eager to tell my colleagues about the weekend and the life-altering epiphany I had, the fear of the jump, and my recollection of my grandfather’s stories, but that looked like it was going to have to wait.

  ‘What happened? Is she alright?’ I asked.

  Martin was a man of little emotion, not because he was insensitive, but because he had such a logical mind, such a composed demeanour. He wasn’t the sort of man to exclaim or marvel over something; therefore, I was alarmed when he reacted this way to one of my regular clients.

  ‘As well as can be expected, given the circumstances,’ he reported, ‘He’s done a right job on her; even worse than last time.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ I implored. ‘I had a feeling he’d kick off when she said she was going to go to stay with her brother on Saturday
. I did warn her.’ I shook my head. I didn’t have to be a clairvoyant to know that her husband, James, was going to react violently to his abused wife testing the waters of freedom.

  ‘I remember you said something to that effect,’ he answered. ‘But don’t you think you should have lodged a stronger dissuasion at her suggestion?’

  Martin Saxon was my colleague, although more like a supervisor, slightly elevated in status and experience at the Family Centre where I worked with abused women. He was a short man with broad shoulders and receding fair hair that was sure to be gone in a few years.

  ‘I did,’ I defended. ‘She wouldn’t listen. Look, I admit I was happy that she finally was finally standing up to him—’

  ‘I wasn’t insinuating that it was your fault she went ahead with her plan,’ he eased me. ‘You just have such a powerful penchant for persuasion, such a wonderful ability to make people feel they can take on the world. Maybe you should have been less ... enthusiastic.’

  ‘Why do I get the feeling that you’re accusing me of pushing her too hard for a change,’ I said, feeling a bit confrontational.

  ‘Please don’t make this a personal issue. There’s nothing wrong with your methods. In fact, they’re normally very effective. All I am saying is that perhaps your timing was out in this instance?’

  ‘How do you mean?’ I asked, genuinely perplexed by his statement.

  ‘As you know, correct timing is as important as successful counselling. I think you may have applied too much pressure on Carol to start making life changes before she was ready to sever the tie with James completely. Am I making sense?’ he asked in a less confident tone.

  He did make sense. Now that I shifted aside my predetermined blame, I could see where he was coming from.

  I nodded. ‘You think I should have waited for her to move into a refuge before I urged her to actually be more proactive, right?’ I replied.

  Martin smiled, removing his bronze-framed glasses and proceeding to clean the glass with the bottom ribbing of his ever-present cardigan.

  ‘Precisely, Katie. Precisely.’

  His argument really was a mute point. How could Carol’s circumstance change if she didn’t feel empowered to take the necessary action? I didn’t mention this, of course. It was too late now. The future was all that mattered, and how we were going to move forward. ‘Where’s Carol now?’ I asked.

  ‘She’s in the staff room. Sitting in reception was too much for her, and I don’t blame her,’ he said, putting his specs back on his nose. ‘I think the condition she’s in would elicit far too much attention and gossip, so it is better for her to remain there for now.’

  ‘Have the police been informed?’ I asked him as I removed my jacket and placed my bag in my bottom desk drawer.

  ‘Yes, the neighbours called them, but Katie, until Carol presses charges and wants to move out, we can’t do more than be a shoulder to cry on.’ He sighed, shaking his head and examining the floor with his eyes, as he often did when he couldn’t find a solution to a problem.

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’ll have a chat with her and see where she wants to take things from here.’

  ‘Very good, very good,’ he said softly. He opened my door to leave, but glanced back, ‘Oh, when you have a moment, I want to hear about your birthday surprise.’

  I smiled and nodded, waiting for him to leave before trying to focus on my meeting with Carol. It was difficult to get my brain in gear when I was still harbouring the secret of my revelation. Secrets had always been horrible things to me, brewing like a stew with a tight lid. When it finally exploded, it made a far bigger mess of things than it ever would have if the lid were just removed before the pot got too hot.

  I knew it would be a long and arduous journey, if not an impossible one, to persuade Jordan to consider having children. On top of that thorn firmly in my skin, I would have to deal with Martha’s wrath too. My mother-in-law was also favourable to adult freedom but not in the way of successful careers. No, Martha divorced her husband when she was forty because she couldn’t bear having only one man. Neither she, nor Jordan would ever admit it, but by the psychology of their relationship and the history of their domestic life, I had managed to piece together what she was about over the years. Life on planet Martha revolved around Martha and Jordan, and no one else came into the inclusion.

  That was the only thing I hated about my marriage to Jordan; the fact that I had to deal with Martha. Personal taste and an inadvertent nudge toward rudeness aside, the woman simply had no boundaries. Sadly, her son couldn’t see it.

  Jordan meant so much to me that I elected to ignore Martha’s constant know-it-all dismissal of my opinions and his consequent sycophantic agreement with her. I decided to tolerate her overbearing insults of my upbringing and class – class – as if she even fathomed the meaning of the word! But she always approved of my concurrence with my husband on the matter of children. As she put it, children killed a harmonious marriage, decimated any romance between a man and his wife and were not worth the effort or money they incurred during their childhood.

  I abandoned the urge several times to remind her that her ill experiences as a mother weren’t the benchmark by which all parenthood should be matched, but refrained for the sake of harmony between the three of us. She meddled in everything we decided as a couple as if everything had to carry her stamp of approval before her son, a grown man halfway through his thirties, could proceed with his life.

  But it didn’t help that I was disgruntled by her over-involvement in our lives because Jordan was firmly in her talons and only too happy to be so. Much as he loved me, he loved and valued her respect just as much. With Martha’s maniacal influence, I knew I could never convince him, and that bothered me endlessly.

  But I had to keep my secret to myself for now. The desire to have a child had suddenly become all consuming, and the more I thought about it, the more I started to feel a warm, safe feeling blossom in my heart. As I lay in bed next to Jordan, the previous night, I imagined us as parents. I imagined vividly the sound of little footsteps running to our bedroom door, warm little hands holding on to my arm and breath smelling of milk and cookies breathing in my neck.

  My smiles from the sweet thoughts I nurtured had to be hidden from Jordan this morning; otherwise, he would have asked me what I was so happy about. If I had told him the truth, I was certain he would have dropped dead right there and then.

  All this was racing around in my mind as I prepared to see Carol Wicker. I had to tuck it away for now, just like with Jordan.

  As I left my office and made my way down the corridor, I felt deep sadness overcome me. I didn’t know who it was for. Carol. Or me.

  Chapter 4

  Carol was seated on the sofa in our staff room. It had two armchairs, a two-seater sofa, and a small coffee table. It had recently been redecorated, and the dark blue walls had been repainted with a bright yellow. This was after years of staff members complaining that the blue was very depressing. Whether the new colour would make a difference remained to be seen. Carol was sat on one of the armchairs. Her back was against the armrest, and she faced toward the other side, her legs pulled up to her chest on the couch. Her shoes were tossed carelessly under the coffee table, and she was staring out the window at the pale morning sun.

  ‘Carol,’ I said as gently as I could, not wanting to startle her.

  ‘Can I smoke in here?’ she asked without regarding me. Her voice was sore and low, fraught with indifference. I had never seen her dressed looking nothing but immaculate, yet today, her usually neat blonde hair was unkempt and fell over a face stained with smudged make-up. The clothes she wore were creased and stained.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, moving slowly towards her, ‘but there’s no smoking in here.’

  ‘Christ, I’d kill for a one right now,’ she said, refusing to move or to look my way.

  ‘I know, I know. Once we are done with our chat, we can go outside, and you can have a cigarette,’ I
said smiling, trying to appease her in even the smallest way.

  I was surprised when she nodded in agreement. I thought she would rather delay our talk than miss out on a nicotine fix. It was only when I moved to the other side of the sofa to sit down that I saw her from the front. My heart stopped. Her bottom lip was cut, blood red from the chafed off skin, and two of her teeth were smashed, not missing, just chipped. It was then that I realised that the jagged edges of those teeth were the reason her lip was torn. Every time she said something, she would wince in pain from the sharp protrusions cutting into her flesh.

  ‘Did the police take pictures?’ I asked her plainly. With domestic violence of this severity, pictures were imperative.

  ‘No, I sent them away. They said they’d report it, but until I press charges, it’s not official or something. To be honest, they didn’t really look like they were much interested in me. They were too in awe of James,’ she explained. ‘I don’t know what story he told them this time, but they seemed to believe I was some kind of neurotic head case who self-harms.’

  ‘Carol,’ I started, but she locked her blackened eyes on mine. Only then did I notice that her nose was broken too because the light shifted across her face to accentuate the fracture.

  ‘Please don’t start the ‘I’m sure the police would take your case seriously, mantra’ she hissed. ‘What ‘sane’ person would believe a member of parliament over the ramblings of a woman with a history of mental health problems … caused by said husband, ironically.’

  ‘I believe you, Carol,’ I said.

  ‘And where’s that got me?’ her voice rose an octave. ‘Nowhere, that’s where. I’m still in the same position I was in when I first started coming here months ago.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Carol, but my hands are tied. I can’t force you into taking any of the actions I put forward.’ I was growing more upset by the second. My job dictated that I remain perfectly calm, no matter what the circumstances, but this morning, it had become exceedingly difficult for me.