Outside the great sash windows, party lights snaked around the sycamores beside her bathroom, and even from two floors up, the pulse of party music could be heard.
The neighbours would hate it – the flash Reynolds family showing off again, Callie Reynolds thought with a grimace, standing ready in her dress and shoes, wishing fifty wasn’t a birthday people felt that a person had to celebrate.
She’d have been happy with a small dinner, but no. Jason, who always wanted the biggest and best, had organised this highly expensive, three-ring circus.
‘You deserve it,’ he’d told her earlier that day, as he’d proudly surveyed scurrying waiters and watched the party organiser ticking off cases of expensive wine. ‘We’ve worked hard for this life.’
Callie had leaned into her handsome husband – everyone said they were a stunning couple – and murmured thank you.
Mentally, she was thinking: but what if, after all the hard work, you find you don’t really like this life after all?
Still bathed in the party lights, Callie locked the door of her glamorous cream marble bathroom. Bending down, she reached under the sink right to the back of the bottom of the cupboard to find the small cosmetics bag stuffed behind the spare shower gels and old bottles of fake tan. It was an ancient bag, chosen on purpose because Poppy, her teenage daughter, was unlikely to riffle through it on one of her forays into Callie’s cabinets in search of make-up.
Since Poppy had turned fourteen, she had grown tall, nearly as tall as her mother, and was no longer even vaguely pleased with ordinary cosmetics, wanting instead to use her mother’s wildly expensive Chantecaille stuff, which Callie herself felt guilty about using.
A full make-up bag of Chantecaille could keep a family of four fed for a month and still have enough left over for takeaway pizza.
‘I got you lovely MAC stuff,’ Callie protested the last time she found that Poppy had whipped her foundation, primer and pressed powder and had broken the latter.
Poppy, who had her father’s colouring and his utter self-belief, had flicked her long, dark hair out of her perfectly made-up eyes. ‘Your stuff is nicer and I don’t see why I can’t share it,’ she said with the entitled air that shocked Callie.
Where is my lovely, sweet daughter and what have you done with her? Callie wondered.
In the past six months since the radical conversion from Beloved Child into Daughter-From-Hell, Callie had tried everything in her maternal arsenal: withholding pocket money; loss of phone privileges; and the When I Was Your Age talk.
The When I Was Your Age talk had backfired the most.
‘That was years ago, the seventies,’ said Poppy dismissively, as if the seventies were on a par with the Jurassic period. ‘This is like, now?’
Callie had ground her teeth. Poppy’s generation had no clue what life had been like for Callie growing up, or for Poppy’s father, Jason. Sometimes, when she thought of how having so little had given Jason and herself such drive and determination, Callie went with: ‘if you get too many things too young, Poppy, what values are you learning?’
The prepubescent Poppy, the one who loved animals, seals and sparkly nail varnish, might have teared up or let her bottom lip wobble at having upset her mum. The new, unimproved Poppy just rolled her eyes, went back to her phone and ignored her mother for the rest of the day, which was obviously what she was assiduously learning in school from the handful of other, equally privileged kids she was now palling around with.
Not having a clue how to handle this new, tempestuous child was partly to blame for Callie’s need of the occasional Xanax.
Her oldest friend, Mary Butler, a real pal from her modelling days who’d lived in Canada for years and had three daughters older than Poppy, often said:
‘I know it seems counter-intuitive, but making us want to kill them is a part of teenagers’ growing up. It’s how we let them fly the nest, because there comes a point where you think you might just smother them in their sleep when they’ve accused you of being passive-aggressive four times in one day and then demanded to know if you’ve handwashed their pink sweater.’
Mary was in her late fifties, older and wiser, no longer caught up in the hormonal maelstrom of perimenopause. Mary had three girls in college. She was not, Callie reflected, dealing with a daughter currently behaving like a particularly venal child from Game of Thrones.
From being around people like Mary, Callie had always assumed that when a person hit fifty, all knowledge flowed into them, automatically. But she was wrong. Because today, Callie Reynolds was fifty. Fifty! And she didn’t seem to know anything more than she ever had.
All the books on menopause seemed to say her Inner Goddess would be along soon, bringing wisdom, new sex appeal and the glow of a new life, which was an Inner Goddess guarantee. Ha! That was a cosmic joke, for sure. Staring at herself in the mirror, Callie firmly believed that her blasted Inner Goddess had run off and had left the stand-in, Inner Crone, in her place.
Crone had dry skin, got irritable, cried at the drop of a hat and sometimes sweated so much in bed she wondered when Jason would start asking if he could sleep in the shallow end.
Crone snapped at her husband – not that he was around much these days, possibly because Crone was not experiencing the much-vaunted sexual surge but more of a sexual Saharan drought.
Plus, the anti-Inner Goddess wanted a daughter who appreciated what she had and didn’t order stuff from the internet with Crone’s credit card without asking.
Finally, Inner Crone missed her family and tended to cry when she thought of them. Which was the other reason Callie needed the odd Xanax.
It was ten years since she’d seen her mother, her brother or Aunt Phil. Ten years. They should have been at this party. But they weren’t. Because of Jason, and the row and . . .
Feeling the panic rise, Callie unzipped the little bag and popped a pill out of its packet. She washed down the Xanax with some water and took a deep breath.
The Inner Goddess would probably suggest dealing with the family rift as well as talking to Jason about how they really needed to spend more time together as a couple. She’d advise a book on healing herbs and how to get through the tricky teenage years, and to take up meditation.
But Crone liked chemicals to block out the pain because it was easier.
Callie could hear music throbbing from the party two floors below and knew she had to hurry. Quickly, she took stock of herself in the mirror: golden blonde hair perfect, the charcoal silk shift dress with its modern Jackson Pollock-style pattern on the front caressed collarbones nearly as slender as those of the teenage models on which it had been photographed in the magazines.
At least collarbones never got fat, unlike waists.
She’d had her hair blow-dried but made her own face up. After those early years as a model, Callie knew what worked. She knew other people saw beauty – full lips, her face a perfect oval and eyes that someone had once described as huge misty grey orbs that dominated her face. She, who’d been the skinny little kid in school with the weirdly big mouth, now saw only flaws: the lines, the inevitable sag of her jawline, and a tiredness no multivitamin could shift.
‘Like a Greek goddess with mysterious eyes, as if all the world’s knowledge is upon those slender shoulders . . .’ someone had once written about her.
Jason had teased her about it, but she knew that, secretly, he’d been pleased.
‘Greek indeed,’ he’d joked, ‘when we both know you’re pure Ballyglen.’
Callie had known he was pleased because normally he never mentioned their home town, having long since brushed its rural dust from his handmade shoes.
Their glamorous detached mansion in Dublin was a far cry from their council homes in Ballyglen, a small East coast town with no industry anymore, no jobs, and her family—
Stop thinking about the past!
She slicked on another sweep of lip gloss.
There had been little joking from her husband this week as the planner had consulted with Callie about the party. Jason, whose idea the blasted thing was, had been distant, on the phone a lot of the time hidden away in his study when he wasn’t at work.
Callie, whose perimenopausal emotional barometer was set to ‘high alert’ anyway, sensed him moving away emotionally.
Worse, Poppy had gone into overdrive in teenage cattiness, a type of meanness that must register on some Teenage Richter Scale of Narkiness somewhere.
‘Are you wearing that?’ she had asked her mother earlier in the week, spying the shift dress on its hanger.
‘Yes,’ said Callie, summoning all her patience, waiting for what Poppy and her friends called ‘the burn’ – a caustic remark that hurt as much as raw flames.
‘You wear that, it’ll look like the eighties threw up on you,’ said Poppy. ‘Plus, the waist is in, you know, Mum.’
There it was – the burn.
Her friend Mary, who was as all-knowing as Google, had warned her that the teenage era was tough.
‘Remember when you were the most fabulous Mummy in the world, small people snuggled up to you on the couch and said you were beautiful?’ Mary emailed gently, when Poppy hit thirteen. ‘That’s over. OVAH. You are now the thing Poppy tests her claws on, like a cat scratcher, only mobile. You’ve got to start reining her in, Callie, because it’s Armageddon time and she will pick on you, not Jason. You are going to be the cat scratcher.’
Mary had been right so far.
Mild acne and raging hormones that made Poppy question Callie’s every word both hit at the same time.
Armageddon, Callie thought, shell-shocked.
Poppy had fallen in with a different crowd at school, the gang with rich parents, the ultra-entitled gang who were always demanding money.
‘Do you remember that Christmas she wanted Santa Claus to give her presents to poor children?’ Callie asked Jason one morning.
‘Yeah,’ muttered Jason, scanning his iPad and barely listening.
‘Where has that person gone?’ Callie said earnestly.
Jason didn’t answer, his attention already elsewhere. Jason thought that as long as the family had plenty of money, that was all that mattered. Growing up poor could do that to a person. Once, she’d been the same.
But now . . . now she was afraid her beloved Poppy was becoming someone else: someone who knew the cost of everything and, truly, the value of absolutely nothing. A child of the wealthy who had nothing with which to compare her life. No memories of jam sandwiches for dinner all week, no recall of not having proper school shoes.
In giving their daughter everything she ever wanted, Callie wondered if she and Jason had damaged her by making Poppy spoiled.
Not that Jason thought so: he thought Poppy hung the moon.
But Callie, though she adored her daughter, worried and she was determined to teach Poppy the right things again.
First, she had to get through tonight – this enormous, entirely unwanted fiftieth birthday party that Jason had insisted on throwing for her.
‘People will expect it from us,’ Jason had said. ‘We’ve got an image to maintain, honey.’
Callie was sick of their damned image.
Sure, it seemed like Callie Reynolds had it all: the big house, the rich and glamorous businessman husband who never strayed, the looks of a former model, an interesting past, and a tall, beautiful daughter any mother would be proud of.
Yet it wasn’t perfect. Nothing ever really was. Real life was not like the pretend world on some people’s Instagram. Where was the Instagram that said ‘My Not So Damn Perfect Life’, with no happy-glow filters?
Jason had certainly pulled out all the stops, which meant a giant drinks party for two hundred people with the catering kitchen in the basement full of sous-chefs prepping for the plating of chocolate surprise bombes, tiny amandine biscuits shaped like stars, sashimi, sushi, cod and chips, Anjou pigeon (watch out for shot, warned the waiters and waitresses) and fat round pieces of beef that had been made into the most luxurious beef burgers ever. If any of the guests had an allergy, or even felt they might like to have an allergy on fashionable grounds, it would be catered for. There wasn’t a bag of Peruvian black quinoa or a tin of organic matcha tea to be had within a ten-block radius, just in case.
Holding her stomach in, Callie slowly made her way into the party, knocked sideways by expensive perfumes and the noisy clatter of hundreds of people drinking cocktails perfected by a mixologist.
‘Fabulous party,’ said someone, and a face Callie barely recognised from the newspaper air-kissed her. ‘The house is divine.’
Callie beamed her photograph smile.
‘Yes, it’s lovely,’ she said, poise in motion now that the Xanax had kicked in nicely and had chemically flattened her worries about Poppy or guilt over her family’s absence at this party. ‘Jason has such incredible ideas for the house.’
It was easier than saying that Jason was a nightmare when it came to the notion of improving everything he owned.
Everything had to be the best or most expensive. Like the recent renovation.
Thanks to endless months of building works on the mansion in the embassy belt, a huge basement had been dug for an extension which opened up to a three-storey conservatory complete with a walkway around the highest floor, at ground level, where tropical plants grew, and solar panels in the giant glass panes made the whole thing work.
She didn’t explain that her husband knew zilch about exotic plants.
He’d actually got the idea from an article in the Financial Times’s How To Spend It magazine about a billionaire who had a greenhouse in Manhattan where he grew all manner of exotic things.
‘Cyrtochilum Dasyglossum orchids,’ he’d read out, admiring a photo of a yellow orchid with delicately ruffled petals.
His elocution and command of the Latin words were impressive for a man who’d grown up in a council estate not too far from Callie’s own in a big county town, and whose knowledge of plants was confined to his mam’s dahlias.
But Jason was a quick learner. He could now talk exotic plants with the best of them. He expected Callie to do the same, as well as look just as beautiful all the time.
Unlike those husbands who died a little when their wives went to the shops wielding credit cards, Jason was always urging Callie to buy clothes.
‘I want you looking good, sexy,’ he’d say.
She could hardly complain, and yet lately she felt more like another thing in Jason’s life. His wife, to add to the Ferrari and the yacht.
‘Do enjoy yourself,’ Callie said to the guest now and she moved as if something vital was happening somewhere and she must race off. It was her fiftieth birthday party, after all, and the hostess needed to be all over the place, a handy excuse when it came to conversing with some of the guests, who were clearly a rent-a-celeb crowd drummed up by the party planner.
Callie moved on through the beautiful grey reception room that soared up to a vast glass and steel structure which had guests admiring it all.
She could see her husband in the distance, surrounded by friends as if it was his fiftieth birthday party and not hers. But then Jason drew people to him with the magnetism of the handsome and charismatic. He was tall, even among the statuesque, Pilates- or barre-toned Amazons in heels who were flirting with him.
She had no idea how he’d grown so tall: his own father, now long dead, had been wizened, but then that was due to smoking untipped cigarettes for years and thinking pints of beer and greasy pub sausages and chips were nourishment. Jason was dark, with that Spanish/Irish combination of raven blue-black hair, blue Irish eyes and skin that tanned when he so much as looked at the sun. Tonight, he was wearing a suit of such a dark navy that it appeared almost black. He looked like a movie star: an almost unreal presence among the rest of the guests.
‘We were flying over Monument Valley and the pilot took us really low. It was awesome. Nothing can do justice to that landscape, but flying over it comes pretty close,’ he was saying, his voice at the same time husky – which was natural – and exquisitely modulated to sound posh Irish – which was not natural but the result of years of voice lessons.
His audience were more women than men. Jason was a rainmaker when it came to money and men loved that. Loved being close to someone who’d managed to buck recessions, the closing of tax loopholes, currency drops and world economic fluctuations to stay rich and grow richer. But tonight, it was a predominantly female crowd.
‘There she is, my beautiful wife,’ said Jason, spotting her and drawing her close. He was annoyed at her late arrival, she could tell from the glitter of his eyes. He was a stickler for punctuality, but he would never say a word. For the crowd, he kissed her lightly on the mouth.
The crowd purred and Jason smiled: he loved the limelight.
‘Nice dress,’ he whispered only for her and she felt the pressure of his fingers moving gently up the dress to caress the underside of her breast.
‘I needed to look perfect for you, darling,’ she said for the benefit of the audience, the knowledge that Jason approved of this dress, of how she looked, calming her along with the Xanax. When did she become this insecure? She hated it. Hated how her sex drive had plummeted and how intimacy had become a chore.
What if the Inner Crone drove her husband away?
He was a good man, despite his ferocious need for more: more money, more things, more prestige.
Now, his fingers traced a line along the skin of her exposed collarbone as if they were alone and the crowd of women all sighed a little at such romance.
‘Where were you, Cal?’ he muttered so nobody could hear. ‘I thought I’d have to send out a search party. Someone keeps groping my backside.’
Callie grinned at the thought of her Alpha-male husband complaining about being groped.
‘Now I’m here, I’ll keep your admirers in check,’ she said, shooting a glance around at his harem and wondering who was drunk this early in the evening and feeling up the host. ‘I was checking on Poppy.’
‘Happy?’
‘Oh, fine. I’d like to think she’s miserable she’s not down here, but she insists it’s all wrinklies and she’d have no credibility if she came to it.’
‘Made her point and now she has to stick to it,’ Jason said with a hint of pride.
Poppy was in her room with four girls from school and Brenda, who was the family housekeeper and Callie’s closest confidante apart from Mary, was keeping an eye on them and feeding them.
‘Daft kid, she’ll be sorry one day, missing all this.’ He gestured around the room and in the process, let go of his wife, which was her signal to mingle.
She didn’t touch any of the cocktails, knowing that alcohol and Xanax were an unfortunate mix.
‘Callie, it’s a beautiful party and you are beautiful in that dress.’
The speaker was small, pretty, had short curling dark hair and, unlike most of the guests, was a real friend who’d known Callie for a long time.
‘Evelyn, I’m so glad you could come!’
Evelyn was the first wife of Jason’s long-time business partner, Rob.
She was a dear friend. They met twice a week at Pilates classes and giggled together over whether their pelvic floors had hit the basement yet. With Evelyn, Callie didn’t have to pretend to be the super-rich, super-happy ex-model wife. She could merely be herself and discuss hot flushes, where this excess waist flab was coming from, and wonder where their sexual reawakening had got to. Before Mary had gone to Canada, the three of them had gone to Pilates together.
‘You look lovely too, Ev. Red really suits you,’ said Callie, admiring Evelyn’s red jersey dress, which they’d shopped for together. She pulled her friend into a hug.
Rob and Jason had been thick as thieves ever since they’d got out of a big City firm and set up their own hedge fund brokerage. They weren’t hedgies anymore, they told everyone. They did lots of things, mainly private property investment, which was very complex, the way Jason explained it.
‘Oh, just a bit of this and a bit of that,’ as Jason said expansively when anyone asked.
Callie didn’t ask anymore.
Evelyn and Rob were now divorced. She’d finally thrown Rob out of the house when his sleeping around had got too much for her.
‘I put up with so much for the kids, because I didn’t want them to have divorced parents, but hey, he’s never around anyway, always “working”,’ she’d said bitterly to Callie at the time. ‘Which means screwing his newest girlfriend.’
Six years on, Evelyn and Callie were still friends and it had been a bone of contention between Jason and Callie when she insisted on inviting Evelyn to the party.
‘Rob’s coming with Anka,’ Jason had said, jaw clenched. ‘We don’t want a scene.’
Anka was the girlfriend who’d stuck: the clichéd, much younger, tall blonde with ski-jump Slavic cheekbones, a fragile beauty and no apparent issues with waist flab.
She was also very sweet, was now Rob’s fiancée and the mother of his latest child.
‘So? They meet all the time over the children. Evelyn doesn’t blame Anka – she likes her. Anka’s great with the children. And Evelyn’s my friend,’ Callie said, even though she rarely argued with Jason.
He got bored by arguments: he just ignored them and walked out of the room. Argument over – simple.
‘You don’t understand . . .’ he began, actually engaging, for once, sounding on the verge of anger. ‘Rob’s coming. He’s part of what pays for all this.’
With his hands spread, he gestured to the huge house around them, all decorated by an interior designer in paints more expensive than La Prairie face cream, filled with flowers and with staff to make sure Callie didn’t have to lift a finger. ‘Rob and Ev squabble with each other,’ he went on. ‘I hate it.’
Then he’d walked out.
‘No sign of Rob or Anka,’ said Evelyn now, looking around. She never said a word against her ex-husband’s new partner. Rob had strayed. The fault was his and she tried to be nice to her replacement.
Callie felt huge pity for Evelyn. She didn’t know how she’d cope if Jason was unfaithful to her. But then he never played around. She was damn sure of it. He was devoted to her, even if he wasn’t the sort of husband who massaged her feet at night and said: ‘how was your day?’
You couldn’t have everything.
‘If they’re not here yet, they’re not coming. I’m glad they’re not,’ said Callie now. ‘Rob must be ill. He never misses any of Jason’s parties but silver lining and all that, you can relax. Well, a bit,’ she amended, looking round the house with its quota of done-up partygoers ready for a night out.
‘Plenty of our well-dressed pack here’ sighed Evelyn, ‘who all want to know am I seeing anyone else.’
She wasn’t, as Callie knew.
The market for older women did not take into account maturity, wisdom or a sense of humour. The buyers were looking for firm flesh, thighs that had never seen cellulite and faces free from wrinkles. Sometimes Callie wanted to hit Rob for hurting her beloved friend so much.
‘Is Poppy here?’ Evelyn asked.
‘Upstairs watching films with some friends,’ said Callie, trying not to mind.
Evelyn did not have teenage girls. She had sons, who were kinder, it seemed.
‘I’m going up there now to make sure everything’s OK,’ said Callie. ‘I know Brenda keeps looking in, but I’m freaked out over thoughts of them drinking, after . . . you know.’
She’d already told Evelyn about the empty bottle of Beluga vodka she’d found under Poppy’s bed last month, filched from the freezer. The row had been pyrotechnic.
She’d grounded Poppy for two weeks, but Jason, who was a fan of the ‘chip off the old block’ school of parenting, had only laughed and said: ‘Kids are going to drink, Callie. At least it was good stuff.’
It wasn’t that simple, Callie wanted to shriek. Genetics mattered. The age at which kids started to drink mattered. But Jason liked to think that being clever could get you past all that stuff. It had worked for him. But not for her brother, her drug-addict brother whom she hadn’t seen for ten years. Poppy had those genes too.
Callie had hidden the anxiety and had another Xanax.
Jason refused to be serious about it all, which made her furious. After all, he’d grown up in the same area where she’d grown up, the not-so-lovely streets of Ballyglen’s council estates where some people hadn’t worked in years and where a hardened contingent considered drinking a full-time occupation.
She did not want that for Poppy. Binge drinking was the start of it. Expensive vodka or cheap beer: it didn’t matter. All the same path, a path to risky choices that could affect her life.
Eventually, Callie managed to leave the room, and went through the corridor the hired-in catering staff were using to access the specially designed catering kitchen. She slipped up the stairs and came out in the back hall, then into the actual family kitchen. There she found Brenda, who’d looked after the house for them for twenty years.
Poppy was in the kitchen with Brenda and another girl from school, Zara, and they were busily loading up two trays with pizzas, soft drinks, and tiny desserts from the caterers.
Poppy had her mother’s mysterious eyes, and was wearing a vest top, leggings and a pink shirt from Callie’s own wardrobe. The time upstairs had given the girls a chance to pile on the make-up at drag-queen levels, so that Poppy was now caked in cosmetics that made her look far older than fourteen. Callie bit her tongue.
‘Hello girls,’ she said brightly and she went over to her daughter, about to pop a kiss on Poppy’s forehead until she remembered, again, that it wasn’t cool to kiss your daughter when one of her friends was present.
‘Hi Mum,’ said Poppy, in a voice that said don’t touch.
‘Hello Zara,’ Callie said to the other girl, doing her impersonation of a totally happy and cool mother. She was really good at the old impersonations these days. ‘This all looks completely yummy.’
‘Hi Callie,’ said Zara, ‘thanks. It’s totally delish.’
Callie remembered her mother’s friends and how she’d always called them Mrs: Mrs this or Mrs that. Nowadays all her daughter’s friends called her Callie and called Jason ‘Jase’, which he found wildly amusing.
‘Nice pizzas,’ Callie said now. She had to stop thinking about how things used to be when she was growing up. Was this another offshoot of being fifty – thinking about the past all the time? ‘Your home-made ones?’ she asked Brenda.
‘Course,’ said Brenda, finishing arranging the tray.
‘How’s it going downstairs at Help the Aged?’ said Poppy to her mother.
‘Great,’ said Callie. ‘We’re not that old, you know.’
‘Says you, Ms Fifty!’ taunted Poppy. ‘If I was fifty, I wouldn’t let people know and have a party.’
Callie grinned and she and Brenda exchanged another glance. Brenda knew quite well that Callie hadn’t really wanted this party. Mind you, Brenda wasn’t too keen either. She didn’t like the sort of parties Jason gave. Someone would undoubtedly set up shop in one of the loos and do lines of coke, which both Callie and Brenda disapproved of.
Brenda opened the door for Poppy and let the two teenagers go up to Poppy’s huge bedroom where three other girls were waiting.
‘Is she all right?’ asked Callie.
‘Behind the sniping, she’s in brilliant form,’ said Brenda. ‘Stop worrying about her. You’re a good mother, enough already. D’ya want a cup of tea or do you have to go back down to party central and schmooze?’
‘I’d love one,’ said Callie, sitting down on one of the kitchen stools. ‘It’s full of people I don’t know and you know how hopeless I am with names. I’m calling everyone “darling” out of desperation. I honestly have no idea what Jason said to that party planner, but for every four people I know, there are another twenty-five I’ve never seen in my life. And they’re not just people Jason’s trying to impress – they’re supposed to be there for me. “An aspirational guest list”, as the planner said,’ Callie finished.
‘You should have put your foot down about going away for a nice weekend instead,’ Brenda pointed out. Brenda had very firm views on how everything should be done and on how Callie should deal with Jason.
Brenda and Jason had a love/hate relationship. They were like scorpions in a brandy glass – circling, each with their stinging tail arched. Jason knew the house would not run like clockwork without Brenda and he knew that his wife both loved and would be lost without her. However, Brenda did not do deference and Jason liked deference from the people he paid.
He pretended to laugh when Brenda called him ‘the master’ out of mischief, but secretly, both she and Callie knew it drove him mad.
‘The party will be over eventually.’ Callie looked at the kitchen clock. ‘Only another few hours to go. By then the stragglers will be so drunk, nobody will notice that I’ve gone to bed.’
Brenda laughed. ‘You hungry? Bet you haven’t eaten. I’ve got some more of the caterers’ desserts in the fridge. Tiny chocolate things that look as if fairies made them and elves decorated them. Hold on.’
One of the waitresses appeared.
‘Mrs Reynolds, there are some . . . er, people at the door for your husband.’
Brenda and Callie exchanged confused glances. Anyone with an invitation to the party would just come in, having cleared the very heavy security on the gate. Anyone without an invitation would have been sent packing.
‘I’ll go,’ said Brenda.
‘Er . . .’ The young waitress shuffled a bit. ‘They asked specifically for Mr Reynolds, but we can’t find him so they asked for you next,’ she said, eyes on the floor.
‘It’s the staff of Tiffany’s,’ joked Brenda. ‘Go with her,’ she told the waitress, ‘in case she needs help carrying the loot or if it’s Aerosmith come to do a special birthday gig and she faints.’
Callie laughed out loud.
They were waiting in the hall, not Aerosmith, but about seven men and one woman, some in police uniforms and some in plain clothes. Callie’s hand flew to her throat.
Ma. Aunt Phil, Freddie, she thought.
She’d walked out of her old life a long time ago. Twenty-five years since she’d left Ballyglen. Ten years since she’d seen her mother, Pat, her aunt, Phil, or her brother, Freddie. Ten years since the huge argument. What might have happened to them?
‘Mrs Reynolds?’ said a man of her own age; tall, lean, with glasses and an intelligent face.
‘Yes,’ she replied, feeling weak.
‘Detective Superintendent John Hughes of the Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation. We’re here to speak to your husband and we have a warrant to search your house.’
He handed Callie a piece of paper but she didn’t take it.
She stared at him, not understanding.
‘This . . . this is my party,’ she stammered, looking around at the waitress, now rapidly disappearing.
Callie saw the hall filled with flowers and giant lit candles, all perfect scene-setting for the modern art that hung on the walls.
Relief returned. Not her family.
‘It’s my fiftieth birthday party. My husband is a businessman, Jason Reynolds. You obviously have the wrong house.’
She waited for the detective to say something about it being a mistake, but he gestured to the pieces of paper.
‘It’s not the wrong house,’ he said and there was something about his voice that made Callie feel more frightened than weak.
She looked at the first piece of paper for an address and saw it all printed perfectly before her: their address, Jason’s name. She’d never seen a search warrant before and it looked so ordinary: ordinary and dangerous. She felt her legs shake the way they’d shaken when she first stood in front of a camera, before she’d learned to handle her nerves and the anxiety.
‘Where is your husband?’
‘Downstairs,’ said Callie. ‘We’re having a party . . .’
‘The guests need to go,’ said the detective.
‘What?’ asked Callie. She knew she sounded stupid but her brain, normally sharp, had hit slow-motion. ‘No, really,’ she said again in desperation, ‘there must be some mistake, you are in the wrong house, you can’t be talking about my husband.’
‘Jason Reynolds,’ said the policeman. ‘That’s your husband’s name?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you are Claire Reynolds?’
Callie nodded. Nobody called her Claire anymore, not since she had turned into Callie years ago, when she’d sloughed off her past and turned into someone totally different.
‘We need to locate your husband.’
‘Why?’
The detective looked at her slowly and she thought she could see pity in his eyes. ‘To help us with our enquiries,’ he said smoothly, which she felt was not the whole truth. His men began to move, some downstairs.
‘Does your husband have an office here?’ asked another man.
The unreality of it all began to sink in. The police were here to search her house. To talk to her husband. They must have got it wrong, but it was still happening, like a movie when the wrong people were targeted.
Shock made her want to sit down, but she had to stay strong. Poppy was upstairs with her girlfriends, Brenda was in the kitchen making tea and there were three hundred people downstairs drinking cocktails and nibbling blackened cod, tiny exquisite burgers, sashimi.
A door opened and Brenda marched through. Callie felt a sigh of relief. Brenda would sort it out. Tell the police that Jason Reynolds could not be the person they were looking for.
‘What is it?’ she said, looking at Callie then looking at the policemen who were leaving the hall speedily.
‘You are?’
‘Brenda Lyons, Mrs Reynolds’ friend and housekeeper.’ She put an arm around Callie. ‘And you?’
‘Detective Superintendent John Hughes, GBFI, Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation.’ He handed out a card to Callie.
‘Right,’ said Brenda with a sigh.
Callie didn’t have time to think why Brenda wasn’t in the slightest bit surprised.
‘There are five teenage girls upstairs,’ Brenda said.
‘I’ll go up,’ said the female officer in uniform.
‘I think I need to come, as does Mrs Reynolds. We can’t upset the girls. But first . . .’ She looked back at the detective superintendent. ‘What’s the plan?’ she said as if they were discussing something quite normal instead of a team of police detectives coming into Callie’s house late at night at her actual fiftieth birthday party.
Callie stared at her old friend in horror.
‘We are here to arrest Jason Reynolds and search the house,’ said the officer calmly and this time Callie felt her knees go totally and everything went hazy and then blank.
When she woke up, she was sitting on one of the squashy chairs in the kitchen.
‘Lucky they caught you,’ said Brenda, waving a glass of brandy in front of Callie’s nose.
‘Was that a dream, did that really happen?’ said Callie.
‘No dream,’ said Brenda bitterly. ‘All true. At this exact moment, there are police officers getting everyone out of your house, carefully taking every computer and every bit of paper with them and they’re searching the whole place.’
‘Oh God,’ said Callie. ‘No,’ she said, pushing the brandy away. ‘You know I don’t like spirits.’
‘I know you don’t like spirits, but drink this because you are going to need it.’
Brenda held the brandy glass up to Callie’s mouth and made her drink it, like Callie used to make Poppy drink things out of a beaker cup when Poppy was a baby.
Her baby.
‘Where’s Poppy?’ she said in alarm.
‘It’s fine for the moment, I got one of the waitresses to go up there and the female Garda is there too. I’ve told her there’s something strange going on but the police are here to fix it and you’re sorting it out, and will be up in a minute. The men are not going near her room until you are ready to be there and supervise, but to be honest I’d say get out of here pronto, both of you. We need to get you and Poppy somewhere safe before the story hits the media.’ Brenda appeared to be thinking about it. ‘I don’t even know if you can bring your clothes or what,’ she added in a very matter-of-fact tone. ‘They’re not the Criminal Assets Bureau, so they can’t impound it all or anything, but when the Fraud Squad come, they’re going to be looking at every asset in terms of legal redress.’
‘What story? This is a mistake, surely? Jason will sue.’
Brenda patted her hand tenderly.
‘Callie, the Fraud Squad don’t make mistakes.’
‘But us? Jason’s a businessman.’
‘Drink,’ was all Brenda would say.
Callie shuddered as she finished the rest of the brandy. She hated all strong spirits.
‘What do we do now?’ she said, making herself come back into the world again.
Everything still felt very unreal. She wanted another Xanax, a whole one, and to go to bed and find out this was all a dream.
‘You prepare yourself for the next shock,’ said Brenda, patting her hand.
‘I’m not preparing for any shocks until I have Jason beside me and I find out what the hell is going on,’ said Callie, as the alcohol hit her system, putting fire in the hold. ‘The embarrassment,’ she went on.
The people at the party knew all the gossip columnists in the country. Everyone would be writing about this. Jason would go mental. ‘Where is Jason? I hope he’s trying to turn the police away.’
Brenda perched on the edge of the armchair.
‘That’s what you needed the brandy for,’ she said.
Callie stared up at her.
‘They can’t find Jason.’
‘What?’
‘I really hate to be the one to tell you, lovie, but he’s done a runner.’
Callie felt the world shift around her.
The words were slow coming out: ‘He can’t have gone. Why would he go?’
The look Brenda gave her was pitying and Callie flinched under it.
‘The most likely excuse is that he’s run because he’s guilty of whatever they are accusing him,’ Brenda said. ‘Which is why you and Poppy need to get out of here now with whatever you can. I don’t know what Jason was doing, but the game is up, Callie, and you need to be out of it.’
‘What do you mean what he was doing?’ said Callie fiercely.
‘For heaven’s sake, Callie, you must have figured it out now. I always had my suspicions. Nobody else was making money during the recession except your husband. Nobody else bounced back so quickly. Did you not find that weird?’
‘No!’
‘Come on,’ said Brenda. ‘You’re a clever woman. I thought you knew his business wasn’t entirely kosher. We can talk about this another time, but now, we need to get those girls home, get you and Poppy out of the house and . . .’ Brenda stopped for a minute. ‘Could we take the Range Rover? It might be confiscated. Whose name is it in? Probably the company’s, so you can’t take it. Right, we need taxis to get the girls home or, better still, I’ll ring their parents.’
Callie watched, mute, as Brenda thought out loud, running through the various permutations and combinations of keeping her daughter out of this crisis.
‘I am not running,’ began Callie. ‘I am going to stay here and wait until Jason comes back from wherever he is and fixes it all—’
‘Fixes it? This won’t be fixed. Tomorrow morning, every newspaper in the country is going to be at your door wanting to know all about it,’ said Brenda harshly. ‘Wake up, Callie. I am your friend and I am telling you it’s all over. You have to get out. Now. For your sake and for Poppy’s.’
Poppy.
‘More brandy,’ said Callie, Brenda’s words beginning to penetrate. ‘I need another one.’
‘Not a good idea—’ began Brenda.
‘I don’t care,’ hissed Callie. ‘I need something.’
Brenda watched silently as Callie half filled the brandy glass and downed it, wincing as it burned.
Callie stood up and looked around her kitchen, the cosy kitchen that she’d insisted on decorating herself. The rest of the house was where Jason had supervised the interior décor, places that were fit for proving to people how rich, successful and gracious the Reynolds family were. It was nothing like the home she’d grown up in, a small terraced council house in Ballyglen, where the whole Sheridan family of four, and her aunt, had lived.
Callie felt an ache deep in her heart.
I wish my family were here. I wish my mother was here.