Callie woke early the next morning to a faint scratching noise that she couldn’t quite identify.
‘Jason,’ she said, ‘what’s that?’ and then she became aware that there was nobody in the bed with her. She opened her eyes and sat up. Reality crashed in. She wasn’t in her and Jason’s bed: she was in the small guest bedroom of Brenda’s house, alone, and surrounded by suitcases that Brenda had plundered from her house, suitcases stuffed full of the only things she’d been allowed to take with her.
The horror of it all sank in again as if the whole catastrophe that was last night was happening once more.
Still the noise went on, accompanied by a faint mewing: the cats, that was it.
Callie got out of bed, feeling every joint in her body ache. It was as if she had been on a huge mountain hike the day before and every part of her was sore. Maybe this was her body’s reaction to the intense stress.
She opened the door and Brenda’s marmalade cat, Joe, crashed fatly in. Instantly, he wound himself around her ankles and began purring. Despite everything, Callie smiled. She loved the feel of his fur against her bare ankles, the sensation that this beautiful animal was happy to see her. In the midst of the chaos, it was a moment of simple, momentary happiness. She picked him up and crooned to him, and all the while Joe purred with a deep rich purr like something motorised.
‘Aren’t you wonderful,’ she said, burying her head in his fur.
‘Yes,’ he seemed to be saying, ‘I am wonderful and I’m allowing you to pet me and I might even allow you to give me some breakfast.’
He was like a baby, Callie decided.
‘Will you come with me to the bathroom before I get you breakfast?’ she said.
Joe didn’t reply, so she took that for a yes.
She popped the cat on the bed, riffled around in her many suitcases and found a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, shoving her feet into old tennis shoes, then she picked Joe up and went into the bathroom. Brenda’s own bedroom had a tiny en suite, so Poppy and Callie shared this little bathroom with its old bath and what had to be the original black and white tiles from the 1930s above the sink. There were ferns growing healthily, art deco prints on the walls advertising various French liqueurs, and towels with retro trim. Minimalist it was not, and Callie loved it.
Joe followed her in and waited slightly impatiently while Callie performed a high-speed toilette. She ran a facecloth over her face and brushed her teeth quickly, thinking of how usually she’d spend ages with her electric toothbrush and rub special moisturiser into her skin. Right now those things felt like such a waste of time. She pulled her unbrushed hair back into a ponytail and tied it up with a band she found on a windowsill. This would do.
She looked tired and drawn in the mirror, and without her base and undereye concealer, her face was blotchy, with deep shadows under her eyes.
Who would be looking at her? she thought wryly.
There was no noise from either Poppy’s or Brenda’s bedrooms, so she crept downstairs quietly, although the stairs creaked the way stairs in old houses always do. It made Callie think of her home in Ballyglen, in the old house where she had grown up. Callie had been brilliant at holding onto the banisters and swinging herself over the creaky steps if she wanted to sneak downstairs in the middle of the night – or sneak upstairs, for that matter.
In the kitchen, the other two cats blinked at her.
‘We need to go out, we need breakfast. Where have you been, slave?’ they seemed to be saying.
‘Am I going to have your voices in my head forever?’ Callie asked them and the cats stared at her serenely. ‘Right. You don’t care as long as you get out and get food, am I correct?’ she asked.
Callie let them out into the garden, boiled the kettle and poked around in the fridge for the cat food. Soon Joe and the white and grey fluffy cat were back and eating contentedly while the black cat sat on the windowsill and looked disdainfully down on her bowl as if food was for peasants.
‘On a diet, darling?’ said Callie and the black cat sniffed and looked away. ‘Fine, you can have it later.’
She made herself a cup of filtered coffee, knowing she couldn’t possibly face breakfast, and finally sat at the kitchen table, keying her phone into Brenda’s Wi-Fi. She couldn’t put it off any longer. She clicked onto the news sites and it didn’t take long to find the story in all its gory glory. There were no names mentioned, but it was a front-page story on several of the news sites – police had uncovered a multimillion-euro property fraud scheme and last night had raided two Dublin houses. No arrests had been made but the search for the people behind the scheme was ongoing.
So Rob hadn’t been found either, Callie thought as she read. At least none of the reports mentioned them by name, but that wouldn’t last long, would it? Brenda didn’t seem to think so. Brenda thought the TV cameras would be on to them at any minute, and then where would she and Poppy go? How could they hide this out? They wouldn’t have any money, nothing—
Suddenly, she thought of the jewellery Brenda had taken out of the house and felt both guilty and passionately grateful to Brenda at the same time. It was wrong to take something that perhaps had been bought with fraudulent money, but she and Poppy would need something to live on until this was all sorted out.
And it would be sorted out. Of course. Her Jason wouldn’t do this. She could not have lived with and loved this man for so many years and not known this about him. It simply wasn’t possible. She knew him, loved him. She’d have known.
Brenda was wrong – it was all a mistake.
She took her coffee into the garden where Brenda hadn’t done much except make sure the old apple trees her mother had planted hadn’t died. The grass was a tiny patch, neatly cut if a bit mossy. Jason would have gone mad had he seen it. He liked the grass in their garden to look like a lawn from a lawnmower commercial.
There was a scratchy old wooden bench outside the door and Callie sat down, looking at the houses behind. It was a long time since she’d lived in a house where there were neighbours able to look in on you. The mansion she’d left had neighbours, but you wouldn’t know it.
It was only half seven but Callie decided she’d text Evelyn. Perhaps the police had called around to her too?
Hi Evelyn, she texted, sorry to bother you so early but I don’t know if you heard what’s happened with Rob and Jason? I know it’s got to be all an awful mistake. Could you phone me back? Callie
She put the phone down, not sure what would happen, if Evelyn would get back to her. But instantly the phone began to ring. Callie grasped it up.
‘Evelyn?’ she said.
‘Oh, Callie, love,’ said Evelyn’s familiar voice, ‘you poor, poor darling. I was afraid this would happen one day.’
‘Afraid what would happen?’ said Callie.
‘That they’d get caught.’
‘Doing what?’ whispered Callie.
‘Doing whatever it was that they were doing because it couldn’t be legitimate.’
There was a long pause. Callie watched the black cat meander past and then leap onto the trunk of one of the old apple trees and speed up in a vain attempt to catch a bird.
‘Honey,’ said Evelyn, her voice soft, ‘I always suspected and surely you must have too?’
Callie said nothing for a moment. This was not the conversation she wanted. She wanted Evelyn to tell her that people in finance sometimes made vast sums of money and governments wanted to know why. That it was going to be fine.
That Jason was a good man, a good husband. Just because Rob had been a bastard to Evelyn didn’t mean Jason was the same.
‘Where are you?’ Evelyn asked.
‘We’re here with Brenda,’ she said in a high, stilted voice she didn’t recognise as her own.
‘Great,’ Evelyn replied. ‘Brenda will know what to do.’
Callie realised that her hands were shaking. She’d spilled her coffee on her jeans and had barely noticed.
‘Callie, I know you don’t what to have this conversation, but whatever they were doing, they’ve been caught. You’re the one left behind. They’ve left the country.’
‘What?’ Callie knew she’d spoken so loudly that even Poppy, who could sleep the teenage sleep of the dead, must have heard her. ‘How do you know? Have you heard from Rob?’
‘He phoned the kids last night to talk to them,’ Evelyn said. ‘The babysitter was there, I was still in the taxi coming home from your party. Apparently he said that he, Anka and the baby were going away for a little while and not to worry, everything was going to be OK and not to listen to anything that was in the papers. He said it was going to be fine.’
‘Anka went too?’ said Callie, disbelieving.
‘Yes. He and Jason obviously knew something was up and they got out quickly. Nobody better than Rob for making a quick getaway,’ she added with a hint of bitterness.
‘Did he say that Jason was going too?’ Callie was distraught. No way would Jason leave her and Poppy to face this mess alone, no way.
‘He told the boys they were flying out last night. Said something about a trip on your boat and not to worry.’
The damn boat. The Maribou Princess. Jason had organised some sort of insane timeshare on a luxury yacht. Callie had only been once: she’d felt seasick the whole time. But Jason adored it. If Rob and Anka were going to the Maribou Princess, Jason was going too. It was his baby.
‘So Rob brought Anka and the baby, and it looks as if Jason went too.’ Evelyn’s voice was gentle.
‘Jason left us behind,’ said Callie mechanically. ‘Poppy and me.’
‘I’ll come right over now . . .’ began Evelyn, but Callie had stopped listening.
She’d had a flu once that had made her feel incredibly lightheaded, so light-headed she could barely think straight, and she had perfect recall of that now: the feeling that nothing was what it appeared to be.
‘He must have known what would happen,’ she said suddenly. ‘Last night, probably shortly after you left, the police made everyone leave the party, searched my house and I had to leave with just some of my stuff. Our bank accounts are frozen and Brenda said we better not take much, just in case. They’re probably still there, searching. I’m wearing old jeans, an ancient sweatshirt and I have about fifty euros in my purse. I was told I shouldn’t leave the country and my husband is gone. There’s been not a word from him. His mobile phone is out of service – I’ve phoned about thirty times! It’s like he has disappeared off the face of the earth and . . .’ She paused. This was worst of all. ‘He left us, while Rob took Anka.’
‘I’m really sorry,’ said Evelyn, ‘really sorry, Callie.’
‘This is actually happening, isn’t it?’ said Callie and started to cry. ‘I just don’t believe he could do this to us.’
‘I would never have believed he could have done that to you either,’ said Evelyn sadly. ‘Jason loves you, he loves Poppy.’
‘Loves us?’ questioned Callie angrily. ‘Are you sure you don’t mean loved us, because whatever is going on, he could have stuck around and we could have got through it together. But he’s gone. And bloody Rob brought Anka and the baby, while Jason just left me and Poppy here to suffer on our own.’
She looked up and realised that Brenda was standing in the kitchen and had overheard every word.
‘I’ve got to go, Evelyn,’ Callie said. ‘Thank you. I’ll keep in touch.’ She looked at Brenda.
‘Hold on. Don’t hang up yet. Tell her you’ll probably need a different phone,’ said Brenda, in the same matter-of-fact tone she was using all the time now, ‘because people will get that phone number from somewhere so you’ll need to get rid of it.’
Last night Callie would have protested, but this morning she just nodded. Brenda had become the person who understood this new world, the person Callie could rely on.
‘Ev, I’ll text you my new number when I get it and don’t give it to anyone.’
‘Fine,’ said Evelyn. ‘I’m here for you, for you and Poppy, but I don’t know what I can do.’
‘Be grateful you got a lump sum,’ said Callie bitterly. ‘Seeing as how Jason, Rob and Anka all got magically out of it because they knew what was coming, you’re going to need it, Ev.’
She hung up and looked at Brenda.
‘Have you seen the news?’ Brenda said.
Callie nodded. ‘He left us behind, Brenda.’
‘I heard,’ she said, going to the kettle. ‘I made a few calls last night. We have a lawyer you can talk to. Today, preferably. He’ll want money up front.’
‘Ha!’ Callie said shakily. ‘Does he take frozen plastic?’
‘Unlikely,’ Brenda said. ‘You’ll need money.’
Callie looked down at her hands and realised they were shaking. She had to sit down or she would collapse. Taking a chair at the table, she said: ‘Last night, I was thinking that it was wrong to have taken the jewellery if it truly was part of some awful white-collar fraud. I don’t steal – I’ve never stolen anything in my life – but right now I don’t care. I need to take care of Poppy, we need somewhere to live and we need some money to live on.’
‘That’s what I was thinking,’ said Brenda. ‘Real-world scenario versus pink fluffy unicorn world.’
Callie laid her forehead wearily on the table and spoke: ‘Brenda, if Jason’s been ripping people off for years, I’ve been living on stolen money. I am a – what do you call it?’
‘Accessory to the fact,’ said Brenda. ‘You’ve been watching too many TV detective shows. You were the nice person caught up in all of this with Shitface and his pal, Other Shitface. Not an accessory to anything.’
‘That’s almost worse, though.’ Callie raised her head. ‘I was too stupid to see what was going on. How could I not have known? That’s what I keep asking myself – why didn’t I see what was obviously under my nose?’