In Ballyglen, Callie and Poppy’s days had fallen into a relaxing routine, something that surprised Callie because she thought she’d have been so on edge all the time she was waiting for news of Jason. There was something about staying with her mum and remembering what it had been like to grow up in Sugarloaf Terrace that calmed her.
And the Xanax helped, no doubt about it. Callie, to her shame, had been back to Glory again and bargained. She’d sold more of her precious jewellery, but there would be no money unless she applied to the courts, Fiona McPharland explained on the phone.
Callie couldn’t face it – not yet, not when everyone believed she must have been in on Jason’s scheme.
Meanwhile, she enjoyed the peace and watching Poppy blossom.
Her daughter had managed to decorate the attic like her old bedroom back home in Dublin, with fairy lights on the dressing table and make-up everywhere and Freddie, her uncle, had dug up an old stereo system from somewhere that now had pride of place in the room.
‘It’s ancient but it really works, you know,’ said Poppy delightedly as he plugged it in and fixed the speakers up. Freddie had laughed. It was apparent he was becoming very fond of this often truculent niece.
‘This was high-tech back in my day,’ Freddie said.
And Callie had grinned at the sight of her daughter, who’d once only been impressed with the latest iPhone and sound-sharing systems, being thrilled with this elderly sound system that resembled four breeze blocks glued together.
‘Can I decorate it, Uncle Freddie?’ Poppy had asked.
‘Do whatever you want to it,’ Freddie had said good-naturedly. ‘We don’t need it anymore.’
‘Thank you, you’re the best uncle in the world,’ Poppy had said and had thrown herself at him.
Watching this made Callie both very happy and slightly sad. Once upon a time, Poppy reserved those sorts of enormous hugs for her father. She still needed that male influence in her life and she’d turned to Freddie, little Freddie who’d turned his life around and now had a great building business, a lovely house and a smart new car. Poppy had started begging Freddie to teach her to drive when the time came.
Because Poppy adored her uncle – they were becoming real friends. He drove up from Kerry all the time and having him there was a joy.
She’d spent time with her Aunt Phil in the big, glamorous house near the golf course. But Phil, sadly, lived there alone.
Her beloved Seamus was in a local nursing home with dementia.
‘It’s the best one there is. They really take care of people there. I couldn’t have left him otherwise, although I’m in there every day,’ said Phil, tears in her eyes.
‘I’d love to visit him,’ Callie said.
Phil just nodded and went to look for her tissues. She’d aged a lot. The glamorous auntie was gone. Callie felt sad to think that she had not been around to help dear Phil shoulder this massive burden.
She didn’t reproach Callie either. Instead, she repeated what Pat had said, only with more anger: ‘That man stole you from us. You were soft, Claire, love. Always soft. Ripe for someone like him. His own mother never saw him either. She moved away, you know, about nine years ago. Went to Somerset. Had family there. God love her.’
Callie was stunned.
Jason had once said his mother was too busy to bother visiting and Callie had thought he’d just palmed her off because her family weren’t coming. But he’d merely meant he didn’t want anything from the past to come into his new life.
The guilt gnawed at Callie. How’d she let Jason separate her from them for so long? She’d been so weak and stupid. It was, she saw now, part of Jason’s attempts to isolate her from her family, to keep her for himself. Controlling, she realised now, seeing it through the prism of her mother’s and Phil’s eyes.
He’d liked to know what she was doing all the time. He liked to advise her on what clothes to wear to events. He’d warned her never to get her hair cut short, because he loved that long blonde skein of hair hanging over him when she was on top when they made love.
She felt so stupid thinking about it now. She’d thought she was smart but she was just another woman who’d believed everything a man said because she wanted to be with him. The argument alone shouldn’t have been enough to drive a wedge between Callie and her family. All families had arguments and got over them. But this one had been like a scimitar dividing them all because Jason had wanted it that way. And what Jason wanted, Jason got.
Callie went to see Seamus in his lovely nursing home, Leap of Faith, where Phil went most days to help out.
Watching Phil in the company of the sweet man who barely recognised her, Callie wanted to sob. This was love, the way Phil fed him, talked to him and walked him gently round the garden.
It was a beautiful place, despite the pain that could have existed there, Callie realised.
The staff were a veritable hive of activity and yet an air of serenity reigned. There were fresh flowers from the garden on a table. Music played from the radio: old tunes that some of the patients were definitely enjoying.
‘They love the music,’ said Phil, watching her niece. ‘Even Seamus loves it and he recognises nothing anymore, not even me.’ Her eyes teared up.
‘Oh but he does, Phil,’ insisted a short blonde nurse, coming up and putting an arm around Phil. ‘You know Marian who works nights? She has hair like yours, blonde and silvery, and your husband loves her the best. Do you know why? Because he thinks it’s you, that’s why. Don’t write off that mind of his yet.’
‘Really?’ Phil could hardly believe this. ‘I want to think he knows I’m here, that I come every day, that I would never leave him,’ she said, tears coming properly. ‘Because I love him and he’s my husband.’
The nurse helped Phil to a seat, leaving Seamus to Callie, who instinctively linked her arm round his and began to walk the garden with him. She did what Phil had done and what other people were doing: just chatted about what was going on, talking gently and with dignity to this person whose mind was perhaps in another place altogether. And yet perhaps not totally gone there, not yet.
She told her uncle about his grand-niece, Poppy, and how she’d be in to see him.
‘Poppy’s fourteen now, going on for twenty-five, Seamus,’ Callie said. ‘She likes music, the way you love music. Remember how we used to talk about the old songs and you loved Glenn Miller music?’
Half an hour passed and she realised that Phil was sitting in a chair just watching. She was worn out with the daily visits and the stress. Having Callie there allowed her to feel Seamus was being loved by his family, and yet she could rest.
Callie vowed to come to see Seamus as often as she could. She liked this place too. Perhaps she could do some work for the nursing home. She loved the serenity of it and the kindness obvious everywhere.
Callie would do anything, she thought: mop out toilets, scrub floors, whatever. She had no misplaced pride left. She just wanted to help in this beautiful place where people were cared for with such gentleness and respect. Perhaps she could earn some money too.
‘You ready for our walk, Mum?’ said Poppy when she got home. Ready in her tracksuit bottoms and trainers, rattling the dog’s lead. Every day, rain or shine, they did a three-mile walk. Ketchup sometimes looked as if he wasn’t able to do that much of a walk, especially since he had very short legs, but he managed it valiantly.
‘You are such a good puppy, aren’t you?’ Poppy said, getting down on her knees to croon at the dog. She adored him. He now slept on her bed all the time, and there were no complaints about smelly dog or fur all over her clothes. There was lovely normality to it.
‘You have totally spoiled that dog,’ her granny said fondly, watching the two of them rolling on the floor together.
‘But he loves it,’ Poppy said.
Pat laughed. She loved spending time with her granddaughter, making her take a trip on the bus one day into the town centre because ‘you’ll need to know the bus routes, love, for school’. And Poppy, who came from a group of girls who were driven everywhere, had been delighted with it. Pat said it would only be a few years till Poppy would need to drive, and it was very important that she learned how to drive a stick shift. Poppy, who used to have a retinue of friends and barely wanted to be at home in the glamorous Reynolds property, didn’t appear to want to go anywhere else, although she had made a new friend – a fifteen-year-old girl from across the road, who had just done her first lot of state exams, and wanted someone to complain to about them. Poppy was engaging in a little bit of hero worship because the girl, Lauren, was tall, slim and stunning with long rippling pale brown hair. Lauren was beautiful without even trying and she was clearly very clever. She wanted to study medicine, and suddenly Poppy began to discuss what she might do when she was older instead of discussing where she wanted to live and what sort of cool apartment she might have.
Values, Callie thought: her daughter was learning values in the way that the posh house in Dublin with the underground carport hadn’t taught her.
It was only at certain times, mainly at night, that Poppy’s high spirits deserted her.
‘Mum, what do you think is going to happen to us? Do you think Dad is going to come back?’
She had only asked this question a few times, but every time she did so, Callie felt her guts clench in such a way that if she’d had Jason there, she would have done him serious damage with her fists. How could he not try to get in touch with them?
The police got onto her occasionally, checking to see if he’d been in touch, and Callie had been able to answer completely honestly with a firm ‘no’.
‘No, he hasn’t been in touch,’ she’d say, ‘not a word.’
At least she had been officially eliminated from their investigation, which was great – but this information had not featured in any newspaper articles on rich people and their fall from grace.
But she couldn’t say any of this to her daughter. Poppy was still fourteen years old, and when you were that age, you needed to idolise your dad, the way Callie had idolised hers.
‘I don’t know what’s going to happen to us, darling,’ she said most times, ‘but you know, we’ll manage.’
She was afraid to tell Poppy the truth because she was terrified of what it would do to her daughter. But in September, Poppy would have to start at the local school and she needed to know for sure before then.
‘I think it might rain when you’re walking the dog,’ her mother said, looking out the back window.
‘I’ve got my fleece and it has a hood,’ said Poppy, the girl who once wouldn’t dream of going out if there was any sign of rain in case it messed up her perfectly straightened hair.
‘You’re fine then,’ said her grandmother, ‘it will just be a little shower, and Ketchup loves the rain.’
Callie was just putting on an old rain jacket of her mother’s when the doorbell rang. The doorbell rang a lot in Sugarloaf Terrace: there were always neighbours dropping in and out for a chat or to discuss the latest happenings of the day.
Callie found she really liked it. The house in Dublin had been quiet apart from Brenda. But this was different, this was homely, this reminded Callie of when she’d been growing up.
‘It might be Lauren,’ Poppy said, jumping to her feet. She opened the front door, but the person who barrelled into the kitchen wasn’t Lauren, it was Nora, next-door neighbour and her mother’s most stalwart friend for many years. In one hand she held a newspaper and the look on her face said the information in the newspaper was not good.
Callie, her mam and Nora exchanged glances.
‘Do you know, we might have a cup of tea, Nora,’ said Callie’s mam. ‘Poppy, love,’ she continued, ‘looking out, it’s got darker. I think it’s going to rain very heavily right now and you’ll all get soaked. Why don’t you go over to Lauren’s and see if she’s around. We’ll wait until the threat of rain has passed.’
‘Do you think it’s going to rain heavily?’ said Nora, ‘Because I have my washing out.’
Callie watched her mother give Nora a subtle kick. Nora instantly sat down at the table, the way she’d been sitting in the Sheridans’ kitchen for forty years. Message received.
‘Of course, yes, forget about the washing. I’ll run in if it rains. Desperate storms coming, Poppy,’ Nora went on. ‘I’m pretty sure Lauren is there. Her curtains only opened up a minute ago.’
‘That,’ laughed Callie’s mam, ‘is why we don’t need Neighbourhood Watch stickers around here.’
Poppy headed off, and as soon as they heard the front door slam, Nora took the tabloid paper from under her arm and unfolded it on the kitchen table.
At least the story was on page three and not on the first page of the paper.
TAX FRAUD RUNNER LIVING HIGH LIFE IN MARBELLA, said the headline. In smaller capitals it said: jason reynolds and his new girlfriend.
There was a grainy picture of Jason coming out of a shop, holding grocery bags, accompanied by a much younger woman. She looked, Callie thought in a distant way, rather like she had herself when she was younger.
The woman was slim and blonde, but she was wearing the sort of clothes that Callie would never have worn, even on a sun holiday: a halter-neck bikini top, enormous earrings and tiny little white shorts that barely covered her buttocks over long legs that ended with extremely high wedged sandals. She was looking up at Jason as though he had the power to grant her every wish under the sun.
Callie got her first look at her husband in nearly two months and what was shocking was that he looked exactly the same.
Not worried. Not anxious. Not vaguely haunted, not like she was.
He was wearing a shirt she’d bought him for a holiday in the Caribbean once: a beautiful pale blue linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Seeing it made her realise that he’d taken time to pack before he’d left. Somewhere along the line, her husband had known he needed to have a bag ready – but only for himself.
While he’d been telling her that this wonderful party was all for her, he’d been ready to run.
She wasn’t sure what made her angrier: the sight of the other woman, or the fact that her husband looked happy.
He didn’t even look like he’d lost weight.
Every morning when she looked in the mirror, she could see her face growing more and more gaunt. She didn’t bother with make-up much, and when she was on the phone to Brenda, Brenda always said: ‘I hope you’re using all those special lotions and creams. No need to let yourself go just because Moron Central has left the country.’
Moron had certainly left the country. He’d found himself another woman, a Callie lookalike, and he was having fun with her down in Marbella, while Callie and Poppy lived on almost no money with her mother in Ballyglen and Callie worried herself sick.
‘It says here that the reporters tried to get a hold of him, but he ran and they sped off in a fancy car, a Jaguar with Spanish plates,’ said her mother gently, holding the paper away from Callie. ‘The police were notified but they weren’t able to track him and the woman he was with. Sorry, lovie.’ She put a hand on Callie’s shoulder. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you by reading it out loud—’
‘You didn’t upset me, Mam,’ Callie said brittlely. ‘My husband upset me by running off. This is just proof he packed his clothes before he went.’
‘What do you mean?’ demanded Nora, who was trying to angle herself so she could get another look at the woman in the paper.
Callie jabbed the picture with her finger.
‘I bought him that shirt,’ she said, ‘which means he left me and Poppy with no money, totally terrified, with me being questioned by the police, with our names mud, and yet he still had time to pack and get out of there. No note, no explanation, no phone call to tell me he was really sorry. Nothing but a carefully organised suitcase.’
She sank down heavily onto a hard kitchen chair.
‘Fellows like that are all the same,’ said Nora. ‘Full of themselves, always after the next big thing, leaving a trail of destruction behind. Listen, Callie, there are women on this road who could tell you stories that would make your hair curl. God help them, but some of them married men who were a waste of space. Plenty of the sons aren’t much better – except for your brother, Freddie, now that he’s off the drugs, and your dear father, God rest him, and my Johnny. The most decent boy who ever lived. Have I told you he’s a priest?’
Callie surprised herself by laughing out loud. Nora had offered to introduce her to her priest son many times in case he could offer her wise counsel. And Callie, who could remember Johnny from when he was a spotty teenager and dallying with bottles of cider in order to gain the kudos to hang out with the cool kids, could not get her head around the idea that Father Johnny would be able to offer her wise anything. To her, he would always be a spotty teenager and she had had enough advice to last her a lifetime.
‘Thanks, Nora,’ she said, ‘but I have to deal with this on my own.’
‘What are you going to tell Poppy?’ asked her mother.
‘I don’t know,’ said Callie. ‘I don’t want to break her heart.’
‘You haven’t broken her heart,’ said her mother. ‘Jason has. You’re going to be the one delivering the news. The only plus is that, if people see where he is and that he’s with another woman, nobody is going to be thinking you had a hand to play in any of this fraud business.’
Callie laughed again, but this time with no warmth: ‘Yes, there’s always a bright side to finding out your husband has another woman,’ she said.
The theoretical bright side was a final slicing of the marital link. If Jason had wanted to divorce her with an assassin’s blade, he couldn’t have done it more successfully.
It still hurt. Before, she’d assumed the worst. Now, it had been confirmed. Jason had simply packed and left, thinking nothing of her or their child. They were clearly nothing to him.
With instructions to her mother to hide the newspaper, Callie left Nora and her mother sitting at home, grabbed her coat and went out. She didn’t take the dog and her mother didn’t ask her to. There was one thing the picture of Jason and his new woman had done to her – it had made her realise that she needed more Xanax. She was down to two and she wanted to take them now.
She couldn’t cope with this on her own. The pain of being lied to; the pain of thinking Jason loved Poppy, loved her, and then finding out it was all fake; she simply couldn’t deal with that. She needed to take the edge off.
If he’d wanted a divorce, she’d have been utterly heartbroken but she’d have given it to him. But Jason had told her he loved her all the time. Told everyone he loved her. Told everyone he was the happiest man on the planet with her and Poppy and now she, and everyone else, knew it had all been a lie.
She dry-swallowed the remaining tablets as she walked down the road, desperate for some relief.
In the pub, she had two vodkas straight up, which she’d have never done before, and ordered a third, with some tonic, before finding Glory sitting inevitably in her spot.
‘Xanax. I need some. Now. Stronger dosage,’ she rapped out.
‘Keep your voice down,’ said Glory. ‘I’m tolerated here, not a paid-up member of staff.’
‘Meet you out back in an hour,’ said Callie.
‘Fine. You’re a right narky bitch,’ muttered Glory. She got to her feet. ‘You staying?’
Callie picked up her glass and took a deep draught. ‘Oh yes,’ she said.
She’d had enough, absolutely enough, and this evening, she wanted to be totally and utterly numb. Whatever it took.