Freddie was being shifty. ‘It’s a surprise,’ he said, ‘a weekend away.’
‘Why?’ asked Callie suspiciously. She’d gone right off surprises.
‘What’s the big deal?’ Freddie demanded. ‘Can’t I treat my mother, my sister and my niece to a nice weekend away?’
The mention of Poppy did it. Callie somehow relaxed.
Over the past few months, Poppy had decided exactly what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. She loved art and she loved make-up.
‘I’m going to be a make-up artist,’ she told her astonished mother. ‘It makes total sense. I’m really good at it and I have lots of brushes and stuff, things that lots of other girls in school wouldn’t have.’
Her new school was nothing like the school she’d been in originally, but she’d made lots of friends. Poppy still talked to some of her old friends on the phone, and she’d been invited to Dublin for weekends, but Callie was putting that off for the moment.
‘I think it’s too soon,’ she said to Mary Butler on Skype. ‘What do you think?’
‘I agree. Give it time,’ said Mary, her lovely face filling the screen of the tablet Callie had bought for Poppy. ‘Imagine if she heard something horrible about her father . . .’
‘Yes,’ winced Callie.
She’d spoken to her daughter about Jason and discovered that Poppy knew a lot more than Callie had thought.
‘Me and Lauren looked him up on Lauren’s phone in her house,’ Poppy revealed. ‘I’ve seen all the stories, Mum.’
She looked guilty but Callie felt like the guilty one.
‘Honey, I never wanted you to find it all out like that,’ she said.
‘Yeah, you can’t get away from news with Wi-Fi,’ Poppy said, shrugging. ‘Although from BuzzFeed, I do know what Disney princess I am.’ She managed a laugh. ‘I know what Dad is supposed to have done.’
Callie nodded slowly. She had to let Poppy tell her this, even if she wanted to get Jason and stick pins in his eyes.
‘I know he must have done it because he ran away and left us, but I know it probably wasn’t his fault. I hate Rob. Bet he did it all. But Dad ran away too and he hasn’t talked to us, so . . .’
Poppy began to cry, silent tears rushing down her face.
‘I hate that he did that, Mum.’
Callie pulled her daughter close and they cried together.
‘I hate that he did that too, lovie,’ Callie wept. ‘Not for me but for you.’
Incredibly, Poppy seemed to have come out of it all better than Callie could have hoped.
The resilience of youth? she wondered. Or just that Poppy was growing up, becoming interested in different things.
She’d been to a youth club disco with some of her friends from school and even though Callie had been on tenterhooks all evening, when she’d picked them up, all giggling and teasing each other about boys, Poppy had been euphoric. Driving them all home had been like driving a car full of girls fizzed up with firecrackers inside them, and Callie had felt so relieved. At least Jason hadn’t taken all vestiges of a normal childhood away from Poppy.
There was hope they’d both come out of this.
‘So where were you thinking of going, exactly, for this lovely weekend away?’ Callie asked her brother now.
‘Kenmare,’ said Freddie, his eyes lighting up. ‘I did some work there once. The Park Hotel. Beautiful place, old-world elegance, charm and style. The owners, the Brennans, are wonderful hosts. Nobody will recognise you, and even if they did, no one would breath a word. It’s a safe place, I promise you,’ said Freddie. ‘You’d be amazed how many famous people live around there and nobody knows.’
The Park Hotel in Kenmare was indeed beautiful, and as they drove up to the lovely front of the old castle-style hotel, Callie couldn’t help but think of the last time she and Poppy had stayed in a hotel. Sitting in the back seat with her, Poppy turned and said:
‘Do you remember the last—’
‘Oh gosh yes,’ said Callie fervently, thinking of the hotel on the outskirts of Dublin where they’d done nothing but fight and where the future had seemed so bleak. ‘Where everything was brown . . .’
‘. . . And it smelled all smoky,’ Poppy said. Suddenly they were both laughing.
This glorious hotel was everything Freddie had said it would be: welcoming and friendly. There were books in Callie’s room, huge windows where you could look out to the bay and an amazing four-poster bed. Sitting on top of the bed was a fluffy white toy sheep. She picked it up and hugged it tightly.
‘I think I love this place,’ she said.
It was the sort of hotel that Jason would never have gone to. Jason liked modern, starkly modern, and if he’d seen a fluffy sheep toy anywhere in a room, he’d have been out the door so fast he’d have got a nosebleed. But this little oasis of comfortable luxury was just what Callie needed.
The four of them ate dinner that night and laughed and joked, watching the driving rain outside and feeling snug inside. And then later, Callie slept better than she’d slept in a very long time.
Kenmare was settled on the edge of the coast, perched on a rocky finger of land that stretched towards the Atlantic Ocean, and in the hotel, there was a sense that time stood still. Callie imagined she could be dressed like a Victorian lady going down to breakfast and it would be perfectly apt.
At breakfast, she ate everything in sight.
‘Mum, I haven’t seen you eat like that for ages,’ said Poppy, laughing at her mother.
‘Must be the sea air,’ said Callie. ‘I suppose I better walk it off. What are you going to do today, Poppy?’
‘I’m going into the town with Gran, then I might go to the hotel spa and I don’t know, just chillax.’
‘After that,’ said Pat, ‘I just want to do nothing, read the paper, look out the window and have tea brought to me where I don’t have to wash up the cups myself.’
‘That sounds nice,’ said Freddie, busying himself with his phone. ‘There’s a great walk down there past the garden where you can walk right out to a little headland. There’s a bat sanctuary, although I don’t know if there are many bats in it, but it’s beautiful and wild. Spiritual.’
It was indeed beautiful, Callie thought, half an hour later as she walked in the fresh December air, enjoying the sense of peace and calm. A lady with a small dog waved a hand of hello at Callie, who waved back, for once not scared she’d be recognised. As she kept walking, she warmed up and she felt the beauty of crunching along through the big stones with the water lapping to one side and the trees on the other. Bathing in the forest, the Japanese called the experience, and it made sense. Bathing in nature was a wonderful way of relaxing.
Here, nothing could touch her. Here, she was just herself: not trying to be the perfect mother in the midst of all her traumas and not trying to run from anyone. There was peace in this beautiful place.
In the distance, she saw someone coming towards her, a man. And on some deep level, he seemed familiar to her. She couldn’t figure out why and then she kept her head down in case it was someone from the past, and goodness, she didn’t want to see anyone from their past life now, she wanted to get away from that. Quickly she moved on towards the wood, but the man called out, ‘Callie,’ and then she stopped dead. She waited until he was closer.
‘Ricky,’ she said, looking up at him in utter astonishment. He was no longer the lean boy he had been, but a man now, filled out with a man’s face and those amazing eyes that she could remember being haunted by many years ago, during the drug years. Yet he looked at peace with himself now.
She stared at him.
‘Why do I feel as if I was set up?’ she said. This was too much of a coincidence to be a random meeting.
‘Busted! Freddie and I set it up,’ said Ricky.
‘Freddie,’ said Callie. ‘Why?’
‘He wanted to talk to you but he didn’t know how to do it himself, so I’m here. I’ve known you nearly as long as he has, well apart from all those missing middle years.’
‘What does he want to talk to me about?’ asked Callie, feeling panicky because she was terrified of what he was going to say. He couldn’t know . . . Freddie couldn’t know. ‘I don’t need your help, Ricky, thank you but I’ll get out of this on my own, and I know you’re rich and everything and it’s lovely of you to be here, but—’
He held a hand up.
‘It’s not that,’ he said. ‘I would love to help you financially and I am here anytime to help you get back on your feet. But you might need my help in another way. Freddie says you do. Come on, sit down.’
They found a few rocks to perch on, Ricky stretching his legs out and turning until he was half facing her.
‘I met up with Freddie lots of times when he was on heroin. I was clean and sober then, so I tried to help for old time’s sake, but he didn’t want to be helped. He needed to be ready himself,’ said Ricky. ‘But I suppose you understand that? If you give up for real, there’s no place to hide anymore. There’s no going back.’
Callie flushed.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Freddie knows you’re taking something and he wanted me to talk to you. He couldn’t trust himself to do it, because he’s too close. Is it benzos?’
‘What?’ Callie cried in shock.
‘Cal, they’ve all noticed. Your mother, your Aunt Phil, and obviously Freddie. Cal, after what they’ve been through with Freddie, they know what an addict looks like, whether it’s heroin or benzos. One minute, you were tense, and the next, you were Mrs Happy. Only one thing does that. Freddie did say you were drinking a fair bit, but it’s not that. And I understand you’ve been through a lot, but—’
‘Xanax,’ Callie blurted out, feeling shamed. But she had to say it: this was her chance to come clean and get rid of her dirty little secret.
‘Yeah,’ Ricky said, ‘Freddie figured as much, said you were buying them from Glory in the Russet Lounge.’
Callie looked down at the pebbles on the beach.
‘Is that really the way you want to go, Callie? It’s just you now, you and Poppy. The whole family and me, if you want me, we’re are all there for you, you’re Poppy’s mother and you can’t let her down as well as Jason. Consider this an intervention.’
Callie could say nothing, she just sat there feeling the shame and embarrassment rise up through her. As if he noticed nothing, Ricky looked out and pointed off into the distance.
‘I’ve a house over there, myself and Valerie, my wife, live there. We’ve a little girl, beautiful little thing, Fleur. She’s ten. Smart as paint. She doesn’t know about me and the drugs, although one day I’ll tell her, because it’s in the genes. Might be in your genes, too, and maybe Poppy’s. But you need to deal with it, Callie. Now.’
Finally Callie managed to speak.
‘How do you deal with it?’ she said. ‘I don’t have the money to go in somewhere and get rehabbed. I don’t know what to do.’
‘You could go to Narcotics Anonymous like your brother and I do, and try and stay off whatever it is you’re addicted to one day at a time. That’s how it works. It’s that simple, that complicated. You may not need NA but you need to be aware that you can’t touch drugs like that, not ever again. First you’ve got to admit you’ve got a problem.’
‘I know I’ve got a problem,’ she said quietly, ‘I’ve known for a long time, but I just haven’t been able to stop.’
‘None of us can stop on our own,’ Ricky said ruefully. ‘We need the support of other addicts. Freddie and I can help you with that, if you want?’
‘But I never took anything before, I was never a drinker before, I don’t understand how it happened,’ cried Callie.
Ricky touched her for the first time and he held her hand in the same sort of brotherly way Freddie would hold it.
‘How about you don’t try to understand,’ he said, ‘for the moment, but just stay with the fact that you’re an addict. Take it slowly.’
‘I hate myself for taking them, for relying on them,’ said Callie, beginning to cry. ‘I drink, too. Drink and the Xanax. I’m narky without it, desperate if I think I’m low on stocks, and I can’t afford it really and I hate myself! Sometimes I curse Jason for bringing me to this and then I think, he didn’t make me buy the bloody drugs.’
‘One day, you’ll look back and you won’t hate yourself,’ he said, putting an arm round her.
‘I can’t imagine that,’ she said bitterly.
‘You will, I promise. Stopping is the first step. Admitting you’ve a problem and stopping takes some people years. But think of what you have to lose: Poppy. Plenty of people lose their kids because they’re addicts. Don’t be one of them.’
Callie started to cry then: the silent tears of pure pain. Ricky was right, Freddie was right. She was an addict and she was risking so much by continuing to see Glory, by taking the drugs, by drinking too much. She’d come to rely on those relaxants so much, but at what cost? If they meant losing Poppy, then she needed to stop.
Ricky let her cry and he held her as she sobbed till her face was raw.
‘Thank you,’ she muttered earnestly. ‘I didn’t want to hear that but I needed it.’
‘Nobody wants to hear it,’ he said. ‘There’s a meeting tonight we could go to in Tralee. Will you come with us?’
Callie nodded. She would do anything.
They walked back to the hotel the way Callie had come.
‘I feel like such a failure,’ she said again.
‘There are lots of us failures out there living great lives,’ Ricky said. ‘Me, Freddie, and it could be you too.’
Callie hugged him goodbye, whispered ‘thank you’ into his shoulder, and went into the hotel. In her beautiful, elegant room, she looked at her stash of tablets with disgust, then made herself flush them all down the toilet. It took all her strength not to take one more, just one – but she had a child to take care of. She had to start again, in every sense. No more self-pity, no more blaming anyone, just starting again. Being true to herself and her darling Poppy.