The call came early in the morning. Callie was used to waking very early now. The curtains in her mum’s front room were not the blackout blinds she’d had in the Dublin house and she woke when the sun did.
She had stopped flicking through her phone for a story written by Ginger Reilly. Instead, there had been much social media activity about how the Girlfriend writer had turned out to be a tall, curvy, plus-sized woman who said she wanted her column to be a platform for all girls – and boys – who felt they had to be the same to fit in. She’d got a big new job and was going to be running her own YouTube channel.
Ginger Reilly was some girl, Callie thought fondly. She owed her a call and a big thank you. Before Ginger had left Ballyglen, the three of them had exchanged numbers and promised to meet up.
‘I’m not in Dublin often and I’ll probably be wearing a dark wig if I do come,’ she said jokily, ‘but I’d love to meet you both – and baby India.’
‘You have to meet Aunt Grace too,’ Ginger said. ‘You would adore her. And you never have to talk about what happened with your husband. Nobody can force you to. If he goes to trial, the world will know you weren’t involved.’
‘If—’ said Callie.
But when the phone rang this morning, and she saw Detective Superintendent John Hughes’ number on the line, she felt sick to her stomach. This couldn’t be good news, she thought. Early morning phone calls rarely were.
‘Yes, Detective Superintendent,’ she said.
‘We’ve got your husband,’ he said bluntly.
‘Oh.’ It sounded totally not the right thing to say after so many months of waiting, and yet, what else did you say?
‘How did you get him?’ she asked, as if she was enquiring about a distant acquaintance.
‘He came home for his girlfriend’s mother’s funeral. I’m sorry, Mrs Reynolds,’ said the detective superintendent. ‘I know that’s not the news you wanted to hear.’
Callie got out of bed and pulled the curtains back. On the street below she could see people getting up, going to work. Going to jobs where they’d earn in a week about as much as she might have spent on a dress. It was a world away from the one she used to inhabit. A world she’d never inhabit again, and yet, what difference did it make. That world had been false.
‘Perhaps they are the words I needed to hear, Detective Superintendent,’ she said. ‘I gave up hoping for the fairy-tale ending a long time ago. You told me he was guilty and it was obvious he was. And he betrayed my daughter.’
‘He betrayed you too,’ said the policeman bluntly.
‘I think he betrayed me a long time ago, Detective Superintendent,’ she replied. ‘I was just too blind to see it.’ She let out a deep breath. ‘Now, what happens next?’
‘We’ve arrested him . . .’
‘Will he get bail?’ she asked.
On the other end of the phone, the detective superintendent snorted.
‘I sincerely hope not, given that he is a flight risk. You’ll be able to see him if you want.’
Callie rolled that thought around in her brain. Finally, she could ask Jason all the hard questions.
‘Yes,’ she said firmly, ‘I’d like that very much. There are a lot of things I want to ask my former husband.’
‘Former?’
‘Obviously it’s going to take a little while for the divorce to go through, but as far as I’m concerned,’ Callie said, ‘he’s my former husband.’
They discussed the logistics and then hung up. Callie sat down on her bed. It was six-twenty in the morning and she didn’t have to be up for another half an hour, but she wouldn’t be able to lie in bed and read, and she certainly wouldn’t sleep. Her heart was racing. Damn Jason. Damn him for creating this havoc in her head again. Once, she would have reached under her bed and found her stack of tablets, but not anymore. Beating her Xanax habit had been hard, no doubt about it, but Freddie had made her see exactly what she’d have lost if she lost herself to addiction.
‘It’s never just the one spliff or the one drink when you’re an addict,’ he’d said. ‘It’s so many that you’re numb. You can’t do that to Poppy.’
Every day she dealt with beautiful people who had their cognisance taken away from them. Addiction meant she’d unwittingly thrown her own away too. She had lots of people in her life who truly cared for her. But first and foremost she had Poppy, and she had to be there for her daughter. Jason was going to go away for a very long time and Poppy would need her mother to be strong.
She’d gone to a couple of NA meetings with Freddie and Ricky, but she wasn’t sure if it was for her. So far, she was coping on her own and she knew now that someone with her genetic history was better off without any sort of drug. Herbal tea and early morning walks with the dog, before anyone else was up: that was working pretty well so far. But Callie knew the serious help was there for her if she needed it.
The gates of Mountjoy Prison loomed large and slightly threatening to Callie when the taxi dropped her off. To the left was the red-brick building she knew housed the Dóchas Centre, which was the women’s prison.
She had so many chances growing up, despite there never being a spare ha’penny in the Sheridan household. But she’d been loved, fed and educated. Her mother had paid for those dance classes. She’d had every opportunity and she’d squandered a large part of it on a stupid man called Jason.
The men’s prison was old and she felt scared as she entered. Scared because she felt as if she might never get out of it once she got in. She still had that fear that she had been complicit in all of Jason’s terrible actions because she’d spent the money. She’d never asked where it came from. She’d bought his story, hook, line and sinker. She’d been part of the public face of Jason and Rob and people had looked at her and believed everything. When had she become so stupidly trusting?
Finally, she was in the visiting room. Prisoners were walking in to see their visitors and then, there he was: Jason.
He looked diminished somehow. Not the suave and unconcerned Jason of those photographs from the newspaper all those months ago, when he’d been wearing the beautiful linen shirt she’d bought him. No. Now he was wearing a tracksuit and runners with no laces. He hadn’t shaved either. No wonderful electric razor in here, she thought. He sat down in front of her and reached forward to grab her hands eagerly, as if he’d just come out of the desert and she were a long cool draught of water. But Callie pulled her hands away and put them on her lap. Startled, Jason looked at her.
‘I just—’ he began.
‘Don’t touch me,’ Callie stated in the cool, clear voice she’d promised herself she would use. ‘I came to see you to ask you questions. That’s it.’
‘But, Callie – I love you. You’re my wife. I have to explain . . .’
Callie stared at him in astonishment.
Over six months of nothing, six months when she and Poppy had been through hell, and he still thought of her in terms of being his wife?
‘Jason,’ she said, unable to stop the anger from rising, despite all her best efforts to prevent it: ‘We’re over. We were over the moment you planned your escape and left us behind.’
He buried his face in his hands and his voice was muffled as he spoke.
‘I know I should have brought you with me, I’m so sorry, I just panicked and then . . .’
Callie looked at the man she’d loved for so long and it would have been so easy to reach out and touch his hair. It was the same dark hair with perhaps a hint of grey at the temples. She could feel the charisma coming off him in waves, and yet, it wasn’t charisma today, she realised: it was something else.
Desperation.
He needed her, wanted her for something. A complete reversal of fortune. For all of their lives together, Jason had been the one with all the power. She’d had none, Callie realised. Her mother, her aunt – they were all right in that regard.
Startled by this internal revelation, she stared at him now, feeling nothing but the cool well of anger. Whatever he needed now, he would have to find it without her. Without Poppy.
‘What about Poppy?’ she said.
His head shot up.
‘Is she here? I’d love to see her.’
Instinctively, Callie shoved her chair backwards.
‘Are you crazy? Do you think I’d bring her to see you purely because you happen to have been caught in this country with your girlfriend? You didn’t come back for us. That will hurt her more than you can imagine, Jason. I won’t stop you having a relationship with your daughter, because that would be wrong, but . . .’ She paused. She almost couldn’t think of a way to put it that would imprint the message upon Jason’s brain.
‘What we went through was appalling. You abandoned us, to the police, the press, while Rob went off with Anka and the baby and you left us two to suffer. Do you have any idea what it was like for us? We had no money, nothing, nowhere to go: Poppy and I, the two people you say you love. If that’s your version of love, you can keep it.’
This time, Jason lowered his eyes first.
Callie felt the fire in her, the same fire she’d felt when she was fleeing Dublin with her daughter, fleeing from the press. That lioness would not let this man destroy her or her daughter.
‘You have every right to see your daughter, and even though we will be getting a divorce, I will make sure you see her because it will be important for her development, but she’s got other role models in her life now. She’s got my brother Freddie and . . .’ she paused again.
Callie was not a vindictive woman and she knew this would wound him. Still, he needed to know who the male presences were in his daughter’s life.
‘She has Ricky,’ she said without relish and Jason’s head snapped up.
‘That bastard,’ he said. ‘As soon as I’m gone, he’s sniffing around you—’
‘No,’ said Callie fiercely, ‘it’s not like that. I don’t want or need a man in my life. I have had you in my life for what, twenty-five years, and look what you did to me. Men are way off my menu. Plus, Ricky has a lovely wife and child, on whom he is not cheating.’
She let that one sink in.
‘My biggest relationship is with my daughter, then with my family, and then with the friends who’ve supported us through this time. Brenda, Evelyn, Mary Butler. They’ve kept in touch, talked to me, helped me.’
She thought of the Skype calls and the emails from Mary.
‘Ricky is my friend, but that’s all he is. He cares, like my family, the family you tried to separate me from. I came here for five minutes to find out why you left us.’ She looked at her watch. ‘You’ve three minutes left. Start talking.’
‘I don’t know,’ Jason said, his voice low. ‘I was scared and I didn’t want you to see it and then we were gone and I couldn’t get you.’
‘That’s it?’ she said in disbelief. ‘That’s the best story you can come up with?’
Jason squirmed.
‘You didn’t try to contact me. Why not?’ said Callie.
‘Because . . . because I knew they’d be watching you and waiting and . . .’
‘And they might catch you, which was not part of the plan,’ she snapped. ‘What about the woman in Marbella? She was just to keep you amused?’ Callie asked, and found that she didn’t mind really. Not anymore. ‘You’ve no idea the trouble I’ve had trying to keep that picture from your daughter, who was wondering where you were and why you hadn’t talked to us.’
‘That – that—’ Jason stopped.
He couldn’t explain his way out of that one.
‘Poppy’s having counselling, by the way. Just a few sessions to help her understand things. I need her to feel good about herself. Not everyone says nice things to a kid whose father has defrauded so many people. I tried to keep the worst of it from her, but she knows most of it. I tell her people sometimes do stupid things but life goes on and she is loved.’
‘Don’t, Callie.’ Jason buried his face in his hands.
‘Don’t what? Tell you the truth? You’ve been a stranger to the truth, Jason, but your running off meant that I got very well acquainted with it. The truth of having no money, the truth of not knowing what to tell my broken-hearted daughter who had to leave her school and her home and her friends. The truth of being a pariah. Was it nice in Spain, by the way? And what’s her name, your woman? The one you came home with?’
He looked up finally. ‘When did you get this hard?’ he said.
Callie laughed. ‘I’m not hard, Jason. I’m simply telling you the truth. You didn’t get caught coming to see us, you got caught coming home with another woman to go to her mother’s funeral. You can see why I might have a problem with that.’
‘I know I made mistakes, but I left you something, just one account,’ said Jason, desperately.
Callie pushed away from the table in disgust. ‘I don’t want to touch your dirty money,’ she said. ‘I don’t care how poor we are, we’ll manage.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s clean, it really is clean. I set it up a long time ago for Poppy and you. That detective inspector guy, he can talk to my accountant, it’s clean money. It’s for you two.’
Callie got up from the table. ‘Yeah, right,’ she said. ‘Clean money and Jason Reynolds aren’t two phrases that go well together. And the cheque’s in the post too, right? Bye Jason,’ she said. ‘I’m sure I’ll see you at the trial. I imagine I’ll have to be there.’ And she turned and walked away without looking back.
At the gate, Brenda was waiting for her.
‘I wish you’d let me come,’ she said.
Callie fell into her friend’s arms and let the tears flow, finally. ‘I needed to toughen myself up before I saw him.’
‘Coffee or tea, or wine?’
Callie laughed. ‘Tea, I think.’
They drove out towards Brenda’s and stopped at a small coffee shop.
‘I thought my house may be a bit dodgy because the press might think you’d be there in order to see Jason.’
‘I got an offer of another place to stay,’ remarked Callie. ‘Sam, that charity boss woman who sprang into action when the Sunday News came to Ballyglen, she offered. She’s been texting. She’s a lovely woman. Actually,’ she paused because she still couldn’t believe it herself, ‘her baby was born on her fortieth birthday, which was the same day as my fiftieth.’
‘Wow. Big night.’
‘I know. And Ginger, the reporter, she was thirty that same day. How’s that for coincidences?’
‘No such thing as coincidences,’ said Brenda sagely. ‘In some weird way, it all links up. I almost can’t believe that the reporter girl decided not to reveal you were there,’ she went on. ‘As my mother used to say: what’s rare is wonderful. So, you going to stay with Sam?’
‘Not tonight, I’m going home.’
Brenda’s eyes filled with tears then. Callie wasn’t sure if she’d ever seen Brenda cry.
‘I’m so glad you’re calling it home,’ she said, finding a paper napkin and wiping her eyes lest anyone spot the tears. ‘I miss you, though.’
‘You could come for a visit.’
Brenda nodded. ‘Definitely. Now, tell me about Poppy and all the goings-on, and really, you and Ricky are just friends . . .?’
Callie laughed. ‘Just friends.’
On the train home, Callie rang Poppy to tell her it was all OK and she’d be home soon. Then she took advantage of the time to text everyone else. Finally, she did something she’d been meaning to do for ages: she texted Ginger Reilly, as well as Sam.
I was in Dublin today, girls, but I couldn’t meet up. But next time, OK? We’re the three amigos – three women with the same birthday. It must mean something, right?xxx Callie