Callie sat in the back of the limo with Jason on the way home and felt herself relax into the buttery soft leather seat. It had been a wonderful dinner after all. A Saturday night, an elegant restaurant with soft lighting, a jazz pianist in the corner and a busy, happy crowd of diners, enjoying fine dining.
Rob was on form, telling stories, being charming and funny, and Jason – Jason had been his charismatic self.
Everyone, from the sommelier to the waiters, loved him. Her husband treated everyone well – he was not one of those people who talked down to waiters and looked over people’s shoulders to see if another more important personage was in his eyeline.
They’d been celebrating some tricky business deal in Bulgaria and both men were on a high. Vintage champagne had been ordered and as she’d watched Rob dickering over the wine list, laughing that they needed the most expensive vintage, Callie had felt a blast of anger that he’d tried to hide money from her dear friend in the divorce.
It was a sliver of gritty harshness piercing this lovely atmosphere. Did you ever truly know anyone else? Rob always appeared so honest: it was part of his charm, part of why so many people wanted to invest with the business.
Jason noticed the look on her face.
Leaning so that he was close to her neck, he had put one arm round her waist and with the other, he adjusted the platinum and sapphire necklace he’d bought her several years ago, and which worked so wonderfully with the silver lace dress she wore. His large fingers caressed her collarbone delicately.
‘OK, honey? You looked like you might reach over the flowers to stab Rob there for a moment.’
She hauled her anger back in. ‘It’s nothing,’ she lied. ‘Tell you later?’
He nodded.
Now, in the back of the car, she allowed herself to lean against him, smelling his cologne and feeling the warmth of his body as he put an arm around her. She wanted to ask him about Rob, find out if he thought his best pal might really have hidden money from Evelyn in the divorce. But Jason was obviously so happy with the whole evening and she didn’t want to ruin the closeness between them.
‘Great evening,’ he said, loosening his tie and popping his collar button. ‘You looked amazing, babes. Did you see those guys at the table to our right? They kept looking over at me and Rob: full of naked, undisguised envy.’ His hand slid under the bodice of the silvery dress and he cupped her breast with longing.
‘Not in the car!’ she said, although the feeling of his warm hand on her flesh gave her a shiver of desire.
Wonderful, she thought with pleasure. It seemed that Old Crone was off duty tonight. Maybe her menopausal flesh hadn’t withered and died.
Jason’s hand kept stroking. ‘The driver’s paid not to notice or watch.’
‘If I want an audience, I’ll try being a porn star,’ joked Callie. ‘Honey, let’s wait till we get home.’
Reluctantly, he pulled his hand out, but not before squeezing her nipple.
‘Jason!’
‘You look so hot tonight,’ he murmured. ‘Rob and I are lucky guys. Talking of which, what was up with you and Rob? You looked so angry with him. Don’t tell me – Evelyn was spinning more anti-Rob propaganda?’
Just like that, she felt her sexual urges vanish. Callie was so annoyed, she slid across the leather seat away from him.
‘Anti-Rob propaganda?’ she said. ‘He tried to hide assets from her when they were getting divorced. They have three sons, were together since school, Jason. That’s not how you treat someone you respect.’
‘He didn’t hide anything,’ said Jason, jaw tightening. He stared straight ahead, not looking at her, which was what he did when he was angry. ‘Don’t swallow everything you hear, Callie. You’re so bloody naïve sometimes.’
‘I’m naïve?’
‘Yeah, very naïve. Rob was good to Evelyn. He’s a rich man, he didn’t want to give her everything he’d worked his butt off for. So what? Does that make him the bad guy?’
‘They were together since they were teenagers!’ went on Callie. ‘Fine, he didn’t want to pony up every penny he ever had, but please don’t tell me that he treated Evelyn with respect when they were married. He screwed everything that moved, Jason: you knew that, even if you never told me. So he owed her decency and some honesty when they were divorcing.’
‘She got a good deal,’ said Jason.
‘Why did she need to get forensic accountants onto it then?’
‘It was a misunderstanding. Rob didn’t want to go through all that. He was good and fair to her in the end. Hell, he was just upset it was over. He loved her, despite the women, you must know that. Rob just needed a bit of variety. He’d have stayed with Evelyn forever if she hadn’t pushed him out.’
Callie said nothing. Was that really what Jason thought? That it would have been better for Evelyn to turn a blind eye to her husband’s philandering and then they’d still have been together?
The car pulled up outside their house and the driver silently got out and opened Callie’s door.
‘Thank you,’ she said, feeling ashamed that this was the first time she’d spoken to the man. Once, she’d have talked to every cab driver.
‘You’re better than nobody and nobody’s better than you, Claire’ – that had been her mother’s mantra.
Now she’d turned into one of those people who said nothing to the man who’d driven her home, and she’d let her husband feel her up in the back of the car, treating the driver like he was nobody, just hired help to be ignored. What sort of awful cow was she turning into?
Thoughts of her mother made her think of the row – again. Her birthday was looming and some of the most important people in her life wouldn’t be there.
That horrible scene from ten years ago was burned into her brain like a cattle brand. Jason and her mother had never got on, but when her mother had come for a rare trip to Dublin, Jason had had a few drinks at dinner at home – Jason would not bring his unworldly mother-in-law out to a posh restaurant – and unwisely, Pat Sheridan had sparked it all off by wondering why they needed such a big house, so much money? Would he never be satisfied? His own mother, long since widowed, missed him. His brother had long left Ireland, whereabouts unknown. Pat had not bitten her tongue on the matter.
‘She has nobody else, Jason. You need to visit her.’
Jason, an expensive cigar in his hand, had stared at her with a cold gaze.
‘Nobody tells me I need to do anything, Pat,’ he said harshly.
Callie could tell he was getting angry: that small muscle in his jaw was twitching He was furious. Why couldn’t the people she loved get on?
But her mother was angry now too.
‘You’re with me now, Jason,’ she said harshly. ‘You can cut the posh accent.’
The row had been pyrotechnic. Jason had yelled that he’d got out of his past and she was just jealous. He began to boast about the plans he had for a villa in a private estate in Portugal and how dare she think she knew what was enough. He would decide that.
‘You’re nothing but a jumped-up control freak who manages to fool people,’ her mother had said when Jason was mid-boast. ‘You don’t fool me, you never have. You control my Claire. I can see it even if she can’t. You’ve cut her off from her old friends and you try to cut her off from us—’
Jason had interrupted. ‘What’s wrong with cutting her off from drug addicts?’ he had spat back, eyes enraged. ‘Your precious son Freddie is nothing but a heroin addict who still tries to pal around with Callie’s ex, another damned junkie, even if he thinks he’s Mr Big Rock Star.’
‘Freddie’s clean, he’s getting help,’ hissed her mother, all sense gone now.
‘How many times has Callie paid for him to go into rehab with my money?’ Jason’s voice was icy. ‘Twice? Is the third time a charm, Pat?’
‘How dare you?’ said Callie’s mother, beginning to cry. ‘You have no idea what it’s like, what I go through, and God help him, he tries his best.’
‘We got out of the backwater of Ballyglen for a reason,’ Jason went on. ‘Because it would drag us down. Like the people. If you keep that druggie son of yours at home, then forget about coming to my house ever again—’
‘Jason, no!’ said Callie, distraught.
Her husband’s hand had shot out and held her back. ‘No, Callie. We’ve moved on and up in the world. Your mother and Freddie want to stay in the gutter. They’re not welcome here. I won’t have Poppy exposed to a junkie and the sort of viciousness your mother likes to dish out.’
‘Please, no, Jason.’ Callie was crying now, desperate to fix it all. ‘Ma, we’ll get Freddie help, we will and—’
‘Not with one cent I’ve earned, you won’t,’ warned Jason fiercely.
He’d stormed out of the room, throwing a Waterford crystal goblet onto the marble floor, where it had shattered into hundreds of tiny shards.
Callie ran after him to get him to reconsider.
‘It’s crazy,’ she said. ‘We’re not living in the Middle Ages. You can’t banish my mother. Yes, Freddie is not welcome here while he’s still using, and he knows that, but my mother—’
‘That woman is never coming into this house again,’ he’d told Callie when she’d found him in his study, smoking his precious cigar. He was still shaking with rage.
‘Nobody speaks to me like that in my own house, nobody! To say that to me! To say I’m jumped-up . . .’
‘Jason, lovie, Ma had a couple of drinks. You know she’s not used to wine—’
‘She’s not used to good wine,’ he said harshly. ‘Only thing she likes is that rotgut they serve in the bar round the corner from her house. Fucking lush.’
‘My mother is not a lush!’ said Callie furiously. ‘She rarely drinks.’
‘And she never has a cigarette out of her hand,’ Jason went on, oblivious to the cigar he was holding. Jason had managed to convince himself that a few Dunhills every day and the odd Cohiba were not smoking.
‘She just lights one from the old one, sucking the life out of it. Well, she is not coming here again to contaminate our daughter. I won’t have anyone who doesn’t respect me in this house. We’re finished with that life in Ballyglen and your bitch of a mother is not setting foot in here again! That’s final!’
‘Jason! She’s my mother.’
He’d been so filled with rage, he was almost frightening. ‘You choose, then, Callie,’ he’d sneered. ‘Her – or me and Poppy, because you can’t have both.’
God help her, she’d chosen Jason and Poppy.
She hated herself for being helpless in the face of his control.
‘Please apologise to him, Ma,’ she’d begged the next day, when her mother packed up early and rang for a taxi.
‘I won’t apologise for speaking the truth,’ her mother said. ‘What’s he done to you, love? You used to be your own person and now you’re like a tame creature he keeps on a lead.’
Callie had flushed. She could see the truth in it, but she’d experienced the world before Jason, the world of Ricky and the drug-infested life he loved. There was no security in that. And Callie craved security. She never wanted to go back to eating jam sandwiches again.
When she and Jason had bumped into each other in Dublin, just after she’d broken up with Ricky, she’d been drawn to his calm control. Here was a man who was charismatic, handsome, and far removed from the world of addiction. They had Ballyglen in common, knew each other already. He was perfect. He adored her, cherished her, made her feel safe.
She could barely look at her mother: she loved Jason. She couldn’t turn her back on that, not even for her family. They didn’t understand. Sure, Jason could be possessive, but he loved her, that was why.
‘Claire, pet.’ Her mother took Callie’s face in her hands, hands worn from hard work and no time for hand creams. ‘He’s not good for you or little Poppy. This world’ – and she’d looked around the hall of the house, glamorous, elegant, as far removed from their small Ballyglen home as the North Pole was from the Amazon – ‘this world is just fakery. Jason likes nice things and you’re one of them. You’re so beautiful on the inside, pet, but he only sees the outside. You don’t work anymore, you have so few friends, you have so little for all that you seem to have so much. He’s made a museum for his nice things and you’re one of them.’
‘I’m not, Ma, and he’s not,’ protested Callie. ‘He adores me, can’t you see?’
‘He adores the wrong parts of you, Claire: the bits people see, not the bits that are inside you, the parts that make you you.’
‘You’re wrong.’
Her mother shook her head.
‘I love you, pet, but I won’t be coming here again. You and Poppy can come to me, anytime. We’ll be there for you. I know he’ll show his true colours one day and we’ll be waiting for you then.’
That conversation seemed a lifetime ago now.
Brenda, who’d stayed over to babysit Poppy, was in the kitchen.
‘Good night?’ she asked, then she saw Callie’s anxious face.
Callie sank into an armchair.
‘My mother never wanted me to marry Jason,’ Callie sighed, staring into the distance. ‘She said he was a fly-by-night merchant and I was on the rebound.’
Wisely, Brenda said nothing.
‘But the row . . . how can we come back from that?’ Callie went on.
‘Jason caused it by showing off his toys,’ said Brenda. ‘Your mother just responded. He’s an evil genius when it comes to pushing people’s buttons.’
‘He pays your wages,’ Callie snapped back.
‘Doesn’t mean I have to like him or not see what he is underneath the charm. Tea is made,’ Brenda said.
‘He’s my husband, you know he’s a good person,’ Callie said instinctively. ‘No, I don’t want tea,’ she added. She didn’t want to argue with Brenda too. It seemed to be her night for arguing.
She went silently upstairs and checked on Poppy, who was asleep, looking fourteen again out of her make-up. Watching her daughter sleeping peacefully, Callie’s mind was racing.
Rob’s behaviour upset her. Jason’s reaction to it upset her even more.
What if Jason was cheating on her and he was already working out how to hide his money so she got just enough?
She went into her dressing room and slipped off the silver dress, leaving on her underwear and pulling on a dressing gown before heading into the bathroom. In front of the mirror, she began taking off her make-up and as she worked, all she could see was crêping skin and wrinkles, places where her face had once been youthful and where now, all the dermatological work in the world couldn’t hide the passage of time.
She didn’t think she looked her age. Models could age beautifully. But hey, who was she kidding?
Her husband could easily be screwing a twenty- or thirty-something like Anka. He might be working all the details out now. Evelyn might think Jason would never look at another woman, but that could all be bullshit. He might be on the phone to her right now in his study, whispering that he’d tell his wife soon, that they’d be together . . .
‘What’s really bugging you, Callie?’
Jason stood in the bathroom, shirt open, tie off, cuffs opened.
He still had a tan from their last holiday: he only had to look at the sun to go dark. And he was toned. He and Rob were always at gyms when they were away.
They’d completed one triathlon together. Sworn off them altogether because it was too hard to combine all their travelling with the training, but still, they worked out.
She could see his defined abdominal muscles, the strength in his pectorals. With the blue eyes startlingly pale against his tanned face, he looked every bit as handsome as when she’d first fallen in love with him.
‘You,’ she said, blinking back tears and wishing she didn’t feel so emotional all the time.
Damn this perimenopause.
‘What about me?’ his face softened and he moved to take her in his arms.
‘I don’t want to be like Evelyn. I don’t want to be discarded with you figuring out how to appease me, how much money to give to me so you can get on with your new life—’
‘What gave you that idea?’ he demanded. ‘I’m going nowhere. There is nobody else. Why did you even think that? Hey, I was proud of you this evening because those idiots at the table nearby were staring at you and I was thinking “she’s my wife, guys – hands off!” Why would I leave?’
With his arms around her, Callie allowed herself to sink into her husband’s embrace. She leaned her head against him, letting all the pent-up worry flood out of her.
‘I love you, only you. And Poppy, our own Teenager From Hell!’ he joked. ‘I adore you both, you never have to doubt me. Don’t you believe me?’
‘Yes,’ she sniffled. ‘But you’ve been so preoccupied lately, busy, not talking and I thought—’
‘You’re one crazy woman,’ he said, and swooped her up in his arms. ‘I don’t care if you’re not finished with the creams and the serums, honey, you’re coming with me. Now. To bed. To have wild sex.’
‘I’m getting old,’ wailed Callie.
‘We’re getting older,’ corrected Jason, negotiating the bedroom door with his foot. ‘So what? You’re still as beautiful today as you were when I met you.’
He laid her on the bed, pulled off his shirt and trousers until he was down to his boxers.
‘Let’s get you out of those wet clothes and into a nice warm bed,’ he said.
Callie laughed.
‘They’re not wet,’ she said.
‘Work with me here,’ he said, unclasping her nude bra and letting her small breasts spill out into his hands. ‘Definitely wet,’ he murmured, leaning down to suck her nipples. ‘And these . . .’
His hands found her panties, a wisp of lace. He reached past the lace to touch her and she arched her back.
She felt ready for him: soft and ready, unlike so often lately when she’d felt as if lovemaking was akin to having her desert body invaded.
But tonight, now, she felt sexual and loved. Desirable.
The next morning, Callie practically danced down the stairs to the kitchen. Her body ached pleasurably, the tiredness of lovemaking she hadn’t felt for a long time.
So, she thought, looking at herself in the mirror as she shrugged into a sweatshirt and sweatpants, you’re not twenty anymore.
Who gave a damn?
You’re a modern, intelligent woman with a man who loves you and get over yourself with your neuroses and your fears of your husband cheating.
No man who was cheating on his wife could make love to her twice in one night when they’d been together for over twenty years.
Beat that, you smug young things, Callie thought.
Mug of coffee in hand, she wandered into the newly completed conservatory, where Jason sat at one end of a huge Norwegian table, the Sunday papers spread out in front of him.
‘Hi honey,’ she said, leaning over Jason and giving him a lingering kiss on the mouth.
He didn’t kiss her back.
‘Your ex is all over the news again,’ he said.
Callie sighed. She hadn’t had enough boyfriends to wonder which one – and only one of them had become one of the most famous men in the world. Damned Ricky.
She’d dated him for three wonderful years, but by the time she turned twenty-one, Ricky was an addict. Callie had ended it, terrified by the ferocity of his addiction. Ricky had gone to London, made it big there and then vanished totally from her life.
It was years since she’d seen him and yet thanks to Tanner being one of the world’s biggest rock bands, who seemed to have an endless supply of hits, Ricky and the band were often in the papers.
Nothing could be more guaranteed to make Jason furious with jealousy than newspaper coverage of Ricky.
Callie was used to it. The trick, she’d learned, was to deal with Jason’s fierce jealousy by pretending utter indifference, even dislike.
‘I guess I should be pleased that you get jealous over my old boyfriends,’ she said, determined to tease him out of his misery. Last night had been wonderful: he’d made her feel loved and she’d understood that things were tricky in work right now, which was why he’d been distant.
She was not going to let Ricky ruin it.
When Jason had gone into the office, Callie took a quick look at the papers.
There was a piece on Ricky, who was recording a new album. People were still talking about his amazing and enlightening talk at Davos about climate change. Jason would have given his right arm, left leg and the Ferrari to be asked to speak at Davos, but it was never going to happen. Callie knew that. But Ricky, her first ever boyfriend, first lover, and one of the most famous men in the world, had been asked and had been a huge success.
Jason had hated that – it meant he couldn’t say that Ricky was just a moron with a guitar. Morons with guitars did not get invited to the prestigious Swiss think tank where world leaders gathered every year.
And he particularly hated it when Callie was mentioned in these articles, as she sometimes was because of the song ‘Calliope’, which had been the breakout song for Ricky’s band – the song that had transformed them from a small band into a band who could fill Madison Square Gardens.
But Ricky had been long gone from her life when she met Jason and back then, it had thrilled Jason to be going out with the famous rock star’s ex-girlfriend.
Callie picked up the paper and put it in the recycling.
The past needed to stay in the past. Except, it kept pinging into her consciousness. Her party was very soon.
She tried not to think about it because of the people who wouldn’t be there: her mother, her brother, her aunt and uncle-in-law. All her relatives, the people that Jason had basically banished from her life ten years before.
Fiftieth birthdays were a time for family, but if she got in touch with her mother now it would look like she was only doing it for appearances’ sake.
How did you come back from that sort of family row? You couldn’t – that was the answer. Instead, you had to be passionately grateful for all you had.