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.
