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.’
