Ginger thought frantically about what she could say that would make this woman understand: confession, she realised. That would do it. ‘My name is Ginger Reilly, I write an online column calledGirlfriend—’
‘My daughter reads that,’ said Callie suddenly, surprised.
‘How lovely. Well, that’s what I want to do, but I do it under a pseudonym and I am too scared to come out from behind that because I thought I wasn’t “aspirational”.’ She made air quotes with her hands. ‘But then, it turned out my editor didn’t think that at all. Only I haven’t done it yet because I’m trying to get over this guy—’
She stopped. ‘I’m sorry – I’m telling you my life story. I don’t do that. People tell stuff to me.’
‘Well, they do if you’re a reporter,’ Callie said.
‘No, really, people open up to me and I just did it to you. Weird.’
‘It’s Ballyglen and this place,’ Callie said. ‘It’s peaceful, makes you think of what’s important. I never knew that before. I guess you need to lose everything to see what’s important.’
Ginger stared at her silently.
Lose everything.
That was strangely what she felt she’d lost. She’d got her family, her new friends, work success, and yet losing Will had somehow wiped out all these triumphs.
Will had helped her to love herself in a way she’d never experienced before. She’d been a butterfly locked in a rock-solid cocoon and his friendship – and love? – had cracked it open. And all the pain of the past had been able to tumble out.
Ginger burst into tears.
‘I tried so hard not to mind,’ she said brokenly. ‘I tried to pretend I didn’t care about having a mother, but I did. Like I care about losing Will. How can you have your heart broken so easily?’
‘Hearts are fragile things,’ said Callie truthfully. ‘But they’re strong, too.’
Ginger nodded and Callie put her arms around the younger woman.
‘Your mother died?’ she asked.
Ginger nodded again. ‘She’s buried in Ballyglen and I haven’t been to her grave since I was a child and my father brought me. “It doesn’t matter”, I said, but it does.’
‘You poor pet,’ said Callie. ‘Pain has to be gone through. You can’t ignore it or put it on the backburner. You have to make your way through. I have a lot of experience of that lately, but it’s possible to do it.’
‘Thank you,’ sobbed Ginger.
And somehow that was how Sam found them, hugging in the nursing home bathroom, with Ginger sobbing and Callie saying that it was all right, that even though Ginger’s heart was breaking now, she would recover.
‘There’s a newspaper photographer outside,’ said Sam urgently.
‘And a reporter here,’ said Callie with great calmness as she held the sobbing Ginger in her arms.
Sam stepped back. ‘What?’
‘It’s OK. Gut instinct. She doesn’t want to do this.’
‘It could be a ploy,’ said Sam, and then she looked at the lurid red of Ginger’s face as she sobbed and decided that even though her mother had never brought her up on the concept of gut instinct, it still made sense.
‘Ginger’s mother is buried here and you ... you never knew her?’ Callie asked gently.
‘No,’ wailed Ginger. ‘I’ve missed her every day of my life. Now I miss Will too and he’s gone. I wonder, did I push him away, because I might have ...’
Over Ginger’s fabulous hair, Sam and Callie’s eyes met.
‘First things first: we need a plan to get rid of the photographer,’ said Sam.
They hustled Ginger out of the bathroom and into the music room where, for once, Miss Betty was not playing the piano to a crowd of enthusiastic listeners.
