In giving their daughter everything she ever wanted, Callie wondered if she and Jason had damaged her by making Poppy spoiled.
Not that Jason thought so: he thought Poppy hung the moon.
But Callie, though she adored her daughter, worried and she was determined to teach Poppy the right things again.
First, she had to get through tonight – this enormous, entirely unwanted fiftieth birthday party that Jason had insisted on throwing for her.
‘People will expect it from us,’ Jason had said. ‘We’ve got an image to maintain, honey.’
Callie was sick of their damned image.
Sure, it seemed like Callie Reynolds had it all: the big house, the rich and glamorous businessman husband who never strayed, the looks of a former model, an interesting past, and a tall, beautiful daughter any mother would be proud of.
Yet it wasn’t perfect. Nothing ever really was. Real life was not like the pretend world on some people’s Instagram. Where was the Instagram that said ‘My Not So Damn Perfect Life’, with no happy-glow filters?
Jason had certainly pulled out all the stops, which meant a giant drinks party for two hundred people with the catering kitchen in the basement full of sous-chefs prepping for the plating of chocolate surprise bombes, tiny amandine biscuits shaped like stars, sashimi, sushi, cod and chips, Anjou pigeon (watch out for shot, warned the waiters and waitresses) and fat round pieces of beef that had been made into the most luxurious beef burgers ever. If any of the guests had an allergy, or even felt they might like to have an allergy on fashionable grounds, it would be catered for. There wasn’t a bag of Peruvian black quinoa or a tin of organic matcha tea to be had within a ten-block radius, just in case.
Holding her stomach in, Callie slowly made her way into the party, knocked sideways by expensive perfumes and the noisy clatter of hundreds of people drinking cocktails perfected by a mixologist.
‘Fabulous party,’ said someone, and a face Callie barely recognised from the newspaper air-kissed her. ‘The house is divine.’
Callie beamed her photograph smile.
‘Yes, it’s lovely,’ she said, poise in motion now that the Xanax had kicked in nicely and had chemically flattened her worries about Poppy or guilt over her family’s absence at this party. ‘Jason has such incredible ideas for the house.’
It was easier than saying that Jason was a nightmare when it came to the notion of improving everything he owned.
Everything had to be the best or most expensive. Like the recent renovation.
Thanks to endless months of building works on the mansion in the embassy belt, a huge basement had been dug for an extension which opened up to a three-storey conservatory complete with a walkway around the highest floor, at ground level, where tropical plants grew, and solar panels in the giant glass panes made the whole thing work.
She didn’t explain that her husband knew zilch about exotic plants.
He’d actually got the idea from an article in theFinancial Times’sHow To Spend Itmagazine about a billionaire who had a greenhouse in Manhattan where he grew all manner of exotic things.
‘Cyrtochilum Dasyglossum orchids,’ he’d read out, admiring a photo of a yellow orchid with delicately ruffled petals.
His elocution and command of the Latin words were impressive for a man who’d grown up in a council estate not too far from Callie’s own in a big county town, and whose knowledge of plants was confined to his mam’s dahlias.
But Jason was a quick learner. He could now talk exotic plants with the best of them. He expected Callie to do the same, as well as look just as beautiful all the time.
Unlike those husbands who died a little when their wives went to the shops wielding credit cards, Jason was always urging Callie to buy clothes.
‘I want you looking good, sexy,’ he’d say.
She could hardly complain, and yet lately she felt more like anotherthingin Jason’s life. His wife, to add to the Ferrari and the yacht.
‘Do enjoy yourself,’ Callie said to the guest now and she moved as if something vital was happening somewhere and she must race off. It was her fiftieth birthday party, after all, and the hostess needed to be all over the place, a handy excuse when it came to conversing with some of the guests, who were clearly a rent-a-celeb crowd drummed up by the party planner.
Callie moved on through the beautiful grey reception room that soared up to a vast glass and steel structure which had guests admiring it all.
She could see her husband in the distance, surrounded by friends as if it was his fiftieth birthday party and not hers. But then Jason drew people to him with the magnetism of the handsome and charismatic. He was tall, even among the statuesque, Pilates- or barre-toned Amazons in heels who were flirting with him.
She had no idea how he’d grown so tall: his own father, now long dead, had been wizened, but then that was due to smoking untipped cigarettes for years and thinking pints of beer and greasy pub sausages and chips were nourishment. Jason was dark, with that Spanish/Irish combination of raven blue-black hair, blue Irish eyes and skin that tanned when he so much as looked at the sun. Tonight, he was wearing a suit of such a dark navy that it appeared almost black. He looked like a movie star: an almost unreal presence among the rest of the guests.
‘We were flying over Monument Valley and the pilot took us really low. It was awesome. Nothing can do justice to that landscape, but flying over it comes pretty close,’ he was saying, his voice at the same time husky – which was natural – and exquisitely modulated to sound posh Irish – which wasnotnatural but the result of years of voice lessons.
His audience were more women than men. Jason was a rainmaker when it came to money and men loved that. Loved being close to someone who’d managed to buck recessions, the closing of tax loopholes, currency drops and world economic fluctuations to stay rich and grow richer. But tonight, it was a predominantly female crowd.
