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 toherright 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.
