‘It’s going to be sorted out, Brenda,’ said Callie fiercely. ‘I won’t need to sell anything. Jason will fix it. This is all a—’
‘Mistake? Yeah, right,’ said Brenda, her voice as caustic as acid. ‘If it’s a mistake, why isn’t he here fixing it now? Because this is no mistake, Callie. You and Poppy are on your own. You’ve got me, and Evelyn too, I imagine, because she’s decent to the bone, and Mary Butler in Canada, but that’s it. So get used to it and start thinking clever. Tomorrow, we’ll find out if you can take stuff from the house – you need a lawyer for when they talk to you. But right now, we’ve got enough.’
Alone again, Callie wiped off her face, tears mingling with the cream. She felt strangely numb. There was a dreamlike quality to this whole evening. Like a bad movie that had somehow stuck in her brain to be replayed in her REM sleep. Yet she didn’t want to think too much about it because, if she did, she would come back to the inevitable: if Jason was a fraud, how had she not known?
When she’d rubbed on moisturiser, pulled on sweatpants and a T-shirt and tied her hair back with a band, she stood outside Poppy’s room and knocked, but there was no reply. She might bring up a cup of hot chocolate to her daughter and try again in a few minutes.
‘I’m sorry, Brenda,’ she began when she reached the kitchen.
‘No,Iam. I’m giving you the tough-love treatment right now and it’s probably too much.’
Everything that had happened was too much, Callie thought, but no point in saying that.
Brenda sat at the small table in the kitchen, her three cats in three different cat beds. There was a scent of tobacco in the air, a small Japanese teapot and two little cups on the table, along with an opened wine bottle and two glasses. Soft jazz music played in the background.
‘Seriously,’ said Callie, ‘thank you for everything. I’m still a bit shell-shocked. Maybe sleep will sort me out.’
There was silence. Neither of them believed a good night’s sleep would do much, but still, it was something you said, Callie thought. Sleep. Hot tea with sugar. Kindness. None of which could take away the fact that Jason had run off, leaving her with this trail of disaster.
‘Is Poppy coming down?’
Brenda shook her head.
‘She blames me,’ said Callie, pouring herself some tea and trying not to let her hands shake too much.
Joe, the marmalade cat, uncurled from his bed and began to weave around Callie’s bare ankles.
‘You’re the only one who’s left to blame,’ Brenda said, shrugging. ‘Shitface went off and left you both, so there’s nobody else to pin it all on.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t call him that,’ Callie said automatically. ‘We don’t know what’s happening.’
‘He left when the police were at the door – that’s what happened. You and Poppy would have been on the street tonight if I wasn’t there. Your bank accounts have been frozen. You couldn’t have rented a hotel room with credit cards attached to frozen accounts. So yes, I think Shitface about sums it up.’
Callie was too shocked to be angry, but clearly Brenda was channelling enough anger for both of them. She abandoned the camomile tea and poured herself some wine.
‘What do I live on if our bank accounts are frozen?’
Brenda shrugged. ‘They want Jason. He’ll be on an arrest warrant now and they have to track him down. Freezing the accounts is what they do.’
‘But what about Poppy and me?’
‘I’d love to ask fucking Jason that,’ said Brenda.
‘I still don’t believe it,’ said Callie staunchly. She finished her glass of wine, went to the sink and rinsed it out. ‘He wouldn’t do this to us!’
Brenda closed her eyes. ‘He has, Cal. He has. I am so sorry for both of you.’
‘But why?’ Callie knew she was about to cry and she didn’t want a tear-stained face, not when she had to go into Poppy’s room. ‘He loves us.’
‘People are complicated, Cal. He loved the lifestyle, didn’t want to give it up when the economy tanked. Went over to the dark side? Who knows.’
‘But us? What about us?’ Callie said.
‘I don’t have an answer.’
Callie finally said it out loud: ‘How did I not know? You seemed to know.’
‘Jason adored you and he protected you,’ Brenda said finally. ‘I’m wiser, I saw between the cracks. I’ve had my suspicions for the past couple of years, but what could I say to you? “Do you think the business is no longer legitimate?”’
