She’d had a flu once that had made her feel incredibly lightheaded, so light-headed she could barely think straight, and she had perfect recall of that now: the feeling that nothing was what it appeared to be.
‘He must have known what would happen,’ she said suddenly. ‘Last night, probably shortly after you left, the police made everyone leave the party, searched my house and I had to leave with just some of my stuff. Our bank accounts are frozen and Brenda said we better not take much, just in case. They’re probably still there, searching. I’m wearing old jeans, an ancient sweatshirt and I have about fifty euros in my purse. I was told I shouldn’t leave the country and my husband is gone. There’s been not a word from him. His mobile phone is out of service – I’ve phoned about thirty times! It’s like he has disappeared off the face of the earth and ...’ She paused. This was worst of all.‘He left us, while Rob took Anka.’
‘I’m really sorry,’ said Evelyn, ‘really sorry, Callie.’
‘This is actually happening, isn’t it?’ said Callie and started to cry. ‘I just don’t believe he could do this to us.’
‘I would never have believed he could have done that to you either,’ said Evelyn sadly. ‘Jason loves you, he loves Poppy.’
‘Lovesus?’ questioned Callie angrily. ‘Are you sure you don’t meanlovedus, because whatever is going on, he could have stuck around and we could have got through it together. But he’s gone. And bloody Rob brought Anka and the baby, while Jason just left me and Poppy here to suffer on our own.’
She looked up and realised that Brenda was standing in the kitchen and had overheard every word.
‘I’ve got to go, Evelyn,’ Callie said. ‘Thank you. I’ll keep in touch.’ She looked at Brenda.
‘Hold on. Don’t hang up yet. Tell her you’ll probably need a different phone,’ said Brenda, in the same matter-of-fact tone she was using all the time now, ‘because people will get that phone number from somewhere so you’ll need to get rid of it.’
Last night Callie would have protested, but this morning she just nodded. Brenda had become the person who understood this new world, the person Callie could rely on.
‘Ev, I’ll text you my new number when I get it and don’t give it to anyone.’
‘Fine,’ said Evelyn. ‘I’m here for you, for you and Poppy, but I don’t know what I can do.’
‘Be grateful you got a lump sum,’ said Callie bitterly. ‘Seeing as how Jason, Rob and Anka all got magically out of it because they knew what was coming, you’re going to need it, Ev.’
She hung up and looked at Brenda.
‘Have you seen the news?’ Brenda said.
Callie nodded. ‘He left us behind, Brenda.’
‘I heard,’ she said, going to the kettle. ‘I made a few calls last night. We have a lawyer you can talk to. Today, preferably. He’ll want money up front.’
‘Ha!’ Callie said shakily. ‘Does he take frozen plastic?’
‘Unlikely,’ Brenda said. ‘You’ll need money.’
Callie looked down at her hands and realised they were shaking. She had to sit down or she would collapse. Taking a chair at the table, she said: ‘Last night, I was thinking that it was wrong to have taken the jewellery if it truly was part of some awful white-collar fraud. I don’t steal – I’ve never stolen anything in my life – but right now I don’t care. I need to take care of Poppy, we need somewhere to live and we need some money to live on.’
‘That’s what I was thinking,’ said Brenda. ‘Real-world scenario versus pink fluffy unicorn world.’
Callie laid her forehead wearily on the table and spoke: ‘Brenda, if Jason’s been ripping people off for years, I’ve been living on stolen money. I am a – what do you call it?’
‘Accessory to the fact,’ said Brenda. ‘You’ve been watching too many TV detective shows. You were the nice person caught up in all of this with Shitface and his pal, Other Shitface. Not an accessory to anything.’
‘That’s almost worse, though.’ Callie raised her head. ‘I was too stupid to see what was going on. How could I not have known? That’s what I keep asking myself – why didn’t I see what was obviously under my nose?’
Sam
At least, thought Sam, cleaning up another nappy, the black faeces that had frightened the hell out of her had stopped. It was meconium, the nurses had explained to her in hospital when she’d stared aghast at the black liquid coming out of her exquisite little baby’s bottom. ‘This can’t be normal,’ she’d cried, fearing there was something wrong with India.
‘It’s perfectly normal,’ said the nurse talking to her, an old hand at explaining this sort of thing to new, terrified mothers. ‘Meconium is the early excreta and nothing to worry about, although it looks a little bit frightening. Soon the baby’s stools should be a more normal colour.’
Sam wanted this confirmed once more. In fact, she’d really have liked a notebook where she could write all this down and then have it typed up in triplicate and stuck around the house, because she needed to know that whatever her baby was doing was normal.
Plus she was beyond irritated with Ted, who seemed more upset at the scent of India’s tiny nappies – why was he so upset about that? How dare he get upset about it when she was the one in the hospital dealing with the impossible task of taking care of their tiny child, of worrying full-time.
The next difficult step in taking care of the baby was the feeding, or latching on as the nurses called it. ‘Latching on’ was such an innocuous phrase, sort of like hanging a picture frame onto a wall. At no point did the words latching on imply getting a small, bewildered, hungry and increasingly cross baby to attach itself to a nipple that was already painful and then make said baby suck.
