‘We were poor and wewerehappy,’ she said. ‘We lived in a real community. We knew there was more out there but we didn’t have it. That didn’t mean we were unhappy. I loved my family and I guess I had hopes and dreams.’
‘Because you were beautiful and everything and you were going to be a model,’ said Poppy as if her mother’s career path had been written down in a great manuscript, something to be fulfilled no matter what.
‘Mam helped me, she sent me to dance classes, ballet classes,’ Callie remembered and the flush of guilt washed over her again. They hadn’t had much money but her mother had insisted that Callie have her ballet classes in Madame Celine’s in the posher part of the town, so Callie could make something of herself.
‘So why don’t you see her anymore?’ said Poppy, getting straight to the nub of it.
She had her father’s ability to ignore things that didn’t immediately interest her, Callie thought.Now, her mother’s family was interesting, but not before.
‘It was on my birthday many years ago. Ma came to the house and had a fight with Dad.’
‘But she saw me, didn’t she?’ said Poppy.
‘She saw you, she loved you, everyone loves you.’ she said brightly, the guilt searing through her again.
‘So the house, Granny’s house – oh, what will I call her? Grandma?’
‘You’ll have to ask her.’
‘What’s the house like?’
‘It’s not what you’re used to,’ her mother explained. ‘It’s small and was always pretty, homey ...’
That warmth was what Callie had tried to recreate in her own kitchen. The community feel of Ballyglen was something she’d never managed to find again in the upper echelons of Dublin society.
‘Will I have my own bedroom?’
‘I don’t know if you’ll have your own bedroom, lovie. You might be sharing with me.’
‘Yuck,’ said Poppy, horrified. ‘That’s sick. I can’t share with you. Why can’t we go back to Brenda’s – at least there I had my own room.’
‘We can’t stay with Brenda, we have to get away somewhere nobody knows us until this all dies down and Dad sorts it all out.’
‘He will sort it all out, won’t he?’ said Poppy in a small voice. And for just a moment she didn’t sound at all like the cool teenager who knew everything.
‘Let’s hope he sorts it out,’ Callie said gently. She didn’t think now that Jason was going to be sorting anything out anytime soon, but her daughter was still only fourteen, still a child. She couldn’t let her child know the truth just yet. She dare not think of social media and how girls from her school could have already told her. But if Callie kept up the facade, then surely Poppy would believe it.
Let them settle somewhere, hopefully in Ballyglen. Let them find some routine and normality to life and then, if Callie could get a job and had enough money to pay for counselling for Poppy, she’d tell her the unvarnished truth. Slowly, gently. Not all in one fell swoop. For a girl who idolised her father, it would be like hearing of his death.
Whatever had to be said had to be said gently. But social media was still the problem. Poppy was glued to her phone. Who knew what she’d see if she looked up her father’s name.
As they drove, Callie could feel her nerves really straining now. Poppy had taken off her headphones and had the radio blasting loudly. She’d grumbled about not being able to get her favourite Dublin city station and about there not being a system where she could plug her phone into the car and let the sound system pick up her music via Bluetooth.
‘Useless car,’ she’d muttered, before finding a cool local station she could turn up too loud, which was her preferred volume.
Callie said nothing but felt the coffee she’d had earlier churning in her stomach.
As they neared her home town, Callie could see the bottle factory that had given work to so much of Ballyglen was gone, but it was still a big farming town with fertile land to raise dairy cows. Just before the town, the road rose lazily into a gentle slope and then they were suddenly on a curve on the sweep of the hill, with the whole town laid out before them. Rich green fields filled with cattle and sheep straddled the roads.
Below lay Ballyglen, home to some twenty thousand souls, one large church, not to mention a large hotel and country club, with golf course and riding attached. A small river ran through the town and divided it perfectly.
From a distance, it looked like a town on a chocolate box: pretty stone walls around it, shops and houses painted soft colours as if a watercolour artist had had a hand in the whole thing. Old trees growing in the centre of the town and a bridge with elegant old curved lamplights giving an air of timelessness to it all.
‘It’s pretty,’ said Poppy in surprise.
‘It is,’ said her mother, smiling. ‘What did you think? Something from a Tim Burton nightmare?’
‘Well ...’ Poppy made the single syllable drag out. ‘Dad said it was awful.’
