‘It’s just a country town and we lived in the poorer bit. He never got over that,’ Callie said, and then realised she’d been very honest with her daughter.
‘Why didn’t he get over it? You did.’ Poppy was interested.
‘Our area was once considered the bad area of the town and it’s not nice growing up in a place where everyone thinks the worst of you because some of the neighbours aren’t model citizens. My family, my whole road in fact, was lovely, but it wasn’t all like that. Blackheights was the name of the place. Comes from the Irish – Aird Dubh. A history teacher once said it was probably a site of ancient Celtic ritual, but in Ballyglen when we grew up, it was where the poorer people lived, people who worked in the bottle factory when it was still open.’
They drove down the winding hill, passing the imposing entrance to the elegant golf resort hotel Callie had often longed to visit so she could see her mother. Had Jason stayed there to see his mother? Who knew? Anything was possible in this topsy-turvy world.
Finally, they were in the town itself and Poppy exclaimed once again at its prettiness, and then said she could see no nice clothes shops, which was bad.
Callie drove carefully, watching the streets as she got nearer to home, seeing the old bakery where she and her friends used to buy jam doughnuts. They drove past Cathedral Square, source of much rage in the Archbishop’s house, and around the picturesque houses which Callie used to fantasise about the whole family living in as a child. Fat old trees sat outside the houses, apple trees with big trunks now and summer flowers in planters.
Then, they were driving higher up the hill on the other side where they arrived at the warren of streets that was Blackheights, a cluster of small terraced houses, built many years ago to house a workforce for whom there turned out to be no work.
There was the sliver of park that Callie could remember was where the rebel kids smoked when she’d been young. Smoked and drunk naggins of gin and vodka, whatever they could get. There had been drugs, but it hadn’t been as all-pervasive as it was for Poppy’s generation. Callie had tried hash when she’d been with Ricky but she’d hated it: it made her feel paranoid, out of place. Poor Ricky, he’d gone down that path for a long time. And Freddie – she stopped. It hurt to think of her brother.
She’d left Ricky then, long before he hooked up with the manager who finally helped him clean up his act and come off drugs. That was when Tanner had gone from being a hot band to being mega, worldwide superstars with Ricky as the rock god.
His parents still lived in Ballyglen, she thought, although she assumed his father and mother no longer worked in the local hospital – they must be retired now.
She flicked on the left indicator and drove down a road she’d walked down so many times on her way to school. Not long now till home.
Poppy turned the radio down.
‘I didn’t expect it would be like this,’ said Poppy quietly.
‘Like what?’
‘Er ... you know ... with these small houses? It’s pretty and everything, but small.’
‘Our house in Dublin isn’t normal, Poppy,’ said Callie. She corrected herself. ‘Wasn’tnormal. Most people don’t have six bedrooms, giant reception rooms, a catering kitchen and a garage with a Ferrari in it.’
And neither did they – anymore.
‘I know but ...’
Callie kept her eyes straight ahead. The roads were narrow here with only room for one car because people didn’t have driveways and parked on the road. Drivers had to zigzag from one side of the road to the other. Callie reached a T-junction and took a right. Now the houses were mainly grey or white. Small, terraced, well-painted because it was a long time since they’d belonged to the council and the owners had kept them beautifully.
Some had the frames around the windows painted bright colours; others had lovely trellises around the porches where flowers, roses or wisteria grew, giving the whole road a welcoming look that Callie couldn’t remember from her youth. It was comforting, home.
For so long, listening to Jason’s poison about their time growing up in Ballyglen, she’d remembered their home town only as a place she’d wanted to escape from. Now she could see the streets around Sugarloaf Terrace as they really were: a place where neighbours drove other neighbours to hospital appointments, where someone would walk your dog if you were sick, where people cared. A sense of community – that was it. Jason had never seen it and, to be honest, she wasn’t sure she had either, until now, when it all came flooding back.
‘So this is where you grew up?’ said Poppy. ‘I mean, the houses are small and all that, but it’s OK.’
‘This is it,’ said Callie. ‘I used to walk along this road in my horrible grey school uniform and meet up with my friend, Bianca, just at the corner back there and we would cut through the lane and go to school.’
‘Sort of hard to imagine you in a school uniform,’ said Poppy, a smile in her voice.
‘It was a horrible school uniform,’ said her mother.
‘But I bet you still looked amazing in it,’ said Poppy, a hint of envy in her voice.
‘You look wonderful in your school uniform, honey,’ said Callie, the old familiar refrain. And then she stopped because Poppy wasn’t going to that school anymore. In fact, she probably never would go back because St Tilda’s was a private exclusive school and cost an absolute fortune. Unless Jason came back in a time machine and sorted everything out, Poppy wasn’t going to school there ever again. The very thought made her want to vomit and she had to inhale deeply and force herself not to be sick. She would not pull over and throw up on the side of the road.
She would not think about possible futures or the past or things that had gone wrong, she would just concentrate on this moment, the way Brenda had told her.
‘Just get through every day as it comes,’ Brenda had said the morning they’d left, holding Callie by the shoulders.
‘You sound like you’re telling me to stay off the drink or something,’ said Callie, trying to lighten the mood.
