‘It’s a bit like that,’ agreed Brenda, ‘although even though you and I have got through a couple of bottles of wine, I don’t think we qualify for rehab just yet. But what I mean is stop obsessing over the past and stop worrying about Jason. You have to take care of yourself and Poppy. If you think too far into the future, you’ll crumble. Be strong and think about today.’
Be strong. Callie said the words silently in her head now. She had to be strong for Poppy because who knew what was awaiting her. Her mother might not forgive her. Her mother might send them packing and then ... Callie wasn’t really sure what the next option was.
She turned the last corner into a tiny cul-de-sac. Sugarloaf Terrace. Ten houses, five on each side. This street had always been beautifully cared for even when she was growing up, even when many of the other houses in the area had been run-down because nobody had any money to paint them up. The council hadn’t cared and the people living in them were too broke, too concerned with survival, to worry about whether the paint on their front doors flaked or not. But the Terrace had been different. Home to many strong women who wanted their homes to look as if they were surviving, because if you looked as though you were, you just might be.
‘Here we are,’ she said, trying to sound bright to hide her nerves.
‘Here?’ said Poppy anxiously.
‘This is it.’
She parked the car in front of the house. It looked different now: her mum’s garden had been transformed with lots of plants and containers and with paving stones so that a small car could be parked there, which was something nobody had ever done when Callie was growing up. The car which stood there now was a smart new little runaround. Silver-grey, one year old, and Callie wondered if her mother had moved. When she’d been young, her mother had never driven and where had she got the money for a car?
‘Do you want to stay here for a minute while I go in and just check if your grandmother is in?’ she said to Poppy.
Poppy, looking strangely subdued, nodded. She pulled out a compact to examine her lipstick again. When Poppy was stressed, she went to her face, examining it and worrying over it as if lipstick application and perfect eyeshadow would make everything all right. Suddenly Callie saw all that primping for what it really was: anxiousness, worry. What would the long-term damage be to her daughter from all of this? She put her arm around Poppy’s shoulder.
‘It’s going to be fine,’ she said. ‘We’ll get through this, everything is going to be fine.’
She got out of the car, thinking that she’d lied again. She didn’t know if it was going to be fine. That was motherhood for you: going from lying about the existence of Santa Claus to lying about how things would be ‘fine’.
A curtain in the house next door twitched, but Callie pretended not to notice as she walked up the path.
Her mother’s door was painted a lovely sky blue.
Callie knocked and could feel her heart beat a tattoo in her chest. Please let her mother still be living there, please let her mother allow her to apologise, explain and beg. She’d beg if she had to. She would go down on her knees, because she and Poppy needed somewhere to stay. Whatever about herself, she couldn’t put Poppy through what they had been through in the last few days.
At that, the door swung open and her mother stood there, still small, her hair no longer platinum blonde but totally white and long, trailing back into a little plait. She’d aged. There were lines all over her face now, carved in by life, and she had, Callie realised, become an old woman. But her eyes were the same translucent blue as Callie’s and they lit up when she realised who it was.
‘Oh Claire, lovie: you’ve come home.’
Callie fell into her mother’s arms and let the tears come.
‘I wasn’t sure if I could come or if you’d see me or have us or anything, but I’m sorry, Mam,’ she blurted out, ‘I’m so so sorry. How can you forgive me ...?’
‘Shush, Claire, lovie, it’s all right.’ Her mother held her the way she used to years ago.
Callie had been taller than her mum since she had been about fourteen, but her mother appeared to have shrunk. Still, it felt so good being able to rest her head on her mother’s shoulders, to smell that familiar smell of perfume. She didn’t know what it was anymore, something with lilies, she thought. It was not one of the expensive perfumes of Callie’s that Brenda had scooped up that dreadful night.
‘I was hoping you’d come,’ her mother said, ‘really hoping, but I didn’t know if you would. When I saw that that bastard had run away on you, I just hoped you’d come back to me.’
‘He’s not—’ Callie began to say and then she stopped. She remembered the row all those years ago when her mother had called Jason a bastard and accused him of all sorts of stuff and Callie had stood up for him. And it seemed as if her mother had been right all along.
‘Is that, is that Poppy in the car?’
Callie nodded. At this point, she could barely trust herself to speak.
‘Oh the Good Lord, get her in here.’
‘Just don’t say anything bad about her father to her – we haven’t gone down that road yet.’
Her mother let go of her and flew down the path, wrenching open the door on the old Renault where Poppy sat, eyes wide open, watching this small vibrant little woman racing towards her.
‘Poppy, love, will you get out of the car and into the house. Look at you! You’re so grown-up, you’re a young woman! I’ve waited for this for so long.’
Callie watched as Poppy was enveloped in the same tight grasp and Callie had to lean against the wallpapered wall in the hall, beside the holy Sacred Heart picture with the red light burning underneath, so she could breathe with relief.
Home. She was home. And welcomed.
