‘I didn’t share it with him but I’m sure he’s thinking of it,’ said her mother slowly, ‘I mean, he rang me when he saw it in the papers. I don’t know, Callie, don’t know what to say to you, love. I’m not going to say anything now in front of the child.’
‘I’m not a child,’ said Poppy, outraged.
‘As it happens, I’m not going to say anything in front of you, anyway,’ said her grandmother firmly. ‘What’s happened has happened but we have to move on and make a new life for yourselves ...’
‘We are not making a new life ourselves,’ said Poppy firmly. ‘We’re here for a visit. Dad’s going to be back, everything is going to be fine, it’s all a misunderstanding. We just needed somewhere because we were staying with Brenda and then, you know, the newspapers came and were taking pictures and we had to get out.’
Callie looked at her mother and saw the deep pity in her eyes.
‘Quite right too,’ said her mother cheerily. ‘I’m glad you came here for a little break. I’ll show you the room. Not that your mother needs any showing, she can bring you up. You can take the attic. You wouldn’t want to be tall to be in it, so it was fine for your aunt because she was a bit of a short one like myself, and it will be grand for you. Not for your mother though. Not with those long legs. You could have Freddie’s old room, Claire. It’s all done up nice now, pinks and greys and Freddie kept saying they weren’t the colours now, but you know I like them. And you could meet the dog. Ketchup. He’s out the back doing his business. Let’s get him in.’
Ketchup was a funny breed of dog.
‘Ah sure he’s a bit of everything,’ Callie’s mother said. ‘Fifty-seven varieties and all that, that’s why we called him Ketchup.’
‘Brilliant,’ said Poppy, who’d always wanted a dog. She sat on the floor and let herself be loved and adored by the off-white little creature with the tufty hair, the short tail, the brown eyes and a little face that said uncertain parentage was definitely part of the picture.
‘We don’t know how old he is,’ Callie’s mum said, as the two grown-ups watched Poppy turn into a kid with an animal. ‘Some young lads had him one Halloween. Luckily, your brother Freddie got there in time and he said it would be good for me, you know, after the operation.’
‘What operation?’ said Callie, hating the feeling that here was yet another thing that she had missed.
‘Ah, you know,’ her mother began, then stopped, which was very unlike Pat Sheridan. ‘Women’s things. Ages ago, it doesn’t matter.’
Poppy decided she didn’t want to sleep alone and that since Ketchup had taken such a shine to her he would share her room.
‘I’m just telling you he makes terrible wind in the middle of the night,’ said her grandmother.
‘That’s fine, Nana,’ said Poppy. ‘I don’t mind, I love dogs.’ She was walking round holding Ketchup in her arms as if he was a pampered chihuahua or some other handbag dog instead of an adorably scruffy little mongrel with the most bewitching black eyes that shone with happiness. Every few seconds, his pink tongue reached out to lick whatever bit of Poppy he could reach.
‘She’s a lovely child,’ said Pat when Poppy went up to the attic with Ketchup to show him his new sleeping quarters before dinner.
They could hear her talking to him on the way up.
‘Now you can have your bed on the floor, but if you really want, you can get into the bed with me and we can snuggle, but no smelly wind,’ Poppy was saying. ‘Although I don’t mind, honestly, I still love you.’
‘Yes, she’s a great girl,’ said Callie, sitting down on one ancient kitchen chair that had been there since she had been a kid. Even though the kitchen was changed, her mother had kept those parts along with some of the old family pictures still on the walls. There were lots of new pictures now, new pictures of a life of which Callie was no longer a part. How could she have been so stupid as to let Jason do that to her? Even thinking about the insults flung and how it had broken up the family made Callie want to cry.
‘That’s in the past, love,’ said her mother, watching Callie’s gaze on the photos that were stuck up haphazardly all over the walls. This was no beautifully created gallery wall – this was family life, the pictures stuck in every which way in all sorts of frames. ‘No point looking back, got to keep looking forward.’
‘Oh, Mam,’ cried Callie. ‘But I do keep looking back. I keep looking back wondering what’s happening, what has he done? And now you’re welcoming me in with a kindness I don’t deserve. Why wasn’t I here when you had that operation? Why did I abandon you? I’m sorry, I’m just so sorry. You must be thinking I’m getting my just deserts now.’
Her mother began stirring the soup she had made from scratch which was going to be their dinner, soup and home-made bread. It was so simple and yet it felt like such a long time since Callie had eaten a good, simple home-cooked meal.
‘You’re my child and I love the very bones of you, Claire Sheridan,’ said her mother firmly. ‘I love you and I have always prayed for this day. Jason had you under his thumb from the first moment he met you. We could all see it, your aunt and I, we used to talk about it. He was controlling, very controlling. But you couldn’t see any bad in him.’
‘There wasn’t any bad in him,’ Callie protested, and then stopped. He’d kept her from her family. He’d run off and left her with fraud hanging over her and no money. It was hardly a résumé a man would be proud of.
‘He wanted to take you away from us and have nothing to do with us,’ said her mother, the first time a hint of anger had shown in her voice since they had turned up on her doorstep earlier. ‘That’s badness: wanting to take you away from everything and everyone you love. That’s a sign of control as much as if he was hitting you, Claire. I don’t like that in a man and I never liked it in him. But I wouldn’t say it. And I worried about how he made his money. I knew it couldn’t be real, only gangsters make that sort of money. The time I did say that, well, he ran me out of the place, didn’t he?’
‘Brenda said a long time ago I should make it up with you, but I just—’ Callie paused.
Telling the truth, she’d only recently admitted to herself, would hurt and yet she had to say it openly and honestly.
‘I was always aware that if I tried to get in touch with you that Jason would disapprove and make me pick. He’d already made me pick and I picked him. I am so sorry, Mam.’
Saying the words out loud made her aware of how controlled she sounded, how stupid she’d been, not getting in contact with her family because her husband had stopped her. So what, there were plenty of things about Jason she didn’t like, but she put up with them, because she loved him. And yet she’d let him walk all over her.
She’d lost ten whole years of her family’s life for a man who had upped and left her and their daughter. What sort of a fool was she?
