‘How many times has Callie paid for him to go into rehab with my money?’ Jason’s voice was icy. ‘Twice? Is the third time a charm, Pat?’
‘How dare you?’ said Callie’s mother, beginning to cry. ‘You have no idea what it’s like, what I go through, and God help him, he tries his best.’
‘We got out of the backwater of Ballyglen for a reason,’ Jason went on. ‘Because it would drag us down. Like the people. If you keep that druggie son of yours at home, then forget about coming to my house ever again—’
‘Jason, no!’ said Callie, distraught.
Her husband’s hand had shot out and held her back. ‘No, Callie. We’ve moved on and up in the world. Your mother and Freddie want to stay in the gutter. They’re not welcome here. I won’t have Poppy exposed to a junkie and the sort of viciousness your mother likes to dish out.’
‘Please, no, Jason.’ Callie was crying now, desperate to fix it all. ‘Ma, we’ll get Freddie help, we will and—’
‘Not with one cent I’ve earned, you won’t,’ warned Jason fiercely.
He’d stormed out of the room, throwing a Waterford crystal goblet onto the marble floor, where it had shattered into hundreds of tiny shards.
Callie ran after him to get him to reconsider.
‘It’s crazy,’ she said. ‘We’re not living in the Middle Ages. You can’t banish my mother. Yes, Freddie is not welcome here while he’s still using, and he knows that, but my mother—’
‘That woman is never coming into this house again,’ he’d told Callie when she’d found him in his study, smoking his precious cigar. He was still shaking with rage.
‘Nobody speaks to me like that in my own house, nobody! To say that to me! To say I’m jumped-up . . .’
‘Jason, lovie, Ma had a couple of drinks. You know she’s not used to wine—’
‘She’s not used to good wine,’ he said harshly. ‘Only thing she likes is that rotgut they serve in the bar round the corner from her house. Fucking lush.’
‘My mother is not a lush!’ said Callie furiously. ‘She rarely drinks.’
‘And she never has a cigarette out of her hand,’ Jason went on, oblivious to the cigar he was holding. Jason had managed to convince himself that a few Dunhills every day and the odd Cohiba were not smoking.
‘She just lights one from the old one, sucking the life out of it. Well, she is not coming here again to contaminate our daughter. I won’t have anyone who doesn’t respect me in this house. We’re finished with that life in Ballyglen and your bitch of a mother is not setting foot in here again! That’s final!’
‘Jason! She’s my mother.’
He’d been so filled with rage, he was almost frightening. ‘You choose, then, Callie,’ he’d sneered. ‘Her – or me and Poppy, because you can’t have both.’
God help her, she’d chosen Jason and Poppy.
She hated herself for being helpless in the face of his control.
‘Please apologise to him, Ma,’ she’d begged the next day, when her mother packed up early and rang for a taxi.
‘I won’t apologise for speaking the truth,’ her mother said. ‘What’s he done to you, love? You used to be your own person and now you’re like a tame creature he keeps on a lead.’
Callie had flushed. She could see the truth in it, but she’d experienced the world before Jason, the world of Ricky and the drug-infested life he loved. There was no security in that. And Callie craved security. She never wanted to go back to eating jam sandwiches again.
When she and Jason had bumped into each other in Dublin, just after she’d broken up with Ricky, she’d been drawn to his calm control. Here was a man who was charismatic, handsome, and far removed from the world of addiction. They had Ballyglen in common, knew each other already. He was perfect. He adored her, cherished her, made her feel safe.
She could barely look at her mother: she loved Jason. She couldn’t turn her back on that, not even for her family. They didn’t understand. Sure, Jason could be possessive, but he loved her, that was why.
‘Claire, pet.’ Her mother took Callie’s face in her hands, hands worn from hard work and no time for hand creams. ‘He’s not good for you or little Poppy. This world’ – and she’d looked around the hall of the house, glamorous, elegant, as far removed from their small Ballyglen home as the North Pole was from the Amazon – ‘this world is just fakery. Jason likes nice things and you’re one of them. You’re so beautiful on the inside, pet, but he only sees the outside. You don’t work anymore, you have so few friends, you have so little for all that you seem to have so much. He’s made a museum for his nice things and you’re one of them.’
‘I’m not, Ma, and he’s not,’ protested Callie. ‘He adores me, can’t you see?’
‘He adores the wrong parts of you, Claire: the bits people see, not the bits that are inside you, the parts that make you you.’
‘You’re wrong.’
Her mother shook her head.
‘I love you, pet, but I won’t be coming here again. You and Poppy can come to me, anytime. We’ll be there for you. I know he’ll show his true colours one day and we’ll be waiting for you then.’
That conversation seemed a lifetime ago now.
Brenda, who’d stayed over to babysit Poppy, was in the kitchen.
‘Good night?’ she asked, then she saw Callie’s anxious face.
Callie sank into an armchair.
‘My mother never wanted me to marry Jason,’ Callie sighed, staring into the distance. ‘She said he was a fly-by-night merchant and I was on the rebound.’
Wisely, Brenda said nothing.
‘But the row . . . how can we come back from that?’ Callie went on.
‘Jason caused it by showing off his toys,’ said Brenda. ‘Your mother just responded. He’s an evil genius when it comes to pushing people’s buttons.’
‘He pays your wages,’ Callie snapped back.
‘Doesn’t mean I have to like him or not see what he is underneath the charm. Tea is made,’ Brenda said.
‘He’s my husband, you know he’s a good person,’ Callie said instinctively. ‘No, I don’t want tea,’ she added. She didn’t want to argue with Brenda too. It seemed to be her night for arguing.
She went silently upstairs and checked on Poppy, who was asleep, looking fourteen again out of her make-up. Watching her daughter sleeping peacefully, Callie’s mind was racing.