At that, Poppy had collapsed against Brenda, sobbing in her arms, while Callie had stood to one side, devastated. How could she fix this when she didn’t know what to fix?
The police had let Callie and Poppy go – with their limited belongings, no computers, no papers – in Brenda’s car with a pal of Brenda’s coming with another car to haul the suitcases.
From the safe, with two police officers watching, Callie had taken her passport and Poppy’s, but had been told she was not to leave the country. Jason’s passport was gone, as was the wodge of cash he always kept in there. Callie had said nothing about this being missing. The safe was quite empty, apart from their passports and her jewellery in the leather cases.
‘Can you tell me what’s going on?’ she’d said as they left to the police detective in plain clothes, the one who’d spoken to her first.
‘This is a criminal investigation into your husband, Jason Reynolds, and we are searching this premises.’
‘Crime? What sort of crime?’ Callie could barely ask but she had to.
‘Large-scale fraud,’ he said bluntly.
‘But who could he defraud?’ asked Callie, bewildered.
‘Investors in his property business, abroad and here.’
Some of the investors were people they knew. The policeman had to be wrong.
Jason wouldn’t commit fraud. He was honest. He was no white-collar criminal.
But he was gone, wasn’t he? Wasn’t that proof of something?
‘We will need to talk to you over the next few days,’ the detective had said.
‘We can’t get one now, but she’ll have a lawyer present,’ said Brenda.
‘Good plan,’ he said evenly.
‘She doesn’t know anything about any of this, you know,’ Brenda said, ‘but then I guess you know that.’
The policeman said nothing.
Callie stood mutely as Brenda asked one final question: ‘Are the bank accounts frozen?’
‘Yes.’
Brenda had played the radio in her car on the way to her home, and she’d shoved in a Carol King CD when the news came on.
‘I hate this music,’ said a voice, the old Poppy resurfacing for a moment from the back of the small car where she sat surrounded by black plastic bags and cases.
‘I love it,’ said Brenda cheerfully, then whispered to Callie: ‘I can’t turn on the radio in case of a news report.’
‘Is it on the news already?’ Callie was stricken.
Brenda shrugged as she turned a corner, driving them away from the glamour of their part of the city to the bohemian style of her own. ‘Who knows. It won’t take long for some smart-arse to connect the dots and find you at my place, though. You need a bolt-hole or else you’ll be facing the press.’
Callie didn’t answer. Where was Jason? What had happened to make him run?
At Brenda’s, the three of them hauled in the bags and cases, then Brenda brought Poppy up to the office-cum-box-room at the front of the house. From downstairs, Callie could hear them.
‘If we push the desk against the wall, you can turn the sofa into a bed,’ Brenda had said.
From Poppy, there was nothing: no anger at the size of this room which was the size of her en suite bathroom at home.
‘I don’t have Netflix, I’m afraid, but there’s reasonable Wi-Fi and there’s Sky on the TV downstairs.’
Then, there was sobbing and Callie imagined Brenda holding Poppy in her arms and murmuring comforting things.
Callie should be doing this, but Poppy hadn’t even so much as glanced in her mother’s direction since they’d left the house. Refused to hug her. It was as if she blamed Callie for everything. And why not? Callie thought. Callie had not stopped this happening.
‘You OK in here? I’ve got camomile tea downstairs,’ Brenda said to her, appearing at the door to the spare room, which was marginally larger than the study.
‘That would be lovely,’ said Callie, stopping her search. ‘I can’t find my creams or stuff. I want to . . .’
‘Yeah, take the face off.’
Brenda shoved things around and found a small suitcase. ‘In here. I brought as much as I could. Even got the retinol cream. Dermalogica will go out of business if you stop buying. Plus,’ her eyes twinkled, ‘I got some of your jewellery.’
‘You did what?’
‘Hey, you’ll need every penny,’ Brenda said. ‘I doubt if Jason ever paid anything but cash up front for anything in his life. No trail of receipts.’ She opened the case and handed a black leather case to Callie. ‘Here. The pearls, the gold Cartier tank watch, some diamonds. The big stuff is in the safe, but fuck it, you need some collateral, things to sell at some point.’
‘It’s going to be sorted out, Brenda,’ said Callie fiercely. ‘I won’t need to sell anything. Jason will fix it. This is all a—’
‘Mistake? Yeah, right,’ said Brenda, her voice as caustic as acid. ‘If it’s a mistake, why isn’t he here fixing it now? Because this is no mistake, Callie. You and Poppy are on your own. You’ve got me, and Evelyn too, I imagine, because she’s decent to the bone, and Mary Butler in Canada, but that’s it. So get used to it and start thinking clever. Tomorrow, we’ll find out if you can take stuff from the house – you need a lawyer for when they talk to you. But right now, we’ve got enough.’
Alone again, Callie wiped off her face, tears mingling with the cream. She felt strangely numb. There was a dreamlike quality to this whole evening. Like a bad movie that had somehow stuck in her brain to be replayed in her REM sleep. Yet she didn’t want to think too much about it because, if she did, she would come back to the inevitable: if Jason was a fraud, how had she not known?
When she’d rubbed on moisturiser, pulled on sweatpants and a T-shirt and tied her hair back with a band, she stood outside Poppy’s room and knocked, but there was no reply. She might bring up a cup of hot chocolate to her daughter and try again in a few minutes.
‘I’m sorry, Brenda,’ she began when she reached the kitchen.
‘No, I am. I’m giving you the tough-love treatment right now and it’s probably too much.’
Everything that had happened was too much, Callie thought, but no point in saying that.
Brenda sat at the small table in the kitchen, her three cats in three different cat beds. There was a scent of tobacco in the air, a small Japanese teapot and two little cups on the table, along with an opened wine bottle and two glasses. Soft jazz music played in the background.