The Year that Changed Everything Page 2

  His audience were more women than men. Jason was a rainmaker when it came to money and men loved that. Loved being close to someone who’d managed to buck recessions, the closing of tax loopholes, currency drops and world economic fluctuations to stay rich and grow richer. But tonight, it was a predominantly female crowd.

  ‘There she is, my beautiful wife,’ said Jason, spotting her and drawing her close. He was annoyed at her late arrival, she could tell from the glitter of his eyes. He was a stickler for punctuality, but he would never say a word. For the crowd, he kissed her lightly on the mouth.

  The crowd purred and Jason smiled: he loved the limelight.

  ‘Nice dress,’ he whispered only for her and she felt the pressure of his fingers moving gently up the dress to caress the underside of her breast.

  ‘I needed to look perfect for you, darling,’ she said for the benefit of the audience, the knowledge that Jason approved of this dress, of how she looked, calming her along with the Xanax. When did she become this insecure? She hated it. Hated how her sex drive had plummeted and how intimacy had become a chore.

  What if the Inner Crone drove her husband away?

  He was a good man, despite his ferocious need for more: more money, more things, more prestige.

  Now, his fingers traced a line along the skin of her exposed collarbone as if they were alone and the crowd of women all sighed a little at such romance.

  ‘Where were you, Cal?’ he muttered so nobody could hear. ‘I thought I’d have to send out a search party. Someone keeps groping my backside.’

  Callie grinned at the thought of her Alpha-male husband complaining about being groped.

  ‘Now I’m here, I’ll keep your admirers in check,’ she said, shooting a glance around at his harem and wondering who was drunk this early in the evening and feeling up the host. ‘I was checking on Poppy.’

  ‘Happy?’

  ‘Oh, fine. I’d like to think she’s miserable she’s not down here, but she insists it’s all wrinklies and she’d have no credibility if she came to it.’

  ‘Made her point and now she has to stick to it,’ Jason said with a hint of pride.

  Poppy was in her room with four girls from school and Brenda, who was the family housekeeper and Callie’s closest confidante apart from Mary, was keeping an eye on them and feeding them.

  ‘Daft kid, she’ll be sorry one day, missing all this.’ He gestured around the room and in the process, let go of his wife, which was her signal to mingle.

  She didn’t touch any of the cocktails, knowing that alcohol and Xanax were an unfortunate mix.

  ‘Callie, it’s a beautiful party and you are beautiful in that dress.’

  The speaker was small, pretty, had short curling dark hair and, unlike most of the guests, was a real friend who’d known Callie for a long time.

  ‘Evelyn, I’m so glad you could come!’

  Evelyn was the first wife of Jason’s long-time business partner, Rob.

  She was a dear friend. They met twice a week at Pilates classes and giggled together over whether their pelvic floors had hit the basement yet. With Evelyn, Callie didn’t have to pretend to be the super-rich, super-happy ex-model wife. She could merely be herself and discuss hot flushes, where this excess waist flab was coming from, and wonder where their sexual reawakening had got to. Before Mary had gone to Canada, the three of them had gone to Pilates together.

  ‘You look lovely too, Ev. Red really suits you,’ said Callie, admiring Evelyn’s red jersey dress, which they’d shopped for together. She pulled her friend into a hug.

  Rob and Jason had been thick as thieves ever since they’d got out of a big City firm and set up their own hedge fund brokerage. They weren’t hedgies anymore, they told everyone. They did lots of things, mainly private property investment, which was very complex, the way Jason explained it.

  ‘Oh, just a bit of this and a bit of that,’ as Jason said expansively when anyone asked.

  Callie didn’t ask anymore.

  Evelyn and Rob were now divorced. She’d finally thrown Rob out of the house when his sleeping around had got too much for her.

  ‘I put up with so much for the kids, because I didn’t want them to have divorced parents, but hey, he’s never around anyway, always “working”,’ she’d said bitterly to Callie at the time. ‘Which means screwing his newest girlfriend.’

  Six years on, Evelyn and Callie were still friends and it had been a bone of contention between Jason and Callie when she insisted on inviting Evelyn to the party.

  ‘Rob’s coming with Anka,’ Jason had said, jaw clenched. ‘We don’t want a scene.’

  Anka was the girlfriend who’d stuck: the clichéd, much younger, tall blonde with ski-jump Slavic cheekbones, a fragile beauty and no apparent issues with waist flab.

  She was also very sweet, was now Rob’s fiancée and the mother of his latest child.

  ‘So? They meet all the time over the children. Evelyn doesn’t blame Anka – she likes her. Anka’s great with the children. And Evelyn’s my friend,’ Callie said, even though she rarely argued with Jason.

  He got bored by arguments: he just ignored them and walked out of the room. Argument over – simple.

  ‘You don’t understand . . .’ he began, actually engaging, for once, sounding on the verge of anger. ‘Rob’s coming. He’s part of what pays for all this.’

  With his hands spread, he gestured to the huge house around them, all decorated by an interior designer in paints more expensive than La Prairie face cream, filled with flowers and with staff to make sure Callie didn’t have to lift a finger. ‘Rob and Ev squabble with each other,’ he went on. ‘I hate it.’

  Then he’d walked out.

  ‘No sign of Rob or Anka,’ said Evelyn now, looking around. She never said a word against her ex-husband’s new partner. Rob had strayed. The fault was his and she tried to be nice to her replacement.

  Callie felt huge pity for Evelyn. She didn’t know how she’d cope if Jason was unfaithful to her. But then he never played around. She was damn sure of it. He was devoted to her, even if he wasn’t the sort of husband who massaged her feet at night and said: ‘how was your day?’

  You couldn’t have everything.

  ‘If they’re not here yet, they’re not coming. I’m glad they’re not,’ said Callie now. ‘Rob must be ill. He never misses any of Jason’s parties but silver lining and all that, you can relax. Well, a bit,’ she amended, looking round the house with its quota of done-up partygoers ready for a night out.

  ‘Plenty of our well-dressed pack here’ sighed Evelyn, ‘who all want to know am I seeing anyone else.’

  She wasn’t, as Callie knew.

  The market for older women did not take into account maturity, wisdom or a sense of humour. The buyers were looking for firm flesh, thighs that had never seen cellulite and faces free from wrinkles. Sometimes Callie wanted to hit Rob for hurting her beloved friend so much.

  ‘Is Poppy here?’ Evelyn asked.

  ‘Upstairs watching films with some friends,’ said Callie, trying not to mind.

  Evelyn did not have teenage girls. She had sons, who were kinder, it seemed.

  ‘I’m going up there now to make sure everything’s OK,’ said Callie. ‘I know Brenda keeps looking in, but I’m freaked out over thoughts of them drinking, after . . . you know.’

  She’d already told Evelyn about the empty bottle of Beluga vodka she’d found under Poppy’s bed last month, filched from the freezer. The row had been pyrotechnic.

  She’d grounded Poppy for two weeks, but Jason, who was a fan of the ‘chip off the old block’ school of parenting, had only laughed and said: ‘Kids are going to drink, Callie. At least it was good stuff.’

  It wasn’t that simple, Callie wanted to shriek. Genetics mattered. The age at which kids started to drink mattered. But Jason liked t
o think that being clever could get you past all that stuff. It had worked for him. But not for her brother, her drug-addict brother whom she hadn’t seen for ten years. Poppy had those genes too.

  Callie had hidden the anxiety and had another Xanax.

  Jason refused to be serious about it all, which made her furious. After all, he’d grown up in the same area where she’d grown up, the not-so-lovely streets of Ballyglen’s council estates where some people hadn’t worked in years and where a hardened contingent considered drinking a full-time occupation.

  She did not want that for Poppy. Binge drinking was the start of it. Expensive vodka or cheap beer: it didn’t matter. All the same path, a path to risky choices that could affect her life.

  Eventually, Callie managed to leave the room, and went through the corridor the hired-in catering staff were using to access the specially designed catering kitchen. She slipped up the stairs and came out in the back hall, then into the actual family kitchen. There she found Brenda, who’d looked after the house for them for twenty years.

  Poppy was in the kitchen with Brenda and another girl from school, Zara, and they were busily loading up two trays with pizzas, soft drinks, and tiny desserts from the caterers.

  Poppy had her mother’s mysterious eyes, and was wearing a vest top, leggings and a pink shirt from Callie’s own wardrobe. The time upstairs had given the girls a chance to pile on the make-up at drag-queen levels, so that Poppy was now caked in cosmetics that made her look far older than fourteen. Callie bit her tongue.

  ‘Hello girls,’ she said brightly and she went over to her daughter, about to pop a kiss on Poppy’s forehead until she remembered, again, that it wasn’t cool to kiss your daughter when one of her friends was present.

  ‘Hi Mum,’ said Poppy, in a voice that said don’t touch.

  ‘Hello Zara,’ Callie said to the other girl, doing her impersonation of a totally happy and cool mother. She was really good at the old impersonations these days. ‘This all looks completely yummy.’

  ‘Hi Callie,’ said Zara, ‘thanks. It’s totally delish.’

  Callie remembered her mother’s friends and how she’d always called them Mrs: Mrs this or Mrs that. Nowadays all her daughter’s friends called her Callie and called Jason ‘Jase’, which he found wildly amusing.

  ‘Nice pizzas,’ Callie said now. She had to stop thinking about how things used to be when she was growing up. Was this another offshoot of being fifty – thinking about the past all the time? ‘Your home-made ones?’ she asked Brenda.

  ‘Course,’ said Brenda, finishing arranging the tray.

  ‘How’s it going downstairs at Help the Aged?’ said Poppy to her mother.

  ‘Great,’ said Callie. ‘We’re not that old, you know.’

  ‘Says you, Ms Fifty!’ taunted Poppy. ‘If I was fifty, I wouldn’t let people know and have a party.’

  Callie grinned and she and Brenda exchanged another glance. Brenda knew quite well that Callie hadn’t really wanted this party. Mind you, Brenda wasn’t too keen either. She didn’t like the sort of parties Jason gave. Someone would undoubtedly set up shop in one of the loos and do lines of coke, which both Callie and Brenda disapproved of.

  Brenda opened the door for Poppy and let the two teenagers go up to Poppy’s huge bedroom where three other girls were waiting.

  ‘Is she all right?’ asked Callie.

  ‘Behind the sniping, she’s in brilliant form,’ said Brenda. ‘Stop worrying about her. You’re a good mother, enough already. D’ya want a cup of tea or do you have to go back down to party central and schmooze?’

  ‘I’d love one,’ said Callie, sitting down on one of the kitchen stools. ‘It’s full of people I don’t know and you know how hopeless I am with names. I’m calling everyone “darling” out of desperation. I honestly have no idea what Jason said to that party planner, but for every four people I know, there are another twenty-five I’ve never seen in my life. And they’re not just people Jason’s trying to impress – they’re supposed to be there for me. “An aspirational guest list”, as the planner said,’ Callie finished.

  ‘You should have put your foot down about going away for a nice weekend instead,’ Brenda pointed out. Brenda had very firm views on how everything should be done and on how Callie should deal with Jason.

  Brenda and Jason had a love/hate relationship. They were like scorpions in a brandy glass – circling, each with their stinging tail arched. Jason knew the house would not run like clockwork without Brenda and he knew that his wife both loved and would be lost without her. However, Brenda did not do deference and Jason liked deference from the people he paid.

  He pretended to laugh when Brenda called him ‘the master’ out of mischief, but secretly, both she and Callie knew it drove him mad.

  ‘The party will be over eventually.’ Callie looked at the kitchen clock. ‘Only another few hours to go. By then the stragglers will be so drunk, nobody will notice that I’ve gone to bed.’

  Brenda laughed. ‘You hungry? Bet you haven’t eaten. I’ve got some more of the caterers’ desserts in the fridge. Tiny chocolate things that look as if fairies made them and elves decorated them. Hold on.’

  One of the waitresses appeared.

  ‘Mrs Reynolds, there are some . . . er, people at the door for your husband.’

  Brenda and Callie exchanged confused glances. Anyone with an invitation to the party would just come in, having cleared the very heavy security on the gate. Anyone without an invitation would have been sent packing.

  ‘I’ll go,’ said Brenda.

  ‘Er . . .’ The young waitress shuffled a bit. ‘They asked specifically for Mr Reynolds, but we can’t find him so they asked for you next,’ she said, eyes on the floor.

  ‘It’s the staff of Tiffany’s,’ joked Brenda. ‘Go with her,’ she told the waitress, ‘in case she needs help carrying the loot or if it’s Aerosmith come to do a special birthday gig and she faints.’

  Callie laughed out loud.

  They were waiting in the hall, not Aerosmith, but about seven men and one woman, some in police uniforms and some in plain clothes. Callie’s hand flew to her throat.

  Ma. Aunt Phil, Freddie, she thought.

  She’d walked out of her old life a long time ago. Twenty-five years since she’d left Ballyglen. Ten years since she’d seen her mother, Pat, her aunt, Phil, or her brother, Freddie. Ten years since the huge argument. What might have happened to them?

  ‘Mrs Reynolds?’ said a man of her own age; tall, lean, with glasses and an intelligent face.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, feeling weak.

  ‘Detective Superintendent John Hughes of the Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation. We’re here to speak to your husband and we have a warrant to search your house.’

  He handed Callie a piece of paper but she didn’t take it.

  She stared at him, not understanding.

  ‘This . . . this is my party,’ she stammered, looking around at the waitress, now rapidly disappearing.

  Callie saw the hall filled with flowers and giant lit candles, all perfect scene-setting for the modern art that hung on the walls.

  Relief returned. Not her family.

  ‘It’s my fiftieth birthday party. My husband is a businessman, Jason Reynolds. You obviously have the wrong house.’

  She waited for the detective to say something about it being a mistake, but he gestured to the pieces of paper.

  ‘It’s not the wrong house,’ he said and there was something about his voice that made Callie feel more frightened than weak.

  She looked at the first piece of paper for an address and saw it all printed perfectly before her: their address, Jason’s name. She’d never seen a search warrant before and it looked so ordinary: ordinary and dangerous. She felt her legs shake the way they’d shaken when she first stood in front of a camera, before she’d
learned to handle her nerves and the anxiety.

  ‘Where is your husband?’

  ‘Downstairs,’ said Callie. ‘We’re having a party . . .’

  ‘The guests need to go,’ said the detective.

  ‘What?’ asked Callie. She knew she sounded stupid but her brain, normally sharp, had hit slow-motion. ‘No, really,’ she said again in desperation, ‘there must be some mistake, you are in the wrong house, you can’t be talking about my husband.’

  ‘Jason Reynolds,’ said the policeman. ‘That’s your husband’s name?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you are Claire Reynolds?’

  Callie nodded. Nobody called her Claire anymore, not since she had turned into Callie years ago, when she’d sloughed off her past and turned into someone totally different.

  ‘We need to locate your husband.’

  ‘Why?’

  The detective looked at her slowly and she thought she could see pity in his eyes. ‘To help us with our enquiries,’ he said smoothly, which she felt was not the whole truth. His men began to move, some downstairs.

  ‘Does your husband have an office here?’ asked another man.

  The unreality of it all began to sink in. The police were here to search her house. To talk to her husband. They must have got it wrong, but it was still happening, like a movie when the wrong people were targeted.

  Shock made her want to sit down, but she had to stay strong. Poppy was upstairs with her girlfriends, Brenda was in the kitchen making tea and there were three hundred people downstairs drinking cocktails and nibbling blackened cod, tiny exquisite burgers, sashimi.

  A door opened and Brenda marched through. Callie felt a sigh of relief. Brenda would sort it out. Tell the police that Jason Reynolds could not be the person they were looking for.

  ‘What is it?’ she said, looking at Callie then looking at the policemen who were leaving the hall speedily.

  ‘You are?’

  ‘Brenda Lyons, Mrs Reynolds’ friend and housekeeper.’ She put an arm around Callie. ‘And you?’