The Year that Changed Everything Read online

  ‘Detective Superintendent John Hughes, GBFI, Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation.’ He handed out a card to Callie.

  ‘Right,’ said Brenda with a sigh.

  Callie didn’t have time to think why Brenda wasn’t in the slightest bit surprised.

  ‘There are five teenage girls upstairs,’ Brenda said.

  ‘I’ll go up,’ said the female officer in uniform.

  ‘I think I need to come, as does Mrs Reynolds. We can’t upset the girls. But first . . .’ She looked back at the detective superintendent. ‘What’s the plan?’ she said as if they were discussing something quite normal instead of a team of police detectives coming into Callie’s house late at night at her actual fiftieth birthday party.

  Callie stared at her old friend in horror.

  ‘We are here to arrest Jason Reynolds and search the house,’ said the officer calmly and this time Callie felt her knees go totally and everything went hazy and then blank.

  When she woke up, she was sitting on one of the squashy chairs in the kitchen.

  ‘Lucky they caught you,’ said Brenda, waving a glass of brandy in front of Callie’s nose.

  ‘Was that a dream, did that really happen?’ said Callie.

  ‘No dream,’ said Brenda bitterly. ‘All true. At this exact moment, there are police officers getting everyone out of your house, carefully taking every computer and every bit of paper with them and they’re searching the whole place.’

  ‘Oh God,’ said Callie. ‘No,’ she said, pushing the brandy away. ‘You know I don’t like spirits.’

  ‘I know you don’t like spirits, but drink this because you are going to need it.’

  Brenda held the brandy glass up to Callie’s mouth and made her drink it, like Callie used to make Poppy drink things out of a beaker cup when Poppy was a baby.

  Her baby.

  ‘Where’s Poppy?’ she said in alarm.

  ‘It’s fine for the moment, I got one of the waitresses to go up there and the female Garda is there too. I’ve told her there’s something strange going on but the police are here to fix it and you’re sorting it out, and will be up in a minute. The men are not going near her room until you are ready to be there and supervise, but to be honest I’d say get out of here pronto, both of you. We need to get you and Poppy somewhere safe before the story hits the media.’ Brenda appeared to be thinking about it. ‘I don’t even know if you can bring your clothes or what,’ she added in a very matter-of-fact tone. ‘They’re not the Criminal Assets Bureau, so they can’t impound it all or anything, but when the Fraud Squad come, they’re going to be looking at every asset in terms of legal redress.’

  ‘What story? This is a mistake, surely? Jason will sue.’

  Brenda patted her hand tenderly.

  ‘Callie, the Fraud Squad don’t make mistakes.’

  ‘But us? Jason’s a businessman.’

  ‘Drink,’ was all Brenda would say.

  Callie shuddered as she finished the rest of the brandy. She hated all strong spirits.

  ‘What do we do now?’ she said, making herself come back into the world again.

  Everything still felt very unreal. She wanted another Xanax, a whole one, and to go to bed and find out this was all a dream.

  ‘You prepare yourself for the next shock,’ said Brenda, patting her hand.

  ‘I’m not preparing for any shocks until I have Jason beside me and I find out what the hell is going on,’ said Callie, as the alcohol hit her system, putting fire in the hold. ‘The embarrassment,’ she went on.

  The people at the party knew all the gossip columnists in the country. Everyone would be writing about this. Jason would go mental. ‘Where is Jason? I hope he’s trying to turn the police away.’

  Brenda perched on the edge of the armchair.

  ‘That’s what you needed the brandy for,’ she said.

  Callie stared up at her.

  ‘They can’t find Jason.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I really hate to be the one to tell you, lovie, but he’s done a runner.’

  Callie felt the world shift around her.

  The words were slow coming out: ‘He can’t have gone. Why would he go?’

  The look Brenda gave her was pitying and Callie flinched under it.

  ‘The most likely excuse is that he’s run because he’s guilty of whatever they are accusing him,’ Brenda said. ‘Which is why you and Poppy need to get out of here now with whatever you can. I don’t know what Jason was doing, but the game is up, Callie, and you need to be out of it.’

  ‘What do you mean what he was doing?’ said Callie fiercely.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Callie, you must have figured it out now. I always had my suspicions. Nobody else was making money during the recession except your husband. Nobody else bounced back so quickly. Did you not find that weird?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Come on,’ said Brenda. ‘You’re a clever woman. I thought you knew his business wasn’t entirely kosher. We can talk about this another time, but now, we need to get those girls home, get you and Poppy out of the house and . . .’ Brenda stopped for a minute. ‘Could we take the Range Rover? It might be confiscated. Whose name is it in? Probably the company’s, so you can’t take it. Right, we need taxis to get the girls home or, better still, I’ll ring their parents.’

  Callie watched, mute, as Brenda thought out loud, running through the various permutations and combinations of keeping her daughter out of this crisis.

  ‘I am not running,’ began Callie. ‘I am going to stay here and wait until Jason comes back from wherever he is and fixes it all—’

  ‘Fixes it? This won’t be fixed. Tomorrow morning, every newspaper in the country is going to be at your door wanting to know all about it,’ said Brenda harshly. ‘Wake up, Callie. I am your friend and I am telling you it’s all over. You have to get out. Now. For your sake and for Poppy’s.’

  Poppy.

  ‘More brandy,’ said Callie, Brenda’s words beginning to penetrate. ‘I need another one.’

  ‘Not a good idea—’ began Brenda.

  ‘I don’t care,’ hissed Callie. ‘I need something.’

  Brenda watched silently as Callie half filled the brandy glass and downed it, wincing as it burned.

  Callie stood up and looked around her kitchen, the cosy kitchen that she’d insisted on decorating herself. The rest of the house was where Jason had supervised the interior décor, places that were fit for proving to people how rich, successful and gracious the Reynolds family were. It was nothing like the home she’d grown up in, a small terraced council house in Ballyglen, where the whole Sheridan family of four, and her aunt, had lived.

  Callie felt an ache deep in her heart.

  I wish my family were here. I wish my mother was here.

  Sam

  Early on the morning of her fortieth birthday, Sam Kennedy was woken up by the phone, and not by her beloved Baby Bean pressing a foot or an elbow into her bladder, which had been the case for the past few months.

  She struggled out of her cosy cocoon of duvet, disentangling herself from Ted’s long warm leg which was comfortably entwined with her own, and answered.

  ‘Happy birthday, Samantha!’ said her mother.

  ‘Who’s phoning at this hour on a Saturday?’ groaned Ted, pulling his pillow over his sleek dark head, and then, remembering what day it was, pulling it off. ‘Happy fortieth birthday, honey,’ he said, putting an arm around his wife’s very pregnant body and kissing her gently on the shoulder through the curtain of her long tangle of untameable caramel curls. ‘Love you.’ He leaned down and kissed her bump, covered with an unsexy floral nightie. ‘Love you, Bean.’

  Sam never stopped loving the gesture: Ted bending from his great height to kiss her and her belly with complete adoration. He was six foot t
wo to Sam’s five foot three and their wedding photos had made her realise how incongruous they might have looked together had Sam not been addicted to very high heels. With a four-inch heel, her pocket Venus body in a simple lace dress had looked just right beside her long, lean husband. Up close, her head fitted perfectly against his broad chest and if he sometimes whirled her round with her feet off the floor, nobody noticed.

  ‘Love you, too,’ Sam murmured now.

  ‘Samantha, are you still there?’ Her mother’s voice sounded irritated at having been made to wait.

  ‘Yes, and thank you for calling, Mother,’ Sam said into the phone, not mentioning that pregnant women longed for their Saturday morning lie-in.

  ‘You sound odd. I hope you’re not getting maudlin about your age,’ her mother went on in the cool tones that commanded respect in St Margaret’s School for Girls, where she’d reigned as headmistress for thirty years. ‘Age is merely a number.’

  Six-thirty on a Saturday is merely a number, too, thought Sam but didn’t say it.

  Instead, she mildly pointed out: ‘I was asleep.’

  ‘Right. I trust you’re well and have a good day planned,’ said her mother with the same formality she probably used to address the school’s board of governors. ‘Again, happy birthday. Here’s your father. Goodbye.’

  With that unmaternal sign-off, the phone was handed over.

  ‘Happy birthday, lovie. Sorry for the early call but . . .’

  ‘I get it, Dad,’ said Sam, warmly. ‘Early morning swim? The garden?’

  Her parents lived close to Dublin Bay, where hardy souls swam in all weathers, Sam’s mother among them.

  ‘The former,’ her father said. They’d communicated this way for years: Sam would speak and he’d answer in the ‘yes/no/absolutely’ code that was hardly Enigma-machine-quality but worked for them.

  Her dad, Liam, was as mild, chatty and forbearing as her mother, Jean, was cool, uncommunicative and distant. It was one of the great mysteries of Sam’s life as to how the two of them had ever married. That they’d stayed married, she put down to the social mores of the times and some concept both parents had about staying together for their daughters.

  Nobody talked about the ice-cold rows between her parents when she’d been growing up, and now, this part of life appeared to have been airbrushed out of family history. It was like the fridge magnet said: If anyone asks, pretend we come from a nice, normal family.

  Only she and Joanne, her younger sister, talked about the past now.

  Their parents’ marriage of opposites had made Sam determined to be nothing like her mother and to marry a man she adored, rather than one she merely tolerated.

  She’d succeeded. Nestling closer to her beloved Ted in bed, she thought that, yet again, being with him should feature in the number one slot on her daily gratitude list.

  ‘How are you feeling and how’s the little baba?’ her father asked.

  ‘Wriggling,’ said Sam, putting a hand automatically on her hugely swollen belly and smiling, another automatic move. She’d been smiling since she’d found out that she was pregnant, which was astonishing because, after three failed IVF cycles in her early thirties, she’d assumed that babies were out of the question.

  Ted had been smiling pretty much non-stop too, a giant grin that brought out that dimple in his otherwise acutely masculine face, a dimple Sam really hoped their baby would inherit.

  After many painful years of longing, they’d finally somehow come to terms with the fact that they were going to be child-free people, and that a dog/cat/hamster was the answer – or so everyone said.

  They would deal with the grief, they would not let it part them. They would do their best to move on.

  ‘Let’s be happy with each other,’ they’d agreed.

  So they’d got two dogs, Ted began the marathon running that had been put on hold during years of planned babymaking schedules (the fertility-drug years) and Sam filled her weekends with botanical watercolours and the odd yoga class, so she could learn again to love the body she’d felt had betrayed her.

  And then suddenly, the previously infertile Sam had become pregnant.

  Incredibly, miraculously pregnant with no help from anyone apart from Ted.

  ‘Last dash of the ovaries,’ said her GP. ‘Evolution is incredible. If you haven’t given birth by a certain age, your body can launch into action.’

  ‘Wow,’ Sam had said, which was almost all she’d said since she’d gone to the GP to discuss her strange tiredness and morning nausea, thinking there must be a medical reason other than the obvious.

  On the phone, Dad said it was a good sign the baby was a week late.

  ‘All first babies are late and the later they are, the smarter they are. I can’t remember what site I read it on, but it’s true.’ Liam spent hours consulting the internet every day on pregnancy issues. ‘I was going to drop round later with your birthday present,’ he added.

  ‘I’d love that. We’ll be here. Ted’s going to walk the dogs, but I plan to tidy the kitchen cupboards.’

  ‘Ah, love, not on your birthday,’ begged her father. ‘Watch old movies and drink hot chocolate. That’s the right sort of plan. Do you have marshmallows? I’ll bring some.’

  ‘Just like old times,’ said Sam, smiling into the phone.

  When her father had hung up, Ted nuzzled into her.

  ‘Happy birthday, sexy pregnant lady,’ he said, sliding up her nightie to stroke her bare belly.

  Baby Bean wriggled and they both gasped to feel Sam’s small guest poke an elbow up.

  ‘Incredible,’ said Ted, marvelling.

  ‘I know,’ agreed Sam, stroking her belly gently. ‘Incredible.’

  Ted swung out of bed.

  ‘I’ll let the dogs out and bring you tea. Camomile and apple? Earl Grey?’

  Sam considered it. ‘Earl Grey. Anymore camomile and I’ll turn into a camomile lawn.’

  She used to love her morning coffee but had given it up as soon as she’d learned she was pregnant – not that a certain amount of caffeine was necessarily bad in pregnancy. But Sam had spent too long wishing and praying for this child to do anything but turn her body into a temple until he or she was born. This was the legacy of every failed pregnancy test: a fear of doing something, anything, to hurt her baby.

  She snuggled back down into the bed and talked nonsense to Baby Bean. She did that a lot now – running commentaries, telling the baby what she was doing and how she couldn’t wait to do it all with Baby Bean.

  ‘Grandpa will be over later with a present for me, baba. It’s my birthday today! You’re my best birthday present, though.’

  Ted returned with a cup of Earl Grey tea for her. Sam took a sip. She’d never been able to touch it pre-pregnancy, but now she wasn’t drinking coffee and the idea of milk in tea made her want to gag, Earl Grey, black, no lemon, was perfect.

  He got back into bed with her and gently stroked her shoulder.

  ‘Sleep?’ he asked.

  ‘Bean is undecided about whether to be a footballer or a gymnast,’ Sam sighed. ‘Lots of moving and kicking. I don’t know what that means. Oh, but Dad says that late babies are smarter.’

  ‘Aren’t you clever,’ crooned Ted to her bump.

  He’d been amazing all through her pregnancy: kind no matter how ratty she’d got and perfectly happy to sit on the side of the bath rubbing her back as she soaked in the water. No matter how enormous she’d become – and boy, she was enormous now – he’d still told her every day how gorgeous she was.

  ‘Now that your dad’s got that new bit of information, there’s still time to start that blog about baby advice,’ Ted suggested.

  Sam loved this game. She started first.

  ‘Number one, people need to know that babies who are carried low can be boys/girls/llamas.’

&nbs
p; ‘Or that fish is good and bad for you, simultaneously,’ added Ted.

  They laughed.

  By now, forty-one weeks into her first pregnancy, Sam and Ted had come to the conclusion that everyone on the planet believed themselves to be an expert in babies.

  And that they all had advice they wanted to impart – whether Sam or Ted wanted to listen or not.

  ‘Don’t eat fish – mercury kills babies.’

  ‘Eat fish – it’s good for their brains.’

  ‘One glass of wine occasionally relaxes you. I’m sure the World Health Organisation said that. Or was it my sister . . .?’

  ‘Your baby will be born with Foetal Alcohol Syndrome if you so much as smell alcohol from more than a distance of four feet. I saw it on the Discovery Channel.’

  ‘Natural births are the best for mother and baby. Who wants drugs in their poor baby’s system?’

  ‘Ask for the drugs early on, like, really early on. If you don’t get them in time, you’ll scream and the pain . . .’

  ‘You’re carrying low – definitely a girl.’

  ‘You’re carrying low – a boy, for sure!’

  ‘Go back to sleep, Sam. You need to rest,’ Ted said. But Sam felt wide awake now. She knew she’d never get back to sleep for even a few minutes.

  ‘Dogs still out the back?’

  ‘Yes. Four magpies in the garden – did you not hear the orgy of barking? The neighbours will love us for dragging them out of their hangovers at this early hour on a Saturday.’

  Four magpies, Sam thought, hauling herself out of the bed to hit the bathroom for her first of many trips of the day. Was she having a boy? Three magpies meant you were having a girl, four meant a boy. If she saw five magpies, Sam wondered if a silver baby would slither out.

  From all the painful birth stories she’d been told, she hoped slithering out was part of it all.

  They’d asked not to be told the sex of the baby. ‘It’s not long until we’ll know and it’s life’s biggest secret,’ she said to Ted. ‘Let’s wait.’

  ‘I thought life’s biggest secret was whether there is life on another planet,’ said Ted, deadpan. ‘OK, you win. No asking the radiographer if they can see a willy or not.’