The Year that Changed Everything

by Cathy Kelly

  Callie nodded mutely.

  ‘Are you feeling all right?’ asked Sam. Her instincts were pricking like crazy – there was something wrong. This poor woman was very stressed.

  ‘No – I, I think I’m going to be sick.’

  Callie bolted from the room.

  ‘Callie,’ said Rona, standing up.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Callie said as the door slammed.

  The name made all the puzzle pieces fall into place.

  ‘Callie Reynolds,’ Sam said suddenly. ‘Oh gosh, no wonder she was so stressed. Poor woman. I am so sorry – I never meant—’

  ‘It’s my fault,’ said Rona shamefacedly. ‘I was so desperate for money and Callie is so brilliant with patients, and she could tell you so much and . . . Please don’t tell anyone she’s here.’

  ‘Of course I won’t,’ said Sam, horrified. ‘I read the papers too. I think she’s suffered enough.’

  Ginger

  Johnny got them into the nursing home and Ginger went into the loos to try to collect herself before they started this horrible job. She couldn’t do it. Couldn’t ruin someone’s life. This wasn’t why she had come into journalism. Girlfriend was. That was her calling: helping people.

  A very thin blonde woman came out of one of the cubicles, crying.

  Their eyes met in the mirror.

  It was her, Callie Reynolds. The blonde hair was still blonde, but the face, the amazing face that had graced so many newspapers, looked tireder.

  She looked like a hunted animal, huge grey eyes dark with fear.

  This woman had been let down, hurt. She had a daughter to protect, and people wanted to hound her? At that moment, Ginger knew what she had to do.

  She was Girlfriend helping women, a woman who would not let another woman down.

  Taking a deep breath, she said: ‘You don’t know me, but I am here to help you. There is a photographer looking for you. I’m the reporter.’

  Callie recoiled.

  Ginger shook her head. ‘No. Actually, you know what: I quit. Right now. I am not making a living hounding people.’ She reached forward and grabbed a startled Callie’s hands. ‘Please believe me.’

  Callie, her heart pounding, nodded.

  ‘We need to keep you out of sight because he will know what you look like,’ said Ginger, desperate to make this woman believe her. ‘I need to find someone to say you never worked here, right? Where can we go?’

  Callie, although she had no reason to do so, somehow trusted this young woman. It was her face: wide, open and honest. Callie was, she realised, trusting her gut, something she should have done a long time ago with her husband.

  But people let you down . . . That doubt was written across her face.

  Ginger thought frantically about what she could say that would make this woman understand: confession, she realised. That would do it. ‘My name is Ginger Reilly, I write an online column called Girlfriend—’

  ‘My daughter reads that,’ said Callie suddenly, surprised.

  ‘How lovely. Well, that’s what I want to do, but I do it under a pseudonym and I am too scared to come out from behind that because I thought I wasn’t “aspirational”.’ She made air quotes with her hands. ‘But then, it turned out my editor didn’t think that at all. Only I haven’t done it yet because I’m trying to get over this guy—’

  She stopped. ‘I’m sorry – I’m telling you my life story. I don’t do that. People tell stuff to me.’

  ‘Well, they do if you’re a reporter,’ Callie said.

  ‘No, really, people open up to me and I just did it to you. Weird.’

  ‘It’s Ballyglen and this place,’ Callie said. ‘It’s peaceful, makes you think of what’s important. I never knew that before. I guess you need to lose everything to see what’s important.’

  Ginger stared at her silently.

  Lose everything.

  That was strangely what she felt she’d lost. She’d got her family, her new friends, work success, and yet losing Will had somehow wiped out all these triumphs.

  Will had helped her to love herself in a way she’d never experienced before. She’d been a butterfly locked in a rock-solid cocoon and his friendship – and love? – had cracked it open. And all the pain of the past had been able to tumble out.

  Ginger burst into tears.

  ‘I tried so hard not to mind,’ she said brokenly. ‘I tried to pretend I didn’t care about having a mother, but I did. Like I care about losing Will. How can you have your heart broken so easily?’

  ‘Hearts are fragile things,’ said Callie truthfully. ‘But they’re strong, too.’

  Ginger nodded and Callie put her arms around the younger woman.

  ‘Your mother died?’ she asked.

  Ginger nodded again. ‘She’s buried in Ballyglen and I haven’t been to her grave since I was a child and my father brought me. “It doesn’t matter”, I said, but it does.’

  ‘You poor pet,’ said Callie. ‘Pain has to be gone through. You can’t ignore it or put it on the backburner. You have to make your way through. I have a lot of experience of that lately, but it’s possible to do it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ sobbed Ginger.

  And somehow that was how Sam found them, hugging in the nursing home bathroom, with Ginger sobbing and Callie saying that it was all right, that even though Ginger’s heart was breaking now, she would recover.

  ‘There’s a newspaper photographer outside,’ said Sam urgently.

  ‘And a reporter here,’ said Callie with great calmness as she held the sobbing Ginger in her arms.

  Sam stepped back. ‘What?’

  ‘It’s OK. Gut instinct. She doesn’t want to do this.’

  ‘It could be a ploy,’ said Sam, and then she looked at the lurid red of Ginger’s face as she sobbed and decided that even though her mother had never brought her up on the concept of gut instinct, it still made sense.

  ‘Ginger’s mother is buried here and you . . . you never knew her?’ Callie asked gently.

  ‘No,’ wailed Ginger. ‘I’ve missed her every day of my life. Now I miss Will too and he’s gone. I wonder, did I push him away, because I might have . . .’

  Over Ginger’s fabulous hair, Sam and Callie’s eyes met.

  ‘First things first: we need a plan to get rid of the photographer,’ said Sam.

  They hustled Ginger out of the bathroom and into the music room where, for once, Miss Betty was not playing the piano to a crowd of enthusiastic listeners.

  ‘Can you lie?’ she asked Ginger.

  Ginger thought of all the years she’d pretended to be two people – sassy Ginger at work and normal Ginger at home. She nodded.

  ‘But I’ve been crying—’

  ‘Somebody’s bound to have a make-up bag,’ said Sam in a businesslike manner. ‘We’ll fix you up. But here’s the plan.’

  Plan explained, Sam raced back to the room where Rona sat and quickly filled her in.

  ‘We need to lie,’ she said.

  ‘But lying—’

  ‘Is sometimes necessary for the greater good,’ Sam pointed out. ‘Get me a white coat.’

  Johnny had gotten bored and had taken some outside shots and when Sam emerged ten minutes later, he was back in the hallway, waiting.

  Sam had put on a white coat and stuck a pen in the top pocket. She’d borrowed somebody’s spectacles so she’d look a little different. She didn’t want to be implicated as a charity boss lying to a newspaper but, and it was a very important but, neither would she sit by and let the woman she’d seen caring for the very ill be hounded. Nobody who had read the story of Jason Reynolds and his abandoning of his wife and child could imagine that they were tied up in it. Callie Reynolds had certainly suffered enough.

  Ginger, poor thing, was being filled up with sweet tea to help her recove
r. Anything less like a cut-throat reporter was hard to imagine.

  Rona accompanied her to the lobby.

  ‘Your reporter found me,’ Sam said to Johnny in a pleasant, nothing-to-see-here voice, ‘and we did have a relative of that woman’s here but he was transferred into hospital. Very sad.’

  Rona nodded.

  ‘All our visitors are logged in and the only person who visited the relative was his wife and, naturally, we cannot give you her details. Now, we do have a problem: your reporter tripped and hurt herself in the music room – snooping, I might add – and she’s very upset. She’s lying down, but I think we’ll need to wait until the doctor comes to look at her leg. Painful bruise, I think she might need a crutch.’

  Johnny looked aghast – and relieved that Ginger had not travelled down here with him, as she had guessed.

  ‘Do you want to see her?’

  ‘Er, sure.’

  Ginger was laid out on a couch in the music room with one of the home’s carers with her. Callie was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘I’m sorry, Johnny,’ she sobbed. ‘Piano stool. My leg – but they never saw Mrs Reynolds here. Damn it. A wasted trip and I have to hang on till a doctor comes.’

  ‘I think it’s only a sprain,’ Sam said, sounding as medically minded as she could.

  ‘Do you want me to stay?’ asked Johnny without eagerness.

  Ginger shook her head.

  ‘No, you go.’

  Gratefully, Johnny patted her shoulder, said he’d tell the boss, and was out the door.

  ‘Some men do hate illness,’ said Sam cheerfully.

  Ginger’s phone pinged.

  That was a waste of a day, and get well soon, texted Johnny.

  This was too good not to share, so she showed it to Sam, who grinned.

  ‘I think we need strong coffee and nice chocolate biscuits to get us over this. Let’s get Callie too.’

  Callie and Rona arrived, and Callie didn’t look remotely like someone who’d just dodged a photographer’s bullet.

  ‘I’m sure I’ll have to talk to someone from a newspaper one day,’ she said ruefully.

  ‘I promise he’s gone,’ said Sam.

  ‘And I promise you I am not writing about this, any of this. On . . .’ Ginger cast about for something suitable. ‘On my mother’s grave,’ she said slowly.

  Sam and Callie exchanged glances.

  ‘I believe you,’ said Callie cheerfully. ‘As the older woman here and the one who has gone through hell these last few months, ladies, I’d say you need to see that grave.’

  Sam nodded. ‘Not today, maybe, but one day?’

  Ginger nodded back. ‘I think you’re right.’

  ‘If I’ve learned anything this year, because I’ve a baby daughter, India’ – Sam’s face glowed with pride – ‘it’s that you have to confront the past to move on.’

  ‘Snap,’ said Callie wryly. ‘Or if the past bites you, you have to learn how to let go and live with yourself.’

  ‘Or forget about all the people who hurt you because there’s nothing to be gained from thinking about them,’ interrupted Ginger. ‘You have to move on.’

  ‘Moving on,’ they all agreed.

  ‘But first,’ Callie went to the door. ‘Biscuits.’

  Ginger

  Ginger pulled herself up to her full height. She wore high heels a lot now. Funny that she never wore them before, but wearing flat boots had somehow fitted in with the type of person who didn’t want to be seen as feminine. Didn’t want to be girly. Because trying to be girly would admit that she wasn’t girly – that she was tall and big and that no man would ever want her. After her heartbreak with Will, she wasn’t sure if she wanted a man anymore. She’d enough self-respect to live with that. To deal with that.

  So what if Zac kept eyeing her up and had once, in deep embarrassment, muttered that he couldn’t remember much of their night.

  ‘Maybe some other time, Zac,’ said Ginger, ‘but you know, I worry that other people might not like us dating. It might appear unethical.’

  Unethical was a magical word when it came to office politics, and Zac had nodded.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, adjusting his collar automatically.

  Ginger had to stop herself grinning every time she saw him. And as for Will – Will was in the past. Another lesson. Was there a set limit to the number of lessons a person had to learn before the lessons stopped? She really hoped there was.

  Going live with her Girlfriend column, saying who she really was, coming out from behind the screen – that was what she was meant to do and, finally, she was ready for it, so ready for it.

  The morning after Ballyglen, she’d walked into Alice Jeter’s office and said she wanted to stop hiding behind the Girlfriend pseudonym.

  ‘I want to run a platform where people can be who and what they want.’

  Alice’s eyes had lit up.

  ‘Finally!’

  Alice had made an offer that would change Ginger’s life. It had taken the trip to Ballyglen for her to see it: she had let the past hurt her and she had things in her past she’d never dealt with. It was time for a change, many changes.

  With two columns on two e-sites, and a series of TV and YouTube ads Alice was planning, there was a campaign being set up for her to be a figurehead for helping people. And Ginger didn’t feel scared; she felt invigorated and happy. She knew her family were thrilled for her. She hoped her two new friends, Callie and Sam, were thrilled for her too.

  Now, Ginger didn’t knock, but just walked into Carla’s office.

  ‘Yes,’ snapped Carla, looking up, surprised.

  If Ginger didn’t know any better, she would have sworn that Carla was playing Candy Crush on her phone. That was a waste of company time.

  ‘I wanted to talk to you before you heard it from someone else,’ Ginger said in the silky tones she’d sometimes heard her Aunt Grace use. Grace was pretty good with people when it came down to it. Probably why she still had loads of boxes in her house despite Ginger’s best attempts to shift them. She was not a woman to be trifled with.

  And neither was Ginger Reilly. Not anymore.

  ‘Tell me what?’ said Carla, eyes narrowing. ‘Sit?’

  ‘No, I’ll stand,’ said Ginger. ‘I’ve got another job, so I’ll be leaving.’

  ‘What sort of job?’ said Carla.

  ‘It involves the internet edition and Alice’s plans to have much more e-copy than previously. You know about the moves we’re making in that direction?’

  Carla stiffened. ‘Naturally,’ she snapped.

  ‘I’ll be working on that,’ said Ginger still in the same silky tones.

  ‘Doing what?’ demanded Carla.

  ‘I’m going to be a senior editor for all the women’s e-titles,’ Ginger said. ‘We’re aiming at a . . . younger audience than here.’

  She stared pointedly at Carla as she said this.

  She might not be as thin or as beautiful or as sexy as bloody Carla Mattheson, but she was younger. In the art of war, you had to use any weapons you had.

  ‘You?’ said Carla, nonplussed.

  ‘It’s the Girlfriend column,’ said Ginger.

  ‘What do you know about the Girlfriend column?’ Carla was scathing now.

  Just a few more words and she’d leave.

  ‘I write it,’ Ginger said calmly. ‘I’ve been writing it all along, and the features that go with it. It’s worth far me to me financially than this.’ She gestured around the office in the newsroom with one hand. ‘So rather than let me go, they’re paying me a lot more money and giving me a great new job. Isn’t that fabulous?’ And then she left.

  Bye-bye old world, and hello new one.

  Callie

  The call came early in the morning. Callie was used to waking very early now. T
he curtains in her mum’s front room were not the blackout blinds she’d had in the Dublin house and she woke when the sun did.

  She had stopped flicking through her phone for a story written by Ginger Reilly. Instead, there had been much social media activity about how the Girlfriend writer had turned out to be a tall, curvy, plus-sized woman who said she wanted her column to be a platform for all girls – and boys – who felt they had to be the same to fit in. She’d got a big new job and was going to be running her own YouTube channel.

  Ginger Reilly was some girl, Callie thought fondly. She owed her a call and a big thank you. Before Ginger had left Ballyglen, the three of them had exchanged numbers and promised to meet up.

  ‘I’m not in Dublin often and I’ll probably be wearing a dark wig if I do come,’ she said jokily, ‘but I’d love to meet you both – and baby India.’

  ‘You have to meet Aunt Grace too,’ Ginger said. ‘You would adore her. And you never have to talk about what happened with your husband. Nobody can force you to. If he goes to trial, the world will know you weren’t involved.’

  ‘If—’ said Callie.

  But when the phone rang this morning, and she saw Detective Superintendent John Hughes’ number on the line, she felt sick to her stomach. This couldn’t be good news, she thought. Early morning phone calls rarely were.

  ‘Yes, Detective Superintendent,’ she said.

  ‘We’ve got your husband,’ he said bluntly.

  ‘Oh.’ It sounded totally not the right thing to say after so many months of waiting, and yet, what else did you say?

  ‘How did you get him?’ she asked, as if she was enquiring about a distant acquaintance.

  ‘He came home for his girlfriend’s mother’s funeral. I’m sorry, Mrs Reynolds,’ said the detective superintendent. ‘I know that’s not the news you wanted to hear.’

  Callie got out of bed and pulled the curtains back. On the street below she could see people getting up, going to work. Going to jobs where they’d earn in a week about as much as she might have spent on a dress. It was a world away from the one she used to inhabit. A world she’d never inhabit again, and yet, what difference did it make. That world had been false.