She didn’t explain that her husband knew zilch about exotic plants.
He’d actually got the idea from an article in the Financial Times’s How To Spend It magazine about a billionaire who had a greenhouse in Manhattan where he grew all manner of exotic things.
‘Cyrtochilum Dasyglossum orchids,’ he’d read out, admiring a photo of a yellow orchid with delicately ruffled petals.
His elocution and command of the Latin words were impressive for a man who’d grown up in a council estate not too far from Callie’s own in a big county town, and whose knowledge of plants was confined to his mam’s dahlias.
But Jason was a quick learner. He could now talk exotic plants with the best of them. He expected Callie to do the same, as well as look just as beautiful all the time.
Unlike those husbands who died a little when their wives went to the shops wielding credit cards, Jason was always urging Callie to buy clothes.
‘I want you looking good, sexy,’ he’d say.
She could hardly complain, and yet lately she felt more like another thing in Jason’s life. His wife, to add to the Ferrari and the yacht.
‘Do enjoy yourself,’ Callie said to the guest now and she moved as if something vital was happening somewhere and she must race off. It was her fiftieth birthday party, after all, and the hostess needed to be all over the place, a handy excuse when it came to conversing with some of the guests, who were clearly a rent-a-celeb crowd drummed up by the party planner.
Callie moved on through the beautiful grey reception room that soared up to a vast glass and steel structure which had guests admiring it all.
She could see her husband in the distance, surrounded by friends as if it was his fiftieth birthday party and not hers. But then Jason drew people to him with the magnetism of the handsome and charismatic. He was tall, even among the statuesque, Pilates- or barre-toned Amazons in heels who were flirting with him.
She had no idea how he’d grown so tall: his own father, now long dead, had been wizened, but then that was due to smoking untipped cigarettes for years and thinking pints of beer and greasy pub sausages and chips were nourishment. Jason was dark, with that Spanish/Irish combination of raven blue-black hair, blue Irish eyes and skin that tanned when he so much as looked at the sun. Tonight, he was wearing a suit of such a dark navy that it appeared almost black. He looked like a movie star: an almost unreal presence among the rest of the guests.
‘We were flying over Monument Valley and the pilot took us really low. It was awesome. Nothing can do justice to that landscape, but flying over it comes pretty close,’ he was saying, his voice at the same time husky – which was natural – and exquisitely modulated to sound posh Irish – which was not natural but the result of years of voice lessons.
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.