by Martina Cole
Chapter One Hundred and Forty-Eight
Gabby was pleased it was a cold and grey day – it would have felt wrong to have been burying her baby in the sunshine. She knew that she would never feel any warmth again; it was as if a lump of ice had settled in her chest, and it would never budge.
She glanced at his little white coffin, and wondered at a god who could take away a child from its mother. What really hurt was that she had had him for only one night and now he was dead. It didn’t matter that it was her brother not her who had burned them out – it had still happened on her watch, as her mother had so succinctly put it.
Maybe her mother was right. Gabby’s life was a shambles in many respects, and that had been driven home to her more and more lately. The only man she had ever loved had been twice banged up for armed robbery – hardly a good role model in the eyes of the courts, or anyone else for that matter. She was not allowed access to her kids unless her mother deemed it OK, and she had the legal rights that should have been Gabby’s. Life was unfair, but she had to accept the blame for a lot of what had happened to her and her children. She had been too young, too stupid to have a child alone the first time round, and with little Vince fate had interfered once more, and she had been left holding the baby again.
She saw her Vincent walking towards her, flanked by and handcuffed to two prison officers. She stepped towards him, the sight of him opening the floodgates, and she heard herself sobbing as if from a distance.
Chapter One Hundred and Forty-Nine
Cynthia was amazed at the reaction of the people at the funeral. She had been hugged and given condolences by people who would normally cross the road to avoid her.
She could see Gabriella, a beautiful name she had always felt was wasted on her daughter, standing with Vincent. The two POs with him looked suitably solemn and out of place at a child’s funeral.
The sight of Vincent O’Casey in handcuffs angered her; he was bringing this lovely child’s funeral down to the level of his family. They were there as well, though standing apart from everyone else, all looking like rejects from The Jeremy Kyle Show. They were just using the boy’s death to worm their way back into Vincent’s good books. She could easily walk over there and fell each and every one of them, punch and kick them to make them leave this place that was not supposed to be soiled by the likes of them. But she would leave that to Vincent; his opinion of his family was just about the only thing they could agree on. The irony was not lost on her.
Cherie was holding her hand tightly and, even though she knew she should make the child go to her mother and father, her innate cunning told her to keep her there. People would see that the child preferred her and that was the main thing. She had made a terrible mistake with little Vince, and she had paid dearly, but it had just made her all the more determined not to let this little one go from her. Without Cherie she had nothing, and that was wrong; after all, Gabriella could have more kids. She should have looked after the children she already had, not succumbed to her depressions and her pills. She was not fit to look after a child as intelligent and special as Cherie. She was wholly Cynthia’s child, and that, she was determined, was never going to change.
Chapter One Hundred and Fifty
As Vincent listened to his Gabby sobbing, watched that piece of shite Cynthia keeping his daughter by her side, and saw poor old Jack Callahan aged and broken, he swore there and then that this was all going to change.
He had caught Cherie’s eye and she had looked away, then up at her nanny Cynthia, as if asking permission to go to him. He allowed for the fact he was in handcuffs, but it wasn’t as if she didn’t know he was banged up – she had been to visit him. He knew it was Cynthia who had poisoned her, but he also accepted that Cynthia, whatever she was or she wasn’t, had been there for the kids when poor Gabby couldn’t be. He blamed himself for that; he had left her twice on her Jack Jones, twice holding the baby, literally.
He hadn’t been there for either of his kids for any length of time, so was it any wonder his daughter didn’t beat a path to his door? She was nervous of him and, from what Gabby had said, her mother had made them both out to be the bastards of the universe. They couldn’t blame the child for that, though, in his heart, he hated Cynthia for the way she had manipulated them all, even him. At one time it was either Cynthia or care, and Cynthia was preferable to those kiddies being in the system. It was a fucking abortion and it was his fault.
That moron James had always been a few chips short of a McDonald’s and, as Cynthia had been the cause of his fruit-caking, he was not impressed with her having too much authority over his daughter.
He felt powerless. He would never get used to it, yet he had been experiencing it for far too long. All he could think about was wiping out that bastard James; after that, everything else would fall into place, of that much he was sure. If he went away again, at least this time it would be for a good reason.
As the thoughts of revenge swirled around his head he held his Gabby as best he could under the circumstances.
Chapter One Hundred and Fifty-One
Jack Callahan had never felt so old and weak. He could not believe they were burying that lovely boy. Why had he let them go home that night? Why had fate chosen that night for James to have one of his rampages? And why couldn’t the police find him? That’s what he asked himself day and night – where could he be? If Jack had an inkling he would go and take the fucker out himself. It was as if James had disappeared off the face of the earth. Cynthia had said that when he had come to her house he had been high on drugs, accusing them all of ruining his life, accusing her of loving his sister’s kids more than her own, a truth that must have hit home even to someone as thick-skinned as Cynthia.
He glanced at her and wondered how someone like her and her son could be allowed to roam the earth, when such a lovely little boy had died. It was all wrong.
Poor Gabby was beside herself with grief, and Jack was glad his Mary wasn’t here to see this. As the priest himself had said to him, this would surely have killed her. It was a wrong day, in so many ways.
Chapter One Hundred and Fifty-Two
Bertie Warner stood in the cemetery and watched the proceedings with a suitably respectful expression. He didn’t like things like this at all; he saw death as an inevitable thing, but he hoped that he would go naturally when the time came and not by the hand of someone else. In his opinion, cancer was preferable to a bullet in the brain – at least then you had the opportunity to tie up loose ends and say your goodbyes.
A child’s funeral was a bastard; it was the wrong order, and it made everyone who attended feel they were blessed because it wasn’t their child who had died. There were times when he could launch his lot into the atmosphere, but he wouldn’t part with them for the world. If one of them died he would be distraught, and that was exactly how poor young Vincent and Gabriella looked.
Truth be told, though, it was Cynthia who was the star turn at this funeral, stealing all the attention. She looked like something from an American mini-series; black fitted suit, high-heeled shoes, and a small hat with a lacey bit hiding her boat race from the world. She still had the looks, he had to admit – not that he would touch her if she begged him. Well, he might if she begged him really nicely.
It was a sad day and no mistake. So why did he feel that there was something awry – he liked that word, it was something an old-fashioned Filth would use. But his shit detector, and he prided himself on his shit detector, was telling him there was something fishy about all this. It smelt wrong and, even though that nutter James was capable of something this heinous, it all felt a bit too convenient for his liking.
Now, it was common knowledge that he hated Cynthia; she had outed a close friend of his, even if he couldn’t fault her actions at the time. But that hatred he had for her also made him suspicious of her, and what she was capable of. Though, from what he could gather, she loved those kids, so he was most probably barking up the wrong tree.
Still, he liked a nice little snoop occasionally, and he had plenty of Filth who owed him favours. If nothing else he would be able to give Vincent a proper update on his son’s murder case, because this was murder, whichever way you looked at it.
Chapter One Hundred and Fifty-Three
As they lowered little Vincent’s coffin into the grave, Cynthia’s crying could be heard above everyone else’s, and that only proved to the onlookers how much she had loved that child. The gossips speculated how that boy would still be alive if he had been at his nanny’s where, in fairness, he had lived most of his life.
Gabriella was a lovely girl but she had been incapable of taking proper care of those children. She was like that Celeste and everyone knew she hadn’t been the full shilling. No, the general consensus was that Cynthia, whatever people might think of her in the past, had proved herself in the end.
Cynthia felt the tide of good wishes and basked in their warmth and, as she stood by her daughter, hand on her arm, her granddaughter clutching her other hand, she knew that she had won, at least where public opinion was concerned.
Everyone watched her pull Gabby into her arms, and they said afterwards that when it came down to it, no matter what, you always wanted your mum when things were bad.
Chapter One Hundred and Fifty-Four
It was almost nine months since the funeral of little Vince, and Gabby was finally getting back to some kind of normality. It had not been the greatest of times, and she knew it would take a long while before she felt strong enough to feel anything close to happiness again.
Vincent was home, working at a garage in East London and they were gradually getting things together. It had been hard for them; he had never really known his son, but he had grieved for him as they both had. Cherie wasn’t living with them, but they saw her a lot, and that was enough for Gabby these days. As Vincent said, it was a shame to take the child away from her nanny until they had replaced everything and had a proper home for her. But Gabby knew it was because Cherie didn’t really bother with him. He had been away for so much of her life, she just didn’t know him any more. It was sad but it was a fact of life.
Now she was pregnant again, although she was too frightened to get excited about it. Vincent was over the moon; he saw it as a chance for them to start again with the family they both had always longed for. Gabby wouldn’t allow herself to get too caught up in his dreams. She had never been lucky in that way – every time she had believed her life was back on track it had been destroyed.
She had a lot of trouble with her hands still. It didn’t bother her that they were scarred, but it was difficult to pick up small things, like pins or stamps. Even a knife could be quite difficult for her, but she was doing a lot of physio, and soon she would have another skin graft and then things would be even easier. She supposed they might put that off now until after the baby was born.
She hoped it was a girl; she didn’t want to replace little Vince with another boy, but she knew that Vincent was hoping for a son he could take to the park and play football with. He wanted a little lad he could lavish all his time and energy on. She wouldn’t begrudge him that – he had been her rock in so many ways, helping her through her grief and her guilt. Because she did feel guilty about what had happened, and would bear that guilt for the rest of her life.
It hurt that her own brother hated her so much he was willing to do that to them all, was capable of setting fire to her home, when she was the only one who had always tried to do what she could for him. In her own way she had kept in contact with him and, consequently, she had brought him into her children’s lives. What a price they had paid for her stupidity!
It was hard getting through the days, and she still had very black moods when she wondered at what was going on with the world and she questioned everything. Why had this happened to her? Why she had been singled out for so much heartache? She had no answer. But it meant she would not celebrate this new baby until it was born – anything could happen between then and now.
As she combed her thick hair into place, the phone rang and she answered it carefully, making sure not to drop the receiver. It was the police. She listened for a few moments, before asking, ‘Is this about James?’
She hoped they had found him; the thought of him out there after what he had done was worse than anything. Supposing he came back to finish the job? That was her nightmare – him sneaking back to burn them to death in their beds. He was capable of murder as they all knew – look at that Dougie person he had killed. She shuddered at the thought. Plus, if they caught him, then that meant her Vincent could not get his hands on him. Revenge wasn’t worth doing life over. Her greatest fear was that Vincent would be banged up for the rest of his days. She knew he spent hours trying to track James down and had put a price on his head. Anyone with information could get twenty-five grand if it led to him being found. That was a big incentive, and she knew it.
‘I beg your pardon, are you sure?’ She listened for a few more seconds then she said in a dazed voice, ‘No, I’ll tell my mother, I don’t think she should hear this over the phone.’
She put the receiver back in its cradle and went into her kitchen. Sitting at the kitchen table, she looked around her for a few moments, unable to get to grips with what she had just been told.
James was dead. He had been dead for over a year, although he had only just been found in a squat in Leicester. He had died of a heroin overdose, and he had been lying there all that time, undiscovered. They had deduced that it was James through his belongings, despite the body being in a state of decay. They would confirm with a DNA test, but they were more or less certain it was him.
If James was dead, then who had tried to burn her house down? Who had killed her little boy? And, more to the point, who had been at her mother’s a few days before the fire? None of it made any sense. The person they had found could not have been James, surely? She decided to ring Vincent. He would know what to do.
Chapter One Hundred and Fifty-Five
Cynthia was happier than she had been for a long while. She was finally getting over losing that little child and his awful death. She still needed a drink to get her through the day – and especially the nights – but she was beginning to feel she had it all under control.
Vincent had not taken to his daughter, and she had not taken to him, thank God. Cherie looked down her nose at him, and so she should. Cynthia had drummed into the child to expect better in life and she would make sure she got it. It had worked out quite well for her. Well, it had worked out as well as could be expected, all things considered. At least she had Cherie who, at ten, was so like her at the same age it was uncanny.
Now that silly cow was pregnant again. Didn’t she ever learn? The girl was a total bloody idiot where Vincent was concerned. She could not see further than his dick, and that was about the strength of their relationship. He fucked her, he got her in the club, and then he left her. Gabriella believed it was third time a charm. As if that oik would be able to keep out of prison long enough to fucking see it born! If only he could find James before the police did – that would make sure Vincent wasn’t around to interfere for a very long time. Even if her daughter was once more pregnant by him, she would happily see him put away for good – especially if it meant James was out of the picture too.
She had made up her mind that she wasn’t going to have too much to do with this new grandchild. She decided that, if she used her loaf, this would be the perfect opportunity to get Cherie away from them both for ever, and keep her for herself.
As she poured herself another of her ‘black’ teas – her euphemism for whisky and water – she pondered on how she could talk them into letting her move right away with Cherie. She couldn’t stand to be in London any more – everywhere she looked she was haunted by memories of baby Vince. Every road, park and zoo reminded her of him and she could hear his voice asking her things, making her laugh. Oh, how he had made her laugh – he had been such a dear little fellow.
She realised she needed to get as far away from those memories as possible.
Gabriella had phoned to say she would be here soon. She wondered what she had to talk to her about? Probably wanting help with that baby she had on the way.
Chapter One Hundred and Fifty-Six
Gabby had parked her car by the new Somerfield’s at Chrisp Street Market; she needed to pick up a few bits for Vincent’s dinner, before calling at her mother’s. She couldn’t drive for long with her hands as they were but she could manage the automatic Vincent had got for her to get around locally. Vincent was as mystified as she was about the news about James. He said he’d dig around a bit for some more information. As she walked out with the trolley, she was startled from her thoughts when she heard someone call her name.
‘Is that you, Gabby?’
Gabby looked into the woman’s face, unable to place her. She grinned at her before saying in a friendly manner, ‘Sorry, do I know you?’
The woman smiled; she was in her late forties and she had kind eyes and heavy legs. ‘I’m Jeannie Proctor. I lived next door to you in Ilford when you were a nipper.’
Gabby smiled back. ‘Oh, really? I’m sorry, I don’t remember.’
The woman looked her over, and she said in wonderment, ‘You are the living image of your mother – that’s what made me recognise you. Beautiful, just like her. How is Cynth these days?’
