Aysha Flynn made her appearance in the world via a home birth, and Shauna was up and about within hours, making tea in her dressing gown in their brand-new kitchen while the dirty sheets whirled clean in the laundry room. Josh marvelled at her powers of recovery; she had babies like most women shucked peas. Shauna shrugged everything off; illness, concern, even her conscience.

But God how she loved her babies. He could see that, as she hefted Connor on to her hip in the upstairs nursery and cooed into the lavishly constructed cradle – new, not second-hand of course – containing the baby girl. Josh watched Shauna, saw her face glowing with satisfaction. She smiled across at him and then glanced around this beautifully furnished room in their new home, letting her gaze linger on the window where the sun streamed in like a blessing.

‘A little sister for Connor,’ she said to Josh. ‘Life’s just perfect.’

Josh looked at her. For Shauna, maybe it was.

But for him?

No.

It was far from that.

Now, when he looked at his wife and at the new baby – who was dark-haired and dark-eyed, like Shauna, and like Jeb Cleaver too – he saw lies. He saw secrets. His life had gone bad the instant he lost Claire, lost the happy Romany way of life he should have lived with her. And now, trapped with this manipulative woman he barely knew and certainly didn’t trust, it was too late; there was no going back.

BOOK TWO

BOOK TWO

68

68

December 1999

Shauna Flynn looked around her vast sitting room. The fire was banked up and crackling cheerily against the winter cold, and she had just finished decorating a huge twelve-foot Christmas tree in tasteful tones of gold and silver. She’d had the decorators in recently, painting all the walls in neutral taupes and creams, so that in spring she could add primrose-yellow and soft sky-blue and sugar-pink cushions and rugs and paintings. In summer, she would accessorize with forest greens and lime and mint. But now it was winter, and she’d put red plaid throws on the huge cream sofas, and added scarlet rugs and a feature wall of deep berry-red around the fireplace.

She was made up with this house. She loved it. It was far better than the four they’d lived in since leaving the riverside place. They’d traded one in for another, climbing up the property ladder until now they were sitting on a goldmine. Their first real family home – the old one by the river – couldn’t compare to this. And it had held terrible memories. She’d been glad to leave it. Every time she’d looked at it after that long-ago night when Ciaran and Rowan had come to call, she saw not a picturesque scene but something tainted and hateful.