Now that fucking madman had nearly raped her child, and that had to have an effect. Wait till she saw that fecker Lesley Scott! Always acting like her shit didn’t stink and they were better than everyone around them, going on that the boys were being dragged up and needed her influence to keep them on the straight and narrow. After what she had bred – a fucking criminal of the first water – she thought she was in with a chance with those two? The woman was deluded.

Ivy felt a small glimmer of shame at her secret delight that Lesley had been brought so low. But it was human nature, she supposed. Lesley had always acted so superior, with her church-going and her refusal to have a drink or a laugh, as though it was all beneath her somehow. She busied herself making endless pots of tea as she waited for her husband to calm down enough to be freed from the two men’s grip. But she could understand his anger for she felt it herself. What she couldn’t understand was why her daughter wanted to be alone and had asked her mother to let her get herself settled a bit before she saw her again. That had felt like a slap in the face.

Ivy wished things had turned out different for her child, but one thing that she knew from experience was you had to roll with the punches. Learn to accept whatever life threw at you. It was the only way to survive.

Chapter One Hundred and Fourteen

Lesley was sitting alone in the dark. Nothing could have prepared her for what she had been told by Jack Johnson. He had been so calm, and insisted she had a brandy, which she had to admit she was grateful for; she could feel the man’s sympathy for her plight. But as she looked at him now, she felt the urge to tear his face apart with her well-manicured and prettily painted nails. She knew he was telling her the truth – even though she tried to deny it.

She had seen the way her husband had looked at that girl; it was like he had a hunger in him – a hunger she had never been able to arouse or indeed provoke. He had watched Sharon’s every move, even when their son had been alive. The too-long embrace goodbye, the way he had always chatted to the girl as if they were long-time friends. She felt the bile rising up inside her at the words Jack was saying.

‘He never managed to actually . . . You know.’

Oh, the shame of it. That’s all she could think of now, the shame. Knowing that he had tried to . . . She pushed the thought from her mind and concentrated on the brandy that Jack Johnson had poured for her.