She was taken aback by his words and the way he had delivered them.

‘I beg your pardon?’

She was at the beginning of outrage and they both knew it. He went to her and held her gently by the shoulders and, looking at her, he said in complete honesty, ‘I really can’t tell you anything. If I did tell you I can guarantee you would regret ever asking me about it. That is as much as I can tell you, Sharon. You have to trust me on this.’

She looked up into his beautiful, dark eyes and believed that he was being honest with her. She could not help but be suspicious of his absences. What woman wouldn’t be? She had two sons and was heavily pregnant to boot. She had a man she thought she could trust with her life and now the doubt was creeping in. After Lenny she couldn’t go through that heartbreak again.

He sensed her uncertainty and, holding her to him gently, he said sincerely, ‘I wish I could tell you about these trips, I really do. But there are some things in our world where you are better left in ignorance. Believe me, I’m not trying to play you, Sharon.’

A voice inside her was telling her that she should accept what he said at face value. But another voice in the back of her mind was asking what was so terrible he could not tell her about it? What skulduggery was he involved in that required so much secrecy? One worry just seemed to replace another.

He kissed her tenderly and caressed her swollen belly. ‘Like I would want anyone else. Haven’t I got everything I need right here?’

She allowed him to hold her and pet her but worry still lingered in the back of her mind.

Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Nine

Lesley Scott looked in the Barking and Dagenham Post and saw her two grandsons’ photograph from the boxing. They had been for the ABAs. She drank in the picture of them, and prayed once more that her daughter-in-law would pay the price for destroying her family.

The boys were her Lenny’s doubles, especially young Lenny. It was like looking at her beloved son at the same age. When she thought of the trauma and heartbreak that bitch had brought into their lives she felt almost capable of murder. She heard her husband calling to her and she quickly poured him a glass of orange juice and went through to her front room.