Lesley Scott was listening to her husband’s laboured breathing and she knew that he was not long for this world. She looked at the man she had married all those years before and felt her futile tears as they finally ran down her wrinkled face. She had aged considerably since her husband’s attack, but that didn’t bother her too much. It was seeing Big Lenny brought so low that had really affected her.

As he lay there breathing his last, having already received extreme unction from his priest, she remembered the huge, handsome man she had married. She had looked beautiful that day and she had felt hope for her future. Some of those hopes and dreams had come to fruition. When she had given birth to Lenny, her husband had been like a dog with six lampposts. She could see him now in her mind’s eye, holding his little son in those enormous hands and laughing with delight. She thought of her son on his first day of school, all scrubbed and smart with his satchel and his packed lunch. He had been such a handsome boy, and tall for his age; he had towered over all the other kids in his class.

Everything had been perfect, until Lenny had brought that whore among them.

Not content with just having the son, after he had been brutally murdered she had then set her cap at his father. Lesley shook her head at the very thought of it. It was a disgrace!

That Sharon could walk around like she did, while decent people were vilified and ostracised, was beyond her comprehension. Why couldn’t people see her for what she was? See through her veneer of goodness to the putrid filth that lay beneath those sparkling blue eyes.

Big Lenny Scott’s breathing was getting shallower now and she knew the time was nearly upon them. He had been left less than a man, and he had never got over it.

The police had not even really given a flying fuck as to why or how it had happened to her husband – but why would she expect any more? That witch had everyone around her under her spell and she was protected on all sides. She was living a charmed life now in her mansion in Essex with its electric gates and swimming pool. Where was the justice in that?

At least she had sent the boys to a good Catholic school, run by Jesuits; that meant they had a chance of getting away from her. That had been the hardest thing to accept: being separated from her son’s children, her blood relatives. Not to be able to see them or talk to them had been a form of torture in itself, especially for her husband. He had adored those lads as much as she had.