Lenny and Liam were locked in their respective bedrooms and so Sharon had an unaccustomed quiet few hours ahead of her. Kathy was ensconced in her lobster-pot playpen with her toys and a drink of juice and Sharon poured herself a nice cold glass of Chablis and sat down gratefully to drink it. She looked around and felt the pleasure her surroundings always brought to her. Why wouldn’t they? She had an exceptionally beautiful home that looked like something from a Sunday supplement. Ray gave her carte blanche when it came to the house, the boys or his new daughter. He never baulked at the prices she paid for anything. He was good to her and she knew that he loved her above all else.

So why was she feeling so nervous about the upcoming wedding? She sipped at her drink, and watched her new daughter playing with her toys and talking baby talk to herself. She had everything any woman could want and she could not understand why she was questioning it. She felt like this periodically and she put it down to the fear of losing what she had again. When Lenny had been brutally murdered it had left its mark on her, and that was to be expected. Even though she had had to confront his other life, she had still been left a widow with two young, fatherless children. It had been so hard to pick up the pieces, and then she had met Ray. More to the point, Ray had entered her life and he had been at her side from the moment she had met him.

Making love with Ray was a completely different experience to Lenny; how could she have known that the sex they’d had was always more about him than her? She realised now that Lenny had been scratching an itch – she could have been anyone. He had been possessed of a high sex drive and he had basically fucked her. No one had ever made love to her until Ray Donovan, and the change had been amazing. He made her feel treasured, loved and desired. He adored her and the kids and they never really had a cross word. The nerves about this wedding were a melon scratcher all right, there was no doubt about that! There was a niggling little voice telling her not to go through with it.