Briony smiled nastily. ‘Wouldn’t I? You don’t know me very well, Mother. In fact, you don’t really know me at all. You get your coat on, or me and you are really finished, Mum, I mean it. Not another penny do you get. I’ll make it my business to let everyone know me and you are old news. That anyone giving you a kind word will answer to me.’

Picking up her mother’s coat from the peg behind the door, Briony threw it across the kitchen at her. Molly instinctively caught it.

‘Come on, Kerry is well on her time and you must be there to greet your grandchild.’

Rosalee stood by the door, her huge bulk blocking it. She smiled at everyone with her wide grin and Marcus smiled back at her. He liked Rosie, which endeared him to Bernie and her sisters. It was not a fake liking. He genuinely accepted her.

‘Come on, Rosie, you come with me and your mum in my car. Bernadette, you go with Briony.’

She could have kissed him. He was trying to defuse the situation.

Walking out of the door, he took Bernadette and Rosalee with him. Briony and Molly stared into each other’s face. Molly was amazed at how beautiful this child of hers was. The white skin, standing out in contrast to her hair, and those deep green eyes really made for a beautiful woman. Yet at this moment she felt nothing for her except contempt. A deep-rooted contempt, because she was owned by this girl, owned by her own flesh and blood. Now she had to go to her whore of a daughter, the one daughter she had truly loved and who now disgusted her, or else give up her easy way of life.

Molly was an intrinsically selfish woman, and the decision once made was easy to accept.

She followed Briony from the house and out to her car.

Kerry was in pain, a deep racking pain that surprised her with its ferocity. Nothing had prepared her for the sheer agony, the feeling of having her body split into two.

‘Oh, it hurts, Bri. It’s a fucking nightmare!’

Briony smiled. ‘I know. I remember me own labour. Not the pain, you forget the pain. But the memory of being a part of something bigger than you doesn’t ever fade.’

‘Never again, I’ll never do this again.’

The midwife laughed now. ‘If I had a penny, love, for every time someone said that to me, I’d be a millionaire!’

Kerry grimaced as she was once more torn in two. ‘I want to bear down. It’s coming. I can feel it.’