Kerry wasn’t singing, in fact she wasn’t really doing anything except drinking. The shock of what had happened to her had affected her more than she would admit. The cuts and bruises had faded. She had told Liselle she’d had a fall, and Liselle had upset her by not questioning that, assuming her mother was drunk. The injuries had gone but the reason for them was still fresh in her mind. Evander had been trying to blackmail her. He had taken her trust and abused it. She had been a fool. A complete and utter fool.

Now, seeing him and Liselle together was like a knife inside her gut. Twisting and turning for the maximum pain. And three men were dead, she was sure of that. The twins would have taken care of them. Kerry wondered what Eileen would have thought of the two boys she had entrusted to Briony. Eileen, the sister with a goodness of spirit lacking in the others. Eileen who was too kind for this world and its harsh realities. Eileen whom they all missed, each and every day. What would she have made of her boys, her babies, taking people and making them disappear?

Briony didn’t even care. She didn’t care what they did as long as they were all right. As long as the family survived whatever was thrown at it.

Kerry couldn’t admit to herself that she was jealous of Evander now, of his need for his child and her need for him. That Liselle was picking up his ways, his expressions. Was gradually blanking her out and welcoming her father in. Even though he had tried to destroy her, destroy them both.

Briony said she wasn’t ever to tell Liselle the truth of the situation. That she should only know her father as a kind man, the man he had been twenty years ago, before he was embittered by years of hardship. What about her years of hardship, knowing that she had a child who was destined for sorrow? Knowing that she had to live with that fact. Knowing she hadn’t been woman enough to follow her star when she should have, when it would have been right to follow it.

Each day the closeness developing between Evander and Liselle made her more aware of the distance widening between herself and her child. She found it hard to forgive Evander for what he had attempted to do. She found it harder to face the fact her child now had a foot in two different worlds.

Well, she consoled herself, he was leaving for the States in the New Year. Only a few more weeks and she could wave him goodbye and get back on to her old footing with her daughter.