Upstairs, Delia put Faith on to her old bed and stroked the child’s red hair. Jimmy had left her after the fight, telling her he wanted her out by the time he returned. He had told her she was a fat ugly bitch and he wanted nothing more to do with her. He had told her she was soapy, like a great big smelly unwashed whale. That’s what had really hurt her. That and the fact he meant every word he said. He also told her that he had been seeing Olivia Sands for six months, her so-called friend. Well, he was going to get a big shock, because no one, no one at all, spoke to her like that and got away with it.

Least of all an acid head like Jimmy Sellars. And a two-timing acid head at that!

As Faith dropped off to sleep her mother stroked the fiery red hair inherited from her Auntie Briony and smiled down at her child, wincing painfully as she looked at her black eye.

She had better not touch her here, her mother would suss it immediately.

A little while later she went into the bathroom and had a long soothing bath. She eyed herself critically in the mirror opposite the bath and felt the sting of tears as she surveyed her heavy body. Since the birth of Faith she had lost the battle with her weight and it showed.

What she would do now she was back home was stick to amphetamines and lay off the cannabis. The cannabis made her hungry, but the amphetamines would kill her appetite. Before she knew it, she’d be back to her old self again.

Humming happily, she washed her hair and shaved her legs with her father’s razor, blunting it.

She wished she could see Jimmy’s and Olivia’s faces when her father turned up that night with the twins. It really would be something to see!

The bathroom looked like a bomb had hit it when Delia finally left it. Bernadette picked up her daughter’s soiled underwear, her clothes and the towels she’d used. She looked at the thick scum around the bath itself, and sighed.

Delia was home all right.

Daniel and Boysie were like raving lunatics. Every word Marcus said fired their tempers and they sat then, three big, powerful and dangerous men, planning their course of action. Marcus enjoyed the feeling of their combined wrath. It was so real, it was positively electric. And it would see that Jimmy Sellars would never again hurt his daughter or his granddaughter. Or indeed any woman. If he survived the night, he would only do so half a man, and that thought, more than anything, calmed Marcus’s soul.

Ten minutes later they were driving to the high-rise flat in Plaistow where their quarry awaited them.