The move had been a huge success. It was a lovely street with decent neighbours. The only sour note had been losing her rosary beads when they cleared out the old house – her mother had donated them to a church jumble sale by mistake, the stupid woman. Mary O’Leary had been twice the mother Molly Wade had been. Much to Viv’s displeasure, she wouldn’t apologize for her outburst, neither had she visited nor phoned her mother since the rosary beads ended up at the jumble sale.

Queenie just couldn’t forgive her. Losing the beads felt like losing Mary all over again. She couldn’t explain to Viv why she was so upset. She wouldn’t understand. Nobody could.

Another thorn in Queenie’s side was that bastard kitten Vinny had bought Yvonne. Three days after moving into her new home, Vinny had turned up with it in a box and begged her to look after it for the time being as Slack Alice was allergic to it.

Queenie hadn’t been best pleased, but seeing as Vinny had wangled her such a beautiful home, had agreed to feed the thing provided it lived in its own little home in the garden and didn’t come inside the house.

Within a day of the kitten’s arrival, Queenie guessed Slack Alice had lied about her allergy. It might look like butter wouldn’t melt, with its pure white fur and piercing blue eyes, but it was pure evil. It kept attacking Queenie with its horrid sharp little claws. Vinny got it in the ear when he came home from work that night. ‘Slack Alice is about as allergic to that cat as she was to all those American servicemen her bucket fanny swallowed up during the war. You’ve not bought a normal cat, ya silly bastard. That’s one of them wild animals they sell down the Lane. It’s probably come from the bleedin’ jungle,’ Queenie ranted.

The loathing she felt for the cat was nothing compared to her hatred of its owner, mind. The more Queenie saw of Yvonne bloody Summers, the more she could not stand the tart. She was leading Vinny up the garden path financially and otherwise. Twice in the past month her son had been involved in fights over his girlfriend. Queenie had now come to the conclusion Yvonne wasn’t quite the giggly simpleton she came across as. She was clingy, manipulative and false. Queenie was that desperate to get rid of her, it had even crossed her mind to ask Patrick O’Leary for help. But what could she say? She could hardly ask Patrick to make her son’s girlfriend disappear without a valid reason. And even if she had a valid reason, she very much doubted Patrick would put the frighteners on any eighteen-year-old girl. Queenie didn’t want her dead; she wasn’t that callous, just wanted her as far away from her son as humanly possible.

Queenie’s daydreaming ended with the arrival of Viv and Lenny. ‘Why aren’t you at school?’ Queenie asked, as Lenny clambered on her lap.