Josephine didn’t answer that. She hoped that her flesh and blood, this pregnancy, would finally come to fruition and give them the one thing they couldn’t buy. Just one child would be enough – that’s all she wanted.

‘I tell you this much though, Josephine. Whoever Assumpta names as the culprit will wish they had never been fucking born.’

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Four

Patrick Costello was practically hyperventilating, such was the vehemence of his anger. He knew he had to be alone for a while, so he had come into his office and poured himself a very large whisky. He sipped it slowly, savouring the strong taste, and the burn as he swallowed it down. He needed the alcohol to give him at least a modicum of inebriation, to take the edge off feeling too much.

This had never happened to him in his life before. He was never unable to control his emotions. His daughter’s pregnancy was bad enough but, coupled with her bare-faced refusal to name the culprit, his usual aplomb was rapidly deteriorating. He took another large sip of the whisky, praying for it to calm him down and give him some kind of peace. He needed to deaden his emotions for a short while, until he could once more control himself – and his actions.

He was going to kill someone soon – that was a given – and, if his daughter didn’t answer his questions, there was a good chance that the dead person might actually be her. It was her reluctance to name anyone as the father which had finally convinced him there must be more than one person in the frame. If it had been a love job, she would have come clean. He could have accepted that, could have understood the power of youth, of being in love for the first time. He wasn’t a complete fucking moron, he could have overlooked such behaviour if it was down to love. He would still have been angry, but he would have allowed for his daughter, his baby, to have been caught up in her hormones.