‘I’m sorry, darling, but it’s arranged now.’ He stood up, playing with his little daughter, determined not to look at his wife and cave in as per usual. This time the house was being cleared, he was going to make sure of that. One of the rooms off the kitchen was a spacious old-fashioned larder. There were over sixty jars of jam on the shelves, forty jars of honey and, more worryingly, he had counted thirty-two tin openers in one of the drawers. Everywhere he looked, there was evidence of her hoarding, and it scared him more than he liked to admit. It wasn’t normal. He had seen her wiping the tins over with a damp cloth, and placing them back into the boxes they had arrived in. Who the fuck did things like that? He had to put his foot down. They had a child to look out for now. She needed to start getting with the program. He had hoped that her finally having a baby would have sorted out her eccentricities, but instead it seemed to have exacerbated them. He loved her more than life itself, but he knew that things were not right.

‘She’s getting to be a right lump, isn’t she?’

Josephine nodded. ‘She is. Like I said, she loves her grub.’

‘Well, she won’t fucking starve in this house, will she?’ He laughed as he spoke, trying to lighten the mood, but Josephine didn’t react in any way at all.

Chapter Sixty-Two

Chapter Sixty-Two

Declan was extremely irritated – almost fuming, in fact – and that was a very unusual occurrence for him. He was a man who rarely let anything throw him off kilter. He saw that as a weakness, a character flaw – not that he had ever said that out loud. His brother and Michael were his polar opposite in that respect. Chasing the dollar was why people like them got up in the morning.

Well, he liked the world he had created for himself. He ran a good business, and he ran it very well. Declan believed wholeheartedly that he had more than enough for his needs. He earned a good wedge, he had shagged more women than he could shake a tenner at, and he genuinely liked his life. He didn’t want marriage or children really. He was happy enough playing the eternal bachelor. What he didn’t like was discord, especially among the ranks. He was very easy going, but the people who worked for him knew that, if they pushed their luck, he was capable of great vengeance if the need should arise.