If only Jessie had tried to understand him, meet him halfway even, she knew they would not be in this situation. But Jessie always had to have the last word, and had understood that, because of her mother’s problems, she had the upper hand. Jessie hated that her mother’s world was so small, and she blamed her father for everything that had happened. No matter how hard Josephine had tried to explain the truth, Jessie had not believed her. Now she was terrified that her daughter had taken up with someone who had harmed her, hurt her little girl in some way.

Jessie had a knack for finding that type of person – men who used her, who treated her like she was nothing and discarded her without a backward glance. Men who she sought out, and who she paid for, bankrolled with her father’s money, and who she knew would make him angry because she was throwing her life away just to hurt him. Now, it seemed she had finally picked the wrong one – a man who she couldn’t control.

It had been too long. Her Jessie never went a day without talking to her – whatever she thought about her father, she loved her mother. They were very close, and it was only the knowledge that she would find it hard if she didn’t see or hear from her little girl, that had stopped Michael from sidelining his Jessie for good. He felt it would do her good to have to earn her own keep, and see what the world was like without his name to protect her; Josephine had argued that if he did that she would be in danger of losing her altogether. Her real fear was that Jessie would end up on the streets, selling herself to whoever for enough money to get stoned. Now she wondered if he had been right all along, and a short, sharp shock, as he put it, might have done Jessie some good.

She picked up her favourite rosary. It had been a present from Michael on their wedding day – it was not expensive, it was very plain, made from olive wood, but it meant the world to her.

She kissed the Cross of Christ, and blessed herself quickly. Then she walked from her bedroom into her large sitting room. There she knelt down before the crucifix that dominated the room, and she began the first decade of the rosary. She normally enjoyed the Joyful Mysteries but, since Jessie’s disappearance, she was now concentrating on the Sorrowful Mysteries. She could feel the despair that Mary, the Mother of Jesus, must have felt when her son had been taken from her. All she wanted, all she was praying for, was a phone call. Just something to let her know her daughter was safe.