Jessie ran back to her room quickly and, locking the door behind her, she went to her bedroom window, watching as the men her father employed forced the two culprits into the back of a Range Rover. She could hear the two men protesting, and see the way they were being punched and kicked violently. She was still shaking with fear as she watched her dad walk over to the Range Rover, and take a piece of lead piping from one of his men, before dragging one of the robbers out of the Range Rover, and on to the driveway. She watched the man’s head burst open as her father struck him over and over again with such force she could see the man’s skull and his blood spraying everywhere.

She could hear her father screaming in anger, ‘You dared, you dared to come to my home! My fucking home! I will kill you. I will fucking kill you stone dead!’

The other men just stood there, watching her father as if it was the most natural thing in the world. The violence was so matter of fact, and she didn’t know how she was supposed to deal with it. The whole driveway was lit up like Battersea Power Station, so she watched it all in glorious technicolour.

She was still vomiting into the expensive porcelain sink in her beautiful en-suite bathroom when her mother banged on her door, demanding entry.

Everything she had heard about her dad was true. She had finally seen it for herself. But it was her mother’s actions that had really shocked her. That had made her realise just how little she knew about the people she lived with. Suddenly, she felt she didn’t know anything any more.

Chapter Eighty

Chapter Eighty

‘Listen to me, Jessie. I know exactly how this looks, but you’re too young to understand the reality of what happened here tonight.’

Josephine was heartbroken. She had never wanted her daughter to have to experience something so frightening. She had made coffee for everyone, left them clearing up downstairs, and then brought her daughter into her bedroom. Locking the door behind them, she had tried to explain as best she could that sometimes things happened, and there was nothing anyone could do to prevent them.