Michael sipped his wine, savouring the taste. He was looking over the gardens; he had turned the outside lights on earlier, and he was enjoying the view. So much had gone into making the gardens look beautiful, but his wife didn’t seem to notice them any more. It was so sad. She took no pleasure in anything these days. How could she? All she did was sit out the days – and that was all she was capable of doing. She was unable to sleep at night, unable to enjoy her life in any meaningful way. His lovely bride, his Josephine, had gradually lost the knack for living life, and she didn’t seem to want to find it again.

Josephine sighed; she missed her daughter so much, but there was no way Jessie was coming home again. She avoided them all like the plague, especially little Jake. Josephine blamed herself for her daughter’s actions. Jessie had needed her, and she had not been there for her daughter – she had put her husband first and done what he wanted.

‘Do you think we were wrong to make her have little Jake? She was so young, Michael.’ She watched her husband as he shook his head in swift and angry denial.

‘How can you even think like that, Josephine? He is a lovely little lad. If we had let her have her way he wouldn’t even fucking be here. For all her fucking antics, and her fucking determination to act like he doesn’t exist, the day will come when she will realise that she did the right thing by having her baby, and that we did the right thing by making sure she gave the child a chance at life. She needed to understand the seriousness of what had happened to her. She needed to learn that having a child isn’t a fucking game. As a Catholic, she had only one choice open to her. There would be no abortions in this fucking house, I made that perfectly clear to her.’

He was getting angry, so he drank some of his wine, and willed himself to calm down. His daughter’s treatment of her son still rankled with him. ‘The worst thing is, Josephine, I actually thought it might make her grow up, you know? I thought it might make her realise that eventually everything has to be paid for. But I was wrong. All it did was drive her further away.’