Declan lay there in Samantha Harker’s bed, wishing with all his might that he was anywhere else in the world. He could hear Samantha in the kitchen, chatting away to her little girl, pretending that everything was fine, but beneath the love he could hear in her voice for her child, there was a deep abiding sadness.

Declan Costello had never felt so guilty about anything in his whole entire life.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Two

Carmel Costello watched her two daughters with growing irritation. They argued constantly with each other and with her. They treated her like she was no more than a servant. Assumpta, the eldest, had become her nemesis; she would argue that black was white if it meant going against her own mother. Gabriella, too, would gladly pick a fight with her own fingernails – she was as spoilt as her older sister, and even more inclined to argue just for the sheer hell of it.

Patrick always tried to insinuate that they took after her! As far as she was concerned, they were their father’s daughters. They were completely spoilt – they had never once had to do anything for themselves, and they never were going to do anything for themselves. She had given them everything they had wanted, and they repaid her by demanding that she give them even more. To be fair, she had used them to make Patrick do whatever she had wanted him to do. The girls had been her bargaining chips, her way of making him toe the line, and he had done everything she had asked of him.

Now the girls were completely out of her control. They were both without a conscience, without any moral compasses whatever. They were as spoilt as she was but, unlike her, they didn’t have the brain capacity to understand that it took more than a temper tantrum to get what they wanted from a man like their father.

Patrick was disappointed in the girls and she was as disappointed in them as he was. The girls’ education had cost a small fortune, and they didn’t have a single qualification between them. She had been so sure that they would both be achievers, would both make their parents proud of them. It had never occurred to her that they would end up no better than if they had been brought up on a council estate. She had assumed the fact they went to a very expensive private school would have at least guaranteed them a place in society, would have given them something that could have helped them to get on in life. But it had been a waste of time and a waste of money.