Shannon Mulligan took a long, deep drag of her roll-up. Her hands shook, and her lip trembled as she picked off some strands of tobacco from the corner of her mouth. She was angry and not just a little bit angry. The other thing that Shannon found herself feeling was sad, something she rarely let herself be or rather something the crack cocaine stopped her feeling.

She sighed, trying to fight back the tears as she stubbed out her cigarette on the wall, making her way back up the stairs to the sauna she now found herself working in.

None of it had worked out like she’d thought it would. Not that she’d really thought about it at all. Not at first. It had all happened so quickly. When she’d taken the baby, she hadn’t imagined Ma would cut her out completely. Stupidly, she thought that Ma would be pleased with her. Kind to her. Proud of her even. Though that was the problem – she should’ve known what Ma was like, but for one crazy minute she’d convinced herself that her aunt would suddenly start to care.

Where she’d got that idea from, she didn’t know. Her whole childhood with Ma had been spent either avoiding getting a beating or lying on her back earning her keep. Perhaps, it was because it’d felt nice, really nice when Alfie and Vaughn had been kind to her and she hadn’t wanted that feeling of being cared for to disappear. But not only had Ma refused to tell her exactly what was going on with Mia, but her aunt had screamed at her when she’d asked to stay the night, refusing to even lend her ten pounds to get something to eat.

She’d had nowhere to go so she’d decided to go back to Charlie’s, thinking that everything was back to normal and he’d forgiven her for staying away, but the moment she’d walked in, Charlie had pounced on her, giving her a black eye.

She’d fought back and had been lucky to catch Charlie in the stomach, managing to get away before he did her some serious damage. But now she knew that unless she wanted Charlie to put her in the ground, there was no way on earth she could go back to him.