That Jimmy could have fathered a child so devoid of love, so devoid of care bothered him. In his heart of hearts he feared that while the boy may resemble him physically, the personality of his mother had come to the fore. The fact that Cynthia didn’t think that the event was in any way catastrophic, really brought home to Jimmy just what he had tied himself to. Like Cynthia, James Junior looked as if butter wouldn’t melt, whereas inside him was a seething cauldron of hate and viciousness. The school had regaled him with his son’s other sins which had all come out after the affair with the cat had become public knowledge; from bullying to stealing, it seemed his James was capable of anything. No wonder he didn’t have any real friends.

As he sat in the psychiatrist’s waiting room, Jimmy looked at his son properly. He was reading a comic – always a comic never a book – and he looked unfussed about his surroundings and the reason why he was even here.

Most people here at the clinic looked like throwbacks from the sixties, all long hair and abundant moustaches. The rest were the opposite, well-tailored clothes and iron-grey hair, their countenances unreadable and their eyes cold and appraising. Not the most auspicious beginnings for the saving of this son of his.

A young girl sat opposite them. She looked to be about fourteen, with dyed hair and make-up. She smiled at him as he caught her eye and said, as if in answer to a question, ‘I’m old enough to come on me own. Anyway, me mum’s never up in time.’ She shrugged as if this was a normal, everyday conversation.

Jimmy looked at her, wondering how the hell he had ended up in a place like this. He had been brought up in a nice home by nice people, and he had been happy in his job – the job which had displeased Cynthia because it had not provided enough for her and what she wanted from life. When she had chosen him – and he made no bones about it, she had set her cap at him and she had got him – he had envisaged a lovely life like his own parents had, a nice, secure kind of life. Holidays every year, and a couple of nice, normal kids.

Instead, he had become a criminal. He had been sucked into a world he would never understand although, in fairness, he sometimes quite liked. It was glamorous at times and it was lucrative. Once Cynthia had realised he would never run the company he worked for the rot had set in, and she was not a woman to compromise from what she wanted.