Derek shrugged. ‘Truth is, Mr Parker, fifteen years behind the door takes its toll on a man but, all in all, he’s doing OK. He’s happy enough with his lot, swallowed his knob, can’t do anything else, can he? We all visit. Me mum’s waited, bless her heart. She spent the best years of her life travelling all over the fucking country. But she’s a good old bird, and she deserves to see him home at some point. Brief reckons another two, three years, he’ll be back in the bosom of his family.’

‘Fucking harsh the sentences handed down. Fucking rapist would have been out now.’

‘At least then he would have had a unit where he could wander about and watch telly in his cell. Fucking nonces and their VPUs. Vulnerable Prisoners Units – have you ever heard the fucking like? ’Course they’re vulnerable, who wouldn’t want to kick their fucking heads in?’

They both nodded, pondering the futility of a legal system that protected the scum of society, and locked away men like Derek’s father for the duration. It was a fucking melon scratcher all right.

Chapter Fifty

‘Go away, you weirdo.’

Cynthia Tailor rolled her eyes at the ceiling as she bellowed, ‘Stop calling your brother a weirdo!’

Gabby grinned. ‘But he is, Mum. Even his shrink thinks so.’

Cynthia wanted to laugh then; Gabriella was funny when she wanted to be.

James Junior looked around the table at his family silently. He was a large lad, and he had the look of his father’s family. Staring at his sister, he smiled sneakily. ‘How’s Vincent O’Casey, Gabby?’

Cynthia looked at her son in shock, and he laughed at her as he said, ‘Didn’t you know, Mum? It’s the romance of the century by all accounts.’

Cynthia looked at this son of hers that she was finding it increasingly difficult to like and said coldly, ‘Not Bridie O’Casey’s Vincent?’

Gabby thought she was going to faint with fright at her mother’s words, and her eyes pleaded with her brother to not do this.

He grinned nastily as he said loudly, ‘The very same.’

Gabby was out of her chair in a second, screaming at her brother, ‘You cat-killing ponce! You rotten little bugger!’

Cynthia looked at her two children and wondered which one to slap first. Her instincts won and she knocked her son off his chair with a sideswipe. ‘Get out of my sight, you.’ Then, when he had scrambled up off the floor and fled the scene of his crime, she turned to her daughter and said quietly, ‘Is this true?’

Gabby knew it was pointless denying it, and so she nodded her head slowly.