Jonny was looking at her in utter amazement now. ‘What the fuck are you on about, you silly bitch? Glad it’s come out! Are you off your fucking trolley? If you were the only woman left in the world, I wouldn’t have you now. Can’t you see what we’ve done? What we’ve caused? I love Celeste, I always will. I couldn’t love you . . . No one could. Face it, Cynth, you’re a lot of things, girl, but lovable ain’t one of them.’ He looked at the woman who had been like an itch to him for so long, and was pleased to see that it was one itch that had well and truly been scratched raw. ‘I need to find Jimmy, and make sure he doesn’t do what your father suggested. But first I need to see my wife, and try and repair some of the damage I’ve done to her.’ He looked at Gabby. ‘Look after your mum . . .’

Gabby laughed, and she looked years older than fourteen as she said, ‘You look after her. As far as I’m concerned me granddad has the right idea, she’s dead to me and all.’

She left the house, and ran to catch up with her granddad who, putting his arm around her, said sadly, ‘I shouldn’t have left you there, Gabby; I’m not thinking right tonight.’

She slipped her hand into his, and together they walked back to her nana’s in silence.

Chapter Fifty-Eight

‘Did you know about all this, Mum?’

Mary Callahan looked at this lovely daughter of hers and decided that only the truth would suffice now. ‘Everyone knew, I think. But how could we interfere, lovie? I kept hoping it would burn itself out . . .’

Celeste nodded; inside her brain somewhere she realised she had known too – not about Cynthia, but she had always known there was someone else. Jonny wasn’t a man to go without anything he wanted, it was what had attracted her to him and, if it hadn’t been for that night when Kevin Bryant had come gunning for her, she knew instinctively that none of this with Cynthia would ever have happened. That night had changed them all somehow, her more than any of them. For Cynthia it had been her re-entry into the world she loved, the world Celeste had only ever really tolerated. But she had loved her sister so much, had felt so grateful to her, and all the while she had been sleeping with her husband.

Celeste felt the bile rising up inside her, wondering how many times he had slipped into their bed and held her, when earlier he had been holding her sister. Touching Cynthia, tasting her. It was sickening. She was actually heaving now, and her mother led her into the toilet, and held her daughter’s head as she brought up everything she had eaten and drunk over the last twenty-four hours.