Gabriella Tailor was heartbroken; they had finally buried her father, and it had been a distressing few hours. Seeing her mother, in full make-up, her head covered with a black lace mantilla and her body encased in a figure-hugging black silk sheath dress, Gabby had felt the urge to tear her apart. She had played the part of the grieving widow to perfection, and it was just that – a part she played. Her whole life was an act.

Now, back at her nana’s, Gabby wondered at parents in general. Her father’s family had not shown, but then they never really had much to do with them anyway, her mother had seen to that. Suicide was a strange thing; people seemed ashamed of it. Some would rather see their loved ones waste away with cancer, or get killed in a car. To Gabby, suicide meant her father finally bailing out on her, once and for all.

She had felt so lonely, so vulnerable in the crematorium, unused to the strange smells and subdued chatter. Quite a few people had turned out, but the majority of them were what her nana termed ‘sightseers’. People who came to tragic events out of a morbid fascination with other people’s troubles. But her heart had soared when Vincent had slipped into the back pew, and the wink he had given her had lifted her troubled spirits.

Her mother, though, had stood alone, and she had wept alone. A forlorn figure, who wasn’t fooling anyone who really knew what she was like. Not one person had acknowledged her, and that must have shown her what people really thought of her. Still, knowing her mother, Gabby supposed she probably didn’t give a shit. Why change the habits of a lifetime?

Now she had to face the truth of the situation, because a social worker, a Miss Bellamy, was telling her grandmother that her daughter, Mrs Tailor, had signed the papers to put her daughter into care. Her nana and granddad were arguing with her, but somehow she knew there was nothing they could do – not at the moment anyway. By the sounds of it, they had to go to court and get a judge to grant a temporary custody order, and then they might get their granddaughter back. It wasn’t a surprise to any of them; it was as if her mother had decided that if she couldn’t have her family then no one could have them.

Still dazed from the events of the last few weeks, Gabby didn’t have the strength to argue that she didn’t want to go. Instinctively, she knew that if she caused problems with Miss Bellamy now it would affect her in the future.