She had loved Jonny Parker once with all her heart, but she had not loved what he had become. What he had tried to be. The violence he had embraced had finally turned back on him. What goes around comes around, how many times had she heard that expression? She knew his body would turn up one day and, until then, she would live her life as quietly and as decently as humanly possible with her mum and dad. She had had enough of the so-called good life; it had never been much good to her.

From that day, Celeste Parker never left her mother’s home, not even for a few hours.

Book Three

As is the mother, so is her daughter

Ezekiel 16:44

It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what

humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do

Edmund Burke (1729–97)

Chapter Seventy-Five

1998

‘What’s the matter with you, child?’ Mary was worried about her granddaughter, she was very quiet these days, as if the light had gone out of her, and had been ever since coming out of care.

‘I’m all right, Nana, I just don’t feel that great lately.’

‘You’re not sickening for anything, are you?’

Gabby laughed at that. It was Irish for ‘Are you pregnant?’

‘Don’t worry, Nana, that’s not what’s wrong with me.’

She saw the palpable relief on her grandmother’s face and sighed inwardly. She wished she was pregnant; it would be lovely to have a baby of her own. Something to love and care for. A little person who loved you back unconditionally. Gabby craved love like other people craved water or food. It was because of her upbringing – God knows, the new social worker had told her that enough times. She grimaced at the thought of Miss Byrne; though she liked the woman, she could be hard work.

But that wasn’t what was bothering her. How could she tell her grandmother that after nearly three years her mother wanted contact again? Of all the things she had expected that had not been one of them. And Miss Byrne was all for it! She said it would give Gabby ‘closure’. What a crock of shit! What it would give her was untold aggravation, which was all her mother had ever brought to anyone in her life.