Mary felt plagued with anxiety nowadays, and that was not good for her heart, not good for it at all. Still, she had her tablets, and she didn’t overdo it if she could help it.

‘That girl’s not well, Mary, but she won’t admit it.’

Mary just stopped herself from berating her husband for his uncanny ability to state the bleeding obvious. Instead she said gently, ‘I know, Jack, but what can we do? Like Doctor Morgan says, if she doesn’t want to see him there’s nothing he can do about it, and neither can we.’

Jack nodded, and Mary saw that, like herself, he was getting old. They were only in their late sixties but they were both in poor health. It was their dirt over the years; smoking, drinking, but also the worry. Oh, they had had their fair share of worry all right. She wondered for the thousandth time if Celeste should be forced from the house; after all, the reason she wouldn’t go to a hospital for tests was because she wouldn’t leave the house. Even the thought of the outside world sent her into a panic. How had this happened to her family? It was a familiar refrain these days, and Mary lay all the blame with Jonny Parker and her elder daughter.

She remembered Celeste as a young girl. She had been full of life, a nice girl without big ambitions – not like her sister in that way. No, Celeste had been a decent kind of person – she still was. But she had never had the toughness needed to survive in a world peopled with the likes of Jonny Parker and Cynthia Tailor.

When she heard that Cynthia had gone back to her maiden name, Mary had wondered briefly if there was any way they could stop her from doing that. Callahan was a good, decent Irish name, and it was meant for better than the likes of Cynthia. At times she loathed her daughter so intensely she felt sure the girl must sense it, no matter how far away she was. She believed that hate could be felt, even if the person wasn’t in the room with you. She hoped her daughter felt her contempt as if it was a living thing; that was what she prayed for.