Celeste smiled through her tears. ‘No, you won’t. When I go it will be a relief for you all, but not as much as it will be for me. My life was a waste, don’t let that be your life. Promise me, darling, you’ll make your life mean something.’

‘I’ll try, Auntie, I’ll try.’

But even as she said it her heart and her waters were breaking.

Chapter Ninety

Vincent O’Casey was tired out. He had been in the gym all morning and then cooked all afternoon. One good thing about Parkhurst – on the SSB unit at least you weren’t on constant lock up. It was still hard though. Knowing that Gabby was due at any moment, he was like a cat on a hot tin roof. All the other lags were chafing him, but he took it in a good-natured way. The fact that he had not named names had gone a long way to making his stay in nick quite easy. It wasn’t ideal, but it was bearable, and Derek Greene had made sure of that, as had Bertie Warner. The Manchester boys treated him like some kind of mascot, and he appreciated it – it showed him that what he was enduring was not for nothing. The hardest thing to bear was that his little baby would be born without him, and he knew his Gabby needed him. She had no one really, except her old grandparents and they were fucking ancient. Nice people, but not exactly in the first flush of youth.

It was pointless dwelling on it now. The first thing he had learned was that the outside world was something you had no control over, therefore you must not let it do your head in. He knew better now than to let his thoughts wander too far from the normal. But with his Gabby on the verge of giving birth to his first child, a child he would not see until visiting day, it was getting harder and harder to pretend it was happening to someone else.

He consoled himself with the thought that he had not dropped anyone in it, that he could hold his head up. But it still didn’t make up for being banged up in here while his girl was alone and pregnant on the outside.

As he was walking back to his cell, a screw called his name and number. He stood to attention as was required and the screw, one of the few who was a nice enough geezer, said to him happily, ‘You got a daughter, lad – eight pounds nine ounces. Congratulations!’

‘A girl? Oh my God, I got a fucking daughter!’ Vincent was jumping up and down, his face a picture of happiness, his voice louder than it had ever been before.