Cynthia looked down at the baby who was, to all intents and purposes, her grandchild. She had taken the call about the birth from a girl she had known at school, and with whom she had resumed a rather sketchy relationship. The girl was a drinker and she supplied a few quid in exchange for news about Cynthia’s family. Now she was at the hospital, and looking at her daughter’s little girl.

The baby was very pretty – a robust, yet delicate-featured little girl, with thick blond hair and what already promised to be strong blue eyes. Oh, she would have the Callahan eyes all right, not those insipid Tailor eyes that James Junior had inherited.

Looking through the glass of the baby unit, Cynthia Callahan felt, for the first time in her life, a stirring inside her. Try as she might to force it away, she knew she would never be able to deny it. This child affected her on a primal level. Even her own children had never made her feel this deep a connection.

The child was looking straight into her eyes as if it knew she was its grandmother. Never had she seen a child so beautiful, so utterly gorgeous. And she looked exactly like her! The child was Cynthia all over.

The strength of her emotions shocked her. It occurred to her now that this was the next generation. She had given birth to this child’s mother and, if it wasn’t for her, this child would never have even been here. That was a very powerful thought. It made her feel invincible, like Methuselah in the Bible, who had lived for nine hundred years – well, he hadn’t but his offspring had. She finally understood family, and it had taken this baby to make her see what that really meant.

Her first attempt had been lousy – she had been too young and she had had her children with the wrong man – but now, with this little one, she felt she had a chance to redeem herself, make her life mean something. She could turn this child into a good person. If she was left with her mother she would end up like her mother. A teenage unmarried mum, a fucking waster, worth nothing – nothing of value anyway. Not as far as Cynthia was concerned.

The baby was like a magnet, and she felt a pull that she had never felt before in her life. She wanted this child. And she would move heaven and earth to get it.

Chapter Ninety-Three

‘She was my sister, Mum. I have every right to be here.’