This was the worst bit about being in prison; the world outside carried on, and there was nothing you could do about that. When things went wrong, like this trouble with Gabby, he couldn’t help because he was stuck in here. Being helpless to do anything for the people he loved was worse than anything else he could think of.

Chapter One Hundred and One

‘Look, Cherie, look at the pictures with Mummy.’

But Cherie wanted to get off her mother’s lap, and sit with her nanny. Cynthia was holding a drink of apple juice, which she knew was Cherie’s favourite treat at the moment. She picked up the child and sat her on her knee smiling at her daughter’s crestfallen countenance.

‘Listen to me, Gabriella – kids are amoral. They go to whoever feeds them. It’s nothing personal, darling.’

Gabby smiled but her heart wasn’t in it.

‘I’ll have to get her ready soon, love. She goes to a playgroup a few hours a day now, three times a week. She’s making friends, bless her heart. While she’s there, I nip up the shops, or go to the gym. I love her, darling, but she’s a handful.’

Gabby felt she was being dismissed; she knew her mother was telling her she had better go soon. She made her feel as if she was holding the pair of them up somehow, was in the way. In fact, she realised that her mother had not even offered her a cup of coffee. She had only been there twenty minutes, if that, and she was already being asked, albeit politely, to leave.

‘I can wait at the playgroup with her . . .’

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea, Gabs, and, to be honest, I think you unsettle her. She has got into a routine, and Miss Byrne thinks she needs more structure in her life. Plus, I’ve arranged for her to go to tea with one of the little girls there. Dear little thing too, though not a patch on our Cherie!’

Gabby tried another tack. ‘But I’m taking her to visit Vincent tomorrow – he’ll expect to see her.’

Cynthia grinned then, and it was the old Cynthia for a few moments. ‘Well, not a lot he can do about that, girl, is there? He should have thought of that before he got himself banged up.’

‘But he wants to see her.’

‘Well, then, in that case, he’ll know what it’s like to want, won’t he? I promised Miss Byrne that I would do whatever is right for this baby and, at the moment, I don’t think you should be around her. Not until you’ve sorted yourself out. Drug addicts are—’

Gabby interjected, shocked at her mother’s choice of words, ‘Drug addict! I ain’t a fucking drug addict . . .’