Cherie looked well cared for and happy and that was what really hurt Mary Callahan. Why couldn’t Cynthia have been that way with her own children? Watching how the girl put her arms up to her grandmother to be picked up, and seeing Cynthia, her daughter Cynthia, smiling at the child with genuine affection, even love, Mary knew then that Gabby was going to have a fight on her hands to get that baby back. Cynthia was besotted with the child, and she had never seen her besotted by anything or anyone before – except maybe Jonny Parker, and look at how that had turned out.

The social worker was watching the interplay with fascination; this was a mother and daughter who obviously had issues. At least contact had been established though. She felt she was reuniting this family, and was quite pleased with herself because of it. Suicide, she knew, could divide families, as had clearly been the case here, but with a little help and some counselling, who knew what might be achieved. When she said as much a few minutes later, she was amazed at the way the two women laughed as if they were never going to stop.

Chapter One Hundred and Six

‘Jesus, Jack, she’s living like a fucking queen! The place is beautiful, and I hate to say this, but little Cherie is thriving. That’s the only way I can put it – positively thriving.’

Jack Callahan listened with growing dismay. It seemed that his Mary had been right all along and, as he looked at young Gabby, he raised his eyes as if to say, well, you were warned this would happen.

Gabby swallowed back the tears that were threatening to fall. ‘Did she look all right then, me mum? Was she all right about you going round there?’

Mary laughed gently. ‘She had no choice. I had the social worker with me, and you know your mother – she could get an Oscar for her acting. I hate to say I told you so, but I did, didn’t I? She wanted that child and now she’s got her, and there ain’t a thing you can do about it.’

‘But I’m her mum!’

It was the petulant cry of a child, which, in reality, was all Gabby was. For the first time Mary Callahan wondered if Cherie might be better off where she was, but she forced that thought out of her head. Cynthia wasn’t a person you could trust in the long term, she never had been.

‘Well, all we can do is go through the proper channels and hope in the meantime that your mother gets fed up playing happy families. But I wouldn’t bank on the latter, Gabby. I can honestly say I’ve never seen her so happy. I never saw a woman so obsessed with a child in my life. She won’t let go easily.’