Cherie didn’t answer, she was waiting to see what occurred between her mummy and her nanny first. She knew they didn’t like one another. It worried her sometimes, but at other times it worked in her favour; it meant they vied with each other to give her what she wanted.

Gabby changed the subject. ‘Your daddy will be home in a few weeks.’

Cherie brightened up then. She loved her daddy, and she truly believed that he was training to be a fighter pilot. Like a lot of kids she had been told that story, it explained away the uniforms everywhere on the visits. Cherie opened her mouth but, after a dark look from her nanny, she shut it again.

‘The three of us will be together all the time then, and you can stay at Nanny’s at weekends, sometimes.’

Stick that one up your arse, Mother, and smoke it.

Gabby knew that Vince was determined to get them back on track, and he had been a diamond. He had given Derek Greene a tug, and money had miraculously appeared every week, as had a nice council flat and new furniture. She was now established as a blagger’s wife, and she was treated as one by everybody. It was amazing what the friendship of Greene and Warner could do for a body, and she was grateful for their help. She knew it bothered her mother as well, and she knew why it bothered her so much. But, as Vince said, he had earned his keep, he’d kept his trap shut and taken the fall for everyone. They owed him.

He was a very different Vincent these days; he was a man now, a big, handsome man and, like her, he had grown up quickly. She knew her mother would get the shock of her life when he came home, and she couldn’t wait. He would put her well and truly in her place, and she wanted to be there when he did it.

The social workers were still hanging round like a bad smell, and she had heard through the grapevine that her mother told them exaggerated stories about Gabby’s wild ways, and how she was still worried that her daughter was too immature to take care of Cherie on a regular basis. But Gabby was biding her time – she knew that fighting this woman was pointless. She knew the social workers wondered where all her money really came from, but they could go and fuck themselves; she was cleaner than a whistle. All she claimed was her Family Allowance and the minimum of benefits – that was it. But the drug conviction which, thanks to a good brief, had got her probation and one hundred and twenty hours community service, was still being held over her head like the sword of Damocles.