All the way home she could have kicked herself, because she knew that her mother, being her mother, would come to the party all right and it would be the fucking party’s death knell. She sighed in frustration. It was always the same – her mother had a knack of making her feel in the wrong and, consequently, she felt she had to make it up to her. Well, Gabby decided, if she turned up, she would act like she didn’t know anything about it. That was pretty much all she could do.

Then it occurred to her that her brother could turn up too, and suddenly the whole thing just seemed too complicated and troublesome. James was her brother and she loved him. At least she loved the boy he had once been. He had serious mental issues, and when he wasn’t taking his drugs he was violent. No one could have that kind of person too close to them. The thought of him near little Cherie made her blood run cold. He was so unpredictable. When he had suffered his violent bouts, the doctors had said there had been no warning, he had just snapped. And he had been like a steam train; whatever the person who’d supposedly wronged him had done, real or imagined, had made him almost murderous with his unsuppressed rage.

So why had they let him out? It made no sense. Her granddad said it was the arrogance of doctors – they believed they could tame people like James when in fact nothing could tame him. A chemical cosh only worked while the person involved was taking those chemicals. What happened if they decided to stop? Apparently James enjoyed hurting people, he liked it. So how on earth was he supposed to fit into normal society with normal people? He didn’t know how to act, or what was acceptable behaviour.

Vincent would go mad if he caused any trouble, and she had a feeling that her brother would have met his match in her Vincent. She had to stop these negative thoughts. She had her daughter back, and her Vincent was coming home too. She had to stop looking for problems where there weren’t any. The trouble was, when your whole existence had been a struggle, you started to think that was all it would ever be.

Well, her life was picking up, and she was finally getting everything she had ever wanted from it. And that was a cause for celebration.

Chapter One Hundred and Seventeen

James Tailor had been watching his mother and, even though he hated her, she still fascinated him. She was still a good-looking woman, and she still had that walk she had always had, as if she was the only person in the world of any note. Which, in her eyes, was God’s honest truth.