When he had been a little kid she had seemed almost omnipotent, but now, watching her, he realised she was nothing really, nothing to be scared of anyway. In fact, he thought she was quite sad these days. Ageing, which he knew would be killing her. Having seen how beautiful Gabby had become, he knew that would be like a knife in her ribs, and that pleased him. He hated her with a vengeance, even while he loved her.

He felt that disconnection with the world once more; it was the best feeling in the world to him. His trouble had always been that he cared too much. Things made him angry, really angry, and that anger all but consumed him. It was like a storm that raged in his blood, and the only way to settle it down was through a bout of violence.

But he knew his anger had been the cause of him being locked away, so he had to try and control it. The heroin helped him enormously, and he was glad he had found something to dampen down those angry feelings. It couldn’t quieten the voices completely, but it did calm them sometimes. He had stopped taking his medication, as it had interfered with his enjoyment of the drugs he injected into his body.

Watching his mother had become his hobby. The psychiatrist said he needed something to concentrate his mind on, and he was concentrating on her all right. He was watching her every move, and he found it enjoyable. He liked that he was spying on her and she didn’t know he was there.

His dad had killed himself over her, which was sad because she really wasn’t worth it. She was the shit on his shoes; his father had been worth fifty of her. She certainly wasn’t worth dying for, but then his dad had never really understood just what he had lumbered himself with. But James could have explained – he understood it all now.

The psychiatrist had once asked him to describe his feelings for his mother, and he had thought about the question for a while before answering honestly that she was ‘toxic’. She was like Agent Orange – it sounded quite nice but was full of hidden dangers, and it destroyed everything it touched. Just like Cynthia Tailor. Just like him. That was the one thing he had inherited from her; the urge to destroy things, destroy people.

Now it looked as if she was after Gabby’s little girl, and that was something he could not allow to happen. Gabby was the only person he even remotely cared about; unlike the rest of his so-called family, she had always kept in touch with him, dropping him a line to tell him about herself and her life. Telling him everything he needed to know.