The sight of Vincent O’Casey in handcuffs angered her; he was bringing this lovely child’s funeral down to the level of his family. They were there as well, though standing apart from everyone else, all looking like rejects from The Jeremy Kyle Show. They were just using the boy’s death to worm their way back into Vincent’s good books. She could easily walk over there and fell each and every one of them, punch and kick them to make them leave this place that was not supposed to be soiled by the likes of them. But she would leave that to Vincent; his opinion of his family was just about the only thing they could agree on. The irony was not lost on her.

Cherie was holding her hand tightly and, even though she knew she should make the child go to her mother and father, her innate cunning told her to keep her there. People would see that the child preferred her and that was the main thing. She had made a terrible mistake with little Vince, and she had paid dearly, but it had just made her all the more determined not to let this little one go from her. Without Cherie she had nothing, and that was wrong; after all, Gabriella could have more kids. She should have looked after the children she already had, not succumbed to her depressions and her pills. She was not fit to look after a child as intelligent and special as Cherie. She was wholly Cynthia’s child, and that, she was determined, was never going to change.

Chapter One Hundred and Fifty

As Vincent listened to his Gabby sobbing, watched that piece of shite Cynthia keeping his daughter by her side, and saw poor old Jack Callahan aged and broken, he swore there and then that this was all going to change.

He had caught Cherie’s eye and she had looked away, then up at her nanny Cynthia, as if asking permission to go to him. He allowed for the fact he was in handcuffs, but it wasn’t as if she didn’t know he was banged up – she had been to visit him. He knew it was Cynthia who had poisoned her, but he also accepted that Cynthia, whatever she was or she wasn’t, had been there for the kids when poor Gabby couldn’t be. He blamed himself for that; he had left her twice on her Jack Jones, twice holding the baby, literally.