But Gabby couldn’t tell her auntie that that was what was wrong with her. That was why she felt so sad. With this part of her family she felt loved and cared for, and she was always terrified that one day this would all stop.

Gabby realised then that she didn’t want to go home ever again. She was far too happy here.

Chapter Fifteen

‘You’re not taking them, Cynth, and that’s that.’

Cynthia looked at her father and sighed heavily. They all knew she had no intention of taking her children home with her. This was a game they played all too frequently; Cynthia faked a maternal interest and her parents pretended to talk her out of taking her children home with her. It was tedious, but they all saw it as a necessary evil. Cynthia could go back home content in the knowledge she had done her bit, and that her parents would be heartbroken if she removed the children from their care. It was a win-win situation as far as she was concerned.

Mary joined in the argument. ‘I’m taking Gabby to the market with me tomorrow, and then we’re going to get her fitted for her bridesmaid’s dress. So it’s not convenient really, unless you want to take her to that?’

Cynthia shook her head as if her mother had asked her to do something completely outrageous. ‘No, thanks! Like I haven’t got enough to do!’

This was another part of the pretence; that Cynthia had a busy life, that she was somehow too busy to do the usual things other women did like take her daughter for her fitting for her bridesmaid’s dress. And yet this was the woman who wouldn’t get a job if her life depended on it.

‘They’re all right here then, Mum, if you’re sure.’

Mary Callahan barely kept the sarcasm from her voice as she replied casually, ‘Oh, I’m sure, Cynth.’

Cynthia looked around the home she had grown up in, at the scuffed paintwork, and the old-fashioned wallpaper, and shuddered inwardly. How had these people spawned her? It was a question that had always baffled her, and always would. All her life she had wondered at how she had been brought up in this dump, and yet had somehow known the proper way to dress, eat and live. Her childhood had been all slapdash; it was beyond her how she had grown up so refined. She believed that somewhere, way back in the bloodline, there must have been someone just like her and, generations later, she had been the recipient of those good genes.

Cynthia looked at her daughter and saw her own beauty reflected in her face. She was a good-looking child, true, but she was too much like this lot. Happy with nothing, happy to eat crap and spend her life watching telly.