Cynthia put on her best, please-why-don’t-you-believe-me voice as she said sadly, ‘Look, James, I believed at the time I was doing it for the best. You were taking cocaine like it was going out of fashion! I was worried about you . . .’ Cynthia was still trying to prove herself a year later, but she wasn’t making any kind of inroad and they both knew it. ‘I just want what’s best for my family. I know you don’t see it that way, none of you see it that way . . .’

‘Oh, change the record, Cynth! Like you ever cared about me, or anyone come to that.’

Jimmy was fed up with her. He was already putting on his jacket, and she knew he would be out of the house having a good time while she sat here alone wishing she could be a part of it all once more. She was desperate to be a part of it, if she was really honest with herself. She needed some serious brownie points to get herself back in with the big boys.

‘I was frightened for you, James, whatever you might think . . .’

Jimmy rolled his eyes in annoyance. ‘You nearly fucked us all up. You know what you did and you also know if it wasn’t for your sister you would be dead.’

Cynthia had tried to get the sympathy vote from her husband, but it wasn’t working. In the last year she had been treated as a pariah – in fact she had hardly left the house. Watching her back had become part of her daily routine – even Celeste had given her the cold shoulder. The worst of it was she missed her sister. She actually physically missed her. Who’d have predicted that? When all was said and done, Celeste had always been there for her, and it had taken a year of being blacklisted to make Cynthia realise that.

In that year, her sister and her husband had become the local celebrities, always in the local papers, opening a new boxing gym, or attending a charity auction. They were like the poor man’s Burton and Taylor. Cynthia understood that if she had not been so vindictive, she would still have been a part of that. Would still have had some kind of a real life. She missed the social aspect of it all, missed the nights out, the reflected glory of being Celeste’s sister. If only she had understood then how lucky she had been.

To compound all that, James was doing really well. They were living better than ever before, and she knew that she was walking a thin line with him. She still didn’t understand why he had never left her – even she wouldn’t have blamed him if he had.