‘Now Wilson’s dead - topped himself in nick, so we’re led to believe . . . and Danny Simmonds and Frankie White have both copped it too. Now Donald Lewis was the man behind the blag. He knew everything about the security van down to what it would be carrying, the names of the guards - everything. The guard who got shot was in on it. I think Wilson was maybe told to waste him . . . I’m not sure of that, but it’s an idea I have. So now Georgio is the only one with access to the money. He didn’t want to rip Lewis off, he still doesn’t, but you see how strange it all looks? Wilson’s dead, the other two blaggers both murdered, and once Georgio lets on where the money is, he’s dead meat as well. It’s a big balls-up from start to finish.

‘Georgio should have kept right out of it,’ the big man concluded. ‘Just supplied the cars and nothing else. But he needed cash, his businesses were in trouble. It seemed like a good way out at the time.’

Donna sat very still, staring down at her hands. The last few months had been such a revelation to her; her whole life, it seemed, was based on lies. But not lies exactly, because Georgio had simply never told her anything.

In a way she felt that was worse. Could she really have lived with, slept with, eaten with, made love with a man she didn’t know?

She was surprised to find she was crying and felt herself being pulled into the large strong arms of Paddy. She lay against him, breathing in the smell of Capstan cigarettes and Old Spice aftershave, and she wept like a baby. This long night had been a time for revelations. First from Alan Cox, about Georgio looking after his family, and now from Paddy.

How could she never have guessed what was going on all these years?

Then a little voice inside her head said gently: Because you didn’t want to know. And somehow she knew that those few words were true.

Her mother used to say, ‘What you don’t know, can’t hurt you.’ Well, that was a lie, as big a lie as Mrs Donna Brunos had been living for twenty years.

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

‘Do you know something, Paddy? Georgio has been a bastard to me. I never thought I’d say that, but he has.’

Paddy tried to calm her. ‘Stop your crying, Donna love. Georgio did what he thought was best. This is why he never told you anything. You’d worry. You’d be scared. Can’t you see, little love, that he was protecting you?’

Donna pulled herself from the older man’s arms.