She watched the man before her, his blond hair tousled from sleep, his broad shoulders held back as if warding off a blow, his deep blue eyes with the perfectly placed laughter lines around them, and felt the pull of him. Never before had she wanted anyone so badly.

‘We can still be friends, Lally, only I want us to be proper friends who ring each other before they drop in, who don’t just land on each other’s doorsteps.’

She nodded. He had never rung her, not once. He had never dropped in to see her ever. He was trying to save her dignity and it hurt her more knowing that.

He pulled her into his arms, contrite now because he had wounded her, but sure enough of himself to know she had finally got the message. He could be the big man now, could comfort her.

‘I’m sorry, Lally, you’re wasting your time on me. No woman will ever share my bed or my life again. If any woman was going to, it would have been you, I swear. I just don’t ever want all that again.’

Lally pushed her body into his, feeling the strength of him, smelling his particular odour.

‘I understand, Alan, I won’t ever do anything like this again. I’ll still see you though won’t I?’

He smiled down into her eyes. ‘Course you will.’

But they both knew he was lying.

An hour later there was no trace of Lally in the flat, and Alan was on the telephone organising his day. He was excited about what Georgio had asked him to do. He had been too long away from the stimulus of the criminal world. Alan was actually enjoying himself.

Donna woke at one o’clock. She lay on the bed, her eyes heavy, her limbs weighted with tiredness. As she sat up she saw herself in a mirror and frowned. Her hair had dried all over the place. Pulling herself from the bed, she went into the shower once more.

She felt lighter as the water hit her in hot jets. The last of the sleep left her body and life tingled back into her muscles.

At two-thirty she was walking downstairs, dressed, made-up and immaculate. As she entered the kitchen Dolly sat at the table shelling peas. She smiled at Donna.

‘Have a good sleep?’

Donna smiled back. ‘I take it you knew about Paddy keeping guard on the house, Dolly?’

Dolly had the grace to look ashamed.

‘It’s funny, you know, but you keeping this from me hurts more than anything that Georgio or anyone else could do to me. Because I really thought we had a deep friendship, a mother and daughter relationship even. It seems I was wrong.’