Donna wouldn’t do the dirty on him, Sadie was right in that respect. After all those years of being his wife she wouldn’t turn on him now. He had prison paranoia, that’s all. All the men went through it at some time. It was the pressure getting to him. If he could have done his time without Lewis hanging around his neck, he would have been all right. But all the stress had got to him.

Anyway, he concluded, she wouldn’t dare do it to him. Not Donna. She wouldn’t have the guts. He’d run around on her all through their married life and she hadn’t even had the guts to question it. Knowing in her heart of hearts he would have given her the answer she didn’t want to hear. In reality, he mused, he should have unloaded her years before for someone more like himself. But he didn’t want to be lumbered with a Carol Jackson, and the life he had lived would have guaranteed someone like her. A decent woman wouldn’t have anything to do with him, not unless she was ruthless, and decency and ruthlessness did not go hand in hand.

He liked the way Donna lived her life. She was quiet, contained, and loyal. Too loyal really. Over the years he had despised her in some ways for her easy acceptance of what he could do to her. She allowed him anything to keep him, and Georgio knew that being the kind of person he was, he couldn’t, wouldn’t plump for a life like that any longer. Maybe if they’d had children he might have felt different. But he could have children, he knew that for a fact. He smiled into the darkness.

If only Donna knew what had really transpired over the years, she would faint. She was a brick though. What she was doing went against the grain with her, and he knew that. In effect he was using her, but he preferred to look on it as payment for all the easy years she’d had, spending his money and living her luxurious lifestyle. He knew she loved him, and the knowledge pleased him. He loved Donna, but he had not been in love with her for years. Not since the boy died. Something had died inside him, too, that night. She had failed him, as she had since the day he married her. She had refused him sex beforehand, and eventually he had married her for it. And the sex wasn’t worth it, not really.

Yet he had cherished her, outwardly anyway. Donna never really knew the extent of his feelings for her but he had known hers. They enveloped him as he walked into a room with her. Sometimes the feeling had been like a balm to his spirit; at other times like a suffocating blanket. But she had class, he couldn’t take that away from her. He knew men looked at her, wanted her, and he enjoyed the knowledge.