While he went and got them both a coffee and a KitKat, Donna looked surreptitiously around the visiting room. Women with children were sitting chatting to their husbands as if this was normal, and to the majority it was. They lived an ‘outside life’, their own lives. As Dolly always had. A small half-caste child of about two was running up and down between the tables, playing peek-a-boo with a huge Rastafarian, her father. He was grinning at his little girl’s antics.

As Georgio came back with the coffees he said casually, ‘That’s Big Black Joe, he murdered three men. He was a drug dealer - nice bloke actually, once you get to know him. Shot them in their house, three brothers, the McBains. Scum of the earth.’

Donna bit her lip at what Georgio was saying, and how he was saying it. He smiled at her. ‘My old mum used to say, “Show me the company you keep and I’ll tell you what you are.” I shouldn’t have told you that, Donna, I’ve shocked you.’ He smiled disarmingly at her.

‘I hate the thought of you in here, Georgio, with these people. People like him, and sex offenders. Murderers.’ She was dangerously close to tears.

Gripping her small hand hard in his he said, ‘It won’t be for long, love. I’ll be home before you can say knife.’

‘The appeal will sort everything out, won’t it, Georgio?’

He grinned again. ‘Course it will. Now, shall I tell you my news first?’

Donna nodded; she didn’t trust herself to speak just yet.

‘I’m off to the Island in the next few days. As you know, I’m Category A, so there will be a three-ring circus to take me there. Even a helicopter following the prison van. I dunno. They squander the taxpayers’ money away.’

‘Why do you need all that? It was bad enough at the trial, all those men on motorbikes and everything.’

‘It’s to make you look bad as possible.’ Georgio sipped his coffee and shrugged. ‘When the Old Bill want to send you down, they pull out all the stops. If that piece of scum Wilson hadn’t done a deal, I’d be home with you. He’s in Camp Hill on the Island, in with the nonces and the gas-meter bandits, the slag! He fitted me up, Donna. They had nothing, it was all on his hearsay. Gordon Bennett, I can’t believe the jury fell for all that old fanny. Wilson’s a lying toerag if ever there was one. I could kill him with me bare hands. I could throttle the bastard!’

Donna shook her head in distress. ‘Stop it, Georgio, stop talking like that. Swearing and carrying on. It frightens me. I don’t like it.’