‘I need to do something,’ she told him. ‘The house is so big, so empty without you. Before all this, I knew you were coming home, and I kept your home for you - not me. Now I feel like I’m in prison - a different kind of prison perhaps, but a prison just the same. I walk around the house, touching things. Dolly keeps the place like an operating theatre it’s so clean. I do a bit of gardening, maybe read a magazine or a book. I go to bed at nine, accompanied by a sleeping tablet and a glass of scotch. Is that what you want for me, Georgio? I’ll die slowly of boredom, worry and regret. For the first time in twenty years I’m on my own, really on my own, and I don’t like it. I hate it! But it’s how things are. Once you come home, we’ll get back on our old footing, but now I want to work. I think it would probably be the best thing for both of us.’

He nodded. ‘I’m sorry, girl, I open me mouth without putting my brain in gear. You do what you have to. In fact, once you get a bit more involved I’ll probably be glad. If I can’t trust you, then who can I trust?’

Donna smiled. She had a feeling she had won something. Just what, she wasn’t sure. All she knew was that her husband’s attitude had cut her to the quick. And another thing she’d realised was that she had power now. Power over Georgio. For the first time ever she was more or less her own woman. Even though the way it had come about hurt her deeply, another little part of her was secretly pleased. She would become expert at running the businesses if that’s what it took to get that look on his face once more. For the first time in years she had surprised him, he had really taken notice of her. He pampered her, petted her, but very rarely took a deep interest in her. Now he was looking at her with surprise, a grudging respect lighting up his deep brown eyes.

That alone was heady stuff.

Maeve drove into the driveway and screeched to a halt. She looked at the imposing residence belonging to her eldest son and sighed. Nearly a million the house was worth, though Georgio had had it built for next to nothing ten years before. Unlike most new houses, it had been constructed with character. A brick-built mock Georgian mansion, it sported a tennis court and swimming pool in the three-acre grounds. The house had six bedrooms, three bathrooms and a self-contained granny flat where Dolly lived. The conservatory on the back was fifty feet by twenty. That alone had cost more than her place in Canning Town.