‘Fuck’s sake, you didn’t tell me he had kids,’ she said, horrified. Her poor mum.

‘Two of them.’

Angel jumped down off the wall. ‘I want to know where they live. I want you to show me.’

‘All right. Saturday. I’ll meet you at King’s Cross, we’ll take the Tube. I ain’t lying, Angel. Honest.’

The road Tommy took her to on Saturday was a nice one, lined with Thirties-style houses, all detached and with neat front gardens. Outside one, Uncle Donny’s car, a brown Vauxhall Viva, was parked. Angel and Tommy loitered a little way down the road.

‘That’s his car,’ said Angel, feeling sick with nerves.

‘Now what?’ said Tommy when they’d stood there for several minutes.

‘I want to see him come out of that door,’ said Angel stubbornly. Her heart ached for her mum. Uncle Donny was using her. She was his ‘bit on the side’. Here was where his real family lived, the people he truly valued.

‘Oh fuck. All right then,’ Tommy sighed.

But what they saw was not Donny coming out of the house door. Instead, after nearly an hour of waiting, it was a neatly dressed dark-haired woman who emerged. She was very petite, with a girl of about five. The woman held a shopping bag and had a confident, prosperous air about her. She walked off along the road in the opposite direction to where Angel and Tommy stood, the girl skipping alongside her, holding her hand.

‘That’s the wife.’

‘You said two kids.’

‘The boy must be inside, with your “Uncle” Donny.’

Tommy’s voice was loaded with sarcasm. Angel chose to ignore that. Her mind was in turmoil. Her mother was a mistress. A fallen woman, tucked away out of sight in a cheap flat in a rotten part of town, while his wife, his actual wife, lived comfortably and respectably here.

Angel felt herself shrivel with shame as it hit home.

She’d doubted Tommy’s word, but now she could see that it was all true.

81

Angel hardened toward Uncle Donny after that. Yes, he bought her stuff and sometimes even made a fuss of her, but he was a bastard. He’d lied to Mum, he was cruel to her, and Dora was clearly afraid of him. All the nice material and sewing machines in the world couldn’t make up for that.

Angel couldn’t help herself. She had to keep on going back to that house, his proper house that he shared with his real wife and kids. It fascinated and disgusted her at the same time. Most times she went alone; Tommy got bored and restless if he went with her. Sometimes, she even caught a glimpse of Uncle Donny and his little boy coming out of the front door and getting into the Vauxhall Viva. The boy was dark-haired like his father and had a prosperous, cared-for look about him, the same look his sister and mother had.

The look Angel and Dora didn’t have.

Dora was a mess – a mottle-faced drunk, at once fearful and oddly worshipful of the man who ruled her and her daughter’s lives. Angel was skinny, skipping school dinners and rarely being fed properly at home. While these people – his family – had everything, Angel and Dora had nothing except that rotten flat in the roughest part of town and whatever crumbs they could beg off him.