He drove into Portaby Road and scanned the kerb looking for Mandy. She was nowhere to be seen. He had arranged to meet her here because it was quiet, and there would not be much chance of anyone who knew her father seeing her standing around waiting. If Patrick Kelly knew that his daughter did not really have the use of her own car he would go mad. He had bought her a car every year since she had passed her test at seventeen. Always a brand new car and always a very expensive one. Kevin knew for a fact that this Mercedes had cost well over forty thousand pounds. That was why he loved driving it. He loved the feel of being in something that was pure class. He turned around at the bottom of Portaby Road and began to drive back up it slowly. Mandy was definitely not here.

Kevin gripped the steering wheel tightly. That meant only one thing: she had gone home without him and without her car. He felt his heart sink as he began to drive to the outskirts of Grantley where Patrick Kelly lived with Mandy in a large rambling house.

Kelly would be furious. Though Kevin would never admit it outright to her or to anyone else for that matter, he admitted it to himself: Patrick Kelly frightened him out of his skin. He frightened anyone who had even half a brain.

Kevin drove slowly. All the excitement he usually felt at driving the car was gone now. It had been replaced by fear.

Bugger that bloody Mandy! Why didn’t she just wait like he’d told her?

Patrick Kelly poured himself a brandy in a large snifter and sat back in his chair. He looked at his new girlfriend Tiffany and hid the glimmer of annoyance that swept through his features as he watched her, watching herself, in the full-length mirror opposite her chair.

Tiffany was nineteen, three years younger than his daughter, and she was built like Jayne Mansfield. Kelly liked his women voluptuous. He allowed himself a slight smile. Tiffany would not even know who Jayne Mansfield was. She was what he commonly termed as thick as two short planks. But that was all right because he didn’t particularly want to talk to her. Just go to bed with her.

The large Christmas tree in the corner twinkled with lights and he glanced at it for a few seconds, then his eyes strayed once more to the photograph of his late wife, Renée, on the mantelpiece. Suddenly he was engulfed in sadness. He shrugged silently inside his Armani suit. A memory of another Christmas came to his mind, he could see Renée holding Mandy in her arms in their little bedsit, the bathroom was full of steam and the smell of camphor. Mandy, just turned one, had croup and both he and Renée had sat in the damp little bathroom all night with her.