Jill watched her daughter with proud exasperation. Belle was a spectacular child in every way. Super-bright and pretty. Milly, who had quickly become Belle’s little playmate, was running right there alongside her, laughing and yelling encouragement. Milly – and this was surprising, given that she had come from the loins of Charlie Stone – was a sweet little thing, much quieter than Belle, no trouble at all. Jill watched as Belle screeched to a halt and let Milly clamber into the driver’s seat; then she pushed her little friend along to pick up speed.

Terry took a sip of coffee. ‘Nothing’s wrong,’ he said to his wife.

‘Look, Daddy, look!’ shouted Belle as both girls went shooting past their eyeline once again.

‘That’s great, darlin’,’ said Terry absently to his daughter.

Jill looked at him, her big handsome husband. So solid, so dependable. Their rise through poverty to comfort to luxury had been almost too fast for any proper adjustment to be made. For quite a while she had felt that Terry was growing uneasy. Well, damn it. She was too. She was still a poor kid at heart, just like Terry was. They had risen on the tail of Charlie Stone’s bright comet, shooting heavenwards in his wake. It made Jill nervous.

For a long while, she’d been ignoring the hidden business that Charlie Stone had dragged them all into. But when Terry had started talking about security measures – passwords, codes for hide and codes for run – her nerves had turned to real fear. She knew that under the cover of importing parts and manufacturing furniture for big retailers, Charlie Stone was feeding a nation’s appetite for drugs and making a fat profit doing it. But now they were in the thick of it all, she found it worrying. Shocking. And she’d had another shock, a terrible one, that she had never even told Terry about.

She couldn’t tell him.

God, what had they all come to?

They were profiting from a sick, horrible trade that caused misery and poverty and death. She doubted she’d ever get used to it. Come what may, she was determined that Belle was never, ever going to know about it, never going to be touched by it. Never. And Terry agreed with that. Their innocent daughter would stay that way: innocent. Untouched by all this filth. She knew that Nula and Charlie felt the same way about Milly. The girls would be kept out of it all; they would be protected.

‘What’s up with you?’ Jill asked him. ‘Come on, babes, talk to me.’

Terry’s eyes flickered upward and met his wife’s enquiring gaze.

‘It’s nothing,’ he said.

‘Well it’s something. You’re not right.’

‘Nula,’ he said with a shrug. ‘She came on to me when I was in the garage. It’s been playing on my mind.’

Jill’s mouth dropped open. ‘She did what?’