Ed and his brothers, Paulie and Ronny, had all worked for Harry at the time and an all-out war with the travellers to take control soon followed.

The O’Hara firm was run by the old man, Butch, but it was his son, Jimmy, whom Eddie despised the most. Ed still bore the scars of his tear-ups with Jimmy, but at the time he’d got his own back by putting Jimmy in hospital for a long spell. Not many moons later the O’Haras disappeared. Harry, Ed’s father, finally got rid of them by shooting Butch in the foot. Ed thought he’d seen the last of them but, unfortunately for him, he hadn’t.

It was many years later, when Ed was living in Rainham with his beautiful wife, Jessica, and their twins, Frankie and Joey, that Jimmy O’Hara reappeared. He bought a house nearby, so they became neighbours. A kind of truce was called and was sort of kept until Ed’s daughter Frankie began dating Jed, Jimmy’s youngest son. Then all hell broke loose.

The ringing of his mobile phone snapped Eddie out of his daydream. It was his fiancée, Gina, whom he’d sent away for safety reasons while he sorted things out. ‘All right, sweetheart? How’s tricks?’

‘Oh, Ed. Claire’s gone back to work today and I’m so bloody bored. I miss you so much and I swear I can look after myself, so please let me come back home. If I leave now, I could be back by teatime.’

Eddie sighed. He missed Gina dreadfully and the decision he’d made was partly because of that. ‘Listen, I’m nearly at me aunt’s now. I’ve come up with a plan that I’m gonna put to the lads and hopefully that will set the ball rolling so you can come back home. It won’t be today though, babe. Stay put for now and hopefully you’ll be home by the weekend. I have to be sure we’re all safe first, so just trust me on this one, Gina.’

Eddie and Gina continued their conversation until he pulled up outside his Auntie Joan’s gaff. When Ed’s father was alive, he’d always insisted that any important meetings should take place in a room upstairs in Joanie’s house and Ed had continued that tradition.

‘You can never trust too many eyes and ears,’ was Harry Mitchell’s motto.

Ed said goodbye to Gina, then hugged his aunt as she opened the front door. She’d been baking, as usual, and the smell of her house was always a comfort to him. Joanie had brought him up as a kid after his mum had died of TB, and she was very special to Eddie.

‘I’ve made you two plates of sandwiches and some rock cakes. Now you go on up, ’cause the boys have been waiting ages.’

Eddie took the stairs two at a time and entered what he called their office. The room hadn’t been decorated since the seventies and Ed liked it that way, as it reminded him of the good old days when his old man was still alive. A large mahogany table sat in the centre of the room, with eight mahogany chairs around it. An old-fashioned bar stood in the right-hand corner and, apart from a massive picture of Harry Mitchell, which Eddie had blown up as a tribute and had placed on the main wall, the room had little else in it.