Leah was a credit to her and Melissa was immeasurably proud of her daughter, even though she wasn’t sure how much of Leah’s success was actually down to her skills as a mother. Leah was old enough now to leave school if she wanted to, but she’d stayed on and was taking her A-levels. To be fair, this had been Leah’s own decision. If it had been up to Melissa, Leah would have left at sixteen and got a job, like she’d done, but Leah had been determined to stay. Melissa struggled to understand her daughter’s attitude. She could see absolutely no point in battling on at school a minute longer than you had to, but Leah saw things differently. In fact, now Melissa came to think about it, many of the great things about Leah – that she wasn’t on drugs, didn’t have a baby or two in tow and was still living safely at home – were mainly down to Leah herself. They broke the mould when they made her, that was for sure.

Melissa felt her throat thickening as she thought about the strong-minded, independent young woman that her daughter was becoming. Her pride was always tempered by the fear that Leah would soon be leaving Whitley Bay with barely a backward glance to go and make her own way in the world. Maybe it had been a mistake to have only one child? If there had been others still growing up at home, then perhaps Melissa wouldn’t have had this terrible premonition that she was about to become redundant.

But then who was she trying to kid? There was no way that Melissa could have coped with any more children. She’d been totally overwhelmed by the one she’d had, mainly because she’d done most of the work herself. Despite Ray’s promises that he would be at home more, that he’d be able to pick and choose his jobs as he became more senior, things had never turned out that way. If anything, she and Leah had seen less of him as his work became more and more demanding. The pride that she’d felt at Ray being the best bodyguard on the books had waned a little over the years, and they argued about it more and more often. Just this last year he hadn’t been at home for her birthday in May. It wasn’t the first birthday he’d missed (and he wasn’t always around for Leah’s, either) but this time something in Melissa had snapped.

‘I thought we could go out for dinner on Monday,’ she had suggested as they washed up after tea.

It was a test, of course, to see if he had remembered. He had. He was good with anniversaries and birthdays.

‘Your birthday,’ he replied. ‘That’s a nice idea. Bit of a difficult day for restaurants, though, Monday. Where were you thinking?’