She sat back in her chair, panic overwhelming her. He meant every word he was saying, and she didn’t know how she could stop him. He turned away from her in disgust.
At the door, he turned back to look at her, and said sadly, ‘Jessie is dead, and you don’t even seem able to fucking take that onboard. She died a death I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy and you’ve not even asked me anything about her at all. I know that you won’t even bother to go to your daughter’s fucking funeral, but you will go to the nut house this time, Josephine.’
She looked at her husband, her handsome husband, who had always stood by her no matter what, and suddenly she felt so very lonely and frightened. She had pushed him away for years. She had known that he would never have done the dirty on her – he was too decent, too nice a person. She had relied on that, she had relied on his love for her.
He was still standing there, in the doorway, watching her intently. ‘By the way, I’m burying Jessie with my mum. They were close and I want them to be together. I can’t stand the thought of our Jessie down there in the ground all alone.’ He swallowed back the tears once more. ‘There was a lot of my mum in Jessie. I realise that now.’
He walked out of the room, and she heard him walking away from her, his tread heavy as he went down the stairs. She could hear Jake’s shrieks of excitement as he was picked up and thrown in the air by his granddad. But it meant nothing to her – all she cared about was that her husband was going to walk away from her. She was finally without his protection, and it terrified her. Every time one of her doctors had recommended that she needed serious treatment, needed to be hospitalised, she had made sure that Michael replaced them. He had always tried to do whatever she wanted him to do. He had always done everything in his power to make her happy.
She put her head in her hands. She had never felt such a feeling of despair before in her whole entire life. She wouldn’t cry, though, even though she wanted to. She couldn’t, she could not let anything interfere with her make-up. She stood up quickly and, pulling out the small padded stool from underneath the dressing table, she sank down on to it. She stared at her face for long moments in the mirror, automatically checking her make-up, and she sighed with relief as she saw that it was all still in place. It was her mask. It was the fa?ade that she showed to the world. But, deep down inside, she knew that she had not faced the real world for years. She registered suddenly that her daughter was really gone. That her Jessie would never again ring her, or come to visit her son. Her Jessie, her baby girl, was dead.
She closed her eyes in distress. Michael was right. She honestly didn’t care enough about anyone; all she was really bothered about was Michael’s threat of putting her into a mental institution. She wasn’t a fucking fool. If she went into one, she knew that it would be a long time before she would ever get out again.
Chapter One Hundred
and Forty
Michael drove through the gates of the scrapyard slowly. The old boy who worked the night shift was a stickler for fucking social etiquette. Michael waved at him in a suitably friendly fashion, and he saw his gratified smile. He sighed in annoyance. He was a nice old geezer, a Face in his younger days, but that didn’t warrant all this fucking babysitting and smiles every time he drove into the yard. Declan had always said, it takes two minutes of your life to recognise a good worker, and that recognition would guarantee their loyalty for twenty years. He was absolutely right, of course. But tonight Michael wasn’t in the mood.
He parked his Range Rover next to his Mercedes and, as he got out and stood on the tarmac stretching, he was gratified to hear that whoever was in the boot of his Merc was making one hell of a racket.
Declan came out of the Portakabin doorway. He looked huge against the lights. Declan had gradually got bigger and bigger over the years, and it was only now that Michael was really noticing that.
‘Drink first?’ Declan was miming drinking a cup of tea with his little finger raised up like an old biddy.
Michael laughed despite himself. You couldn’t not like Declan Costello – the man was a genuine diamond. Even at a time like this he could bring a smile to Michael’s face.
‘Pour me a large brandy, but first up, open this fucking boot.’
Declan took the Mercedes keys from his trouser pocket, and opened the boot quickly.