The Faithless - Martina Cole [105]
Cynthia was not going to take no for an answer. ‘When was the last time you were a young girl, eh? When was the last time you got your gladrags on and had a night out with your mates? Had a few drinks, let your hair down? It’s not good for you being stuck in with a baby all the time, even one as lovely as our Cherie. We’ll be here waiting for you.’ She smiled at the baby in her arms. ‘Won’t we, darling? We’ll wait for mummy, won’t we? How’s that mate of yours, the one I always thought was a bad influence?’
‘Christine Carter? Oh, she’s still around, pops in to see me sometimes. Now she is always out somewhere!’
Cynthia laughed with her daughter. She knew exactly what Christine Carter got up to – she was a byword for whoring and drug-taking, by all accounts.
‘You should ring her, go out with her. You’re not a kid any more, are you? I bet she’ll show you a good time!’
‘I could I suppose, she does love a night out. But Vince . . .’
‘Vince is in the nick, love, and I’m sure that if he had the chance of a night out he would take it without a second’s thought for you or anyone. Blokes are like that, love. Anyway, you’re not married to him and, while he’s away, why should you be locked up too? He should have thought of that, love; if you want my opinion, I think you deserve a night out.’
Cherie gave one of her big gummy grins and the matter was sealed.
A little later on, Cynthia handed her daughter fifty pounds in cash. ‘Have a good night, sweetheart, and don’t worry about little Cherie – she’ll be safe as houses.’
Gabby hugged her mother then, overwhelmed by her generosity and, when her mother hugged her back, she felt as if she had won the rollover on the lottery.
Chapter Ninety-Seven
‘Where the hell have you been?’
Mary’s voice was angrier than Gabby had ever heard it and, putting the pillow over her head, she groaned. ‘Not now, Nana, I’m tired out.’
Mary opened the curtains and dragged the quilt and pillow from her granddaughter’s bed. ‘’Course you’re tired out – you’ve been out on the lash for two days. It’s Sunday, love, and you are getting up and you are going to go to your mother’s and you are going to get your baby. Remember your baby? Cherie, ten months old, little bundle of happiness?’
Mary saw the ravaged look on the girl’s face and sighed heavily. The last few months she had started going clubbing – whatever the fuck that was – and Gabby had apparently taken to it like a duck to water. She was out more than she was in, and the upshot was that Cherie now spent more time with her grandmother than she did with her own mother.
That Cynthia was behind this newfound freedom, Mary had no doubt but, at the moment, Cynthia could do no wrong in Gabby’s eyes. She was all ‘me mum this’, and ‘me mum that’. Like Cynthia was suddenly the fucking oracle or something.
Mary was even more worried because she had found little pills in Gabby’s bedroom drawer, and she guessed they were those things called Es they were always talking about on the news. They were dangerous – people had died taking them.
She looked at her granddaughter’s emaciated body; she had lost a lot of weight, and she often appeared spaced out, that was the only way she could describe the vacant look on the girl’s face. That was Christine fucking Carter’s fault; she was known on the estate for everything from drugs to thieving. Now Gabby thought that Christine Carter was the epitome of council house chic.
Gabby was already asleep again, and Mary sighed, knowing it was pointless trying to talk to her while she was like this. In a way she sympathised. Gabby was little more than a child herself and she was tied down with a baby, with the father locked up on the Isle of Wight. With her mother on the scene, she felt her baby was being well looked after – it was with its nanny after all who doted on the child – so Gabby could go out and have a good time. Mary wasn’t so old she didn’t understand human nature, and if it