The Faithless - Martina Cole [119]
Then it occurred to her that her brother could turn up too, and suddenly the whole thing just seemed too complicated and troublesome. James was her brother and she loved him. At least she loved the boy he had once been. He had serious mental issues, and when he wasn’t taking his drugs he was violent. No one could have that kind of person too close to them. The thought of him near little Cherie made her blood run cold. He was so unpredictable. When he had suffered his violent bouts, the doctors had said there had been no warning, he had just snapped. And he had been like a steam train; whatever the person who’d supposedly wronged him had done, real or imagined, had made him almost murderous with his unsuppressed rage.
So why had they let him out? It made no sense. Her granddad said it was the arrogance of doctors – they believed they could tame people like James when in fact nothing could tame him. A chemical cosh only worked while the person involved was taking those chemicals. What happened if they decided to stop? Apparently James enjoyed hurting people, he liked it. So how on earth was he supposed to fit into normal society with normal people? He didn’t know how to act, or what was acceptable behaviour.
Vincent would go mad if he caused any trouble, and she had a feeling that her brother would have met his match in her Vincent. She had to stop these negative thoughts. She had her daughter back, and her Vincent was coming home too. She had to stop looking for problems where there weren’t any. The trouble was, when your whole existence had been a struggle, you started to think that was all it would ever be.
Well, her life was picking up, and she was finally getting everything she had ever wanted from it. And that was a cause for celebration.
Chapter One Hundred and Seventeen
James Tailor had been watching his mother and, even though he hated her, she still fascinated him. She was still a good-looking woman, and she still had that walk she had always had, as if she was the only person in the world of any note. Which, in her eyes, was God’s honest truth.
When he had been a little kid she had seemed almost omnipotent, but now, watching her, he realised she was nothing really, nothing to be scared of anyway. In fact, he thought she was quite sad these days. Ageing, which he knew would be killing her. Having seen how beautiful Gabby had become, he knew that would be like a knife in her ribs, and that pleased him. He hated her with a vengeance, even while he loved her.
He felt that disconnection with the world once more; it was the best feeling in the world to him. His trouble had always been that he cared too much. Things made him angry, really angry, and that anger all but consumed him. It was like a storm that raged in his blood, and the only way to settle it down was through a bout of violence.
But he knew his anger had been the cause of him being locked away, so he had to try and control it. The heroin helped him enormously, and he was glad he had found something to dampen down those angry feelings. It couldn’t quieten the voices completely, but it did calm them sometimes. He had stopped taking his medication, as it had interfered with his enjoyment of the drugs he injected into his body.
Watching his mother had become his hobby. The psychiatrist said he needed something to concentrate his mind on, and he was concentrating on her all right. He was watching her every move, and he found it enjoyable. He liked that he was spying on her and she didn’t know he was there.
His dad had killed himself over her, which was sad because she really wasn’t worth it. She was the shit on his shoes; his father had been worth fifty of her. She certainly wasn’t worth dying for, but then his dad had never really understood just what he had lumbered himself with. But James