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By Root 768 0

heart she should have known her mother would not have countenanced that. Her mother had always wanted those children more than she had ever wanted anything in her life. Gabby had actually deemed that at one time her mother’s saving grace – the undeniable love she had for those two little mites. It was the love she had never had for her own kids, but she had lavished it on her grandchildren. Gabby had been so grateful to her, had felt so indebted to her for all her help. She recalled how badly her mother had taken little Vince’s death; Gabby had assumed, like everyone else, that it was because she had loved him and cared for him. But it had been guilt. The wicked bitch had been consumed with guilt.

Even as Gabby’s heart was trying to deny what she was telling herself, her brain was telling her that it couldn’t have been her brother who started the fire. The brother who her mother had said had visited her a few days before, and who she subsequently admitted had threatened them all with death, pain, torture and destruction, was well and truly dead by then.

Gabby remembered her mother’s devastation at the kids having to leave her to go home to their terrible mummy. How she had kept saying Gabby wasn’t ready to have the kids back yet, that she still needed to sort herself out. It was exactly what she had said about Cherie coming back to her after the fire. Gabby had believed her mother was doing her a favour by keeping Cherie with her then. Cherie, who could have died as well if she had not slept in her bed that night, who would have been in the same room as little Vince, who had been so determined to leave her great-granddad’s house because of Cynthia’s bad mouthing.

She could see that her mother hadn’t intended to kill them. She had believed they were at her granddad’s that night. Cynthia had burned the place down thinking it was empty, but she had done it to make it look like Gabby was incapable of looking after her own children. A big fire would make them think twice about letting the children come back home, especially when there was no fucking home for them to go to. Gabby could almost hear her mother saying to the social workers how irresponsible she was to have left a fag burning, and imagine if the children had been in there with her.

Well, they were in there with her. While her mother was creeping around her house with every intention of burning it down, she had been asleep upstairs with her babies. It all made perfect sense now – her mother would have had to keep the children at least until she was re-housed, and back on her feet. And that would have been months, if not years.

Cynthia had done it deliberately, and she had done it for no other reason than to get what she wanted, as she had always got what she wanted. Gabby had lost not only her little boy in that fire, but all her photos, the memorabilia of her life, of her kids’ lives, of her nana Mary and her all-too-little time with Vincent. Her mother had been willing to leave her with nothing in her determination to keep those kids, and instead she had murdered her little boy.

Gabby thought back to how her mother had always made sure she got whatever or whoever she wanted – by hook or by crook. Cynthia had taken Jonny from poor Celeste, she had taken the kids from her own daughter, and she had been the reason her husband had killed himself. She had murdered in cold blood once – to save her sister she claimed, but she had done that to save herself too. It would always be about her, and what she wanted. It would never, could never, be about anyone else.

And what about poor James Junior? Cynthia had blamed James from the get-go. She had put him in the frame with her lies about him going round there and threatening all sorts. Was there nothing she wasn’t capable of?

Gabby was outside her mother’s flat, parked up all neat and tidy, but she had no memory of driving there. She got out of the car, and she felt as if she was walking through water, so heavy and awkward did her limbs feel.

Chapter One Hundred and Fifty-Eight

Gabby was throwing up in her