The Faithless - Martina Cole [62]
‘Fucking harsh the sentences handed down. Fucking rapist would have been out now.’
‘At least then he would have had a unit where he could wander about and watch telly in his cell. Fucking nonces and their VPUs. Vulnerable Prisoners Units – have you ever heard the fucking like? ’Course they’re vulnerable, who wouldn’t want to kick their fucking heads in?’
They both nodded, pondering the futility of a legal system that protected the scum of society, and locked away men like Derek’s father for the duration. It was a fucking melon scratcher all right.
Chapter Fifty
‘Go away, you weirdo.’
Cynthia Tailor rolled her eyes at the ceiling as she bellowed, ‘Stop calling your brother a weirdo!’
Gabby grinned. ‘But he is, Mum. Even his shrink thinks so.’
Cynthia wanted to laugh then; Gabriella was funny when she wanted to be.
James Junior looked around the table at his family silently. He was a large lad, and he had the look of his father’s family. Staring at his sister, he smiled sneakily. ‘How’s Vincent O’Casey, Gabby?’
Cynthia looked at her son in shock, and he laughed at her as he said, ‘Didn’t you know, Mum? It’s the romance of the century by all accounts.’
Cynthia looked at this son of hers that she was finding it increasingly difficult to like and said coldly, ‘Not Bridie O’Casey’s Vincent?’
Gabby thought she was going to faint with fright at her mother’s words, and her eyes pleaded with her brother to not do this.
He grinned nastily as he said loudly, ‘The very same.’
Gabby was out of her chair in a second, screaming at her brother, ‘You cat-killing ponce! You rotten little bugger!’
Cynthia looked at her two children and wondered which one to slap first. Her instincts won and she knocked her son off his chair with a sideswipe. ‘Get out of my sight, you.’ Then, when he had scrambled up off the floor and fled the scene of his crime, she turned to her daughter and said quietly, ‘Is this true?’
Gabby knew it was pointless denying it, and so she nodded her head slowly.
When her mother’s hand shot out and grabbed her hair she stifled a scream, knowing it was best to take whatever she dished out as quietly as possible. Begging annoyed her, as did screaming in agony, trying to escape, and attempting to talk your way out of things. Once her mother had you by the hair, you were all but finished.
‘How long? How long have you been going behind my back?’ This was her mother all over, not ‘how long have you been seeing him’ but ‘how long have you been going behind my back’.
‘A while, nearly a year . . .’ Gabby had to be honest now she’d been caught; it was the only way out for her. If she lied now she was as good as dead. Her mother was not a woman to buy lies of any description. Once sussed out, all that you had left to redeem yourself in any way was the truth.
Cynthia screwed up her face in complete and utter amazement. A year! This had been going on for a year, and no one had guessed? No one had told her more like. The bastards. An O’Casey – a family so low down on the social stratum they might as well be fucking cavemen. Bridie O’Casey was a lazy, feckless trollop who couldn’t even keep her kids clean, let alone her home. And the father! Paddy O’Casey, the local drunkard. It was beyond her comprehension.
‘All I’ve done for you kids, and this is how you repay me? Your brother up there on the road to becoming a fucking serial killer and you well on your way to whoring! Well, lady, this stops here. You’re coming home for good. No wonder you’re always round your nana’s! I bet she’s encouraging him, fucking vicious old bag that she is . . .’
She punched her daughter