Poor Colleen had been far too good for this world; an old saying that had been proved only too true.

Kathleen and Eileen, the twins, adored their brother Pat, as had Colleen, and he would hug them and make them laugh once more, before going back to the game of football with the girls' adoring eyes turned to him as always. He was a good boy, and he was a good man, whatever anyone might try to say about him. He was his father's son all right, and for that she would always love him.

Now her Shawn was another good lad, as was Shamus, and she knew she would get a good look at them before she finally went for the long sleep.

The long sleep was such a wonderful thought; she was tired, bone weary in fact. Her mind was once more back in the present and now she could smell the faint odour of her own body; her sweat was sweet, almost like almonds. She knew it was the drugs she was on, the smell emanating from her pores a constant reminder of her old age and her pain-racked body.

There was nothing left of her now, the once voluptuous curves were nothing but bone and sagging skin. She smiled, she actually looked like her granny. Oh how history repeated itself.

She glanced at the photograph in a heavy silver frame that stood on her bedside table; in the photo she was a young woman with her eldest son in her arms, and a belly full of arms and legs. She knew now something she had never known back then.

She had been beautiful, really beautiful, and she had wasted it. Wasted the only thing she had ever really had going for her. Because in those days a woman's looks were all she had.

Her stepfather's rough, cigarette and whisky-soaked voice came to her, laughing as he said, 'You are sitting on a fucking goldmine, girl, remember that.'

Her mother had gone off her head at him, screaming at him not to put those thoughts in her mind. She hated him, she realised now. Her mother had tied herself to a man who wasn't, as her granny would always say with a drink in her, worth a wank.

She tore her eyes away from the offending photo, unable to bear looking at the woman she had once been, and comparing her with the cancer-riddled wreck she was now.

But her life had been eventful, if nothing else.

She closed her eyes and retreated again into the past, which was becoming more and more real to her with every passing hour.

Patrick Brodie was still waiting patiently for word that he could visit his dying mother. He didn't hold out much hope, though his brief had pointed out that he was only on remand even if they were making out like he was already sentenced. He would love to hold her in his arms once more. Feel her familiar embrace one last time.

She had been a game old bird, and a good mother, despite everything that had happened to her in her life.

He remembered her as he always did, in her heyday, shouting the odds, putting his father in his place. Cooking her gargantuan meals and always with a cigarette in her mouth.

She was such a character, and he had loved her more than anyone else, even after all the problems with her men after his father's untimely demise.

His father's murder had hit them hard, but his mother most of all. She had lost more than a husband, she had in effect lost the only person who had ever really valued her other than her kids.

His father's death had been the catalyst for all their problems and the hardships, and he saw that now. It had turned Pat into the man he was, made him the man he had become. The man who was awaiting trial for the murder of his brother, his own flesh and blood. A murder for which he had not one iota of remorse, only sorrow that he had not done it earlier. Got shot, got rid. Eradicated him as you would any kind of predatory vermin. They couldn't prove it, and no one was going to talk, he was as sure of that as he was sure of his own name. Everyone knew he had done the dirty deed, but no one could prove it. In this country you needed evidence, not circumstances, and he was confident of a 'not guilty' verdict.

He had watched his dad die, seen it in glorious detail, and had learned very early in life that in this world, their world anyway, it was all about the survival of the fittest. His father had let his guard down, had not thought things through, a mistake he had never made himself. Seeing your old man's brains all over your mother's jumper tended to stay in your mind, and the reason for it happening tended to make you determined never to make the same mistake.

It had lodged in his bonce, it had made him wary, made him cold, but it had also made a child into a man well before his time. It had made him embrace skulduggery and chicanery with a fervour his father would have been proud of.

As a kid, he had only tried to help his mother look after his siblings, he had never realised then that it would become his way of life. A bit of hoisting here, a bit of burglary there, gravitating as the years went on to other kinds of illegal activities to keep them all clothed and fed, a roof over their heads, the tallyman off the doorstep, and a few bob for his poor mum to go out and have a good time. It had been a means to an end, that was all.

That he would like the world he had been catapulted into, that he would rise in it and make a name for himself, had not been on the agenda. That he had eventually given his dead father's name some kind of meaning, after all that had happened, was just coincidence. How could he have known all that would happen?

His mother had tried to keep him in line, taken the strap to him, had threatened him and tried to keep him out of trouble. Even though she had inadvertently brought a lot of it on them all, with her choice of men, with her choice of lifestyle. She had been a girl though, there was no doubt about that. And, in fairness, she had traipsed around the prisons, visiting one or the other of them.

He sighed, he was only on remand in Belmarsh and they still had him locked up like a lifer. Double A grade, like some kind of fucking terrorist. How they had the nerve to sanction other countries about their penal laws when they treated their own as guilty before there was even a trial, he did not know. Innocent till proven guilty? A fucking joke or what?

There was no reason not to let him out to see his mother, but he knew they would find a way to keep him there if they could. They hated him, and they had good reason to. He hated the system, and whenever he had been banged up he had fought it with every bone in his body.

He breathed in deeply, feeling the familiar anger welling up inside him once more, the anger that had always been there, that had caused him to do terrible things, but he could also feel his determination not to let it spill over until he had seen he woman who had borne him, who had loved him.

Then he would let it explode once more, and feel the release wash over him and the peace descend as always.

Until the next time.

Eileen lit a cigarette and, taking a deep pull on it, she blinked back the tears that were threatening to spill over.

A few minutes earlier she had sponged down her mother's body and the sheer devastation of it had moved her profoundly.

She was like a skeleton, her poor arms and legs were stick-like, her chest was sunken and bruised all over from bleeding under her skin, and the scar from her mastectomy was vicious in the half-light.

She already looked dead and Eileen knew that it couldn't be long before she went. But even though she knew it would be a happy release for her mother, the thought of her never being there ever again was terrifying.

She depended on her so much, needed her so desperately that even though she knew it was selfish, she prayed her mother pulled through as she had before. Paulie, her husband, knew how hard this was for her. He alone knew she had come off the drink so she could nurse the woman who had cared for them all.