Jackie was not listening, she was at the end of her tether with the thought of her husband out enjoying himself while she was in agony giving birth to his child.

'He would rather be with those whores in that brothel than with his wife. Has anyone rung the place in Ilford?'

They had rung everywhere, Freddie knew where she was, there was no way he had not heard about the situation. Liselle at the pub had indicated that he was there, and that he had already been appraised of the situation regarding his wife.

Freddie could not give a flying fuck and they all knew it. Why didn't Jackie just accept that he would not come until the child was delivered? Maggie had just left to cab it over to the pub, so hopefully he might deign to make an appearance, but no one was holding their breath.

Maddie sighed heavily, and Lena followed suit. For once the two women were united, and it was this sudden friendliness that made Jackie take notice of what they were saying.

Lena started in first. 'That fucking child has got to come out, right? So stop fucking about and get on with it. If the baby is born Freddie might be more inclined to get his arse over here.'

Jackie was crying. Her big moon face was red, covered in a heat rash, and shiny with her tears. Maddie stared at her for long moments. She looked awful, and the way she was lying with her legs open, the purple stretchmarks on show, and her toenails ingrained with dirt did not help her one little bit. In her heart Maddie didn't blame her son for wanting to keep away, she was more amazed that he had impregnated the dirty bitch in the first place.

Jackie's crying was getting louder now. She wanted her husband and the fact he would not be coming made her want him all the more. She sounded like an animal, but not a nice animal like a cat, mewling gently as it gave birth. She sounded like one of the animals where Maddie had grown up. And the worst of it all was she looked like one of them. From her bloated face to her dirty feet. Her mother had always referred to the dirty women around their estate as animals, it was an Irish thing. Maddie's mother judged people by the way their children were turned out and how well they managed their money. She had followed suit, and still felt that a woman's kids said more about her than anything else. If the children were clean and cared for, fed and watered, the woman was classed as decent. Jackie's whole way of life disturbed her. Her son's wife should be a reflection on him, and she had a terrible feeling that this girl was.

Jackie was groaning once more, and her face was screwed up in pain. She was only having a baby, anyone would think she was dying of cancer or something the way she was carrying on. How her son had ever seen fit to mate with her was beyond Maddie's comprehension. Yet she loved his girls, and they in their own way loved her. But she found it difficult to go to the house, because Jackie made it all so hard. Jackie was jealous of her, his mother. She had never tried to make a friend of her, even when Freddie had been banged up she had not attempted a modicum of friendship. The prison visits had been timed so they would not meet.

It grieved her that her favourite son had married this baggage, who, even now, could not keep herself clean and tidy for the hospital. To Maddie, appearances were everything, and how the world perceived you and your wifely skills was of tantamount importance. Yet all she ever heard about Jackie was how she was making a show of herself. When her Freddie had been put away, she had had to step in when Jackie had overspent on catalogues and then not even attempted to pay, and deal with the embarrassment of finding out that Jackie had gone all over the place ordering stuff and then threatening women with her husband's family if they tried to get what they were owed. To top it all, she'd had her own husband telling her that she had better sort it all out because the embarrassment was killing him. Then, after all she had done for her, she had to contend with Jackie looking at her in that disrespectful way she had, the girls sitting there all scruffy, with their pretty faces stained with sweets.

She remembered Jackie telling her that she needed help now Freddie was gone, that she needed clothes for the kids and food on the table, when everyone knew any money she laid her hands on went on drink and drugs. Expensive hobbies that once more put her daughter-in-law in debt.

Another one of Maddie's foibles was debt. She could not understand spending what you didn't have. When she had found herself paying off her daughter-in-law's debts it had been the final straw. Hundreds of pounds on clothes for her and the girls, clothes she wasn't even going to look after, that ended up in a washing pile and stayed there. It was all wrong, everything had gone all wrong.

Now, though, what else did she have, other than her children and her grandchildren? And a husband who was suddenly in love with a twenty-two-year-old girl.

The humiliation was still smarting along with the knowledge that this time it was different. Over the years he had tried to save her feelings, but this time he was not bothered about her at all. Had lost all respect for her, because he was enamoured of a child, a girl who already had two children by two different men, and a mouthful of expensive teeth that had been paid for by the man Maddie had loved all her life.

A girl who he took everywhere with him, like she was some kind of trophy, like a prize that said he wasn't getting old. It was laughable, and she would have laughed if it had happened to anyone else but her. Freddie Senior was staying with this girl most nights and he was parading her around the place without a thought for her. It was as if he had gone mad overnight, and now she was reduced to seeking out her son's mother-in-law, someone who she had prided herself on avoiding for all those years. She knew Lena was aware of the situation, but then it was nothing new to her, she had lived with it all her life. She also knew that Lena, knowing the score, felt for her, because she understood just how hard this situation was. To think she had looked down her nose at Lena for years and now, when life was overwhelming her, it was to Lena she was turning.

Once, Maddie would have caused murders, she would have fought him every inch of the way. But not any more. She was past fighting now, because she knew in her heart that if she pushed it, he would actually leave her this time. He was older, and he needed the reassurance of youth more than ever. She also knew he was working for his son, and experiencing a renaissance of his younger days and the skulduggery he had loved so much.

Freddie had given his father a new lease of life and she would never forgive him for that.

'I want my Freddie. Where's Freddie?' Jackie wanted her husband, she wanted him beside her as she produced his son. It was what she had dreamed of for months.

Maddie rolled her eyes at Lena. In the waiting room they had already consumed a large amount of brandy, courtesy of Maddie Jackson's emergency supply that she kept in her large, mock-crocodile-skin handbag. Maddie liked a drink occasionally, when life was getting her down.

She had only come to the hospital because her husband was on the missing list with his young girl, and her son was nowhere to be found, but for the first time ever she was warming to Lena, a woman she had always seen as below her, mainly because Lena and her brood had never moved on from the estate they had all grown up on. Whatever her husband was, he had moved them away. It grieved her that Freddie was still more comfortable in the council house he had with Jackie than she would have liked. All the money he had earned, and he still had nothing.

But they were both spendthrifts, they both saw money as something to use unwisely. She had hoped that Jackie, at least, with three kids, would have learned the value of a pound. It was not to be, now the girl was sweating and groaning out another child that would be brought up on the rock and roll. Because her son and his wife were claiming benefits, she knew that for a fact. Jackie was still getting her social security every Monday, she saw it as her bunce, as her money. When Freddie had been banged up it had been a necessity, now she should be making ends meet without bringing in government agencies and everything they entailed.