Jackie was getting dressed and any thought of sleep was long gone. This was now a woman on a mission, a dangerous mission that entailed murdering her sister in cold blood if necessary.
'Stop it, Mum, and listen to me. I heard them at Jimmy Junior's funeral, Dad was baiting her even then, he was being hateful to her even though she had just buried her child-'
'Oh my heart's bleeding for her, the cunt, and don't you mean their child?'
'Mum, Maggie would never hurt you, not intentionally. Why do you think she kept it quiet all these years?'
'If you were shagging my old man wouldn't you keep it quiet? Jimmy might not be too thrilled when he hears either, love, has that occurred to you yet? All my life she has wanted what I have, she had been jealous of me since day one! I had what she wanted!'
Kim laughed now. 'You can't seriously mean me father, can you? Maggie wanting him, are you off your fucking trolley, Mother? And even if she had, Maggie wouldn't do that to you, she loves you even though you treat her like shit.'
Jackie sighed and then said in a friendly yet sinister way, 'She is dead, Kimmy, get that through your thick fucking head. She fucked my old man, she had a baby with my old man – your words not mine, Kim – and if you think I am listening to all that old fanny about rape you can get stuffed. I will take her fucking head off her shoulders, and yours with it if you interfere any more.'
Kimberley was absolutely terrified now. 'Stop this, Mum, and think about it. Why would she be telling him to leave her alone, eh? Why would she have fucked him off out of it?'
Jackie sighed heavily. Her daughter was just what she needed to start off her campaign of hate. No one was accusing her husband of rape. He was a fucking babe, and Maggie had wanted him because he was hers and she was jealous. In Jackie's mind everyone she fell out with, or had a grudge against, was jealous of her. In her mind she was really something else. Her home was a cause of jealousy, her husband, their lifestyle. It never occurred to Jackie that it was her own vindictive jealousy that caused most of her problems.
To her now, Freddie had been duped, had been led up the garden path by a femme fatale who had been a virgin till Jimmy and who she knew would not have given Freddie Jackson house room if the four-minute warning had just sounded. And they had produced a child – well, for once Maggie could hurt like she had hurt as she watched her little sister make a success of her life, watched her go on to bigger and better things!
Jackie was the eldest, it should have been her who had the salons and the big houses, not Maggie, not little Maggie who she had always used as and when it had suited her and who had suddenly, overnight, become the rich bitch of the family.
How dare she think that she could get one over on her?
Freddie had joked that Jimmy was a Jaffa, and maybe he was right. No other kids had arrived and she knew it wasn't for want of trying. Maggie was desperate for another one, had been since the birth of little Jimmy Junior. She went on about it enough.
Jackie had, it seemed, cried over her husband's bastard, and she would not let that go lightly. Baby be damned, little Jimmy had been her husband's child. He had taken more notice of that boy than he had of any of his own, and she would not forgive that bastard Maggie for that. It was the ultimate betrayal as far as she was concerned. No wonder she had not wanted the poor little flicker, guilt did that to a body, and even her own mother had called her unnatural over her treatment of him.
'Please, Mum, think about what you are doing. He raped Maggie, raped her. Jimmy will kill him, Jimmy will believe her… Like I do, and other people will.'
The truth of these words didn't escape Jackie but she fronted it out as always. 'Oh, Kimmy, what's the matter, eh? You want me to score a few pills for you, calm you down, like? Or maybe you want me to take back my fucking fist and wipe that pathetic look off your face once and for all? She is a fucking husband-stealing whore and she is me own sister, me own fucking sister. Well, she's dead, as are you dead if you get in me way.'
She grinned as she dragged her clothes on to her cumbersome body. 'Come on, sweetheart, it's your call.'
Roxanna was watching the scene before her and she still had a feeling of terrible doom on her. It was like the first few days before her period, when everything had a weird aftertaste, when she could make 'Good morning' sound like a declaration of war.
She knew that if what Kimberley said was true then Maggie had been raped by her father. There was no other way that it could have happened. Maggie would sooner bed down with the local tramp than Freddie Jackson, and she couldn't blame her. If the boot was on the other foot she would have felt exactly the same. But how was this going to affect her? Her and her Dicky boy? What would happen when all this shit hit the big fan that had now metamorphosised into her mother's big trap?
She didn't want Dicky's mother and the rest of his family finding out about anything like this, it was too extreme even for the Jacksons. It was now her reputation she was worried about, but any reasoning with Jackie about this little lot was likely to be about as much use as a handbrake on a fucking canoe.
Kim had opened up a can of worms, and these were evil worms, vindictive worms and they were worms that were in her mother's mouth and would therefore be spewed out sooner than any of them might actually believe.
Jackie was still dressing herself, and as she did so Kimberley was trying to convince her that Maggie, poor Maggie, had been the victim. Rox knew that this was the worst thing her sister could do. If her father took an axe and murdered all the neighbours in front of a film crew from Channel Four, her mother would convince herself that it was not true, or that they had done something so heinous his murdering of them was justified.
Roxanna could cheerfully wring Kim's neck.
She would have to warn poor Maggie and as she wondered about Maggie's reaction to this news getting out, it hit her that Jimmy, her lovely uncle Jimmy, was as big a force as her father was. In fact, she was aware that he was now a bigger, better-connected force. Dicky was enamoured of her uncle Jimmy to the point of adoration.
This was so serious, she knew it would smash the family apart, and she wished that Kimberley had kept her big nose out of it. Like her mother, Rox liked everything on an even keel and if that meant keeping things swept under the carpet, pretending things were OK, then that was what she was prepared to do.
She wanted to cry. Everything was going to be destroyed, and she knew that life would never be the same again for any of them. But it was her loyalties that were really disturbing her, because if she was pushed to choose, her mother and father wouldn't stand a chance.
Paul had answered the phone three times and each time it had been Glenford asking if Freddie was still there, and what condition he was in.
He had said each time. 'Yes and not good.'
He knew something was going down and he was terrified of it happening in front of him and his wife. Liselle had been dispatched off to their flat with a warning that no matter what she heard, she was to keep a low profile.
Freddie was on a roll now, and his handsome face belied the evil that lurked so near to the surface. A girl had arrived an hour earlier, when Freddie had finally been about to depart. The girl was in her twenties with long hair, a crooked smile and a skirt that defied gravity. She was also, to add insult to injury, Liselle's niece, and she had taken one look at Freddie and love had been born.
What was it with women and Freddie Jackson? The worse he treated them the more they seemed to want him. She was all perfume and mint chewing gum, her clothes were New Look mixed with Dot Perkins and the stomach she was baring was not as washboard as she liked to believe.