‘Jesus, Mary and fucking Joseph, this will destroy Gabby! She’s banking on him being there when the child’s born.’
Paddy O’Casey sighed once more. ‘I know, but we can’t
always have what we want in life. She might as well learn that lesson now – this is as good a time as any.’
Hearing the defeat in the man’s voice, Mary Callahan felt an urge to slap him across the face. This was his son’s life, and he was acting as if it was nothing more than an inconvenience. No wonder young Vincent spent so much time round here. Well, he wouldn’t be coming back for a long time, and she had to tell her granddaughter that at some point this evening. She would be devastated, and rightly so. Why were they being plagued with this bad luck? It just seemed to be one thing after another. Now Gabby was pregnant and alone. What a state of affairs.
‘You’ve got to snap out of this, Gabby, it’s not good for you or the baby.’
Gabby knew that her nana was right, but it was hard. She was eight months pregnant, and her baby’s father was doing nine years in Parkhurst. He would be out in four with good behaviour. He had not grassed up or implicated anyone else and the men thought he was wonderful, a real mate, and a right diamond geezer. Well, Gabby didn’t share that opinion.
She
thought he should have told the Filth everything he knew, and got himself out a lot sooner. She shook her head as if she was clearing it. She didn’t really mean it; she knew he had to take the fall. Grasses were not welcome in their world. Grasses were not welcome anywhere.
On top of everything else, his dad and brothers had found his hidden stash of money and taken it for themselves, so she was also skint into the bargain. They had jumped on that money like a monkey on a banana tree, and that had hurt. They had basically taken the food out of her baby’s mouth. The O’Caseys had had a new TV and a good few parties on what should have been
her
money. Vincent was furious. That money was for her and her baby. But there was nothing he could do about it. Not from where he was sitting.
‘I just miss him, Nana.’ Her voice was a plaintive cry now.
‘’Course you do, child, it wouldn’t be natural if you didn’t.’
Her nana’s no-nonsense approach made her smile at times,
even though it could annoy her too. Mary Callahan’s attitude was, it’s happened, get over it. But then her nana had had a lot of experience where being let down was concerned, she supposed. It didn’t stop Gabby from feeling lonely and abandoned once again though.
Her baby kicked and she smiled; at least her child was strong and healthy, that was something she supposed. She was determined to be the antithesis of her own mother; everything her mother had done for her and James Junior, she would do the opposite. She figured that at least that way, she would have to be doing
something
right. But having a baby was a scary thing. A little person was going to depend on her for everything, from being fed and changed, to being loved and wanted. Well, this child would have all of that and, even though its father wasn’t around, it wasn’t because he didn’t want to be. It was legally impossible for him to be there, and she would explain it just like that when the time came. It was so much better than being told your father had been nicked.
She was due soon, and she knew it would not be pleasant. In all honesty, she was frightened of what it entailed. She wished she had a mum to turn to. Her nana was great, but she was so old and, in truth, Gabby didn’t want to worry her more than she had to. Her nana and granddad seemed to have aged almost overnight, and she knew it was because of her auntie Celeste.
Celeste was a shadow of her former self, and the really worrying thing was she didn’t eat a thing now, she just lay there, on her bed, watching her programmes. Her granddad called her the
Radio Times,
because she knew every TV schedule, even Sky’s back to front, making them all wonder if she ever actually slept. She believed the BBC was quality programming, but she claimed to prefer the shows that didn’t make her feel like they were being condescending to her. She loved American talk shows, especially
Oprah,
and believed Jerry Springer had a place in that society, albeit not at the top end. It was surreal talking to
her, because unless she had watched it on a TV programme she wasn’t sure it was really true. She talked about Dr Phil as if he had come to the house and diagnosed her himself. She was really big on self-diagnosis. According to an episode of
Oprah,
she was losing weight because her good angel was helping her. After all, angels were real, weren’t they? Celeste bought it all, hook, line and fucking sinker. She claimed to understand forensic pathology as well as if she had studied it at university, and was sad that most murder cases she read about in the papers didn’t have access to the same resources that they did on TV shows. And why not? she demanded. Where was Dr Sam Ryan when you needed her?
Did these programmers never allow for people like her aunt, who believed all that shit without question? Or did they depend on them? What came first; the TV or the viewer? Did the people really have a chance against those boffins at TV stations around the world? That, Gabby realised, remained to be seen.
Even her granddad Jack had to acknowledge that Celeste wasn’t right these days, and seemed to be becoming more and more entrenched in her TV world by the minute. She talked about Trevor McDonald as if he was an old friend, and she argued that Michelle Collins was not a bad person, she was
just
Cindy Beale.
Now that she rarely got out of bed, the smell was not good. She was not even forty years old but she looked sixty at least.
As she went into her aunt’s bedroom, Gabby wrinkled her nose at the odour; it was sweet, but overpoweringly so. Gabby knew it was the Parma Violets her aunt sucked all day long, but it still made her want to heave.
‘Fancy a take-away, Auntie Cel? You name it, I’ll eat it!’ This was getting boring; she did the same thing every night now, and each time she got the same answer.
‘Nothing for me, sweetie. How’re you and junior doing?’
Gabby sat on the edge of her aunt’s bed and she said sadly, ‘We’re doing fine. And you?’
Celeste looked into her niece’s eyes and saw the beauty in her face; it was the same innocent beauty her mother had possessed, except with Cynthia, it had masked her true nature. ‘I nearly had a baby once, but I lost it. I lost a few actually. I thought it was terrible at the time, but now, well, how lucky was I, eh? I never had to tell them the truth about their father, never had to lie to them either.’ She coughed gently before saying earnestly, ‘I’m dying, Gabs, I have cancer of the uterus. I told the doc not to tell your nana. You know how she flaps about everything. But I’m telling you in case I don’t see this little one born. No, don’t be sad, I
want
to go. What kind of life is this for anyone, eh? But I want you to know I will miss you, and I loved you like you were me own.’
Gabby looked down into her aunt’s face which still held the vestiges of her former prettiness and, choking down a sob, she held her to her breast as if she was the mother and her aunt was the child.
‘I’ll miss you, Auntie Celeste.’
Celeste smiled through her tears. ‘No, you won’t. When I go it will be a relief for you all, but not as much as it will be for me. My life was a waste, don’t let that be
your
life. Promise me, darling, you’ll make your life mean something.’
‘I’ll try, Auntie, I’ll try.’
But even as she said it her heart and her waters were breaking.
Vincent O’Casey was tired out. He had been in the gym all morning and then cooked all afternoon. One good thing about Parkhurst – on the SSB unit at least you weren’t on constant lock up. It was still hard though. Knowing that Gabby was due at any moment, he was like a cat on a hot tin roof. All the other lags were chafing him, but he took it in a good-natured way. The fact that he had not named names had gone a long way to making his stay in nick quite easy. It wasn’t ideal, but it was bearable, and Derek Greene had made sure of that, as had Bertie Warner. The Manchester boys treated him like some kind of mascot, and he appreciated it – it showed him that what he was enduring was not for nothing. The hardest thing to bear was that his little baby would be born without him, and he knew his Gabby needed him. She had no one really, except her old grandparents and they were fucking ancient. Nice people, but not exactly in the first flush of youth.
It was pointless dwelling on it now. The first thing he had learned was that the outside world was something you had no control over, therefore you must not let it do your head in. He knew better now than to let his thoughts wander too far from the normal. But with his Gabby on the verge of giving birth to his first child, a child he would not see until visiting day, it was getting harder and harder to pretend it was happening to someone else.
He consoled himself with the thought that he had not
dropped anyone in it, that he could hold his head up. But it still didn’t make up for being banged up in here while his girl was alone and pregnant on the outside.
As he was walking back to his cell, a screw called his name and number. He stood to attention as was required and the screw, one of the few who was a nice enough geezer, said to him happily, ‘You got a daughter, lad – eight pounds nine ounces. Congratulations!’
‘A girl? Oh my God, I got a fucking daughter!’ Vincent was jumping up and down, his face a picture of happiness, his voice louder than it had ever been before.
The commotion had brought all the lags out of their cells, and Vincent felt his hand being shaken, and his shoulders being hugged, but it was like a dream to him. A little girl – he had a little girl. He hoped his Gabby had not had too bad a time of it. According to half the men in here, the first one was a piece of piss – except George Palmer whose wife had died in childbirth, but that was twenty-five years ago. Things were so much different these days.
The screws congratulated him, and one gave him a pack of cigars, while another gave him two bottles of decent Scotch. He knew this lot was really from Derek Greene but he was grateful nonetheless. When all was said and done, he would much rather have been beside Gabby and seen his little baby for himself. The men on the wing understood that, and they did their best to help him forget. He was grateful to them because he wasn’t sure he could have coped with it alone.
Celeste died just two hours after Gabby’s baby was born. Little Cherie Celeste Mary Tailor entered the world screaming, and it was a sound that her mother cherished from the first moment. She was a big lusty child with thick blond hair and the Callahan blue eyes. She was adorable, and Gabby fell instantly in love with her, as did her great-nana and granddad.
Jack looked at the child as if he had never seen a baby before. He wondered if it was the fact she was a great-granddaughter and he never thought he would live that long, or if it was because the baby was exquisite. He decided it was most probably a mixture of the two.
It was a night of celebration, and a night of mourning. As his Mary had pointed out, God takes one and leaves another in its place. A load of old cobblers really, but he wanted to believe it this night. Wanted to believe that his poor Celeste might live again through this child. He sat there for a long moment, the child in his arms, the fourth living generation of Callahans, and he wondered what kind of life this child would have. He prayed it would be a good life, a really good life. His old mum had often said, ‘Life at its longest is short, make the most of it while you still can.’ How true that was. But with this baby’s start in life, a very young mother and her father doing a big lump for armed robbery, he couldn’t really see any good coming of it. He hoped against hope that he was wrong.
Cynthia looked down at the baby who was, to all intents and purposes, her grandchild. She had taken the call about the birth from a girl she had known at school, and with whom she had resumed a rather sketchy relationship. The girl was a drinker and she supplied a few quid in exchange for news about Cynthia’s family. Now she was at the hospital, and looking at her daughter’s little girl.
The baby was very pretty – a robust, yet delicate-featured little girl, with thick blond hair and what already promised to be strong blue eyes. Oh, she would have the Callahan eyes all right, not those insipid Tailor eyes that James Junior had inherited.
Looking through the glass of the baby unit, Cynthia Callahan felt, for the first time in her life, a stirring inside her. Try as she might to force it away, she knew she would never be able to deny it. This child affected her on a primal level. Even her own children had never made her feel this deep a connection.
The child was looking straight into her eyes as if it knew she was its grandmother. Never had she seen a child so beautiful, so utterly gorgeous. And she looked exactly like her! The child was Cynthia all over.
The strength of her emotions shocked her. It occurred to her now that this was the
next
generation. She had given birth to this child’s mother and, if it wasn’t for
her,
this child would never have even been here. That was a very powerful thought. It made her feel invincible, like Methuselah in the Bible, who had
lived for nine hundred years – well,
he
hadn’t but his offspring had. She finally understood family, and it had taken this baby to make her see what that really meant.