* * *
‘Open wide!’ Joanie Byrne smiled down at her precious granddaughter Nancy, as she spooned the last of her dinner into her mouth before kissing her gently on her head. ‘There’s a good girl for your nana. You love your nanny’s mash, don’t you, darling!’
‘She’s almost two, Joanie. She doesn’t need to still be spoon-fed. She needs to learn to do it herself.’
Startled as she heard Colleen’s voice from the doorway behind her, Joanie Byrne hadn’t realised that she was skulking around the place, watching her. She’d thought that her daughter-in-law would be been doing her usual today and moping around in her bedroom.
‘Well if it was left down to you, she’d be doing everything herself, wouldn’t she, poor little mite. Besides, it didn’t do my Jimmy any harm and I spoon-fed him until he was almost three!’ Joanie said tartly, her eyes scanning Colleen with disdain. It had gone six o’clock in the evening and the woman was still walking about in her dressing gown. She looked a state, as if she hadn’t even bothered to drag a hairbrush through her hair today, let alone have a wash or brush her teeth.
‘Well, that’s a matter of opinion, isn’t it?’ Colleen muttered to herself, raising her eyes at Joanie’s idea of perfect parenting.
Her little angel, Jimmy.
What a joke.
The truth was, Joanie had created a monster. It wouldn’t have surprised Colleen to hear that the woman had breastfed Jimmy until he was fifteen, knowing what a control freak she could be. In fact, if Joanie was capable of lactating now, Colleen wouldn’t put it past her to try and breastfeed Nancy too while she was at it. That’s what she wanted: to make herself indispensable, so that Jimmy and Nancy couldn’t live without her.
‘Besides. It saves time this way. I’ve got enough to do. Looking after Nancy is a full-time job, and seeing as you’re barely capable of looking after yourself, you’re hardly one to talk, madam.’ Losing her temper now: Colleen always seemed to know how to push her buttons. ‘Speaking of which, are you even going to bother getting dressed today?’
‘I don’t feel well.’
‘You don’t feel well? Oh come on, Colleen, you never bloody feel well. You need to pull yourself together. Do you think Jimmy wants to come home to this every night?’ Joanie extended her arm in Colleen’s direction. ‘Look at the state of you. It’s no wonder he’s out working every hour. You want to be careful you know. A handsome man like Jimmy could get any girl he wanted.’
‘I bet he could.’ Colleen’s eyes flashed with fury at another one of Joanie’s twisted jibes, playing on Colleen’s insecurities. Beating her down with her words, making her feel crap about herself. As she did every day. Telling her how she wasn’t good enough for Jimmy or Nancy. Trying her hardest to make Colleen feel shit about herself, when the truth was Colleen couldn’t feel anymore awful about herself if she tried.
Joanie was right. Jimmy probably had found someone else.
He worked around the clock these days, barely coming home. When he did, the only person he seemed to have any time for was Nancy. Jimmy doted on his daughter.
Since they got married they’d only made love a couple of times. Though love it certainly hadn’t been. Both times they’d had sex it had been Jimmy that initiated it; both times he was drunk. Rough with her. Cold. It had merely been an act carried out between them because Jimmy so desperately wanted a family.
Colleen hadn’t enjoyed the sex at all.
Lying back, numb of feeling. Every time Jimmy had thrust himself inside her, all she’d thought about was that boy he’d murdered on their wedding night: the same boy that Joanie had completely banished from her mind, as if he’d never even existed. The woman was as bad as Jimmy. They were both as sick and twisted as each other.
Bored arguing with Joanie, Colleen decided to ignore her, focusing on her daughter now instead.
‘Hey, baby!’ she said, waving her hand awkwardly, as she tried to catch Nancy’s eye. But Nancy showed her the same level of interest as her nan. The child seemed totally uninterested in her, not even bothering to glance over in her direction at the sound of her voice.
Joanie had trained her well.
‘Hey, Nancy, baby, do you wanna hug from Mummy?’
As she stepped towards her daughter, Joanie quickly got up from her seat, and scooped the child up into her arms. She held Nancy close to her, raising her eyes up at Colleen.
‘I was just taking her up for her bath.’
‘That’s okay, I’ll take her,’ Colleen said, but Joanie wouldn’t even hear of it.
Making her way to the door, she was stopped dead in her tracks as she felt her daughter-in-law reach out and grab at her arm.
‘Please, Joanie. I’m her mum.’
‘Get your hand off me,’ Joanie said indignantly before shaking Colleen’s hand away from her.
Sensing an argument, she placed Nancy down on the floor and watched as the little girl made a run towards the stairs.
‘Wait there for Nana, Nancy. Be a good girl.’ Then she turned to Colleen, narrowing her eyes as she looked her up and down. ‘You’ve been drinking again, haven’t you?’ she said, recognising the glazed look in Colleen’s eyes. Her face flushed, the slight slur to her speech.
‘Nana!’ Nancy squealed as she waited impatiently at the bottom of the stairs for her nana to take her hand so that they could carry out the usual bedtime ritual.
The child’s little voice ripped right through Colleen, her heart aching for her daughter to call out to her. Joanie had made sure it wasn’t to be. She’d turned Nancy against her. Gradually, without Colleen even realising, until the child didn’t even acknowledge her any longer.
Attempting to move, Colleen stepped in front of Joanie.
‘I’m taking my daughter tonight,’ she said firmly, the resolve in her voice surprising even her.
Joanie shook her head.
‘You can’t. Not if you’ve been drinking. Jimmy won’t be happy about that!’
‘Well, like you said, Jimmy’s not here, is he?’ Colleen replied.
‘You're going to upset her, Colleen. Let me put her to bed,’ Joanie argued. Colleen was just being stupid. Trying to make a point, at poor little Nancy’s expense. ‘Can’t you see she doesn’t want you, Colleen? She wants me.’
The slap that came next surprised them both.
Grasping her flaming hot cheek, where Colleen had swiped her, Joanie looked momentarily shocked at her daughter-in-law’s sudden attack.
‘Why don’t you just fuck off,’ Colleen shouted, feeling suddenly empowered at standing up for herself. At finally putting her mother-in-law firmly in her place.
Joanie was speechless.
Behind them, picking up on the tension, Nancy began bawling. She was inconsolable.
‘You did this. You’ve turned her against me. Nancy is my child, Joanie. Mine.’ Determined more than ever not to let the woman get the better of her again, Colleen was defiant. Marching out to the stairs, she picked up her daughter, ignoring the child’s cries as Nancy held out her arms for her nana. ‘I’m taking her tonight and if you try and stop me, I’ll rip your fucking head off your shoulders. Then I’ll tell Jimmy that it was my medication. You know all the pills you and him keep feeding me. I’ll tell him that the meds messed my head up, that I had a bad reaction. How about that?’ She’d finally lost her patience. She glared at Joanie, challenging her to say another word.
Joanie didn’t dare.
She’d never seen Colleen like this. So angry, so unhinged.
‘Go ahead. Like you say, you’re her mother,’ Joanie spoke quietly, still dazed from where Colleen had struck her. She wasn’t going to row with the girl anymore. She’d let Jimmy deal with her once he was home. Joanie would get to him first and make sure that he knew exactly what had gone on tonight, and after he learned that Colleen had attacked her, he most certainly would sort the girl out.
Stomping off to the kitchen, to get away from Colleen, Joanie’s only consolation as she put the kettle on to make
herself a cup of tea was the sound of Nancy still wailing from the bathroom upstairs.
She shook her head despite herself. That little girl up there loved the bones of Joanie. Just like her Jimmy. Colleen might be Nancy’s mother by birthright, but the girl didn’t care for Colleen one bit.
Joanie had well and truly seen to that.
Her daughter-in-law may have won the battle this time, but when it came to her Jimmy and Nancy, Joanie would fight tooth and nail to get what she wanted, and Colleen Walsh would never win the war.
Twenty-Five
Slumping down on her bed, Colleen leaned back against the headboard and squeezed her eyes shut. She was exhausted. Just a few hours with her daughter tonight had left her completely drained.
It was gone ten o’clock now and she’d only just managed to get Nancy off to sleep. Her daughter had been a nightmare. Talk about ‘terrible twos’ and Nancy wasn’t even there yet. Screaming and crying for almost an hour, she had point-blank refused to get into the bath, and when she had finally got in, she’d cried that the water was too cold, and she wouldn’t let Colleen dry her hair.
Colleen had eventually given up trying. Wrapping Nancy in a huge towel she’d carried her into Colleen’s bedroom and placed her in her big double bed. When she’d lain beside her and tried to read Nancy a storybook, Nancy had kicked up a right fuss asking for her nana once more. Hitting the book from Colleen’s hands in a rage, and kicking the covers off herself until finally, what felt like hours later, Nancy had knackered herself out and fallen asleep.
Sasha was right: Nancy was just like Jimmy. Not only in looks, with her emerald green eyes, but in temperament too. For a child still so young, Nancy was stubborn. Nothing deterred her from what she wanted and the child had wanted Joanie.
Her daughter felt nothing for her. The realisation broke Colleen’s heart. She hadn’t been well, this past year and a half, even throughout the pregnancy. Battling with her conscience, with her nightmares as her mind replayed that fateful night. The night that Jimmy had murdered that poor kid.
Colleen couldn’t get the images out of her head.
She’d been part of it. She’d been there. She’d seen it with her own eyes, and hadn’t told a soul. That made her just as bad as Jimmy surely?
It was fair to say she wasn’t coping. The depression started to eat her up inside, consuming her so that by the time the panic attacks came, Colleen had all but lost her mind.
Joanie had taken advantage, Colleen realised that now. She’d so graciously stepped in offering to look after Nancy, all the while doing her very best to poison Colleen’s daughter against her, and the worst thing of all was that Colleen had allowed her to do so.
She hadn’t been strong enough, or well enough to fight her.
Three years she’d been married to Jimmy; trapped in this loveless marriage like a prisoner, with Joanie always lurking about. Inside their home, inside their lives, manipulating and controlling them all.
The woman ran the household. She mothered Colleen’s child.
Colleen had been made redundant. Neither wanted nor needed. Even Jimmy had no use for her anymore; tolerating her, tiptoeing around her. He said all the right things, pretending that he cared, but Colleen knew. She knew the real Jimmy Byrne: the way he could pretend to be so charming, so genuine.
Colleen barely left the house anymore unless Jimmy insisted on dragging her along to some client dinner, so that she could help him play the role of happy couple. He’d said it was good for business. Having his wife on his arm made him appear more genuine, more authentic. Apparently, people trusted a family man.
The irony.
Colleen didn’t trust Jimmy one bit.
Crying now, she opened the drawer of her bedside table. Grabbing the small bottle of vodka that she’d hidden away especially, she unscrewed the lid. Glugging down the liquid. Relishing its burn at the back of her throat.
She stared down at the plastic pot of tablets. Shaking the bottle, she knew that if she took them all now, there’d be no coming back.
It would be final.
These had been Joanie’s answer to everything. She’d told Colleen that they would help. Painkillers, sleeping pills, antidepressants. She’d said that they’d make her feel better in time, but they hadn’t. They’d made her feel worse.
Staring down at Nancy, Colleen felt an overwhelming sense of sadness as she watched her daughter blissfully sleeping. Her perfect soft skin; the long dark eyelashes that rested gently on the tops of her cheeks. Nancy was every bit a Byrne and as time went on Jimmy and Joanie would only turn her more and more against Colleen. Already the child wanted nothing to do with her and it hurt – more than anything Colleen had ever experienced before.
Unscrewing the bottle, Colleen cupped the pills in her hand before swallowing them all down at once. Glugging down the vodka until every last one had been forced into her stomach. Until she choked.
Crying now, Colleen lay down next to her daughter. Stroking the child’s head. Inhaling her soft, delicate smell.
‘I love you, Nancy,’ she whispered before closing her eyes.
She waited for the numbness that she knew would come.
Twenty-Six
‘Let me fucking go. I haven’t done anything. Get off me!’
Incredulous, as Jack Taylor threw the man down onto the wet pavement with far more force than was necessary, he cried out at the brutal thump as his head bounced off the cold, hard concrete. Though he knew he was wasting his breath. This filth clearly didn’t give a shit about his protests and the fact that he was hurting him. He was probably doing it on purpose. Getting his job satisfaction any way he could.
‘You’re under arrest, mate! You have the right to remain silent…’ Straddling the assailant as the man swung his arms and legs out wildly – kicking and hitting out in a desperate bid to break loose from the officer’s grip – Jack was struggling to detain the man as he writhed beneath him. Losing his patience, Jack had had enough. Gritting his teeth, he wrenched the man’s arms up roughly behind him using all his strength, ignoring the screams of pain from the assailant as he slapped the metal rings tightly over the man’s wrists, restraining him. He wasn’t in the mood for this bullshit tonight.
‘Oh, have a laugh, will you! It was just an argument. A lover’s tiff,’ the man spat, kicking out with his legs in protest. ‘Ain’t you pigs got nothing better to do?’
‘As it happens, yeah, we bloody do.’ Jack Taylor shook his head in disgust at the pure gall of the man, visibly annoyed that they’d been called out to this pair of drunken morons yet again.
The husband and wife duo were well known to the police.
They were harmless really. Just a pair of old drunks. But Jack was getting fed up wasting his time and energy on scum like this who had nothing better to do than hang around on the streets, brawling with each other. The two of them. Rolling around on the pavement outside one of the pubs, beating the living shit out of each other.
‘It’s a shame there’s always idiots like you two wasting our time.’
The man’s wife was on him then too. The scrawny woman bent down, grabbing the officer with her bony hands as she tried to pull PC Taylor off her husband.
‘You’re hurting him. There’s no need to sit on him, you fat bastard. You’ll flatten him.’
She was pulling at Jack’s jacket. But the gobfull of phlegm that hit him in the face a second later caught him off guard.
‘For fuck’s sake!’ Jack shouted, as he wiped the string of saliva and blood off his cheek with disgust. The woman had been clumped by her husband just as the officers had arrived. She’d been assaulted, but suddenly they had somehow become her target.
‘Can someone grab this one? Knowing my luck she’ll be riddled with fucking AIDS or rabies.’
‘You can’t talk about me like that! I want your badge number!’
Dragging himself up off the floor, clearly not in the least bit threatened by the woman, Jack Taylor pulled the man up onto h
is feet along with him, before leading him over to the awaiting police van as PC Adams ran over and intervened with the woman.
‘Oh, two against one now, is it?’ the woman squeaked as she continued her tirade of abuse, and lashing out with her fists and legs.
‘Why don’t you calm down? There’s no need for all this,’ the younger officer said diplomatically, as he held the woman by her arms in order to detain her. But his interference only seemed to infuriate her even more. Lashing out even more in blind fury, she was much stronger than her five foot nothing frame had led him to believe.
‘Fucking pigs. Go on, what you gunna do, huh? Beat me up en all?’ she spat, pounding the officer repeatedly with her closed fists, as PC Adams exchanged a look with his fellow officer.
It was clear that they were both thinking exactly the same thing: chance would be a fine thing!
‘How do you like it, eh?!’ The woman cackled as she caught PC Adams with a sharp blow, causing his nose to explode on impact.
‘Right that’s it. You’re nicked too!’
Wrenching the handcuffs around her wrists, he ignored her cries of them being too tight as he felt the trickle of blood running down his face and into his mouth. Grimacing at the horrible metallic tang, he knew that, despite his injury, the woman was still in no mind to relent.
Christ knew how much she’d had to drink tonight, but the woman didn’t seem to have any understanding of the shitstorm she’d just caused herself by assaulting him and, judging by the potent stench of alcohol radiating from her breath, PC Adams was convinced that the woman was far too wasted to give a shit.
‘Get the fuck off me, and get the fuck off my husband!’ The woman was acting deranged now.
‘Your husband knocked your front teeth out, love. So we’ve arrested him. It’s called assault.’ PC Adams spoke through gritted teeth. ‘And now you’re being arrested too, for assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest. So you carry on, love, and we can always add some more charges while we’re at it. No skin off my nose,’ he snarled as backup arrived in the form of another police van.
The Betrayed: A shocking, gritty thriller that will hook you from the first page Page 18