She was mortified because she knew that it was her fault if people did think that about her because she had no interest in the boy or in what he did or didn't do. She had no trouble believing what the woman was telling her, and she knew that she should at least be trying to justify his behaviour, make allowances for him, at least try to defend him, but she had no intention of doing anything like that. Instead, she jumped up and bellowed her son's name out with all the force she could muster.

The kids had shot into the bedrooms when she had shouted at her mother and as they trooped back downstairs now she could feel the heat of humiliation and shame wash over her face and neck. The child seemed to move inside her with a sickening wrench and she had trouble staying on her feet.

Pat Junior and the girls were in the hallway and Lance was behind them, his eyes wide and, as always, displaying an innocence she knew he had never really possessed. He was a devil in disguise and she flew at him with a speed that belied the heaviness of her aching body. All she wanted to do was hurt him to make him realise exactly what he did to others; she wanted him to feel the same emotions as his victims.

Lance tried to escape her wrath and she grabbed at his ankle as he attempted to run back up the stairs. She dragged him by his legs and his screams were loud and piercing but she ignored them. She pulled him into the front room and flung him on to the floor. He lay there panting in fright and she saw the terror in his eyes as she shrieked at him. Her mother was trying to calm her down and she grabbed the front of Annie's carefully buttoned cardigan and thrust her back out into the hallway, nearly knocking her over in the process. The children were all staring at her as if she had gone mad. She didn't feel like she had gone mad though, she felt as if she had finally woken up from a bad dream. She felt as if she was free at last.

Annie's voice was cajoling her now, she was trying to calm her down. Instead it made her anger swell inside her like a canker that was about to burst.

'Lil, calm down, love. He wouldn't do anything like that. He's a little fucker, granted, but he wouldn't do that. They pick on him…'

Lil shook her head in despair at her mother's words and, placing her hands on her ample hips, she said with derision and contempt, 'Oh, Mum, fuck off, will you? He could murder all the neighbours in broad daylight with an axe and you'd say they must have deserved it. That they must have done something to him.'

'You going to take her word over mine then?'

Lil saw the hurt on her mother's face and the frown lines etched there so she looked old before her time and she actually felt pity for her. Annie was almost delusional where Lance was concerned; it was as if she saw a different boy to the one everyone else did. She held herself in check knowing it was pointless talking to the woman before her, a woman she didn't even like most of the time, but who she had thought she needed.

'Take the kids upstairs, Mother, and don't fucking come down again until I tell you.'

Annie was beside herself with grief for the boy she could see no wrong in.

'Nanny Annie, please, Nanny Annie, don't leave me with her…' Lance was choking on his sobs now and even with the tears running down his handsome face, the face that was so like his father's, and his pitiable crying, Lil still couldn't find it in her heart to feel any kind of pity for him.

He tried to bolt from the room then, to get away from her, and she grabbed him by the hair and dragged him back inside. Then, slamming the front room door closed, she untangled the arms that were now desperately trying to grip her round her waist to make her cuddle him and she laid into him with all the strength she possessed.

Her blows were heavy and carefully delivered. He curled into a ball on the floor so she grabbed him once more by his hair and, holding him upright, she gave him a beating that was as vicious as it was overdue. He was bleeding and she could smell the fear coming off him in waves but it just added to her anger and her need to teach him a lesson that would be remembered his whole life.

She could hear herself shouting at him and in her rage she couldn't even comprehend what she was saying to him: 'You fucker, you bullying, wicked fucker…'

Lil was screaming the same words over and over again and Janie sat and watched the scene before her with an awe that she would say later was due to the fact that Lance was still denying any wrongdoing even after his mother had opened up his eyebrow. She would tell people in a hushed voice that Lil Brodie was like a maniac, that she had doled out a hiding many a man would have been loath to be on the wrong end of. She would tell anyone who asked her that Lil Brodie was a decent woman who had administered a beating to that little bastard to teach him the error of his ways. She had paid him out tenfold for her girl's injuries and without realising it, Janie set out Lil's reputation as a battler once and for all.

Lil was crying now, a low groaning cry of despair and disappointment and long strings of snot were hanging from her nose as she knelt over the boy, and, forcing down the urge to crack his skull open with her clenched fist, she said to him, 'I'm on to you, boy, and you will get this or worse every time you step out of line. You fucking bully, you rotten, stinking bully.'

Lance stared up at the woman he alternately loved and hated and he said through his tears, 'It wasn't me, Mum, it was Patrick… I swear… I swear to God…'

Lance was still lying to her, still trying to worm his way out of it. He had not a scrap of shame or pride inside him. Lil pulled his head up towards her face with a force so great that his teeth crashed together loudly enough to make Janie Callahan jump. Lance could feel her breath on his face once more as she bellowed at him.

'You liar, you are still fucking lying. Tell me the truth, you mad bastard, tell me the truth or I swear to God I'll fucking bury you!'

She was staring into his eyes and he knew then that she meant every word she said. She saw the lids of his eyes come down like blinds on a window and knew he was changing tack. The knowledge depressed her even as it worried her. He was such a strange child and now she had acknowledged that fact to herself and to Janie Callahan, she felt her fear of him evaporate.

'It was me. I'm sorry, Mum… I'm sorry… She was looking at me… She thinks she is better than us she does.'

The whine in Lance's voice, and his constant lying, was too much for her. What the hell had she bred? Where the hell did this child come from? Lil threw him away from her then as if the effort of touching him was anathema. Then, holding on to the arm of the sofa, she pulled herself up from the floor with difficulty and Janie quickly leapt up to help her. She had been silent as she had watched Lil take matters into her own hands. Before, she would have laid out money that Lil had been aware of her son's reign of terror; how wrong she had been. And how relieved she was now that her kids would finally be free of the little boy who looked like an angel but had the vocabulary of a sailor.

Lance was battered and bloody and Janie could feel no remorse for what had happened to him. Like his own mother, she felt only distaste and relief that he had finally got his comeuppance. She had enjoyed seeing him squirm and it bothered her that a young child could stir up such feelings inside her.

'Get out of my sight.' He dragged himself up slowly and Lil could see that she had gone too far, that she had really hammered him, but she didn't care. There was a kink in Lance's nature and she was going to iron it out if it killed her.

When Lance was gone from the room, Lil sighed and, lighting a cigarette, she pulled on it deeply. Blowing out the smoke noisily, she said sadly, 'I am so sorry, Janie. I knew nothing about it. Is the little one all right?'