'Let's get married soon, Mags, eh?' He squeezed her to him. 'I have enough to buy a place, we can go looking at the weekend. I want us together like this all the time, I am sick of having to take you home and pretend we ain't shagging at every available opportunity.'

She laughed. 'I am ready when you are, mate.' He kissed her on the lips, and she felt the urgency in him once again.

Sooner rather than later suited her, she just wanted out of her mother's house and into a place of her own. She had it all planned, and she was determined to see that her plans did not go awry. No kids for at least six years, and a nice little business to see her through the future. She felt so lucky, and she prayed silently that they would not end up like Freddie and Jackie.

If he ever stopped loving her like this she knew that she would die inside, and it was this knowledge that helped her understand why her sister and mother acted like they did.

Freddie Senior was in his element. He was experiencing a high the likes of which he had never thought possible.

Kitty Mason had just blown him off and it had left him weak as a kitten and feeling like Tarzan.

She was now rolling herself a joint. She sat cross-legged on the floor, her naked body shining like marble in the lamplight. All the years he had been married he had never seen his wife in the nude, and though he had sown his wild oats he had never had a woman so at ease with herself and her body like Kitty. Even after two kids her body was like a well-chewed Blackpool whelk, not a mark on it!

He could watch her for hours, there was something about her that made him want her like he had never wanted any woman before. He had always had his sidelines, and he had enjoyed them, and then he had left them. They had known the score and that had been their attraction. He took them out and he wined and dined them, gave them a seeing to as and when it suited him. They, for their part, had the opportunity to be seen with a well-known Face and experience the criminal lifestyle of money and long nights out.

It was an arrangement that suited everyone and this state of affairs would carry on until the relationship died a natural death.

But from the moment he had seen Kitty it had been a totally different experience. He had been besotted within seconds.

This was an alien concept to him. Never in his life had a woman affected him so strongly. He knew he was setting himself up for a fall, that the thirty-odd-year age gap could only bring him grief, but he was drawn to her. When he wasn't with her he wondered constantly where she was and what she was doing. Drove himself mad wondering if she was with someone else, more to the point, if she was sleeping with anyone else.

Freddie Senior knew in his heart the way he felt about her was unhealthy. She was like an addiction, yet he could not bring himself to try to give her up. Her little flat was lovely, and even though she had two kids she kept the place spotless. It was nicely decorated, and her kids were well behaved. Kitty was a free spirit, and he was attracted to that. She looked after herself, paid her own bills, had even done her own decorating. She had a strength of character that wasn't apparent to most people and it was that independence that most attracted him.

The downside of Kitty, though, was she never knew when to shut her mouth. She opened it without ever once thinking about what she was saying. In his world, women were rarely afforded that luxury and she had put a lot of backs up with her outspokenness. When she had a drink she got very loud, and she also had a problem with any other women around her. It had not taken her long to see that it was her involvement with him that allowed her to say more or less what she liked. But he knew he was going to have to put the hard word on her soon and he was dreading it.

Kitty was capable of having a knock-down, drag-out fight, and afterwards giving him the most amazing, mind-blowing sex he had ever had in his life.

He lay back on the sofa as he listened to Sade. He had a dry mouth and his heart was beating fast, the sound of it loud in his ears, and he knew he was getting the rushes from the amphetamines he had snorted earlier.

He felt sixteen again and he loved it. The feeling of being completely free was like a drug in itself. He snorted, he smoked dope and he listened to music that until Kitty had turned him on to drugs had sounded like shit. He had been an Elvis fan, had loved Sinatra. Now he was listening to 'Papa Was A Rolling Stone' and actually liking the stuff.

The drugs had been a revelation to him, he had not been turned on or tuned out in the sixties. He had been a fifties man, a man who saw alcohol as his only vice. He had loved his wife, who he now saw as nothing more than a brick gradually helping him sink into his old age. Maddie was a decent woman, and he respected her. But all his married life she had been respectable, he had never had a decent shag or a decent conversation in thirty-four years. His generation had stayed married whatever. They had consciously looked for decent women who they knew would take care of the home and any kids they might accrue. They had married their mothers and felt honoured to be doing so.

Now, though, he wanted excitement, he felt the sap rising inside him and he knew that Maddie, God love her, would never be enough, had never been enough. Even before the kid, when she had been well stacked and had a face like a movie star, she had been cold. He knew that people from their background believed that women who enjoyed sex were wanton, were untrustworthy, and he felt cheated because of it.

Freddie Senior had spent the best part of his life looking for what this girl gave him, belief in himself as a man. Not as a giver of children or a provider. Kitty lay back and let him take her. She would howl her enjoyment out and he got off just watching her as she came.

She passed him the joint now and he toked on it deeply. The speed was making his heart beat erratically and he wanted to come down a bit.

As Kitty got up and slipped her dressing gown back on, he heard a knock on the front door. It was the middle of the night and Kitty, being Kitty, did not even think it was unusual. He jumped up and pulled on his trousers and shirt.

'Who the fuck could that be?'

Kitty laughed at him. 'Probably a mate, Fred. Relax, for fuck's sake.'

Kitty was used to people coming round at all hours. She had a flat and she had gear, so it was a natural occurrence for her.

She opened the front door a few minutes later and Freddie Senior was surprised to see his son walk into the room.

'All right, Dad.'

Freddie was smiling, the picture of friendliness and camaraderie. He heard a child crying and the low voice of Kitty as she went in and hushed it. As he looked around the room he was surprised at how nice it was and this showed on his face.

'She keeps this place lovely.' Freddie Senior was explaining himself away and they both knew it. 'So, what brings you here?'

Freddie could hear the nervousness in his father's voice, he knew the fact he had come here would throw him.

'Jackie had a boy tonight.'

Freddie saw the smile on his father's face, the genuine pleasure he was feeling for him, and he grinned back.

'Handsome fucker he is, built like the proverbial, a Jackson through and through.'

Freddie Senior shook his son's hand and hugged him tightly. 'Sit down and I'll get you a beer.'

Freddie sat on the sofa, observing the room. In spite of himself he was impressed. He would not have put Kitty and this flat together in a million years, and she had certainly gone up in his estimation. He clocked the speed that was lying in neat lines on the smoked glass coffee table and the half-smoked joint in the ashtray.