He sighed and said sadly, 'I think things are a bit off at Chez Jimmy's. Maggie has been fit to be tied since he had to go up to Jockland.'

'Well, you can't blame her, it was on their anniversary.'

She dismissed him and once more he felt the anger rising inside him. He swallowed it down and said, with as much kindness as he could muster, 'I think he is firing blanks. Jackie was telling me Maggie stopped the pill eighteen months ago and there's still no sign of a baby.'

Patricia looked at him in absolute amazement. 'Who are you now, fucking Marge Proops? Who gives a fuck!'

But he knew this would be relayed back to Ozzy, and that was exactly what he wanted. In future, he was going to become the stable one, the one who sorted things, even if it meant being nice to that pair of wankers otherwise known as the Blacks of Glasgow.

Jimmy would soon find out. No one mugged him off, and he didn't care who they were.

'Please, Mags, tell me what is wrong with you, mate.'

Maggie shrugged. 'I am just tired, that's all.'

She walked past her husband and looked out of her office door. She watched the goings on in the salon as if they were of paramount importance. She had no interest really, the salons pretty much ran themselves, but if it took her eyes away from Jimmy's then that was OK as far as she was concerned.

She could not look him in the eye any more.

If he touched her she wanted to cry, and if he didn't she wanted to cry.

Jimmy observed her warily She had not been the same since he had gone to Scotland. He had explained over and over again that he had not really had any option. The Blacks spent their time dreaming of taking out Freddie, and so he was the natural choice as go-between. Thanks to him, Jimmy, the Blacks and the poor little chemist from Amsterdam, who now resided in Ilford with a young girl called LaToya and a bad crack habit, they were all quids in.

But she had not recovered, and no matter how much he tried to talk to her, or tried to love her, she was different. It was as if she was in another dimension, and it was starting to frighten him. He didn't know what to do about it.

'I am all right, Jimmy, for fuck's sake leave me alone, will you!'

He sighed heavily. 'You sure you are all right?'

She didn't answer him and he didn't know how to break the crashing silence between them.

Chapter Fifteen

Glenford Prentiss smiled his gap-toothed smile and Jimmy returned it. They had become good friends over the years, and they were close, as close as they would ever be to anyone, considering their line of work.

'Come on, Jimmy, you need to talk to someone, man. You looking stressed, you looking like a man with a problem he can't resolve by himself.'

Glenford knew he might be overstepping the mark but he was worried about Jimmy. He looked terrible. This man had gone down in drug folklore. He had flooded the market with ecstasy. From the raves all over the country to the blues on the Railton Road, he had made it accessible to everyone. The price was low, the product was good, and the money was rolling in. Jimmy should be over the moon, and yet here he was with a face like a wet night in Montego Bay.

Jimmy was stoned. This was not a usual occurrence for him and he felt the dragging heaviness of the skunk. He had never really been into skunk, it was a heavy, potent puff. He was more a Lebanese gold kind of man. He liked to mellow out, chill out, and finally go off to sleep.

Skunk, however, was a different thing altogether. It could make you hallucinate if you smoked enough, it was a chemically controlled puff, and he usually avoided it. But everything was a massive fuck-up at the moment, and as he was spending the evening with Glenford he decided to have a blow and maybe sort his head out.

It was a mistake.

'Come on, man, a few Red Stripes and you will become loquacious, the words will be tripping off your tongue.'

He was laughing. Glenford had done a serious lump as a young man, and he had spent his time with a dictionary and his right hand. That was his favourite story, and even though Jimmy had laughed like everyone else he knew there was more than a grain of truth in it. When Glenford was in the mood he could talk for England. He used words that were so alien to the people listening but were said with such aplomb, and in such circumstances, that they were almost like listening to music.

He was a wordsmith, and he had once confided to Jimmy, while very stoned, that his hero was, of all people, Les Dawson. The man, he assured Jimmy, had been the most exciting wordsmith of them all. He said that this man had been underrated, and was in his opinion the last great humorist and talker other than Spike Milligan.

This had caused Jimmy to laugh himself nearly unconscious, but then when he had watched the tapes with Glenford he had been inclined to agree. Les Dawson was humorous, and he was also imaginative. Like Glenford, Jimmy had realised the man's total command of the English language. Without the puff though, Jimmy wasn't so sure. Glenford was also a Monty Python aficionado. He could repeat any sketch, any line from any film and he also knew every anecdote about the Python team that was in the public domain.

Now Jimmy wanted his friend to start on about Les Dawson, or his new idols Bill Hicks and Eddie Murphy.

Anything was preferable to thinking about his own situation.

'Maggie ain't right, and she ain't been right for a while.'

Lena was voicing the opinion of everyone around her, but unlike everyone, she was saying it out loud.

Jackie shrugged as always when faced with any kind of problem that did not involve her or her life. Consequently, she was exasperated as she cried out, 'She's all right. Fuck me, Mum, she's coining it in, so she can't be that fucking in a state, can she?'

Lena regretted speaking now. She knew Jackie was so jealous of her little sister that anything said about her was derided, or just plain dismissed. But Lena was worried, very worried. Her youngest had gone from a happy, caring woman to a nervous wreck seemingly overnight.

It was as if all the joy had been milked from her, along with her happiness and her natural energy, and all that was left was a husk, a living, breathing husk that was like a pale imitation of the girl she had been.

She went through the motions, she smiled, she worked and she did everything she had always done. But somehow, it was like she had been replaced by a clone.

The girl was not right, and Lena was terrified that something very sinister was going on. So she tried once more in case her elder daughter might have noticed something.

'Has she said anything to you, Jackie?'

Jackie sighed, then said sarcastically, 'Like what exactly, Mum? How you are getting on her fucking tits because you are never off her fucking doorstep? Do you think that maybe you might have overstayed your welcome there?'

Lena closed her eyes and suppressed her anger, as well as the urge to smack her eldest daughter right across her fat, bloated face. Instead she goaded her with words, because she knew that words hurt this daughter more than a baseball bat across her thick skull.

'You are a bitter pill, ain't you, Jackie? You jealous fucking mare. She ain't crossed this door for weeks and you don't even care, do you?' Lena got up and, putting on her coat, she left without another word. But she felt Jackie's anger and she knew it was misplaced.

Jackie knew that she should have swallowed the criticism, and that her mother had an actual point. They were family after all. Instead, she was just glad that her mother had gone and left her in peace.

Since Freddie had become so enamoured of her Maggie, she had been grateful for her sister's absence from her life. Jackie still went there at weekends, and ate her food and drank her drink, but the fact that Maggie didn't come to her house any more didn't really bother her. She had only come to spy anyway, spy and give her lectures dressed up as the ramblings of a worried sister.