Rox was sitting on her mother's bed and trying to get her to drink some tea and eat a piece of toast. The girls took it in turns now to force Jackie to get out of bed and to eat. They were worried about her and her escalating drinking problem.

'She'll be all right, now will you piss off, Rox, and let me sleep!'

Rox sighed. 'Imagine it was one of us, Mum, who had died. How would you feel?'

'At this moment, Rox, I would be over the moon. Now will you sod off and leave me be.'

Kimberley, who was on the landing, listened to her mother and wondered at a woman who had no real feeling for her sister's grief.

Rox tried again. 'Will you sit up, Mum, please, and eat this toast we've made you?'

Jackie was getting really annoyed now. This was becoming a regular thing and at first she had loved it. The attention and the knowledge her girls were looking out for her had been lovely. Now it was getting a bit over the fucking top. They were here every day like a gaggle of bloody witches, and all she wanted to do was have a kip.

Kimberley walked into the bedroom and, pushing Rox out of the way, she grabbed the quilt and dragged it off her half-naked mother.

Jackie went ballistic. She sat up in the bed and screamed in anger, 'What the fuck is it with you lot? Why can't you just leave me alone!'

Rox was trying not to laugh, but then she looked at her mother properly and saw the way she had bloated out again over the last few months and any thought of laughing vanished.

Jackie's legs were a mass of bruises and scratches, because her kidneys were gradually breaking down and causing an itchy rash. Rox and her sisters knew this because they had looked it up on the internet. They knew what was happening to Jackie and they wanted to try to help her help herself, before it was too late. Their mother was a textbook case for a female alcoholic and they wanted to stop her from drinking herself to death.

Rox looked around the bedroom. It was filthy The bedding was rotten, the carpet was a mass of cigarette burns and coffee stains, and the whole room stank of sweat and stale perfume. But the saddest thing of all was that it didn't look half as dilapidated as the woman sitting up on the bed amidst all the squalor.

Jackie had pulled the quilt back over her, but any thought of sleep was long gone, and her anger was being expressed as vindictive personal insults.

She lit a cigarette and said loudly and sarcastically, 'So what is this about, then?'

She spoke in a high, sing-song voice, the utter contempt for her children's do-gooding evident. 'Rox is having a baby, so now she is a fucking fountain of wisdom. Well, you know fuck all, Rox, you never have.'

'She knows more than you ever will, Mother.'

Jackie smiled as she looked at Kimberley 'Oh, now me junkie daughter is giving me the benefit of her experience as well, is she? Well, shove it. Go and have a fix, Kim, at least you were smiling on the skag.'

Rox walked to the door. She had heard enough.

Kimberley said quietly, 'Look at yourself, Mum, and your life. It stinks, you stink and you drink yourself stupid so you don't have to accept that. But you do, you have to try and stop destroying yourself and everyone around you.'

Jackie laughed nastily, and pushing her hair back off her face she hollered, 'At least I have a life, what have you got, eh? No man, no nothing. Who'd fucking want you, Kim, with your miserable fucking boatrace? You tell me that.'

'Listen to yourself, Mum, I don't need a man to make me feel like a valid person…'

Jackie was laughing again. 'Kimberley, go and score, go and get pissed, jack up, snort, I don't give a fuck. Just get out of my fucking face!'

Rox and Kimberley looked at her, and the expression on their faces told Jackie all she needed to know about herself.

Kim spoke up, the disgust evident in her voice. 'You ain't got a man, Mum, you ain't even got Dad. You know what? He loathes you. He is out and about all the time…'

Rox was trying to make her sister leave the room, trying to prevent the blow-up she knew was about to erupt. 'Leave her, Kim, we're wasting our time…'

Jackie laughed again.

'"Leave her, Kim,"' she mimicked her daughter's voice. 'Go round Maggie's, she loves all this shit. You get it from her, the lot of you… another fucking drama queen. That poor child, she wouldn't give it the fucking time of day for years. Neglected him-'

Kimberley laughed with utter contempt. 'You, to talk about neglect! You've got some nerve, Mother. Little Freddie's arse was always red raw because you couldn't be bothered to change him, he never ate a decent meal unless we provided one, and you talk about neglect!'

Jackie knew this was true, which just annoyed her more.

'I was always there for him, and whatever I am or I ain't, I've never not loved him! Maggie had it all, the house, the car, even the fucking dog! But no baby, and when she got one, finally got one, she didn't even know what to do with it! She is only off her trolley now because she fucking well knows she had no time for that little boy. She's feeling guilty, and so she should be after all those years of neglect.'

Jackie was shouting now. 'Even your father had more time for him than she did, and she couldn't stand him even touching the child! I used to watch her when he played with the poor little sod, her face screwed up, like we was all nothing. She hated him near the boy, yet she didn't fucking lay one finger on him herself unless she had to, did she? That poor child was neglected, and even my mother said it. My Freddie loved that boy and she wouldn't even let the poor child have the benefit of him making a fuss of the poor little fucker, let alone anyone else!'

'And just why do you think that might have been then, Mum, eh? You know so much, why do you think she hated him touching him, then?'

Rox could hear the inflection in her sister's voice and knew that something was going to be said that was going to cause trouble, big trouble, serious trouble.

'Shut up, Kim. Come on, let's go.'

Jackie leaped up on the bed, she wanted to hear this. 'You keep out of it, Rox. Come on, then, what are you getting at, Kim? Fucking spit it out. He loved that little boy, he doted on him, and thanks to him at least the child had a few good memories to take with him-'

'It was his child, you stupid bloody cow!'

Jackie was stunned and wondered, briefly, if she was hearing things.

'What did you say?'

'He raped her. Dad raped Maggie!'

Maggie was sick inside, and the pain she felt could not be relieved with the tablets her mother was forever trying to get her to take.

'Please, Mum, leave me, go home, I just want to be on my own.'

The strange thing was she was fine on her own, but no one believed her. Alone, she could gather her thoughts, pretend that things were OK, all right. She could relax, try to rest. She could forget what had happened.

Forget how her son had been conceived, remember him as the little boy he was, the son she loved. She would let Freddie Jackson rape her every day if it would bring her son back to her. He was a child of rape, he had been brought on to this earth because of an action that was so heinous, so evil, and yet she had learned to love him. He had been the innocent party, he had been the catalyst for her life being destroyed, and then he had been the catalyst that had given her life meaning, and given her marriage the kick-start it had needed to survive. Jimmy had loved him and that had allowed her to love him as well.

Now, her own company was preferable to anyone else's. Her own company afforded her the luxury of pretending he was still alive, that her son was still near her. Alone, her life could be what she wanted it to be, instead of what it was.