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he marched out. ‘Think about the kids. They’re the ones who are going to suffer.’
    Mark slammed the door, stomped down the stairs and hit the pavement, anger propelling him towards the pub.
    It was one thing Amy having a go – she was his wife, and that was what they did best. But mates were supposed to have your back in times of trouble, not make you feel worse. And as for Steve suggesting that he had a problem, that was just stupid. He didn’t wake up sweating and shaking of a morning, desperate for a gambling fix; he just liked the occasional flutter. And Amy hadn’t complained when he’d bunged her that extra cash the other week – even if he had lied about where it had really come from. The greedy bitch had almost snatched his fucking hand off.
    Still brooding when he reached the pub, Mark bought himself a pint and headed defiantly for the fruit machine. Fuck Steve, and fuck Amy. It was his money, and if he wanted to blow it, it was none of their business.
    Ginger Jenny was getting ready to meet up with her friends Fiona and Katie. Although she was no longer ginger, having finally shaken off the last shackles of her mother’s control and visited a hairdresser.
    She had pleaded with her mother for years to let her change her hair colour, convinced that it would make the bullies stop picking on her, make the boys fancy her, and make everybody in general realise how great she was and want to be her friend. Her mum had point-blank refused to spend money on something that she considered frivolous, so Jenny had been forced to suffer. And, even after her mother had died, she hadn’t dared to do it, unable to shake the feeling that her mother was still there in spirit.
    That feeling had eased after the council had taken the house back and moved her into a flat, and she had finally taken control of her life. A brunette now, with a style that was both trendy and easy to manage, Jenny felt pretty for the first time ever. And, having invested in a whole new wardrobe to complete her new image, she was ready to show herself off to the world, so when Katie and Fiona had asked her to go for a drink, she’d said yes – even though she’d never liked either of them.
    Spurned and ridiculed by the cooler kids, the three of them had stuck together at school like a little band of lepers. Jenny had dropped the other two like a hot brick after leaving, and hadn’t contacted them since. But Fiona had got back in touch after hearing about her mum passing away, and the pair of them had been bombarding her with phone calls ever since, seemingly convinced that she needed support and comfort.
    When the carriage clock on the mantelpiece chimed softly, Jenny slipped her feet into her new stiletto heels and stepped back to check her reflection in the mirror, turning this way and that to make sure there were no unsightly bulges, or labels hanging out. As she preened, she glimpsed the urn on the windowsill out of the corner of her eye, and flashed it a sly smile.
    ‘Something wrong?’ she asked, as if responding to an unspoken muttering of disapproval from the ashes within. ‘Skirt too short? Too much make-up?’ She paused and cocked her head, as if waiting for an answer. Then, shrugging, said, ‘Oh, well, it’s not up to you any more, is it?’
    Jenny felt great as she made her way to the pub, but her good mood dipped when she saw that Fiona and Katie weren’t waiting outside as they had promised. She pulled her phone out of her bag and brought up Fiona’s number.
    ‘Where the hell are you?’
    ‘Sorry,’ Fiona apologised. ‘But I’m sure we said half past, and it’s not quite ten past yet.’
    ‘What am I supposed to do now?’ Jenny demanded. ‘I only agreed to come because you begged me, but I wouldn’t have bothered if I’d known you were going to let me down.’
    ‘We didn’t know you were going to be early or we’d have made sure we were there before you,’ said Fiona, still apologetic even though it wasn’t