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overwhelm her to go away. Joel was trying to keep below the speed limit as his car was a police magnet but Charly could tell that he wanted to put his foot down and drive at one hundred and twenty miles an hour along the Parkway into town.
    â€˜What the fuck was all that about?’ Joel asked angrily.
    â€˜What?’ Charly asked, puzzled.
    â€˜I don’t like being spoken to like a twat and your dad just made me out to be a prize one.’ Joel threw the car around a roundabout.
    â€˜I don’t like being spoken to like a twat either, Joel!’ Charly snapped back.
    â€˜Let’s call it a night, yeah? I don’t want to talk about your cunt dad any more,’ Joel said with real anger in his voice.
    â€˜
Cunt?
’ Charly said, taking exception to the word. ‘The only cunt in there was you.’
    Joel slammed hard on the brakes and Charly flew forward. Her seatbelt cut into her as it pulled her back into her seat sharply and she gasped for breath before looking at her boyfriend in shock.
    Joel pressed his face up to Charly’s. She could feel his breath against her skin. ‘Call me a cunt again and I’ll show you what one looks like.’
    Charly wiped the side of her face and looked out of the window as Joel pressed his foot on the accelerator, urging the car into life. She hated living like this but what could she do? She loved Joel, and she knew that if she left him there would be a line of women waiting to take her place. She didn’t know what to do, so she’d do what she always did when faced with confrontation from Joel: nothing.

chapter three
    TRACY WAS COUNTING her blessings. To her complete shock Markie, Jodie, Leanne and Karina had all agreed to come to the Elvis competition tonight. She’d thought at least one of them would have had some moralistic hissy fit and told her where to shove it. Good, she thought, that stuff with Leanne last year was obviously all in the past for her kids. She wasn’t quite so quick to forgive and forget, but their year-long avoidance of her was something she would deal with when she saw fit. Now wasn’t the time. For the moment she needed her family on her side to show Len Metcalfe that the Cromptons were a family, unlike his rag-tag-and-bobtail mob. There was Jimmy Metcalfe, who had been in and out of the nick for petty criminality since leaving school. There were Anita and Tanita, the twins who sat on their fat backsides all day eating cakes and watchingdaytime telly, not bothering to converse with the outside world because they had that weird twin thing going on where they read each other’s thoughts and knew if the other wanted a custard slice or a bakewell tart that day. And then there was Charly, who had been a thorn in Tracy’s side for long enough when she had gone out with Scott. Now she was a bloody WAG, of all things. What a job, Tracy thought. As much as Tracy loathed Charly, she also had a grudging respect for her, one that she wouldn’t be able to admit even to herself – Charly had found her meal ticket and had left Bolingbroke as quick as her sticklike little legs could carry her. Something that Tracy herself would have done years ago if she’d ever had the opportunity.
    Kent came into the front room in his Y-fronts with what looked like a sandwich bag smeared with black paint stuck to his head. ‘Am I done?’ he asked nervously.
    Tracy took a swig of the large vodka she had poured herself and walked over to Kent, pulling at the bag to inspect his hair. ‘Give it another five minutes; you don’t want to end up looking like Dickie Davies.’
    â€˜Don’t say that!’ Kent said, alarmed, scanning the back of the Nice ’n Easy packet.
    Tracy began to cackle. ‘It’ll be fine; you’re like a bloody woman.’
    â€˜I don’t want to look like a prize nob tonight.’
    â€˜Yeah, dressed in a white catsuit down the working men’s club,