Dangerous Lady by Martina Cole

mind Michael had more chance of getting the Pope’s inside leg measurement than he had of getting that money back.
    Michael stubbed out his cigarette, grinding it into the ashtray with such force Joe thought it would surely break. Snapping his head up he looked at Joe, his mouth clamped closed. In the quiet room Joe could hear his laboured breathing.
    ‘I’m warning you, Joe … I’m warning you now… don’t fight me on this. I know exactly what I’m doing. I’ll get that money back. I’ll get it and the interest on it, you just wait and see.’
    There were tears in Michael’s eyes. He’s just like a child, Joe thought, it’s as if I’ve taken his toys away from him. The difference being that when Michael was like this he was liable to explode into a ‘raging temper at any moment.
    Joe felt the familiar fingers of fear touching him. It was Michael’s very unpredictability that drew Joe to him. Twice Michael had lashed out at him and hurt him, only to be contrite and loving in the next breath. Although Joe had never tried to analyse their relationship, inside himself he knew that it was the boy’s vicious streak that attracted him.46
     
    ‘All right, Michael, I’ll let it go this time. But in future, you come to me.’
    Michael’s face broke into one of his winning smiles and Joe felt himself relax.
    As Michael looked at the man sitting opposite, his fat ugly face grinning like a Cheshire cat’s, he felt an impulse to smash his fist into his teeth. Instead he carried on smiling. Joe didn’t know it but his days were numbered. Soon he would be out of the way and he, Michael, could get on with his life.
    Joe got out of his chair and walked around the desk. Standing behind Michael he began rubbing his taut muscular shoulders. Feeling the solid flesh beneath his fingers he felt himself harden, completely unaware that Michael was planning his demise. Roy was in the butcher’s shop in the Portobello Road. His father-in-law had given up trying to explain to him the different cuts of meat. Roy had been working for him since three weeks after his wedding, and he hated it. He felt like a kept man. He couldn’t do the job, he knew it and his father-in-law knew it, but it was all part of the grand master plan: How To Keep Your Daughter At Home. They lived with Mr and Mrs Grierson. They ate with Mr and Mrs Grierson. And they watched from the sidelines as Mr and Mrs Grierson between them brought up the baby, Carla. It had been a few months before Roy realised he had married what his mother would have called ‘a lazy bitch’. Janine was quite content to let her mother take over the baby, the cooking, everything. That left her free to play at being married which consisted of getting herself done up to the nines and visiting her friends all day, now and again taking the baby, all nice and clean, out in her pram. Playing at being mother of the year. Roy winced as he thought of her. What had happened to the girl he had fallen in love with? The spirited young woman who had been as eager for life as he was? Admittedly they were only nineteen, but surely, he reasoned, there must be more to married life than this? If he mentioned moving out of her parents’ house, she dissolved into tears. Last night had been the last straw. He had told her there was a flat going in Westbourne Park and she had had hysterics.
    ‘How am I gonna cope with a baby on me own?’
    That’s when he had lost his temper. ‘Well, we won’t find that out until you try, will we? God Almighty, Janine, you’ve never once looked after the bloody kid for a whole day since it was born!’
    After that her mother, Eliza, had come into the bedroom and led Janine out, taking her into her own bedroom. Then this morning she had told him that Janine was ‘delicate’ and needed her mother to look after her. He was frankly bewildered by it all. He wanted them to have their own little place, where Janine looked after the baby all day and cooked his meal in the