“What time is it?” I ask, my voice sounding raspy from sleep.

“Dentist o’clock.” he replies. I lean my head back into my pillow and look at him for a few seconds.

“What are you talking about, what’s dentist o’clock?”

“Two-thirty.”

“What?’

“Tooth hurty… Geddit?” I groan loudly and it has absolutely nothing to do with sex.

“Fuck off Cam, even my Dad’s jokes are funnier than that, are you sure you’re thirty and not fifty two, because that was a proper, lame, Dad joke.”

He stares at me blankly for a few seconds, I watch as his Adams apple bobs in his throat as he swallows hard, for a split second I think he’s going to cry because I didn’t laugh at his joke, when he says, “Her name was Chantelle, she was my wife.”

My eyes widen as I realise this one of those moments where I need to keep my mouth shut and listen. “Our parents were best friends, I was two years older than her, and it was just always assumed that we would end up together. Her Dad owned a few businesses, my Dad owned a few. She was an only child so her Dad had no boys to take over the reins. Robbie was too old for her, Joshie too young. When my Dad was killed, Colin, her Dad, stepped in and helped us out, he made sure nobody came in and tried to take what my Dad had built up while Rob and I established ourselves.” He takes a moment to sit himself up and leans back against the headboard, I sit up and tuck the quilt under my arms and sit cross legged next to him and listen to the rest of what he has to say.

“Georgia, I’m assuming you’ve worked out by now that not all of what I do is entirely above board, entirely legal?” I nod my head and just make an mmm sound.

“Me and your Dad are very similar in the way that we do things, the way we run our business, we're both very fair with people, we don’t take the piss and we always try and help people out when we can but if you cross us, we will fucking break you.” I nod some more. “Chantelle wasn’t my girlfriend or anything until I was twenty five when Colin got diagnosed with cancer, it all happened so fast, there was so much going on. There’s a family called the Riley’s, they used to be faces around the East End in the sixties, then they moved out to Basildon way and made a name for themselves there. When my Dad was killed, they tried to make themselves busy, tried to take over a couple of the doors we run security for in Romford and Harlow, they would send people into the clubs to cause trouble, then report the bouncers to the Police, that and a few other things, anyway, it died down once they realised we had Col on board and that me and Rob weren’t just a pair of kids to be fucked around with. So then Colin gets told he’s only got months to live and he wants to see his daughter married, I know what I have to do, I did love her but she was just, she was more like a mate but I was prepared to give it a go. Colin lived a bit longer than we thought he would and Chantelle was six months pregnant when he died, this triggered all sorts of problems, she had had a bit of high blood pressure during the pregnancy, I… ” He looks up at the ceiling and I can see he’s struggling.

“I’m no angel Georgia, never have been, never will be, but I’m sorry for how I treated her when we first got married, I stayed out all night, getting off my nut on Charlie, fucking other women and she wasn’t stupid, she knew, but she loved me, she fuckin’ worshiped me, she always had, always did.” He stares blankly right at me but I’m not there, he doesn’t see me.

“Anyway, she’s a mess after her Dad dies and I realise that I need to step up, she’s on complete bed rest to try and keep her blood pressure down and I’m trying to deal with her and the Riley’s who’ve crawled out of the woodwork again and are causing us problems.”

I watch as his hand comes up to his jaw and he rubs with his thumb and index finger, he seems to study me for a few long moments, I think he’s debating whether or how to tell me whatever it is he’s about to say next. “I went out George, I went out on the Friday night, I was off my tits and pubbed, clubbed and fucked my way through Friday and Saturday night, I didn’t call her, not once George, not once did I give my sick, pregnant wife a thought during that weekend, not until I pulled up Sunday lunchtime, back at our home.”

He rakes both of his hands through his hair, then drags them down his face. “We had bought a place in Shenfield, not far from where your Mum and Dad are now. The first thing I noticed were that the gates were open, Chantelle would never have left them open. I had them put in especially for her and the baby’s security, then when I pulled up outside, I could see that the front doors had been smashed in, I went running in, calling out her name, I found her in the bedroom, she was tied to a chair, blind folded, with an alarm clock ticking to her, she’d… ” He shook his head, not the little head shake he does when I piss him off but a no, no, no kind of head shakes.

“She’d thrown up all over herself and was totally confused, I untied her and laid her on the bed, then called for an ambulance, she hadn’t been touched, not raped, not beaten, what they had done was terrify her. Her blood pressure was dangerously high, they delivered my son by emergency caesarean, and he was still born. Chantelle started fitting on the operating table, her blood pressure was so high that it was causing seizures, eventually all of her organs shut down and she died, she died, my baby died a large part of me died. I should’ve died, not them, they were good and pure and innocent but they died because of me.”

He has tears but he doesn’t appear to be crying, he’s just talking, telling me his story, with tears rolling down his cheeks. I go to him and sit myself in his lap, curl myself into his big body. He holds me, wraps his arms around me and kisses into my hair. “The man I shot yesterday, he was one of their firm, he didn’t come to my house that day, if he had he would have been long dead but he was known to us as one of the faces causing us trouble in the clubs, then he got banged up and I just let it go. I had no idea he was even out so yesterday, yesterday he finally got what was coming to him.”

I sit quietly comprehending all that he’s told me. “It was the Riley’s then, who’d come to your house.”

“Yeah, we caught up with one of their firm later that night, didn’t take much to get him to grass, but he did; all of those involved had done a runner over to Spain, all trying to lay low, they got in touch, pleaded that they had no idea it would cause her blood pressure to go up, they didn’t want any trouble, they were sorry.” I feel him shrug his shoulders. “I’m a nasty bastard Georgia, I’ve done lots of bad things in my life but I have rules, most people I deal with, your Dad and your uncle, your brother, we all live by the same rules, you do not involve people’s families, whatever grief you have with someone, you do not involve family, especially not pregnant wives.”

He sighs deeply. “They got what was coming to them, I didn’t have to do anything, everyone else was so disgusted, so appalled at what they had done, that as soon as they surfaced, they were taken out, all but one, Chris Riley but I found him, I found him and I took a lot of pleasure in dealing with him. Terry was the last on the list, he’s lucky I was with you and in such a good mood yesterday, I let him off lightly.”

Fuck!

My Dad, my Uncles, my brother, my family are all involved in this, in this lifestyle and I had no idea. I sit silently in his lap, my head resting on his bare chest, he has one arm around my waist, the other wrapped around my shoulder, while traces patterns over my back with his fingertips. I have no idea what to say. What do you say? Is this a conversation that anyone, has sat naked and had before I wonder?

“Would you like me to go?” He looks down at me as I look up at him. Do I? I suddenly feel incredibly tired again and just want to go back to sleep.