Free Bad Blood by Geraldine Evans

split I took up with different men. I had a fling with an Arab man and got pregnant again with my little Hakim Mohammed. By the time I'd had the third kid, my daughter Aurora, with the local bad lad black drug dealer, the silent treatment was beyond her. She refused even to see me after that, never mind speak to me.’
    Jane gave a humourless laugh. ‘I was an embarrassment, you see, a social embarrassment. I'd pissed on her image of herself, brought her down. She can't … couldn't, forgive that.’ Her voice now little more than a whisper, she added, ‘And now…now, she never will.’
    As if her son's words of warning had at last penetrated, Jane stared at them from eyes that dared them to criticise her. Their very challenge revealed more of her vulnerability than copious tears ever could.
    ‘Apart from having and bringing up my kids – that's the only thing I've ever achieved in life – hurting her. In two generations, I've managed to drag her family line down from the manor house and its gentle living, where she started life, to this squalid squat.’ She nodded towards the peeling, vandalized front door of her ‘borrowed’ flat, ‘and two half-caste grandchildren.’
    For a moment, her face slackened as if in realisation that such an achievement wasn't up there with climbing Everest. Then, as if shrugging off this acknowledgement, she bared stained smoker's teeth in a Grim Reaper's smile, and said, ‘The squat could be erased from the family history, but the half-caste family line can't. She might have denied two of her grandchildren in life, but in death she can't deny them. The obituaries won't let her. My two youngest kids’ surnames are their own testimony.’ It was clear she believed it to be a triumph of sorts.
    Rafferty felt like asking her if she didn't think it was time that she grew up and took responsibility for her own actions. But he said nothing, not least because he was honest enough to admit to himself that, in wrestling with his own concerns about responsibility, he wasn't exactly rushing to embrace the mature grown-up world himself.
    When Jane's complaints finally ran down, she stared at her closed front door, then, with an air of reluctance, she climbed from the car. And as she opened the door and it was rushed by two youngsters; a pretty young mixed race girl around twelve or thirteen and a handsome youth in his mid-teens, whose proud features proclaimed his Middle Eastern paternity, Rafferty offered Jane the silent commiseration he had been unable to voice before. After a full night shift, Jane Ogilvie must be exhausted; yet now she faced the task of breaking the grim news to her two younger children.
    Hit by an attack of conscience after his earlier feelings of dislike, Rafferty got out of the car and offered to leave Mary Carmody with her in order to provide the support it was clear Darryl Jesmond wouldn't supply. But his offer was curtly declined and as the WPC who had collected the two younger children from school came to the door, she was unceremoniously bustled out and the door was all but slammed in their faces.
    ‘Well honestly,’ remarked young WPC Allen. ‘The manners of some people.’
    ‘She has just had a shock,’ Mary Carmody gently reminded the younger officer. She glanced at Rafferty. ‘But, even so, I don't think she or the boyfriend merit removal from the suspect list just yet, do you, sir?’
    Rafferty shrugged and gave his best imitation of the cautious Llewellyn. ‘It's early days. It wouldn't do to jump to any hasty conclusions.’
    This comment brought a stunned silence, not only from Mary Carmody – who knew of his famous predilection for leaping ahead of the game and the evidence, but also from WPC Allen, who was a recent addition to the strength, but who had obviously made it her business to tune in to canteen gossip.
    Rafferty, with his newly adopted caution about such matters, felt put out that no one had even noticed it. To hide this, he remarked