Free The Graft by Martina Cole Page A

wife; he needed her tonight, needed to feel loved. Wanted. He had never felt so low in his life. The guilt was weighing on him heavily. Every time he closed his eyes he saw that boy’s face.
     
    He clasped Tammy’s hand and she squeezed his back affectionately.
     
    ‘Tam . . .’
     
    ‘It’s over, Nick.’
     
    He nodded.
     
    ‘But, Tam . . .’
     
    ‘You’re pissed.’
     
    She said this without taking her eyes off the TV.
     
    He nodded once more.
     
    ‘I need to talk to you, Tam.’
     
    She looked at him.
     
    ‘In a minute, wait till this ends.’
     
    Her voice was warmer now, softer. He looked at the screen. Richard Burton and Geneviève Bujold were fighting.
     
    ‘What is it?’
     
    She sighed in annoyance.
     
    ‘ Anne of the Thousand Days . It’s about Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. He’s just dinged her in the Tower of London and he’s offering her an annulment if she shuts her trap and don’t ask for nothing from him. But she knocks him back so he has her nutted.’
     
    ‘Sounds good to me.’
     
    Tammy laughed despite herself.
     
    ‘Look, let me see her die then I’ll make you a drink and we can talk all night if you want.’
     
    He watched the screen, amazed by his wife’s passion for history. Whatever else she was, Tammy was without doubt a mine of information about royalty. She had loved Diana and cried for three days after her untimely death. She had more feeling for a woman who had been beheaded centuries before than she did for the boy who had died at her own husband’s hands.
     
    But that was Tammy all over.
     
    Nothing ever bothered her unless it affected her personally. And she had taken the threat to Nick’s liberty personally. In Tammy’s mind the fact that her husband could have got into trouble for defending his own family was tantamount to two fingers up at her from the British legal system. At her, Tammy, who adored royalty - except for Prince Charlie, of course. Who saw herself as British through and through. Who even made remarks sometimes about Nick’s Irish heritage. She had been devastated when he had nearly been arrested for doing what he had done. She’d even slagged the Queen off on more than one occasion recently. And all this from a woman who would normally defend the monarchy to the death.
     
    He had loved her loyalty, though, even if it had always been tinged with selfishness. Tammy saw anything he or the boys did as a reflection on her.
     
    He glanced at the screen once more. Anne Boleyn was walking sedately to the scaffold. Nick watched her, wondering briefly how it must have felt, leaving her young child in the care of the man who was in effect murdering her.
     
    He could hear soft crying from Tammy and hugged her close to him. She was a nightmare in some respects, but he had to admire her consistency. Anne Boleyn was her idol. Tammy knew everything there was to know about her. She huddled into Nick’s arms, and allowed him to comfort her.
     
    It did not occur to her that she should be comforting him. As far as she was concerned it was all over.
     
    And not before time either.
     
     
Tyrell lay on his mother’s sofa, drunker than he had ever been in his life. Though Verbena had never liked alcohol she understood his need to obliterate the last few days.
     
    She sat studying the pictures all around the room of Sonny Boy and his mother. He had been a handsome child. Sally came into the room with two mugs of tea, made just how Verbena liked it with plenty of sugar and a healthy dollop of condensed milk. The sweet warmth eased her for a moment.
     
    ‘Was she really bad?’
     
    Sally sat on the edge of the sofa and shrugged.
     
    ‘The usual.’
     
    Verbena sighed.
     
    ‘You shouldn’t hold a grudge against her, you know, Sally. She is to be pitied.’
     
    Her daughter-in-law didn’t answer, just smiled tightly. She had been hearing that for so long it had absolutely no effect any more. As she looked into Verbena’s sad eyes she felt