Free The Life by Martina Cole

this my brother and I hear about you upsetting our Northern friends?’
    The time for pleasantries was clearly over.

Chapter Seventeen
    Daniel looked down at his new daughter and felt a fierce protectiveness wash over him. As drunk as he was, he knew that this feeling was real. She was perfect, this new baby, so small, so delicate. Not like the lads; they had been huge lumps and noisy babies from the off – masculine from the day they were born. None of them had ever been this frail, this tiny. They had each been born with the Bailey scowl; by six months they were already their own men, and they had been a handful from the day they could walk.
    He knew his mother was watching him, knew she was not impressed with him at this moment in time. She was clearly disappointed with him for not coming home sooner. Well, fuck her. Tonight, he’d had serious work to see to and the sooner she understood that the better. They were real Faces now, finally top of the fucking heap. He smiled at her anyway – she was his mum after all. The alcohol was making him maudlin. He’d been so hyped up after the meet with Alfie Clarke, Peter had taken him to their pub to calm down. But once the news of Tania’s birth got round, the drinks had been overflowing. He felt the tears stinging his eyes, and he tried to wipe them away before anyone saw, unaware that every movement he made was overdone, too forced.
    Daniel was not a good drunk. Drink made his temper flare up faster than usual, it made him overly confident and, worse, itmade him cry. He could break down at a record, a memory, or a thought, and the majority of the people he rolled with saw that as a weakness.
    ‘Give me that child before you drop her on her fecking head, and she ends up a fecking moron like her father.’ Theresa Bailey did not like this son of hers when he had been drinking; he irritated her and she hated that the drink made him foolish, made him forget that he was a family man. She took the child gently.
    Lena watched the exchange and smiled despite herself; for all his big talk, Daniel was still scared of his mother, no matter how much he tried to pretend he wasn’t.
    She actually thought she understood her husband in a way his mother never could. She got angry with him – anyone would, he could be such a prat at times. But she knew the real Daniel Bailey. His upbringing as a fatherless boy, with a brother who was black and who he adored, had made an indelible mark on him. He had spent his whole life proving he was better than everyone, that the
Baileys
were better than anyone. He worked hard for them all. Just as she had her mania for saving money, her husband had a mania for making himself successful.
    Yes, she was terrified he would get his collar felt, and she was equally terrified that he would lead the boys into things that would result in them going away. But, when all was said and done, she loved him. And she knew that, no matter how misguided he might be, he would always do his best for them.
    ‘She’s a diamond, Lena. You’ve given me a treasure, girl.’
    He was sitting on the bed beside her now, and she could see the tears forming in his eyes again. As tired as she was after the birth, she would have to comfort her husband as the drink made his emotions erupt into a bout of prolonged weeping.
    She held out her arms and, as he grasped on to her and cried noisily on her shoulder, she saw her mother-in-law shaking her head in annoyance, as she walked the child out of the room. Even the slamming of the bedroom door was lost on Daniel Bailey. As Lena knew from experience, it was all about him now.

Chapter Eighteen
    ‘Come on, Pete, he’s always been over the top.’
    Peter Bailey grinned. He had just aired his worries to his wife. He needed someone to confide in, to say out loud what was bothering him and Ria was a good listener. He knew he could trust her. ‘You’re preaching to the converted, love. He’s me brother, but this is too important for him