Hush Hush. Mel Sherratt

took over him eventually. He hardly went anywhere but the pub during his last year alive.’ She paused for a moment. ‘After he was murdered, Jade and I got to know each other better. I thought it would be good for us to work together on something, so we opened Posh Gloss, on a part-time basis. It’s not terribly busy, but we get by; although mostly I’m in there on my own, or the receptionist, Clara, takes over.’

      ‘Jade doesn’t like doing nails?’

      ‘My daughter doesn’t like doing anything.’ Kathleen sighed. ‘Jade has always been a fragile soul. She’s never been married but the last man she was with was hideous. She spent several years with him before he thankfully left her. She and my granddaughter Megan have been living back in Stoke for about a year now, in their own house, but they spend a lot of time here with me since George was murdered. To tell you the truth, I like having them around; they each have a bedroom of their own here. The house is too big for me without him. We were married in 1996, just after you left, you know.’

      Grace looked away fleetingly. It was awkward talking about it, but it was better out in the open. Kathleen had had an affair with her father. He had been married to her mother when her half-siblings were born. Kathleen had also lived with the beast. Even if she had no visible physical scars, Grace assumed she must have some mental ones. Grace did and she’d been a mere child.

      Unless of course George Steele never laid a hand on Kathleen. And Grace couldn’t ask her. It was none of her business.

      ‘I didn’t have it easy with George,’ Kathleen said.

      Grace jumped. It was almost as if the woman had read her mind.

      ‘I bet he was as brutal to you and your mother as he was to me and my children?’ Kathleen added.

      Grace said nothing, then gave a small nod.

      Kathleen looked at Grace, regret clear in her expression. ‘I couldn’t stop him,’ she continued. ‘But I couldn’t leave with three children. I had no money, nowhere to go, so it was better to put up with it until the children were old enough to fend him off. And then it was too late for me.’ She sighed dramatically. ‘I only wish I had your mother’s convictions. But George wore me down. Thankfully’ – she swept her hand around the room – ‘the house was put into my name, as George began to fear having anything in his own. Business sense, he called it, although he never made a will.’ She half-smiled then. ‘It did mean that when he died it was passed to me.’ She paused. ‘I hope you don’t feel bitter that nothing was left to you.’

      ‘Of course not!’ Grace shook her head and refrained from saying what she was thinking. George Steele had ceased being any part of her life once they had moved to Manchester. If he had left her anything, she would have refused it.

      ‘Eddie and Leon have never really seen eye to eye,’ Kathleen added. ‘You’d think they would, only a couple of years between them, but George made them rivals. It wasn’t nice to witness.’ She stopped as if thinking what to say next. Then, with a shake of her head, she continued. ‘George Steele had a lot to answer for, but I’m afraid I had too. I should have found the courage that your mother did and left him years ago. He was a monster.’

      Grace couldn’t imagine how hard life had been for Kathleen, living in a house full of dread and fear, amongst so many family feuds.

      She stayed for a few minutes more, asking basic questions about Kathleen’s movements at the gym on the night Josh Parker was murdered, but she had got what she’d come for.

      As she drove away, leaving all her demons in the house, she knew that everything she had witnessed yesterday at the gym had been a front. With what Kathleen Steele had just told her, it seemed that none of them really liked each other. But most families stuck together, and they didn’t seem to be an exception.