Her brother's bitterness pierced her flesh like so many knives.

'And that foul-mouthed little creep Pietro sneers about you like his uncle did something to be proud of!' 'You don't know what happened between Vito and me,' she said haltingly.

'You were nineteen and he was twenty-eight,' Tim flared. 'That tells me all I need to know.'

'Our relationship just didn't work out, Tim.'

'He dumped you when you were pregnant and married someone else,' Tim snapped back rawly.

She was drenched in pain by the blunt reminder of the child she had eventually lost. Grey-faced, she whispered tightly, 'It wasn't like that, Tim. He didn't know I was pregnant. In fact, at the time we broke up, neither did I and I never told him. There wasn't much point once he was married.'

Her brother stared at her incredulously. 'Don’t lie about it! I'm not a kid any more.'

'But that's how it happened.'

His complexion had a sickly hue now. 'I don't believe you. He let you down. He left you in the lurch. He used you! He must have known about the baby! He must have…'

'Does Pietro?' 'Well, no, but-'

'Vito didn't know.' Her nails had bitten sharp crescents into her palms. Too late now to wish she had told him the whole story. But how could she have told him so that he would have understood? Some things you didn’t want to talk about. Some things you couldn't explain to a teenage boy, who was determined to see his much maligned sister in the guise of an innocent victim, seduced and abandoned. In one sense, it had been that brutal, but in another sense she had chosen her own fate. And Tim's response to her questions had confirmed her every suspicion. What had driven Tim over the edge was her situation, not his own.

'Try not to worry too much,' she murmured. 'It may…it may just come all right.'

'I'm not a baby, Ash,' he muttered jerkily. 'I fouled up. In the pub, it was all just spinning round and round my head. What they'd done to you. What they'd done to me. I just couldn't take any more. I just… I just saw red, you know?'