The woman glanced at the card but didn"t take it.

"Well, what do you want? If it"s the rent, I put it in the post yesterday." She folded her arms across her thin chest and dared Roz to dispute this piece of information.

"I"m not from the council, Mrs. O"Brien." It occurred to her that the woman couldn"t read. Apart from her telephone number and address, Roz"s card had only her name and her profession on it. Author, it stated clearly. She took a flyer.

"I work for a small independent television company," she said brightly, her mind searching rapidly for some plausible but tempting bait.

"I"m researching the difficulties faced by single parents with large families. We are particularly interested in talking to a mother who has problems keeping her sons out of trouble.

Society is very quick to point the finger in these situations and we feel it"s time to redress the balance." She saw the lack of comprehension on the woman"s face.

"We"d like to give the mother a chance to give her side of the story," she explained.

"There seems to be a common pattern of continual hara.s.sment and interference from people in authority -social services, the council, the police. Most mothers we"ve spoken to feel that if they"d been left alone they wouldn"t have had the problems."

A gleam of interest lit the other"s eyes.

"That"s true enough."

"Are you willing to take part?"

"Maybe.

"Oo sent you?"

"We"ve been conducting some research in the local courts," she said glibly.

"The name O"Brien popped up quite frequently."

"Not surprised. Will I get paid?"

"Certainly. I"d need to talk to you for about an hour now to get a rough idea of your views. For that you will receive an immediate cash payment of fifty pounds." Ma would turn her nose up at anything less, she thought.

"Then, if we think your contribution is valuable and if you agree to be ifimed, we will pay you at the same hourly rate while the cameras are here."

Ma O"Brien pursed her meagre lips and proceeded to splatter aitches about the place.

"Han hundred," she said, *hand hI"ll do it."

Roz shook her head. Fifty pounds would clean her out anyway.

"Sorry. It"s a standard fee. I"m not authorised to pay any more." She shrugged.

"Never mind. Thank you for your time, Mrs. O"Brien. I"ve three other families on my list. I"m sure one of them will jump at the chance to get their own back at authority and earn some money while they"re doing it." She turned away.

"Look out for the programme," she called over her shoulder.

"You"ll probably see some of your neighbours on it."

"Not so *asty, Mrs. Did I say no? Course I didn"t. But I"d be a mug not to try for more hif there was more to be *ad. Come in.

Come in. What d"you say your name was?"

"Rosalind Leigh." She followed Ma into a sitting room and took a chair while the little woman turned off the television and flicked aimlessly at some non-existent dust on the set.

"This is a nice room," said Roz, careful to keep the surprise from her voice. A three-piece suite of good quality burgundy leather ringed a pale Chinese rug in pinks and greys.

"All bought and paid for," snapped Ma.

Roz didn"t doubt her for a moment. If the police spent as much time in her house as Hal had implied, then she was hardly likely to furnish it with hot goods. She took out her tape recorder "How do you feel about my recording this conversation? It"ll be a useful gauge for the sound man when he comes to set levels for filming, but if the microphone puts you off then I"m quite happy to make notes instead."

"Get on with you," she said, perching on the sofa.

"I"m not afraid of microphones. We"ve got a karaoke next door. You gonna ask questions or what?"

"That"s probably easiest, isn"t it? Let"s start with when you first came to this house."

"Ah, well, now, they was built twenty year ago, near enough, and we was the first family him. There was six of us, including my old man, but *e got nicked shortly after and we never seen *im again. The old b.a.s.t.a.r.d b.u.g.g.e.red off when they let *im out."

"So you had four children?"

"Four in the *ouse, five in care. b.l.o.o.d.y hinterference, like you said.

Kept taking the poor little nippers off me, they did.

Makes you sick, it really does. They wanted their ma, not some do-good foster mother who was only in it for the money." She hugged herself.

"I always got them back, mind. They"d turn up on my doorstep, regular as clockwork no matter *ow many times they was taken away. The council"s tried everything to break us up, threatened me with a one-roomed flat even." She sniffed.

"Ara.s.sment, like you said. I remember one time..

She required little prompting to tell her story but rambled on with remarkable fluency for nearly three-quarters of an hour.

Roz was fascinated. Privately she dismissed at least fifty per cent of what she was hearing, princ.i.p.ally because Ma blithely maintained that her boys were and always had been innocent victims of police frames.

Even the most gullible of listeners would have found that difficult to swallow. Nevertheless, there was a dogged affection in her voice whenever she referred to her family and Roz wondered if she was really as callous as Lily had painted her. She certainly portrayed herself as a hapless victim of circ.u.mstances beyond her control, though whether this was something she genuinely believed or whether she was saying what she thought Roz wanted to hear, Roz couldn"t tell. Ma, she decided, was a great deal smarter than she let on.

"Right, Mrs. O"Brien, let me see if I"ve got it right," she said at last, interrupting the flow.

"You"ve got two daughters, both of whom are single parents like you, and both of whom have been housed by the council. You have seven sons.

Three are currently in prison, one is living with his girlfriend, and the remaining three live here. Your oldest child is Peter, who"s thirty-six, and your youngest is Gary, who"s twenty-five." She whistled.

"That was some going. Nine babies in eleven years."

"Two sets of twins in the middle. Boy and a girl each time.

Mind, it was *ard work."

Unmitigated drudgery, thought Roz.

"Did you want them?" she asked curiously.

"I can"t think of anything worse than having nine children."

"Never *ad much say in it, dear. There weren"t no abortion inmyday."

"Didn"t you use contraceptives?"

To her surprise, the old woman blushed.

"Couldn"t get the ang of them," she snapped.

"The old man tried a rubber once but didn"t like it and wouldn"t do it again. Old b.u.g.g.e.r. No skin off *is nose if I kept falling."

It was on the tip of Roz"s tongue to ask why Ma couldn"t get the hang of contraceptives when the penny dropped. If she couldn"t read and she was too embarra.s.sed to ask how to use them, they"d have been useless to her. Good G.o.d, she thought, a little education would have saved the country a fortune where this family was concerned.

"That"s men for you," she said lightly.

"I noticed a motorbike outside. Does that belong to one of the boys?"

"Bought and paid for," came the belligerent refrain.

"It"s Gary"s. Motorbike mad, *e is. There was a time when three of the boys *ad bikes, now it"s just Gary. They was all working for one of them messenger companies till the b.l.o.o.d.y coppers went round and got them sacked. Victimisation, pure and simple.

"Ow"s a man to work hif the police keep waving *is record under the boss"s noses. Course, they lost the bikes. They was buying them on the never-never and they couldn"t keep up the payments."

Roz made sympathetic noises.

"When was that? Recently?"

"Year of the gales. I remember the electricity was off when the boys came *ome to say they"d been given the push. We"d got one blooming candle." She firmed her lips.

"b.l.o.o.d.y awful night, that was. Depressing."

Roz kept her expression as neutral as she could. Was Lily right, after all, and Hal wrong?

"The nineteen eight-seven gales," she said.

"The first ones."

"That"s it. Mind, it *appened again two years later. No electricity for a week the second time, hand you get no compensation for the *ardship neither. I tried and the b.u.g.g.e.rs told me hif I didn"t pay what I owed they"d cut me off for good and all."

"Did the police give a reason for getting your boys the sack?" asked Roz.

"Hah!" Ma sniffed.

"They never give reasons for nothing. It was victimisation, like I said."

"Did they work for the messenger company long?"

Old eyes regarded her suspiciously.

"You"re mighty interested all of a sudden."

Roz smiled ingenuously.

"Only because this was an occasion when three of your family were trying to go straight and build careers for themselves. It would make good television if we could show that they were denied that opportunity because of police hara.s.sment. Presumably it was a local firm they were working for?"

"Southampton." Ma"s mouth became an inverted horseshoe.

"b.l.o.o.d.y silly name it *ad too. Called their selves Wells Fargo Still, the boss was a ruddy cowboy so maybe it wasn"t so silly after all."

Roz suppressed a smile.

"Is it still in business?"

"Last I *card, it was. That"s it. You"ve *ad your *our."

"Thank you, Mrs. O"Brien." She patted the tape-recorder.

"If the producers like what they hear I might need to come back and talk to your sons. Would that be acceptable, do you think?"

"Don"t see why not. Can"t see them sneezing at fifty quid apiece." Ma held out her hand.

Dutifully, Roz took two twenty-pound notes and a ten from her wallet and laid them on the wrinkled palm. Then she started to gather her things together.

"I hear Dawlington"s quite famous," she remarked chattily.

"Oh yeah?"

"I was told Olive Martin murdered her mother and sister about half a mile down the road."

"Oh, *er," said Ma dismissively, standing up.

"Strange girl.

Knew *er quite well at one time. Used to clean for the mother when she and *er sister were nippers. She took a real fancy to Gary. Used to pretend *e was *er doll whenever I took *im ha long with me. There was only three years between them but she was nearly twice as big as my skinny little runt. Strange girl."

Roz busied herself with sorting out her briefcase.

"It must have been a shock hearing about the murders then. If you knew the family, that is."

"Can"t say I gave it much thought. I was only there six month.

Never liked *er. She only took me on for a bit of sn.o.bbery, then got rid of me the minute she found out my old man was in the nick."

"What was Olive like as a child. Was she violent to your Gary?"