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she needed that now. But he was also trouble, and there was no part for him in her life now. Once this was over, she'd say goodbye to him for ever.
Although something told her it wasn't necessarily going to be as easy as that.

Four
'Half a million quid. It looks beautiful.'
Jimmy Galante had always loved money. He just hadn't liked the part where you had to work for it, which was why he'd chosen armed robbery and major drug dealing as his means of making a living.
The ransom was in a large Adidas holdall that Andrea had dug out from the loft, which was now sitting open on the coffee table in her living room. Jimmy was sitting on one of the leather armchairs with a large wad of fifties secured by a rubber band in his hand. His dark eyes moved from the wad to the contents of the holdall, then back again. The expression on his face was pure, unadulterated excitement.
'It's not all there yet,' she told him. 'I'm still sixty short. I need to pick up the rest at the bank tomorrow.'
'Where did all this lot come from, then?'
'Never you mind.'
He grinned. 'Been hiding it from the taxman, have you?'
'It's none of your business, Jimmy. The lucky thing is I've got it. It means our daughter can come home.'
The grin disappeared, and he nodded soberly, returning the wad of fifties to the holdall.
Initially, Andrea had been reluctant to bring Jimmy back here. She knew the kidnappers had been watching her and was afraid they might have bugged the house, so on Jimmy's advice they'd driven to a shop in Kensington which sold surveillance products and Andrea had bought a bug finder for a hundred pounds.
When they'd got back it was already dark, and after checking there was no one watching from the street, she and Jimmy had hurried inside, and he'd gone to work with the bug finder. It had taken him only seconds to locate a tiny electronic trip switch attached to the bottom of the skirting on the front door which would have alerted the kidnappers remotely as soon as the front door was opened, and was clearly how they'd known to phone her as soon as she'd got home the previous night.
Inside the house, though, the bug finder hadn't picked up anything, but this didn't stop Andrea feeling that the place had been violated by the kidnappers. It was now twenty-four hours since she'd found out about Emma's disappearance.
She watched Jimmy carefully as she sat smoking what was probably her fortieth cigarette of the day and drinking her third glass of red wine, and wondered if she could trust him. She'd hoped that telling him that Emma was his daughter would stir his parental instinct, but now she wasn't so sure it even existed. In the four hours since she'd picked him up from the airport, he'd hardly asked about Emma at all, seeming far more concerned about filling his stomach. He'd insisted on ordering an Indian takeaway, at the same time bemoaning the quality of them in his little corner of the Costa del Sol. Andrea had hardly been able to touch hers, but Jimmy had fallen upon his food ravenously. He'd eaten enough for two men, and washed it all down with four cans of Stella.
When Andrea had shown him a picture of Emma she'd brought with her to the airport, she'd said quietly, and with a sense of awe in her voice, 'This is your daughter, Jimmy. This is Emma.' His reaction had been a vague half-smile and a murmured, 'She's pretty.' Nothing else. Just those two words. She's pretty. For Andrea, this hadn't been enough. She'd wanted more. In truth, Emma didn't look much like Jimmy, but then again she didn't look much like either of them. Andrea was a natural brunette, with features that were sharp and well defined – a very attractive woman, but one with a hard edge to her. Emma, meanwhile, was a natural blonde, with small, delicate features, a round snub nose, and lively blue eyes. She was pretty in a sweet, cherubic way, and looked young for her age. The photo Andrea had shown Jimmy was a head-and-shoulders shot taken on Hampstead Heath the previous