When Lucy thought about Max,
it made her think back to the days far gone when Sam could be persuaded to attend the boy scouts.
The original den mother had thrown in the towel as her son hit his teens and had vouched for Lucy for her replacement but the other women could not be convinced;
it was the way Sam behaved, his habit of wearing pink to meets, arriving at school on the back of his brother's motorbike and his pierced ear.
Lucy gave her sons something those harpies could never give their children...confidence.
Max saw that in her. In some perverted way, it could have been romantic;
he would adopt flamboyant Sam and rebellious Michael she would adopt his boys and be a mother to them. From cute little Laddie to David the sinister bleach-blonde who seduced Michael into doing God knows what, behind her back
It would have felt perfect too and from Michael's nightmares, she took their names:
David, Dwayne, Paul and Marko
Always in that order, she memorised them and what Lucy Emerson wouldn't have sacrificed to be their mother.