No Going Back by Casey Kelleher (black male authors TXT) 📗

woman any further. Nurse Hamilton rushed to Winnie’s side, wrapping her arms around her as she stood now, rigid with fear, her fists clenched at her sides. Only after the nurse had whispered soothing words in the older woman’s ears did Lucy see her nan begin to physically relax.

‘I’m going to take Winnie back to her room for a lie-down. I think today has been too much for her,’ Nurse Hamilton said.

‘What’s that?’ Winnie said, staring at the mess on the floor, as if she had no idea how it all got there.

‘That’s the tray of tea, Winnie. You knocked it over. Never mind, eh. Accidents happen. Don’t worry, I’ll clean it up,’ the nurse said, hoping to reassure the woman. Only Winnie refused to budge.

‘No,’ Winnie said, irritated then as she stared down at the contents of Lucy’s bag, which had tipped over and spilled out across the floor. ‘That.’

Her eyes fixed on the paper. Following her nan’s gaze, Lucy saw the E-fit. Her colleagues had let her keep a copy, and she’d hurriedly shoved it into her bag before going into the press conference yesterday. Shit. Now her nan was going to start asking questions about who the man was, and Lucy would have to tell her that she’d seen him. The man who murdered her mother. That she’d finally remembered his face. But before she had time to think of a cover story about who the man was, Winnie bent down and picked up the piece of paper.

‘Well, now. That’s a face that I haven’t seen in a while,’ Winnie said, eyeing the image with horror. Her face twisted then as if she was in some kind of pain.

‘You know him, Nan?’ Lucy said, shocked that her nan would recognise the man in the image.

Her heart started thumping wildly inside her chest and her blood whooshed loudly inside her ears. As her nan looked up at her and nodded, she felt almost for a second as if the world had stopped. As if time had frozen, and all they had was this. This one moment.

‘Why are you asking me such a stupid question, Jennifer?’ Winnie said, exasperated. ‘Of course, I know him. You do too. It’s Lucy’s father.’

24

Having managed to avoid the small cluster of journalists who stood around in the car park below, Ashley couldn’t help feeling a bit smug as he made his way up the back stairwell that led to his flat. The investigating officers who had taken Shelby’s statement yesterday afternoon, had warned the family that the press would no doubt hound them for their story over the next few days.

As it was, news of the attack was already splashed all over every newspaper and news channel available. The press was hovering around like hungry vultures now, waiting to pounce on their prey and pick apart the local tenants for any information they could get on Shelby and the attack.

Ashley didn’t have time for any of that. All he wanted to do was get his head down for the night before going back up to the hospital first thing in the morning.

Only as he reached his floor and stepped out on to the balcony that led to his flat, Ashley faltered, thinking that one of the journalists had worked out which flat they lived in, when he caught sight of the woman loitering right outside his front door.

Ready to give the journalist a piece of his mind and tell her to get lost, Ashley relaxed as he recognised the short, dumpy woman to be one of the tenants from a few doors down.

Imelda? Or something like that. He couldn’t remember exactly, but he knew that Shelby had spoken to the woman on a few occasions. Though, he certainly wouldn’t have classed the two women as friends. An oddball, but completely harmless. That was how Shelby had described her when talking to Ashley about the brief, awkward encounters. They’d both joked that the woman had the hots for him, because apparently she always asked after him, despite the fact that Ashley barely gave the woman the time of day if he saw her. Still, he couldn’t blame her for having good taste. And he guessed that she was probably lonely too. An expectant single mother, due to give birth any day now going by the sheer size of her.

The woman had latched on to Shelby because they both happened to be pregnant at the same time, but Ashley knew that was really the only thing that Shelby would have had in common with the woman. There’s no way that Shelby would have even entertained a friendship with the woman otherwise. They were polar opposites.

Though just because she thought she was a friend of Shelby’s, didn’t mean that she was going to get special treatment and that Ashley was just going to feed her with gossip and give her the lowdown on his wife’s ordeal, just so that she could tell every other nosey bastard on the estate all the gory details. If that’s what she was here for, she could think again.

Nodding in her direction was the most attention he was willing to give her as he got his key out and turned his back to her.

‘Was it Shelby?’ Imelda said, not taking the hint as Ashley stepped around her and made a beeline for his front door.

‘They didn’t name her on the news, they just said a local woman. But I knocked and there’s no one home… Well, I mean you’re here now…’ Imelda said, giggling nervously, so acutely aware of her cheeks glowing pink that she could barely bring herself to look Ashley in the eye. ‘Only I haven’t seen her. So, I just thought that… maybe it might be her… It was, wasn’t it? I have had a bad feeling in my stomach since I heard. I can sense these things…’

About to step into his flat and close the door behind him, Ashley hesitated, hearing the genuine concern behind Imelda’s question. The way