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

it? Winnie seemed so convinced. But that was what dementia did, wasn’t it? It brought on confabulations. Fabricated distorted versions of memories. Her nan wasn’t being malicious. She believed what she was saying. And Lucy was used to not taking these misinterpreted memories to heart. But there was something about the way her nan seemed so certain, so sure that she knew the man in the photo, that made Lucy believe that perhaps she actually did.

‘You must be mistaken, Nan. He can’t be…’

‘Why are you asking me such stupid questions, Jennifer?’ Winnie said, her face blazing with anger now as the paper was snatched from her grasp. ‘You know who he is. What’s wrong with you? Why is she asking me these things?’ Winnie said, turning her attention to Nurse Hamilton now.

‘Nan, this is important. Who is he?’

‘I’ve already told you,’ Winnie said, visibly distressed as she picked up on Lucy’s sudden frustration as she continued to quiz her. Mistaking Lucy’s urgent need for answers for anger.

‘What have I done wrong? Why is Jennifer shouting at me?’ Winnie asked the nurse. Because something had upset Jennifer and Winnie couldn’t understand what it was.

Had she done or said something? She couldn’t remember. Her head was hurting. She was tired.

‘Is she sick? Is there something wrong with her? Is that why she’s shouting?’ Throwing a look to Nurse Hamilton, Winnie wondered if the nurse standing next to them was here for Jennifer. ‘I think you should sit down, Jennifer. I don’t know why you are so angry. I told you he was trouble. I told you to stay away from him. But you wouldn’t listen.’

Lucy bit her lip, knowing that battling against her nan wouldn’t get her anywhere. She was just prolonging the agony of not knowing how to make sense of this revelation. She changed tactics, hoping that playing along with her nan’s make-believe world would be more effective.

‘Sorry. Of course, I know who he is,’ Lucy said, throwing a coded look to Nurse Hamilton that she was now playing along and pretending to be her own mother. It wasn’t ideal, but she had to do this. She had to know the truth. Sitting back down on the chair, Lucy slipped into her role, hoping to defuse the heated tension between them. It worked. Winnie faltered then. Her guarded body language visibly relaxing as she mirrored Lucy. Sitting down opposite her granddaughter.

Lucy finally spoke.

‘We didn’t tell Lucy about him?’ Lucy said, hoping that this tactic would work. That her nan would tell her what was going on. Because something wasn’t right. She had the feeling that her nan had been keeping something from her.

‘Of course not. We agreed. We said she must never know the truth. It was for her own protection, remember? We made a pact,’ Winnie said sadly as she looked down at the floor, sombre then. ‘Oh, Jennifer, why didn’t you listen to me? Why didn’t you stay away from him? I should have made you listen to me. I should have made you stop,’ Winnie said eventually. Her voice wracked with what sounded like guilt.

‘I’m sorry, I should have listened. You were right…’ Lucy said, not daring to disagree, in case she broke the spell.

‘You knew how dangerous it was, Jennifer. You knew that but you chose to ignore it. You knew that every time you did your “job”, if you can call it a job!’

Lucy held her breath. The realisation of what her nan was implying shaking her to her core.

‘My job?’

‘Yeah, well. That’s being polite. I wouldn’t call sleeping with men for money a vocation. But you insisted that you had no other choice. Insisted that it was the only way you’d ever get off that goddamn estate and make a proper life for yourself…’

‘No.’ Lucy gasped, wincing as her nan confirmed the worst. She shook her head. Refusing to believe what her nan was saying.

That her mother had been a sex worker? That wasn’t possible. And even worse than that, she had known her killer all along? And her nan knew too. Lucy knew her mother, inside and out. She’d idolised her. Knew everything she could know about her. She and her nan had talked about her constantly, always making a point to keep her memory alive.

The woman who danced and giggled around the flat with her on rainy afternoons. The woman who snuggled up with her on the sofa, watching movies and reading fairy tales together while eating ice cream.

Lucy didn’t have many memories from that early age, but the few she did have of her mother she cherished. And now her nan was tainting her mother’s good name. Confused and fabricating fragments of someone else’s stories that flitted into her head and churning them out as her own. Because her mother wasn’t like that. She didn’t do that.

Still Lucy continued, hoping that her nan might be able to explain the E-fit image at least. Because she seemed so certain that she knew him, and Lucy just needed a name. She could check the information out herself after that.

‘And what about him?’ Lucy said, nodding down to the bit of paper on the table. ‘Who is he? What’s his name?’ she asked, almost not wanting to hear the answer now. Unsure how much more she could take.

‘You know who he is. He’s trouble, that’s what. Kevin, though he always went by the name of Bodge. Stupid bloody name that was, mind.’ Winnie almost spat the man’s name from her mouth. She held Lucy’s gaze. ‘You should have stayed well away from him. But you wouldn’t listen, would you? And look what happened. Look how you ended up. And I had to live with it,’ Winnie said, clenching her fists tightly in her lap, angry now. ‘I knew that it was him that did it. I always knew it was him. Of course, I did. But what could I do? I couldn’t tell a single soul, because if I did, if I ever even