No Going Back by Casey Kelleher (bill gates books recommendations TXT) 📕

since you flirted with a woman if this is the best you’ve got? I thought you had way more game than this?’ Her eyes sparkled, laced with challenge.

‘Well. I do actually,’ Holder began, trying to think of a good comeback. Only he was fumbling his words. Suddenly feeling vulnerable now that he’d let slip to Lucy how he really felt.

‘Fuck it. I’ve started this now, so I may as well be honest,’ he said finally, looking Lucy in the eyes. ‘I really do like you.’ He shrugged then, feeling as if he was about fourteen years old again and confessing his love to his first crush. ‘And I know it isn’t ideal, us working together, and I don’t know, you probably don’t feel the same about me, and that’s fine…’

‘Ben!’ Lucy said, her eyes searching his. Her laughter halted to a genuine smile.

‘I do actually.’

‘You do what?’

Holder narrowed his eyes. Not sure if he just misheard.

‘I do like you too,’ Lucy said, reiterating her words. Before draining the last mouthful of wine from her glass.

‘Now are you going to sit there jabbering all bloody night, or are you going to take me home?’

54

Walking through the main entrance of Wandsworth Cemetery, Lucy smiled when Winnie linked her arm with hers as they both walked in silence towards her mother’s grave. The sun shone down on their faces. It was good for her nan to get out and get some fresh air.

‘I wouldn’t want to live there, would you?’ Winnie said, nodding over towards the lodge that they passed which sat at the cemetery’s main entrance.

‘Oh, I don’t know. It looks like a pretty house,’ Lucy said, eyeing the gleaming windows, adorned with pretty floral window boxes. A row of horse chestnut trees lined the border behind the house. ‘There’re worse places to live out there, Nan, trust me. That place looks pretty idyllic to me.’

‘What, with a garden full of death and ghosts. I’d have to sleep with the lights on and a baseball bat next to my bed.’

‘A baseball bat? For the ghosts?’ Lucy said, shaking her head and suppressing her chuckle, happy that her nan was in such good spirits today, light-hearted and feisty. She seemed like her old self again. Though Lucy knew from experience that could change at any time. ‘I don’t think a bat would get you very far, Nan!’

‘Well, at least they’d know that I meant business. It’s got to be better than nothing, hasn’t it? What else would I do, leave them a note saying please don’t haunt me, my granddaughter’s a police lady?’ Winnie scoffed as Lucy laughed again. Her nan’s theory clearly made perfect sense to her.

The two women made their way over to the far corner of the cemetery, to Jennifer Murphy’s grave.

‘These places aren’t the nicest places in the world to visit.’ Lucy shrugged. ‘But I always feel, I don’t know… peaceful when I come here. Like there’s a sense of calm around me. Maybe I just feel closer to Mum when I’m here,’ she said, trying to make sense of why she felt better when she came here. When like her nan said, the place was full of death and ghosts. Only for her it meant so much more than that.

Lucy had come here religiously from the age of five. Visiting this same green space whenever she’d missed or needed her mum, she’d sat at her graveside and talked to her mother, as if she was still here. And as sad as it sometimes made her, mainly it helped. It made her feel as if her mum wasn’t too far away. As if there was a place she could go when she really needed her.

‘We’ll come here more often, Nan,’ Lucy said, making a silent promise to herself, too, to come here more. Realising it had been ages since she was here last. Winnie too. Work had been so busy lately and life just had a way of taking over. And Lucy knew that it wouldn’t be long until Winnie wouldn’t be able to remember any of this. Why they were here. Who Jennifer was. Who Lucy was. She was on borrowed time. She had to make every minute count.

‘We don’t visit her enough.’

‘Well, I can see that. When was the last time you cut the grass?’ Winnie said, having another of her moments as she eyed some of the more overgrown, neglected graves that they passed.

‘We don’t cut the grass, Nan. That man over there, the caretaker, he tends to the grounds.’

‘Well, he wants to pull his finger out then. Because this is not acceptable. Someone should be cutting the grass. And what about a nice pond. This place could do with one. And a café…’

‘No, Nan. Honestly, it’s fine…’ Lucy said, realising that her nan was on a mission now. but it was too late. Winnie had already taken it upon herself to shout out to the caretaker.

‘Cooee! Hello…’

The man turned and nodded at Winnie in answer. Only Winnie pursed her mouth, forgetting then what she’d been about to say. Instead, she threw the man a wink and shouted, ‘I’m not too old to catch you, you know, and you’re not too young to enjoy it.’

‘Nan!’ Lucy said, seeing the man laugh and take her nan’s comment in good humour, guessing by Lucy’s horrified expression that Winnie didn’t mean any harm.

‘Why did you say that?’ Lucy said, holding Winnie’s arm and guiding her off in the other direction, hoping to keep her out of trouble, as she started cackling.

‘He’s my boyfriend, isn’t he?’

‘No, Nan. He’s the caretaker.’

‘Well that’s a real shame for him. I bet he wishes he was my boyfriend.’

‘Oh Nan!’ Lucy said, laughing then too.

Reaching the grave, Lucy placed the white roses that she’d brought her mother in the vase next to the headstone and stepped back to read the writing scripted upon it, even though she knew the words off by heart by now.

Jennifer Murphy – Greatly loved and sadly missed

‘Twenty-five. She was the