Dead End Street by Wood Trevor

Author:Wood, Trevor [Wood, Trevor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

41

When Jimmy had been released from prison he’d vowed never to set foot inside one again – but he’d been back so many times recently that he was on first-name terms with two of the guards.

As he approached the visitors’ entrance on his latest visit, he was surprised to see an elderly woman waving at him from a disabled bay in the small car park. He hoped she didn’t have some kind of mechanical trouble she needed help with as he was the last man to ask about that. He needn’t have worried.

‘You’re Jimmy, aren’t you?’ she said, as he approached her.

He stopped, puzzled, and looked at her a little more closely. She was tiny, less than five foot, and looked way too fragile to be standing around in a prison car park on her own. Her grey hair was so wispy it barely covered her scalp and she had that slightly bent over way of standing that made him think she had a back problem of some kind. There was, however, a brightness in her eyes that suggested she still had her wits about her. One thing was certain, he’d never seen her before.

‘Who’s asking?’ he said, looking around to make sure she didn’t have company. He’d walked into enough traps to be wary of innocent-looking strangers, no matter how frail they looked.

‘I’m Lilian. Lucy’s mother.’

It took him a second or two to join the dots. Lucy. Gadge’s late wife. The elderly woman standing in front of him was Gadge’s former mother-in-law.

‘D’you mind if we sit down a moment?’ she asked, pointing at a bench by the side of the road. ‘I’m not quite as nimble as I used to be.’

Jimmy nodded. Lilian shuffled towards him and he instinctively put out his hand to help her.

‘Thank you. He said you were a nice man.’

‘You’ve seen him then?’

‘Of course, Keith told me you were due soon. That’s why I was waiting for you. To see if I could help.’

He supposed he’d get used to Gadge having a real name some time but it still sounded weird. It took a couple of minutes to reach the bench and neither of them spoke on the journey, which Jimmy was glad about as he didn’t have a clue what she wanted from him.

‘He didn’t do it, you know,’ she said, as soon as they were settled. ‘I’ve known him since he was a young man. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

Jimmy did his best not to smile. There were many things he was still discovering about his old friend, but he knew fine well that he was more than capable of hurting people if he believed they deserved it. He chose not to remove Lilian’s rose-coloured glasses but wondered if this was going to be a waste of time.

‘He was so good for Lucy. She was always a troubled girl, even when she was very young, but he calmed her down, made her happy.’

Jimmy sensed that Lilian wanted to talk about her daughter so he left her space to do just that.

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