Hunted

by Roberta Kray

Genres: Suspense

Synopsis

Stealing from the rich is what Cara Kendall does for a living. She's 24, bold and fearless, convinced that she'll never get caught. But everyone's luck runs out eventually. When she breaks into a house in Hampstead, she gets more than she bargained for - a body in the study and the law on the doorstep. As rumours start to circulate about her part in the killing, she finds herself under increasing pressure to give up what she hasn't got and tell a truth she doesn't know. With danger growing by the day, and a killer still on the loose, Cara can't afford to lose any time. She has to find the answers before her enemies catch up with her. . .

Release date: November 10, 2022

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 441

Sample

Cara Kendall was escorted off the premises of HMP Leaside at eleven o’clock on Thursday morning 8 November. She walked a little way from the gates and stood on the pavement with a carrier bag hanging from her right hand. The day was grey, gloomy, with an overcast sky and rain in the air. She hunched her shoulders, shivering in her thin denim jacket. Nothing felt quite like it should. She was finally free after eighteen long months, but instead of the anticipated joy and relief, she felt only a curious flatness.

She frowned. Perhaps it was natural, she told herself, a normal reaction to having to face the world again after being behind bars. You couldn’t just expect to slot back in and carry on from where it had all stopped. It would take some adjustment, a realignment, before normality could be resumed.

She looked up and down the street, hoping for a friendly face, but all she saw were strangers. If there was one thing that could be said for Jimmy, it was that he was reliably unreliable. She wasn’t surprised that he hadn’t shown up, but she was disappointed. What was wrong with the bloke? Why say you’re going to do something if you’re not going to bother? She’d hardly been expecting fireworks and a fanfare, but a lift would have been welcome.

Well, she wasn’t going to wait. If he wasn’t here already, he wasn’t coming. He’d let her down and there was nothing new about that. He was probably still in his pit, snoring like a pig while he slept off a midweek bender. For Jimmy Lovell promises were like IOUs, easily given but rarely honoured.

Although they were no longer a couple – he’d taken up with some dumb redhead called Rochelle only weeks into her sentence – they had stayed in touch with occasional visits and letters. Even before she’d gone inside, their relationship had been on the rocks, so his infidelity hadn’t come as any great shock. Jimmy wasn’t the sort to let the grass grow under his feet. For all his faults, she’d still been looking forward to seeing him. She didn’t want him back, but she did want some company. And perhaps she’d also been hoping to regain a little of her pride – which was why she’d made an extra effort with her appearance just to show the cheating sod what he’d be missing.

What a waste of time that had been. She ran her fingers through her cropped fair hair and rolled her artfully made-up eyes at her own stupidity. She should have guessed that he’d be a no-show. She had hardly been his priority when she’d been his girlfriend, and now they were separated she was even lower down his list of concerns.

‘I’ll be there, babe,’ he’d said last week in the visiting room, leaning forward and giving her that rakish grin. ‘You’ve got my word on it.’

Cara started walking towards the bus stop. The first day of the rest of her life. Wasn’t that how the cliché went? She was twenty-four, young and healthy, with the world at her feet. And if being in the slammer had taught her anything, it was that she could take care of herself. She didn’t need a man to run her life or tell her what to do. From now on the only person she was going to rely on was Cara Kendall.

Freedom. She breathed in deeply, inhaling the diesel-laden air. Now that was the smell of London. For the first time she felt a flicker of excitement. Tonight, she’d be sleeping in her own bed, and tomorrow she could get up at whatever time she liked and do whatever she wanted to do – so long as she stayed out of trouble. Going back inside was definitely not on the agenda.

She should have listened to her dad: ‘Don’t be a mug, love. It only ever ends badly.’ But it was too late for regrets. And, of course, he’d never followed his own advice. If he had, he’d still be alive now. It was two years since he’d slipped from the roof of a house in Mayfair and been impaled on the spiked railings below. She half closed her eyes and shuddered. It had been dark, icy, dangerous. Why had he even attempted the break-in? But she knew the answer to that: Richard Kendall might have been less agile, less limber, than in his glory days, but he’d never been able to resist a challenge.

‘You fool,’ she muttered.

Cara had thought about him a lot while she’d been inside. He hadn’t been the best of fathers, far from it, but he’d been her father, and it was still hard to accept that he was gone. And yes, he’d been way down the scale in the morality stakes – a thief, a gambler, a womaniser – but he’d also been the kindest, funniest person she’d ever known. And there was something else she knew for a fact: he’d have been standing outside the prison gates today had circumstances permitted it.

She hadn’t seen his body after he’d died, hadn’t wanted to, but now a part of her regretted it. Perhaps it would have been the start of coming to terms. Sometimes she imagined that he wasn’t dead at all, that it was just a case of mistaken identity, a fateful error which he’d chosen to go along with. Always in debt to one casino or another, it would have been the perfect opportunity for him to disappear and begin a new life somewhere else.

There were, unfortunately, a couple of obstacles to this fantasy, one of them being that her mother had gone to the mortuary to identify him – despite being separated for years, they had never divorced – the other that his face was known to half the cops at West End Central. So, it was a ludicrous fantasy, but still she clung on to it, a tiny glimmer of hope being better than none.

Just as she reached the bus stop, Cara heard a vehicle slowing behind her and turned her head, sure that it was Jimmy. Her lips began to widen. Better late than never, she thought, whilst simultaneously trying to bring to mind some cutting yet witty comment about him being late for his own funeral. But her smile quickly faded. It was a car rather than a van. The driver was wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses, and he wasn’t Jimmy. He stared hard at her before he put his foot on the gas and accelerated away. The episode, quickly over, left her flustered.

She gazed after the black BMW, watching it disappear into the distance. What had that been about? Just a bloke playing silly buggers, or maybe he’d mistaken her for someone else. But her instincts told her otherwise. Her instincts told her that what had just happened had been a deliberate act of intimidation, that the man had been trying to scare her. Not a good start to her first day of freedom.

Cara’s heart started to pump. She’d done her time and the slate, theoretically, had been wiped clean, but theories weren’t facts and people bore grudges. The family of Gerald Myers still hadn’t got any answers. Whoever had killed him had got away scot-free. Maybe they reckoned she’d got off lightly too, that she knew more than she had ever told.

And then there was the law. They hadn’t been convinced by her story and had tried their very best to pin an accessory to murder charge on her. That two people, completely independent of each other, had chosen to burgle the same house on the same night was a coincidence too far. Their take on it was that the two of them had broken in together, separated – her going upstairs, him downstairs – and that her accomplice had murdered Gerald Myers after forcing him to open the safe.

The memory of those long, relentless hours in the interview room would always be in her head, a reminder of how close she’d come to being banged up for years. ‘If we were working together, why wouldn’t we have left together?’ she’d asked. But DI Steadman had just curled his sceptical upper lip and replied, ‘Because he double-crossed you, love, took the cash and the diamonds, and scarpered.’

‘If that was the case, I’d be telling you his name, right here, right now. Why would I protect him?’

‘I’m sure you have your reasons. About half a million of them, I should think. Your pal got away with quite a haul.’

‘There was no pal. I’m not denying that I broke in, but I was on my own. I didn’t even hear the gunshot,’ she’d insisted. ‘Gerald Myers must have been dead before I got in the house.’

‘So you keep on saying.’

‘Because it’s the truth.’

And on it had gone, hour after hour, with her protesting her innocence and him trying to prove otherwise. Her story, she had to admit, had sounded thin to her own ears, but she’d stuck to it. Most of it was true, and the truth was easy to remember. Her only deviation was to deny having taken any of the jewellery from upstairs, claiming instead that she’d heard a noise from the ground floor shortly after climbing through the window and crept partway down the stairs to investigate.

‘That’s when I heard him leave. I couldn’t see him, but I heard him. He went out of the front door.’

‘And then you went down to the study?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why did you do that?’

‘Because something felt wrong. I thought the house was empty, but it wasn’t and …’ She’d shrugged, struggling to find the words to explain it. ‘That’s when I found Mr Myers.’

‘And the jewellery on the floor? The jewellery from the bedroom upstairs?’

‘The man must have dropped it.’

‘That was careless of him.’

In the end, unable to prove a connection to the killer, Steadman had only done her for breaking and entering, but that hadn’t stopped the judge from giving her three years. She’d served half the sentence and that had been long enough. It had been a result, she supposed, bearing in mind how things could have panned out.

Cara sighed and gazed along the street towards the last point she had seen the black BMW. She hoped it was just paranoia that was churning her guts. Shifting from one foot to the other, she found she couldn’t stand still. Her mouth was suddenly dry. She wasn’t looking for trouble, but what if it was looking for her?

The bus eventually arrived, and Cara got on, climbing up the steps to the top deck. She made her way along the aisle to an empty front seat and sat down. As a kid this was always the place she’d loved most, high above the hustle and bustle, like being on top of the world. Now she used it as a vantage point to gaze down on the streets of London, checking out what might have changed while she’d been away – not much, by the looks of it – and whether there was any sign of the BMW. She was probably making something out of nothing. But still, she felt uneasy.

Eighteen long months she’d been absent from the outside world, during which the IRA had put a bomb under the Tories, Princess Diana had given birth to her second son, Torvill and Dean had skated their way to Olympic gold and the coal miners had gone on strike. Events had happened. Life had moved on. But not for her. She was back to where she’d started, on her way home to the Mansfield estate. The place had only one thing to recommend it: was marginally better than HMP Leaside. Jimmy had claimed he’d been keeping an eye on the flat, checking the mail and making sure she didn’t get any squatters in her absence, but whether this was true was questionable.

She frowned as Jimmy entered her head again, still annoyed by his failure to pick her up. He’d be full of excuses like he always was, a hundred and one reasons why he couldn’t get off his backside, jump in the van and travel ten miles down the road. At the very least he owed her a drink, and she’d be straight round to claim it once she’d had a long hot shower and sloughed off the stench of prison.

Twenty minutes later the bus drew up outside Kellston station. She got off and started walking along the high street. Almost immediately it began to rain. She turned up the collar of her jacket, cursed and ducked into the Spar. Here she picked up some basic provisions – coffee, milk, bread, butter, ham, eggs – before paying at the till with the small amount of money she’d been given on leaving jail. Even this simple act, the exchange of cash for goods, felt alien to her.

It was still raining when she left the shop. She walked at a quick pace, sloshing through the puddles with the two carrier bags swinging against her legs. There was nothing unusual about rain in November, but it was just her luck that the heavens had opened the minute she’d got off the bus. Already her feet were squelching in her trainers. She felt like a drowned rat.

‘Damn you, Jimmy,’ she muttered.

Cara took a right into Mansfield Road and a minute later was passing through the gates to the estate. It looked the same as it always had, grey and dreary, a concrete monstrosity. Apart from a few spindly trees, it was devoid of any green. Sodden litter gathered in the gutters, and graffiti covered the lower parts of the buildings. The three high-rise towers rose up towards the sky, a blot on the landscape and visible from miles away. Two of the towers, Haslow House and Carlton House, stood next to each other, while the third – where Jimmy lived – was set apart. Temple Tower, that was called, or at least it had been when she’d gone away. The council had changed its name twice in the last twelve years.

With the rain having driven most people indoors, the estate was pretty much deserted. A few youths were lurking in the entranceways to the shadowy passages that linked the front and back of the towers, pushing their dope and their pills and whatever else the locals needed to get them through the day. The whole estate was a dumping ground, a final refuge for the poor and the desperate and the forgotten.

As she hurried along the path, she raised her gaze and peered up at the tenth floor of Haslow House, four windows from the right, but couldn’t see anything to cause her concern. The flat had been her dad’s for almost twenty years, and because she’d lived there on and off since childhood, he’d managed to get her on the tenancy when she was eighteen. She was grateful for this now. The Mansfield might be a dump, but at least she still had a roof over her head.

Cara shook herself like a dog as she entered the foyer, shaking off the rain. She found a lift that was working, stepped inside, wrinkled her nose at the smell and quickly pressed the button for the tenth floor. The lift juddered as it rose, making the kind of noises that threatened imminent breakdown. The very thought of it brought her out in a cold sweat. She’d had enough of confined spaces.

When the lift reached its destination and the metal doors slid open, she heaved a sigh of relief, leapt out on to the landing and made her way along the corridor. She could hear the sound of a radio floating through the walls, George Michael singing ‘Careless Whisper’. When she reached her flat, she fumbled in her pocket for the key, inserted it in the lock and went inside.

The second she crossed the threshold, Cara sensed that something was wrong. She put down the carrier bags and frowned. There was someone else here; she was sure of it. She wasn’t alone.

‘Jimmy? Jimmy, is that you?’

As soon as she’d spoken, she wished she hadn’t. If she had uninvited guests, she’d just, rather stupidly, announced her presence to them.

Cara held her breath, in two minds as to whether to beat a hasty retreat. Squatters, burglars, the law? Whoever it was, they shouldn’t be in her home. And then there was the man in the black BMW: he could easily have got here before her, although why he should want to was another matter altogether. She felt a rush of anxiety and her heart started to thump, but before she could decide what to do next there was movement, the sound of footsteps and a moment later a stranger appeared at the living-room door.

‘Who the hell are you?’ he said, before she could get the very same words out of her own mouth. ‘What are you doing in my flat?’

Cara stared back at him. He was slight, in his early thirties with light brown hair down to his collar. Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, there was nothing especially threatening about him – his expression was more startled than aggressive – other than the fact he was questioning her right to be here. For a couple of surreal seconds, she wondered if maybe she was in the wrong flat. Was it possible that her key fitted another lock in the same corridor? But then she realised this was nonsense. Of course this was her flat. She could see past him into the living room, to the moss-green walls and her dad’s old sofa.

‘Your flat? I think you’ll find its mine. What the hell are you doing here?’

The frown that had appeared between his grey eyes deepened and then suddenly cleared. He smiled, showing a row of straight white teeth. ‘Oh, you’re not Cara Kendall, are you?’

She nodded without returning the smile. ‘Yeah, I’m Cara.’

‘Jimmy said you wouldn’t be back until the new year.’

‘What’s Jimmy got to do with all this?’ But already her stomach was sinking. Anything to do with Jimmy was usually bad news.

‘He rented the flat to me for six months.’

Cara’s mouth fell open. ‘He did what?’

‘Ah, I take it he didn’t run it past you first. He said he had. He told me you’d agreed.’

As it happened, Jimmy had run the idea past her when she’d first gone inside, and she’d said absolutely not. The idea of a stranger being in her home, touching her things and using her bathroom, revolted her, which was ironic, she supposed, bearing in mind her own cavalier attitude towards other people’s property. Anyway, with the money her dad had left she’d had enough in her bank account to cover the rent while she was banged up. ‘I told him I didn’t want to let it out.’

‘Looks like he lied to us both, then.’

‘The little shit,’ she muttered. ‘He had no right.’

‘So where do we go from here? I’m Will, by the way, Will Lytton.’

Cara couldn’t believe this was happening. If Jimmy had been around, she’d have happily strangled him. She picked up the bags, walked past Lytton, strode through the living room, and went into the kitchen. It was time to be assertive. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to leave. Jimmy didn’t have permission to let the place to you. And now I’m back so …’

Lytton leaned against the doorframe as she unpacked the groceries. ‘And go where?’

‘I don’t know. Haven’t you got any family, mates?’

‘I paid up front,’ he said. ‘Six months in advance. I paid until the end of January.’

Cara pulled a face. ‘You’ll have to sort that out with Jimmy.’

‘I think it’s up to you to sort it out.’

‘And how do you figure that out?’

Lytton shrugged. ‘It’s your flat.’

‘Exactly, and I want it back.’

‘So take it up with Jimmy. He’s the one who’s caused this mess, not me.’

Cara emptied the Spar carrier bag, put the bread on the counter, threw the other provisions into the fridge and slammed the door. ‘I’ll do that,’ she said, pushing past him into the living room. She snatched up the phone and punched in the number. It rang and rang, but Jimmy didn’t answer. Big surprise. No wonder he’d been a no show today; he was too much of a coward to come clean to her face. Jimmy’s maths had never been all that. He probably hadn’t realised, until it was too late, that Lytton wouldn’t be gone before she got out of the slammer.

‘No reply,’ she said, hanging up. She knew Jimmy would be avoiding her, that he’d try and lie low until she’d calmed down a bit, but hell would freeze over before that happened. He’d taken six months’ rent off Lytton while she had been paying the council. He was a thieving toerag.

‘How do you even know Jimmy?’ she asked.

‘I don’t, not really. I met him in the Fox. We got talking and I mentioned I was after somewhere to live. He said he might be able to help and …’ Lytton gave another shrug. ‘He brought me to look at this place, said it belonged to a friend of his who was travelling.’

Cara gave a snort.

Lytton glanced back towards the kitchen, his eyes alighting on the carrier bag she had brought out of prison with her. ‘I guess you travel light, huh?’

‘When was the last time you saw him?’ she said, ignoring the comment.

‘A while ago. Three weeks, four? I bumped into him in the pub. He asked if there was any mail for you, but that was about the sum of the conversation.’

Cara scowled. So Jimmy hadn’t even been round to check up on the flat, to make sure it wasn’t being trashed or used as a drugs den. Typical. She made a quick survey of the living room and was almost disappointed to find that it was perfectly clean and tidy. Even the carpet had been hoovered. If she’d been hoping to evict Lytton based on his levels of hygiene she was out of luck. There was something missing, though. ‘Where’s the photo of my dad?’

‘In the cabinet,’ Lytton said. ‘Sorry, but it’s kind of odd living with a picture of a total stranger.’

Cara opened the cabinet, took out the photo in its gilt frame and placed it back in its usual position on the shelf above the table. She felt marginally better after she’d done it, as if she’d gone some way towards re-establishing her territory. She stared at his picture – it was the first familiar face she’d seen since they’d unlocked the gates of HMP Leaside – and wondered what he’d have done if he’d got home to find some random bloke occupying the flat.

‘Would you like a coffee?’ Lytton said. ‘It’s the real stuff, not instant. I’ve just made a pot.’

Cara couldn’t think of much she wanted more than a strong cup of coffee – well, apart from a stiff Scotch – but this wasn’t the time to be fraternising with the enemy. ‘No thanks. Look, you can’t stay here. It’s not on. This is my flat and I want it back.’

‘I understand that, but I’ve got nowhere else to go until the end of January. Like I said, I paid for six months.’

Cara said reluctantly: ‘So what if I give you your money back? I mean, for the remaining time.’ She didn’t fancy her chances of recovering the cash from Jimmy, but if it was the only way to get rid of Lytton …

‘It’s not just the money. I haven’t got time to look for another place. I’ve got essays to write.’

‘You’re a student?’

‘A mature student,’ he said, and then added with a wry smile, ‘Obviously. I’m doing a history degree.’

‘Aren’t there halls you could move into?’

‘No.’

‘It’s not even legal to sublet,’ she said, trying a new tactic. ‘You’re not here legally. If I went to the council—’

‘If you went to the council, you’d be in as much trouble as me. They wouldn’t believe that you knew nothing about Jimmy subletting the place. Odds are they’d chuck us both out.’

Cara wasn’t sure if this was true or not, but she certainly didn’t want the council on her back. ‘This is ridiculous.’

‘Isn’t there anywhere you could stay until January?’

‘What? Me? Why should I? This is my flat, for God’s sake!’

‘Well, strictly speaking, it’s mine at the moment.’

Cara glared at him. She opened her mouth to retort, but smartly closed it again. Arguing would get her nowhere – he’d dug in his heels and wasn’t going to shift – so she might as well save her breath. She strode out of the flat, fuming.

Cara stormed along the corridor, went down in the lift to the ground floor, pushed through the foyer doors and set off across the estate towards Temple Tower. Bloody Jimmy! This was all his fault. All she’d wanted was a hot shower and a change of clothes and instead she’d come home to find a student cuckoo in the nest. She muttered under her breath as she walked, shaking her head in disbelief.

After a while she broke into a jog, partly to keep warm – she was still wet from earlier – but mainly because she couldn’t wait to get her hands around Jimmy Lovell’s neck. How could he do this to her? She’d made her feelings clear, crystal clear, when he’d come to visit her, but he hadn’t taken a blind bit of notice. That was Jimmy all over. He could never resist the temptation of making a few quid on the side.

The rain had eased off into a drizzle, but the sky was still low and grey. She glanced up, hoping that she’d make it to the tower before the next downpour. At this rate she’d end up with a dose of pneumonia on top of everything else. And what was the betting that Jimmy wouldn’t even be in? No, he wouldn’t be so stupid as to stay in his flat. He’d have done a runner as soon as he heard the phone ringing, or probably well before. Which begged the question of why she was even bothering to do this. But she had to start somewhere. Once she was sure he was out, she’d check all his regular haunts until she tracked the weasel down.

Temple Tower was almost identical to Carlton and Haslow – same structure, same litter, same graffiti – but it had a different atmosphere to it. She always felt apprehensive when she came here, as though she was entering enemy territory. Her eyes quickly scanned the surrounding area, alert to would-be muggers or any other dangers. A woman on her own was fair game to some scumbags.

Slowing to a walk as she approached the main door, Cara noticed a group of dubious-looking lads loitering in the foyer. At best, they’d feel obliged to make a few suggestive comments, at worst to try and feel her up. She veered off to the right to avoid them, choosing to take the external staircase instead. Jimmy’s flat was on the third floor, so it wasn’t too much of a hardship to forego the lift.

She bounded up the concrete steps, taking them two at a time as she tried to prepare herself for both confrontation and disappointment. When she reached the right landing, she stopped, took a moment to catch her breath and then marched along the corridor. Jimmy’s door had peeling blue paint and a bell that didn’t work. Before she knocked, she leaned the side of her face against the door and listened. Nothing.

She rapped three times and waited. Still nothing. Immediately she crouched down, opened the letterbox and peered into the hall. There was no sign of life, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t hiding in the living room.

‘Jimmy!’ she called out. ‘I know you’re there. Come on. Answer the door. I’m not going anywhere until you do.’

Cara had the feeling she was talking to herself but wasn’t ready to give up quite yet. The thought of having to traipse all over Kellston filled her with gloom. It could be hours before she found him. ‘Don’t mess about. I’ll wait here all damn day if I have to.’

But Jimmy, if he was inside, wasn’t persuaded by idle threats. There was no movement, no indication that he was there. She stayed crouched for a while, listening closely, straining her ears to catch the slightest sound. Then, slowly, she pulled herself upright again. Four more raps on the door. ‘Jimmy!’

Cara rattled the door handle in frustration. She didn’t expect the door to be unlocked, but to her surprise it was. A big grin spread across her face. The silly bugger had either forgotten to lock it when he left or not bothered to lock it when he came back. Either way she now had access to the flat. If he wasn’t in, she could make herself a coffee, warm up and wait for him in relative comfort.

She quickly went inside and closed the door behind her. ‘Jimmy?’ There was no response. Perhaps he was still tucked up in bed. When he’d had a skinful, that man could sleep through Armageddon. She walked along the hallway and tried the bedroom first, putting her head around the door to see if he was there. The bed was empty, the rumpled covers pulled back. Pausing, she remembered all the nights she’d lain there beside him, convinced they’d be together for ever, sure that nothing would ever come between them. It had taken her longer than it should to figure out the obvious: the nearest Jimmy Lovell ever came to fidelity was drinking in the Fox every Saturday night.

Cara retraced her steps and went into the living room. The place was always untidy, always littered with beer cans, ashtrays and takeaway cartons from the Chinese. Today was no different. She sniffed and frowned. It smelled of sweaty bloke and stale tobacco and something else she couldn’t quite identify. Once upon a time she’d have cleared up, sweeping the debris into a bin bag and running the hoover over the carpet, but how he chose to live wasn’t her business any more. She was no longer his girlfriend, and she certainly wasn’t his skivvy.

Desperate for that coffee, she crossed the room and pushed open the door to the kitchen. What she saw stopped her in her tracks. Jimmy was lying sprawled face down on the lino, one arm stretched out, the other by his side. For a few crazy seconds, she thought it was some stupid game, that he was just pretending, playing possum, that if she poked him with the toe of her shoe he’d grunt and laugh and eventually get to his feet again.

But gradually the truth dawned. She saw the blood in his hair, the stillness of his body. Her eyes widened with horror. Lurching forward, she dropped to her knees, took hold of his shoulder, and rolled him partly towards her. His face was battered, his eyes closed. She grabbed his wrist. ‘Jimmy?’ His skin was cold to her touch and she knew he was dead. There was nothing she could do, no help she could give. A cry rose in her throat and froze on her lips. Racked by shock and pain, she slipped her hand down into his, squeezing his fingers as if through touch she could force life into him again.

Now her pulse was starting to race. She could hear her own breathing, fast and shallow. He couldn’t be gone. It wasn’t