Never Go Back

About the Author Dubbed ‘Queen of the Underworld’, Jessie Keane is of Romany gypsy stock. She was born rich, in the back of her gran’s barrel top wagon, and her family thrived until their firm crashed into bankruptcy and became poor. Her father died when she was a teenager and she fled to London to escape grim reality, finding there a lifelong fascination with the criminal underworld and the teeming life of the city. Twice divorced and living in a freezing council flat, she decided to pursue her childhood aim to become a writer. She sold her wedding dress to buy a typewriter and penned her first Annie Carter book, Dirty Game. This was followed by five more Annie Carter books, all Sunday Times bestsellers, then Ruby Darke arrived in Nameless, Lawless and The Edge. Jessie's stand-alone novels include Jail Bird, The Make, Dangerous, Fearless, The Knock and The Manor. It started with a kiss . . . Well, not exactly. More a look of passionate hunger, when I dreamed up an imaginary hot-headed 1960’s East End of London girl (Annie Bailey) who had a massive crush on local up-and-coming gangster Max Carter. Straight away, I understood Annie’s feelings when Max ended up engaged to her goody-two-shoes sister Ruthie, I understood how badly Annie behaved and how cataclysmic that ‘crush’ became when she was perched between one rival gang (Max’s) and another (the Delaneys). Reader, I couldn’t get the thing down on paper fast enough! I rattled it off in no time, forgot to number the pages, shivered in my shoes at my own audacity while I stood in the Post Office queue and sent it off to six agents. I waited. I shivered a bit more, because I was living in a council flat and couldn’t afford to run the heating. I’d typed the whole of Dirty Game while wearing an overcoat and using a monitor lent to me by a kind neighbour because I couldn’t afford to buy a new one when my own packed up. I was told by well-meaning people that I should Get A Proper Job. Seriously! When I knew I was holding this story, this fabulous story of conflict and hate and desire, in my hands and that someone had to put it into print. Well, someone did. Also, someone paid me a six-figure sum for Dirty Game plus two more Annie books – Black Widow and Scarlet Women. So, my writing career began. The truth was, I’d always wanted to be a writer. As a child I’d scribbled down stories, or told stories in needlework class, or put on puppet shows I’d scripted. All through my teenage years I’d written westerns and adventures and sci-fi pieces. All through my twenties I’d written romantic comedies. I’d even tried to get a few of those published, only to fall at the last hurdle. One By Jessie Keane THE ANNIE CARTER NOVELS Dirty Game Black Widow Scarlet Women Playing Dead Ruthless Stay Dead THE RUBY DARKE NOVELS Nameless Lawless The Edge OTHER NOVELS Jail Bird The Make Dangerous Fearless The Knock The Manor Diamond Never Go Back Jessie Keane www.hodder.co.uk First published in Great Britain in 2023 by Hodder & Stoughton An Hachette UK company Copyright © Jessie Keane 2023 The right of Jessie Keane to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. All characters in this publication are fictitious and To Cliff AUTHOR’S NOTE Annie Carter is one of those strong, compulsive female characters that I love to write, and judging from all the five-star reviews that my series of books about her have received, it’s extremely gratifying to see CONTENTS About the Author By Jessie Keane Title Page Copyright Dedicaion AUTHOR’S NOTE PART ONE 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23