The problem with saying one thing, and then uttering something different several months later, is that some people will remember the first thing as well as the second. One or two stubborn folk out there will try to join the dots.
And so, back to Carlisle United's billionaire, a saga now more than 400 days old. Except we are no longer to refer to him as a "billionaire", for this was a tag attached by the mischief-making media.
"This whole thing was dubbed billionaire by the local press," asserted John Nixon, United's co-owner, in his recent interview.
Of course - we in the newsgathering trade had simply got over-excited by a tweet issued by Andy Bell, erstwhile Blues vice-president, after his private conversation with Brunton Park's rulers earlier that day, May 20 last year.
Bell's tweet, you may recall, suggested that United had indeed been approached by a "billionaire". But the b-word was never uttered by the club itself. It was his word, and then our word, but not theirs. A confection, a mountain of a molehill, Nixon implied. So can everyone please calm down.
Except things aren't as neat and tidy as that.
As much as the fact Bell's tweet was never officially corrected - strange, if a person so closely affiliated to the club was reporting inaccuracies - it also pays, as we pass this quadruple-century milestone, to rewind to June 27 last year.
That day, Carlisle United's owners responded to 10 questions asked by the about the investment situation.
Question four asked if the club could confirm or deny Bell's claim that the new, interested party was a billionaire.
The answer from the top of Brunton Park? "Information obtained from our own research indicates that this is indeed the case."
Now, it may be true that the b-word did not feature in United's answer. But it's also true that those 13 other words left little to the imagination.
"Information"..."research"... "this is indeed the case". Those words do not suggest uncertainty. They are a good deal closer to "yes" than "no", much more definitive than "we're not sure, so hold your horses".
Carlisle's belief that they were talking to a billionaire appeared plain from that reply. So why go so hazy on it, 12 months later? Could it be that the never-ending story, and fans' keenness for it to be resolved, has become a source of discomfort at United's top table, and so a little convenient distance needed to be created, with a now-resigned vice president chucked under a passing bus in the process?
Did it, in the end, suit the Blues' owners to be more emphatic about their mystery man then than now?
Further questions, the more one reflects, are raised about Nixon's recollection of the day "billionaire" entered the United lexicon.
Referring to the conversation with Bell about the foreign approach, Nixon claims he himself said: "He's probably a millionaire," at which point Bell speculated that he may be even richer, in light of his proposals.
"I then looked up on Google," Nixon added, "and said it appears he's got access to probably billions rather than millions." An over-excited Bell then tweeted, and a strange idea sprouted legs, the story went.
But hold on. More than a month passed between that Google activity and United claiming their "research" suggested their suitor was indeed a billionaire.
So, what was the extent of that "research"? If some deeper delving had taken place, informing United's answer to this paper on June 27, then Nixon's account on the radio last month omitted some rather significant detail.
If, alternatively, one Google trawl was the extent of it, for a period of 38 days, what would that say about the sort of due diligence one would expect from club bosses into a person whose cash could transform the place?
Either way, it cannot be said that supporters have been served with the consistent truth all the way along.
The same, too, goes for the light Nixon offered to shed on that initial approach.
On Mike Zeller's radio show the director said: "The interest from abroad was such that they had looked at the stadium, the seating, and came back to us and said [they] would like to change the seating in the old stand. 'If we put money into the club, could we change these seats, [and] what else could we do in the club?'"
An offer to rearrange some seats. If this strikes you as a curious starting point for investment negotiations, it is also useful to remember how this seemingly tame opening gambit was first reported by the Blues' high command.
"Carlisle United Football Club are pleased to announce they have received a prospective new investment offer from a second party which has expressed a genuine and firm interest in taking the club forward on a fresh financial basis," their statement read.
That sounded a little more bold than an offer simply to take a look at where supporters park their backsides.
So which was it? The version Nixon recounted - we'll look at the seating, and is there anything else we can do? - or an approach to transform the club that "pleased" United so much?
It is these inconsistencies that disturb fans, these grey areas that cause the to ask "mischievous" questions (Nixon's term), these gaps in the boardroom message that hopefully Nigel Clibbens, the new chief executive, will be able to fill in a more straightforward way from here.
Speaking of those questions: perhaps a few memories can be jogged there, too. Nixon told Zeller that United had answered this paper's first set of 10 questions last summer - true - and "they may have another list now" to which "they probably know all the answers".
They have another list? They have another list. And Nixon knows this, because he personally invited the sending of them, all 20, in early December last year. A couple of months later, with no response forthcoming, we were again invited to send them. Which we did. And again no reply.
And guess what? We don't know all the answers. We may think we know who "Keith" is, we may have thousands of theories on why the billionaire hasn't yet shown face, but one can only imagine the grunts of displeasure from certain sections were we simply to present our assumptions as fact, rather than ask open questions of the people concerned.
And so we go on, still too many dots unjoined. "We're not in a position where we want to be rude to people showing interest in our club," Nixon concluded.
Perish the thought.