Read A Cold Killing (Rosie Gilmour) for Free Online

were in bed, the men would come knocking on their door with plastic carry-out bags of vodka and a few cans of beer. They wouldn’t stay long, and then some other man would come, or maybe even two together. Ruby and Judy could hear them laughing, sometimes arguing, then noises they didn’t recognize. She’d blackened Billy Millar’s two eyes in the school playground one day when he shouted at her that her mother was a whore. He never said it again, but it didn’t make it any less true. It was her mammy, and she’d heard her crying in the night too often after the men left for her to feel anger or disgust at what her eight-year-old concept of a whore was.
    Ruby swallowed the lump in her throat as the cab pulled out of the city and onto the motorway. Her stomach knotted a little at the thought of seeing Judy again. She’d been coming back as often as she could to see her sister in the home. Three or four times a year, if she could manage it without anyone finding out where she was. As far as most people were aware, Judy was long dead. And Ruby decided she’d keep it that way when she’d found her all those years ago, a half-starved wreck in a locked ward of a Dickensian NHS psychiatric institution. Judy would remain dead so she could work towards the single goal that had driven her since that night all those years ago. She blinked away the picture. At least Judy was in a decent place now, and not in that shithole where they’d left her rotting for years. Ruby’s money had made sure she was well cared for, and every time she came over from Europe she’d sit with her, talking to her empty eyes, holding her hand, telling her stories of the two of them as children, hoping to provoke some reaction, evoke some memory. But Judy’s fixed gaze never flinched. Nothing. Maybe today it would be different.
    *
    The nurse on reception looked up and smiled when Ruby came through the swing doors and into the sterile tranquility of the main foyer.
    ‘Hello, Ruby.’ She put down a folder and came out from behind the desk. ‘How lovely to see you. Are you well?’
    ‘Yeah,’ Ruby said from behind dark glasses. ‘I’m good.’
    She couldn’t remember the name of the middle-aged nurse who always greeted her with a caring smile each time she visited. Ruby viewed it with the cynicism with which she had viewed most things as she grew up. You get what you pay for. If it had been the NHS hospital, you’d hardly have got a nod from the staff, they were so hard pressed. Here, amid the oil paintings and leather sofas in the foyer, it was all grace and charm. If you weren’t coming in to visit a loved one who was either in a permanent vegetative state or wired to the moon, you’d think you were in a boutique hotel.
    ‘How is she?’ Ruby asked, as they walked along the polished corridor to Judy’s room.
    The nurse turned to Ruby and made a sympathetic face.
    ‘The same, I’m afraid.’ She sighed. ‘We just have to keep hoping. We should never give up hope.’ She paused, turning to Ruby. ‘She’s up, and we got her dressed. We told her you were coming.’
    Ruby nodded as they turned the handle on the door and walked in.
    Judy was sitting in a glossy white wicker chair by the window, a shaft of setting sun catching the paleness of her cheeks.
    ‘Look who’s here, Judy. Your wee sister.’
    Judy stared straight out of the window, where acres of soft green grass stretched and spread into foothills in the distance. A male nurse pushed a wheelchair carrying an elderly patient down a tiny path towards the lake.
    Ruby gave the nurse a nod.
    ‘Thanks. We’ll be fine now.’
    The nurse backed away, smiling, knowing she’d been dismissed.
    Ruby took a deep breath and swallowed back her tears. Every time she came here it was the same. It ripped the heart out of her. Judy was all she had in the world. Even as children they had clung to each other, both somehow aware of the fragility of their lives. Then, after the fire, the terror of