Jessie Keane - Ruthless

She shrugged. ‘Ah, you know. Old things.’

‘What old things?’

A shrug. Her eyes were fastened on the table. One finger was tracing the grain of it, over and over again.

‘Can you tell me about it?’ he asked, keeping his voice gentle. ‘This is me, Orla. How long have we been friends? For ever. So why not tell me what’s been going on with you?’

Orla’s fingernail dug into the grain, leaving a half-moon mark there. Her eyes flickered up to his face, then back to the wood.

‘It’s nothing,’ she said. ‘Old stuff.’

‘Such as…?’

Again, a shrug. ‘Nothing that matters any more.’

This was driving him mad. He had to know. ‘Come on, Orla, tell me.’

Now her eyes met his. She picked up the dregs of the whisky, drank it down in one.

‘Tory used to come into our room – mine and Redmond’s. Pat too. He liked to watch.’

Rufus sat back with a frown. Of all the things she could have told him, he hadn’t expected that.

‘Come into your room…?’ he queried.

‘To have sex with us,’ she said, and gave a tight little smile.

Rufus sat there feeling as if the marrow in his bones had been turned to ice.

‘You what ?’

‘That’s why I don’t like it much. Sorry.’

‘Orla… for the love of God, what are you telling me? You’re saying your two elder brothers abused you? Both you and Redmond?’

She nodded. And then she smiled.

‘But Tory’s dead, and Pat went missing long ago, so I suppose he’s dead too.’

‘Jesus… Orla…’ He couldn’t get his head round it. Her elder brothers, who should have been protecting her, loving their sister as any brother should, had been doing that to her? And to Redmond as well!

‘Don’t feel sorry for me,’ she said. ‘It happened years ago, it’s all forgotten.’

No it isn’t , thought Rufus. You’re scarred right through from it, but you think you’re normal. You poor bitch .

‘I had no idea.’ He was thinking of the lock on her bedroom door, the clenching when he tried to make love to her, the dislike of babies. ‘There wasn’t… I mean, did anything happen after they’d…’ He couldn’t even say it. It was too monstrous, too awful.

She took another gulp of whisky. ‘I thought I was pregnant at eleven years old,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t. Which was lucky.’

‘Oh Jesus. Orla…’ He thanked God that Tory was dead. He wanted to dig up that bastard’s bones and beat them against a wall, he felt so choked.

‘You can’t imagine how it was. I was so confused. This was Tory, this was Pat. They played football with us, with Redmond and me and baby Kieron, out on the lawn. Like a normal family would do, with Mum and Dad looking on. And then at night, nothing was normal. Nothing at all.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Rufus, shaken. That she had been through such a hell appalled him. He wished he had known. Wished there could have been something he could have done to help her. But the façade of family life had been so smooth, so polished. And beneath it – chaos.

‘Ah.’ She shrugged again, poured more whisky. ‘It doesn’t matter. All gone. All done and dusted.’

‘I want to kill him,’ said Rufus.

‘Too late,’ said Orla.

‘Maybe I could catch up with Pat.’

She shook her head. ‘No. I think he’s gone too.’

So they had escaped their punishment. Meanwhile Orla was having to live with their crimes every day of her life. It must have been such a comfort to her, to have Redmond at her side, understanding, knowing the hell they’d both lived through. And now she’d lost him. No wonder she kept painting those mad pictures of him in her studio.

‘You must miss Redmond an awful lot,’ he said.

‘I do. Every day. We had a good life in London for a while,’ she said, her eyes misty with remembrance. ‘We ran the manor, the two of us. After Tory was gone.’

‘I know.’

‘Still, there’s one thing that gives me comfort.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Knowing that we finished off that bitch Annie Carter. Too bad we didn’t kill her sooner, before her Mafia friends organized the plane crash, and I lost Redmond.’

Rufus frowned. What was she talking about? ‘When was this – what year?’

‘Nineteen seventy,’ said Orla. ‘I’ll never forget it.’

But he’d seen Annie Carter long after that, when he’d been working in London’s East End.

‘Orla,’ he said, dry-mouthed.

‘Don’t worry, Rufus. I’m still alive, aren’t I? Feck them all. I’m alive, and they’re gone, Annie Carter included.’

‘She’s not.’

Orla’s hand paused halfway through bringing the glass to her lips. Her eyes met his.

‘What?’ she said.

‘She’s not dead, Orla. Annie Carter’s alive.’

Orla could only stare at him.

‘What did you say?’ she asked at last. All the colour had drained from her face, leaving it sickly pale. Her green eyes were huge as they stared into his.

‘I said she’s alive. I swear it, Orla. She’s alive.’

Orla was shaking her head. ‘No! That’s not possible…’

‘Possible or impossible, it’s the truth. She was in London and she was alive. I saw her myself at one of the clubs there. It must have been back in seventy-three or four.’ Rufus looked at Orla. ‘How could you not know this? Surely you have contacts…?’

Orla sat a long time in silence, trying to absorb this shattering news. Annie Carter, alive? Alive , while Redmond was dead?

She was clutching at her head, shaking it. ‘No, no…’ she moaned.

‘Orla…’ Rufus stretched a hand out, seeing her pain, wishing he’d kept his mouth shut.

She twitched away from his touch. ‘No!’ she shouted, jumping to her feet. She started to pace around the room, swigging whisky from her glass, eyes feverish with confusion and seething hatred. ‘We left the scrapyard and we got Fergal out and he flew the plane. We had to run, London was finished for us. But first I wanted to make sure we’d got rid of her.’

‘Orla – you didn’t. Last I saw, she was alive and well.’

Orla rushed to the table and slammed her glass down, hard. Whisky slopped over the rim.

‘But Redmond’s dead ,’ she hissed, leaning into him, her jaw clenched with fury. ‘And she was behind it, I know she was. She was having an affair with that Mafia man, Barolli – he must have taken out a contract on us to avenge her death. The fuel dial was low, that’s what Fergal said. And he’d only just refuelled. Someone must have cut the fuel line. We were meant to die that night.’

Rufus chewed his lip. He was startled by the intensity of her anger. The news of Annie Carter’s survival had made her incandescent with rage. ‘Look, Barolli might well have arranged it, but it wasn’t to avenge her. To please her, perhaps? She married him. Moved to the States with him.’

‘ No! She should have died ,’ Orla howled in his face, spittle flying. ‘She was meant to die .’

‘Orla,’ he said gently, ‘she didn’t die. She’s alive.’

Now Orla’s eyes grew distant. She slumped into her seat, drained the whisky in one gulp.

‘I’ll kill her,’ she said with flat, bitter venom.

Rufus felt a chill creep up his spine. His thoughts flew to poor Rory, lying in the grave outside. If only he could have brought himself to believe that she would use the knife, he would have stepped in, snatched it off her. But the truth was, he hadn’t wanted to think her capable of such an act. And his reluctance to see the truth had cost Rory his life. Rory’s betrayal had been motivated not by greed but by the need to protect his son. At heart he was a good and true man, undeserving of the cruel end she had inflicted on him.