Free Ruthless by Jessie Keane Page A

stiffened – but still, she smiled.
    ‘I thought I’d lost you,’ he said, and a tear of genuine emotion trickled down his cheek.
    Orla gave a tight little smile. It was her smile, the same one she’d had as a teenager; restrained, secretive, closed-off.
    ‘I’ve been here all the time,’ she said.
    ‘For how long?’ To think of that! That she had been here, and he had been running around the world not knowing.
    ‘Oh – years. Years and years,’ she said, and there was that sadness again, as if she had been stuck here like a fly in amber, trapped against her will. ‘Where have you been?’ she asked.
    ‘Long story,’ he said.
    ‘Well, fetch your bag and come inside, then you can tell me all about it.’

19
    ‘Who’s this?’ Davey Delaney asked when he saw Rufus sitting in the kitchen with Orla and her mother.
    ‘This is Rufus. You remember him, don’t you? Sorcha’s boy, Rufus,’ said Ma.
    The old man looked as though he didn’t even remember Sorcha, his own sister, much less her son.
    ‘That Sorcha! What a tongue she had on her,’ said Ma.
    Rufus had to smile at that. His mother did have a tongue on her, it lashed like a Fury’s. More miserable in her poverty as the years passed, her husband dead so no longer the whipping boy for her dissatisfaction, she had taken to homing in on Rufus as a fair substitute. He found her depressing to be around, and his visits had become less and less frequent. In fact he hadn’t visited her in years, and he didn’t intend to remedy that.
    The place was looking tired, for all the efforts that had clearly been made to spruce it up – much like the elderly pair who inhabited it, shuffling around in carpet slippers, eating crackers and cheese at the kitchen table, the old man gazing around him with an air of gentle bewilderment, the old woman living out her days in obdurate, long-suffering tedium.
    ‘Pa’s not always this mild,’ Orla warned him. ‘He gets a bit aggressive sometimes, a bit frustrated. You know we have guns on the farm, to see off vermin. All the farmers around here do. We have to be careful to keep the cabinet locked though.’
    Rufus wondered if she was joking, but soon found she wasn’t when the old man sprang to his feet one night and threw a coffee table at the TV in irritation at something the newscaster was saying. Rufus had to restrain him until Ma and Orla could calm him down, but it was startling to see and a warning that Orla’s words were correct.
    That first night, when the old ones went off to bed, Rufus sat there into the late evening with Orla. She got out a bottle of whisky, poured them both a measure, and sat there in her tea dress studying him.
    ‘You look well,’ she pronounced at last.
    ‘And you.’ In fact he thought she looked better than well: fabulous. ‘Tell me what happened. I heard talk about a plane crash when I was in London. How could you have survived that?’
    Orla’s eyes dropped to the tumbler of whisky. She raised it to her lips, sipped a little.
    ‘Redmond helped me get out,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Fergal the pilot was done for when we hit the sea, but we were still alive and the plane was filling with water and starting to sink.’
    ‘It must have been terrifying.’
    ‘It was. But Redmond saved me.’
    ‘He got you out of the plane, got you to shore?’
    Orla shook her head. ‘He got me out of the plane, but I lost him after that. I swam to shore alone. I’ll never forget how cold that water was. I was sure I would die before I got to dry land. Somehow, I managed it though.’ Her voice broke. ‘But Redmond was nowhere to be found.’
    ‘Jesus,’ said Rufus, and crossed himself.
    She nodded. ‘I can’t talk about this,’ she said.
    ‘No. I’m sorry. It must be painful for you.’
    Orla looked up with a strained smile. ‘And what about you? How’s the world been treating you since we last saw each other?’
    Rufus thought of Pikey going up in flames, Don’s unending fury.