Who Killed Ruby?. Camilla Way

      She laughs. ‘No, Samar, I’m bloody not. For one thing, I don’t even know if he’s single.’

      ‘Well, get yourself on a few dating websites, then. It worked for me and Ted.’

      ‘Yeah,’ she says, ‘maybe you’re right.’ But her thoughts linger on the doctor, and she’s not sure what it is about him that intrigues her so, only that there’s something about his grave smile, the calm brown of his eyes that she can’t quite let go of.

      Much later, after her guests have left and Cleo is sound asleep, Viv goes about turning off the lights and locking the front door. Outside, the November wind bounds and batters along the street, she hears a bottle rolling to and fro along the pavement, a dog’s distant bark. Before she goes to bed she glances in at Cleo sleeping before softly creeping away.

      No matter how hard she tries not to think about it, her mind returns again and again to the day her sister died, a familiar niggling doubt worrying at the peripheries of her consciousness. This strange uncertainty is something that has dogged her all her life. Perhaps it was Jack’s continued assertion of his innocence – he had appealed three times against his conviction – or his family’s unwavering belief that she had lied, but she’s never quite been able to shake it off.

      As she gets undressed she reminds herself of how badly Jack had treated Ruby, how both Morris Dryden and their neighbour Declan had said they’d seen him in their lane at the time of the murder. She reaches for her sleeping pills, wanting only oblivion. The right man had gone to prison; there could be no mistake.

      She wakes to darkness, her head slow and foggy from the pill, to feel fingers gripping her shoulder and she jerks away in alarm.

      ‘Mum, wake up! Wake up, Mum, it’s OK, it’s only me.’

      Sitting up, Viv gazes around her in confusion. ‘Cleo? What’s the matter?’

      ‘You were shouting in your sleep again.’

      ‘Oh, God, love, I’m sorry.’ She leans over and switches on the bedside light to find her daughter crouching by her bed, blinking in the sudden brightness.

      ‘It’s OK. You were really screaming. Are you all right?’

      ‘I’m fine. I’m sorry, darling. I’m OK.’

      Cleo straightens and yawns, her face swollen with sleep. ‘Sounded like a bad one this time.’

      ‘It was. Thanks for waking me, I’m so sorry I disturbed you. Go back to bed. I’m fine.’

      When Cleo leaves, Viv waits for her heart to cease its frantic hammering. The nightmare had begun the way it always did. She’s a child again, sitting in the living room while Ruby and Jack argue in the room above. A slow dread creeps through her. She knows that her sister is about to die but she’s unable to move a muscle, to do anything at all to stop it. What happens next always varies; occasionally she’ll go to Ruby’s bedroom to see a dark faceless figure standing over her sister’s body, sometimes she’ll run from the house knowing that her sister’s killer is on her heels, his hand reaching out to grab her.

      In tonight’s dream though, just as she’d heard her sister’s scream she’d looked up to find their old neighbour, Declan Fairbanks staring in at her through the living room window. For a moment she’d held his pale blue gaze before being hit by the overwhelming rush of fear that had caused her to scream out so loudly that she’d woken Cleo – and probably half the street too.

      It was not the first time she’d dreamt of Declan; he often appeared in her nightmares, always with an accompanying feeling of disquiet. Sometimes she’ll dream that Morris Dryden is there too, his happy grin and rosy cheeks incongruous with her terror.

      This, of course, is not surprising, tied as Morris and Declan are to that day, their witness statements playing a key role in Jack’s conviction. But she’s noticed lately that her unease when she dreams of Declan is laced with something else – a queasy kind of revulsion. She remembers little about him: a rather severe-looking man in his fifties, dark hair peppered with grey, very striking pale blue eyes. She has a dim recollection of him shouting at her once for kicking a ball at his window. Perhaps that’s where her aversion springs from, the childish memory of being chastised mixed with the general horror of Ruby’s death. Perhaps that was all it was.

      For a long time she lies staring at the ceiling, only the street lamp below her window casting its weak glow upon the blackness. The wind has stopped; the world outside is silent now. But when at last she starts to drift off back to sleep, a sudden noise from the street jerks her back to full consciousness. What was that? Her window is open a crack and she lies very still, listening, until another sound from outside has her sitting up, suddenly alert. There it is again: feet shuffling on the pavement below, then the sound of someone clearing their throat. Her nostrils prickle as she detects the faint trace of cigarette smoke. Slipping from her bed she creeps to the window and looks out.

      There is someone standing by her gate and she feels a jolt of shock when she realizes that it’s her mother’s boarder, Shaun. He’s looking away down the street, the red glow from his cigarette rising and falling as he takes a drag, and she quickly steps back from the street lamp’s glare. What on earth? She waits, heart pounding, until she hears him move off, his footsteps on the pavement gradually retreating, and when she dares to peer out once more she sees him rounding the furthest corner, before finally disappearing from view.