Read Online A Cold Killing (Rosie Gilmour) by Anna Smith - Free Book Online

younger looking, with high, fleshy cheekbones and full, soft lips. Rosie was relieved when they curled into a smile.
    ‘I’m not young. Not by a long shot.’ She sniffed and puffed out a gust of air. ‘I was once, though.’ She glanced around the bar, shaking her head wistfully. ‘God! The nights we had in this place all those years ago . . . students and lecturers together . . . A different world. All full of dreams and big ideals . . . impossible ideals.’ She sighed. ‘I’ve been away so long.’
    ‘You live abroad?’
    ‘Yes. France.’
    ‘You’ve lived there a long time?’
    ‘Nearly twenty years.’
    ‘What took you over there?’ Rosie probed. ‘If you don’t mind me asking.’
    Mari sat back and touched her neck, looking at Rosie then beyond her into the throng of people at the bar.
    ‘I just needed to get away. From here . . . From everything . . . Initially I went for a few months, then stayed on. Ended up teaching English in one of the international schools.’
    ‘I’m wondering why France,’ Rosie asked. ‘What’s a former student of East European Studies doing in France?’
    The waitress arrived with the drinks and Mari drained her glass and put it on the tray. She took a sip of the fresh drink, then pulled out a cigarette and offered the packet to Rosie. She took one and lit them both.
    ‘I wanted to put it all behind me.’ She inhaled and let out a stream of smoke. ‘I had to. I went down south first and did a post-grad in French so I could teach. I just wanted all the Eastern European crap out of my life.’
    They fell into silence and, for a moment, Rosie pictured this tired, defeated figure back in her heady, carefree, student days flouncing around the bar.
    ‘I take it you were Tom Mahoney’s lover?’ Rosie raised her eyebrows, knowing it was a bit of a hand grenade.
    For a moment, Mari stared straight ahead, as though the question had triggered a raft of images. Rosie waited. Eventually, Mari turned to her, sniffed and nodded.
    ‘How very astute of you,’ she said, with something of a defeated smile. ‘That was before . . .’
    Rosie raised her eyebrows.
    ‘Before what?’
    Silence.
    ‘Before Katya.’ She flicked a glance at Rosie then stared into her wine glass.
    The tears came again and she let them run down her cheeks.
    *
    Mari had been a final-year student of Eastern European Studies at Glasgow University. She almost blushed as she recalled how just about every female student in the faculty was a little bit in love with Tom Mahoney. One or two of the boys were, too, she smiled, as though she were back on the campus in her heyday. Mahoney was in his mid-forties and drop-dead gorgeous: more than that, he was a force of nature, a highly intelligent, passionate lecturer who could take a subject as dull as the Five-year Plans for the economy of the former Soviet Union and bring it to life so that his students hung on his every word, feeling as though they were living through it. He was also relaxed and witty, drinking in West End bars, where he was sought after by students and lecturers alike. Everyone knew he was married, but it was the early seventies and there was a new sense of freedom among the students and women everywhere felt empowered to be able to sleep with whoever they wanted without judgement being passed on them. There were always rumours that Mahoney had bedded a couple of his students, but that didn’t stop Mari from falling for him. She’d slept with him on three or four occasions, none of them planned, and no commitment ever made. Sex was what it was, and Mahoney was quite clear about that. Just before their fling, Mahoney had been on a sabbatical, teaching students in East Berlin for a year. When he returned he was bursting with enthusiasm and determined to make the USSR, its history and current situation more understood and accessible to his students. He took eight of them on what he called a field trip to East Berlin.
    ‘It was there,’ Mari said,