15/02/17
They found my sister’s body beside the train tracks in Whisper Hill a month ago and now all anyone ever talks about is her being a murder victim. There’s nothing I want more than to see the police catch who killed her and I know that raising awareness of what happened to her is a part of that but someone needs to talk about who Ruby was when she was alive. She wasn’t just a murder victim, she was a person.
The first flat we lived in was a small place on Mòine Road in Earmam that I mostly remember being damp and cold. I was a year and a half older than Ruby so I don’t really remember her much as a baby but I do remember her as a toddler and always being on the move. Even back then she had so much energy. It’s funny how the things that annoyed me most about her as kids are the things I miss the most now.
She was five when our parents divorced and a couple of years later our mum met our stepdad and we moved into a bigger, more modern flat in Bakers Moor. It was strange for us as kids, a time of upheaval, but the one constant was Ruby and her energy and happiness and loudness. She was always singing and dancing and had more space for it now. At Caisteal Secondary School she was involved in everything, dancing and acting and all sorts of clubs. She made friends easily and kept them forever. The people in her life meant everything to her, and she made time for each and every one.
As she got older she started to think about what she was going to do with her life, but she was so full of enthusiasm for so many things that she never really settled on one. I started engineering and when I got a placement with Duff she insisted we go out to celebrate. She was probably happier and more proud than I was, but that was Ruby. That was the last time we spent together and it was one of the best. Seeing her so happy, the way the energy radiated out of her and infected everyone around her, it’s a memory of how special she was, how just being around her was a gift. I was on a ship that had just docked in New Edinburgh when I got the message saying she had been killed and Duff had me flown home to be with my family.
I hate having to write all that, even the good memories, because it means talking about Ruby in the past tense. Every mention of her life brings back memories of what we as a family have gone through in the last month. Hearing talk of what happened to her, newspapers and websites speculating about why a young woman was out for drinks and hinting at things I know are untrue and that I will never forgive them for suggesting. All those people want to talk about her death and the investigation into it. I want everyone to know that Ruby-Mae Short was not just a murder victim, Ruby-Mae Short lived.
Nathan Short