I Never Saw a Woman Look So Wistfully

Kate strained to peer through the tiny aperture to see the execution area. But she was doing it to please Noreen. She wasn’t interested in that poor woman. But once with a view through this little window there was… oh, what a roofless world. Can you see it?
Kate, now held aloft like some child peeping over a fence, looked out at the sky: she could see a small aircraft circling in this sky without mantle, where the white cotton wool clouds scudded along in slow majesty. So she watched with gaze of dull amaze that small plane disappear. That sky, those clouds. While Noreen continued supporting her legs she clasped the bars on the tiny window and continued to gaze in wonder at the careless clouds that in their freedom drifted by.
“Can you see it?”
“Yes, I can see it. Yes, I can see it now.”
Oh, I never saw a woman, who looked, with such a wistful eye,
upon that little tent of blueWe prisoners call the sky.
“Going to let you down now, darling, me arms are getting tired now. All right, sweetheart.”
 Half an hour later at teatime. A ‘trusty’ ran a spoon across the bars, as she pushed along the tea trolley. “It’s next Wednesday. Ruthy’s for the chop next Wednesday.”
When a voice behind me whispered low that girl is going to swing

Read the rest of Peter Cheevers short story about, Ruth Ellis,

'I Never Saw a Woman Look so Wistfully'

 the last woman to hang in the UK,
published by Ether Books
at:   http://catalog.etherbooks.com/Authors/1118