Read Online Making Marion by Beth Moran - Free Book Online Page B

it can make you want to run away. Even just to see what somewhere else is like.”
    â€œDid you do that? Did you run away?”
    â€œI didn’t run away, because I told my ma I was going. And I’m a lot older than Grace, so nobody will worry about me.”
    â€œWill you go back, then? Back to Ireland?” Valerie looked at me, eyebrows lowered. Daring me to say yes.
    â€œI don’t know. But if I do, it won’t be for a while yet.” I handed her a pair of rubber gloves. “Come on. While you’re keeping out of the way, you can give me a hand.”

    It had been two days since the party. I had dragged that diamond ring about as if it weighed a thousand carats. My new fiancé had been in Belfast, packing up his student life and preparing to move back to Ballydown. Here he would lodge with his parents to save money, commuting to his new position at the local community hospital. He had texted me twice. The first text said: “CAN U RING HOTEL AND SEE IF THEY FOUND MY JACKET.”
    The second text was even more romantic than the first: “MA SAID COME 4 TEA ON SAT. DID YOU GET JACKET?”
    I rang the hotel and used up my lunch break retrieving the coat.I took a good long look at my new sparkly, shiny, caraty ring and decided to skip tea that Saturday. In fact, I decided to skip not just my future mother-in-law’s house, but the whole of Ballydown. I packed a bag on Friday morning before I could change my mind, and phoned the library manager, Harriet. Despite being my boss, Harriet was also my best friend. I even loved her enough to put up with her humming. All day, from the moment she opened the doors until she locked up in the evening, Harriet produced a continual tuneless drone without even realizing it.
    Harriet cheered when I told her I was handing in my notice. She hummed out a mini-symphony of joy. She is the only person I have told about the photograph. After showing it to her last Christmas, Harriet kept depositing different books on my desk: Sherwood Forest: A Visitor’s Guide; Walks in the Forest; The Legend of Robin Hood; Robin Hood and the Battle of Nottingham; Where to stay in Nottinghamshire. None of these books arrived at Ballydown Public Library by chance. When I returned them to Harriet I pretended I hadn’t read them. She pretended to believe me.
    Harriet loves me enough to keep kicking me up the behind. She did not offer her congratulations at the party, but she did give me a present: a one-way, one-passenger ferry ticket from Dublin to Liverpool.
    The ticket bought a place on the overnight ferry setting sail that evening. At one o’clock I just got up and walked out the door. As I loaded my bag into the car boot, Ma walked up behind me.
    â€œGoing somewhere?”
    I slammed the boot shut. I deserved this.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œComing back?”
    â€œI don’t know. If I do, it won’t be to here.” I nodded my head at the house.
    â€œWell. That’s a load of stew I’ve got cooking in the oven wasted.”
    â€œBye, Ma.” I pulled open the car door, then turned to say something else – anything. She already had her back to me, walkingaway. I drove off, more angry than sad; wondering how I could pretend to myself I had done something courageous for the first time in my life, when I knew that tucked inside the zip pocket of my wash bag was a billion carat ring, and saved in the outbox of my phone a message not yet sent to the rightful owner of that ring.
    However thoughtless and self-centred a man may be, he doesn’t deserve to be told his fiancée has done a runner by her mother.
    I drove the three and a half hours to Dublin without stopping. Despite the clear signs, I managed to get lost twice trying to find the port, adding another forty-five minutes to my journey. I grabbed a flabby sandwich from the café and ate it staring at my phone sitting on the passenger seat beside me. Four times I went