Read Online The Ballymara Road by Nadine Dorries - Free Book Online Page B

appeared not to move, nor her glare to leave the girls. However, she needn’t have wasted her breath because Sister Celia almost immediately waddled into view, carrying the leather holdall Kitty had brought with her on the day she had arrived. It contained her own clothes, which had not been seen in months.
    ‘Take these girls into my room immediately and search them, please, Sister.’
    With no grace and even less kindness, Sister Celia dropped Kitty’s holdall on the floor. Grabbing Aideen and Agnes each by the arm, she marched them both away down the corridor. As Kitty began to slip to the floor, unsupported, Rosie had to move swiftly, placing her arm under her shoulders and round her back.
    Sister Assumpta said to Rosie, ‘I told them on the day they brought this – this girl,’ she almost spat out the words; she had wanted to use a very different term but she had eighty pounds owing to her, and was not going to put the payment in jeopardy, ‘that many of the girls here are penitents, placed here into my care by the government. I have a job to do here, midwife, and, as I told you, I would prefer you not to speak to the girls for any reason at all.’
    Rosie was not easily intimidated, and she had no intention of apologizing, but right now she just wanted to be out of the Abbey and on the road to Dublin. Stooping to pick up the holdall she shuffled Kitty towards the door.
    Sensing the sister’s hot breath on her neck, Rosie gave way to rising panic. When she finally managed to open the door, she took a deep breath of the chilled, rejuvenating air. She was nearly there.
    ‘Thank you, Reverend Mother. The girls have been very helpful. I am sure I will have messages of thanks to deliver to them, from the family, when I return with the payment. I hope to see them again.’
    As she walked out, she knew that Sister Assumpta still stood in the doorway, rooted to the spot, observing her every step.
    And she also knew that she would not be allowed to see Aideen and Agnes ever again.
    With an effort, she laid Kitty down on the back seat of her Hillman Hunter. As she closed the car door on her and placed her holdall into the boot, she heard the sound of stifled cries. Rosie felt sick at the thought of the girls being beaten, only a few yards away, but right now she had a sick girl only forty-eight hours post-partum with a temperature of 104, lying on the back seat of her car. She prayed that her contact details were not found in the hem of Aideen’s calico knickers, and quickly checked that the letters were safely in her handbag before placing it on the passenger seat beside her.
    The sky was darkening rapidly as Rosie left the Abbey. When she pulled away, she was aware that her retreating car lights were being followed: from behind the twitching, heavy curtains by disapproving nuns’ eyes downstairs, and by grateful waves from unknown girls through the cold, uncurtained windows of the top floor and the laundry.
    As she looked across the vast lawn towards the trees, in the bright moonlight she noticed a gravestone. Rosie shuddered. Each one of those girls in the graveyard would have died terrified, screaming in agony, feeling unloved and alone. Rosie crossed herself as she pulled out of the gate and sped, as fast as the icy road would allow her, on to Dublin.
    In less than ten minutes, she realized she would never make it. An abandoned bus completely blocked the road. Rosie left her car and shouted up into the driver’s cab, but there was no one inside. The door was locked and footsteps leading away, lightly covered by fresh snowfall, told her that the driver and passengers had long since left.
    Kitty slept fitfully on the back seat with Rosie’s spare sheepskin jacket laid over her and an Aran picnic blanket rolled up under her head for a pillow. There had been no tea or cake for Kitty. Rosie knew she was weak and in danger. The Kitty she had known before the delivery had been a bright girl. Now she was without the