The Ballymara Road by Nadine Dorries Read Free Book Online

for her own protection, away from the lure of temptation and sinful ways.
    These girls, known as penitents, were transferred to the Abbey straight from the industrial schools, run by the nuns and brothers. Many were country girls from the village farms, victims of incest and rape, or just a girl carried away at a dance, or a fair. Those who found themselves pregnant outside of wedlock would be deposited abruptly at the Abbey’s doors by their parents or by the local priest. In their imprisonment, some went mad from grief and despair.
    Many in Rosie’s circle knew about the laundries. An industry run by nuns who made vast profits enslaving women deemed to be sinful. The sisters and the government, worked as a team.
    This had made Rosie cross herself in shame when she last walked through the Abbey doors. If the penitents were lucky, after three long years of unpaid work in the laundry they might manage to buy back their freedom, provided that their families could supply the necessary one hundred and fifty pounds. However, before they left they would also be required to agree to give up their babies and to allow the Abbey to sell them on to American families.
    For the country girls, there was no way to bypass their years of slave labour. There wasn’t a farm girl from one end of County Mayo to the other who would ever see that kind of money in her entire lifetime.
    For young Kitty Doherty from Liverpool, Rosie’s involvement with Sister Assumpta and the Abbey had been necessary.
    A necessary evil.
    Kitty was neither a penitent nor a country girl but, for her own sake as much as anyone else’s, for a short while she had needed to become one.
    Rosie had agreed to personally deliver the baby at the Abbey when Kitty’s time was due, but, based on Rosie’s examination a few months earlier, she had thought that wouldn’t be until the middle of January at the very earliest.
    Rosie was one of very few people who knew that Kitty’s secret arrival in Ireland was in some way connected to the murder of the priest. The news of the murder had been all over the Dublin newspapers for almost a week.
    Since it seemed like half the men of County Mayo had travelled to Liverpool, to work on the roads, at the docks or building new houses, anything that happened in Liverpool was news in Ireland too.
    Rosie didn’t want to know the details of why or how Kitty had become pregnant.. Sure, hadn’t she seen enough girls in Ireland in the same position. The priest in Liverpool was not unique. She was delivering Kitty’s baby under a cloak of secrecy, at the request of her sister-in-law, Julia, who lived in Bangornevin in County Mayo. Refusal was not an option. A girl was in trouble. It was the job of the women to find a solution to her problem. Kitty Doherty’s name had been changed to Cissy so that no one would ever know she had been at the Abbey. It had been drilled into Rosie that no one must know where the girl was, who she was, or that she had given birth. Once she had done so, she would need to return to Liverpool as soon as possible.
    Rosie was well aware, without having to be told, that the part she had played – in helping to hide the child at the Abbey to have her baby – had saved Kitty’s father, Tommy, a good man, from the gallows.
    The justice of the four streets was brutally simple.
    An eye for an eye. A life for a life stolen.
    The family had altered Kitty’s name to Cissy, to hide her true identity from the nuns, and Cissy her name would remain. Unlike the other girls in the Abbey, who had their name removed on the day they arrived.
    No one was allowed to use her real name whilst resident at the Abbey. Hair was cut short, personal possessions removed and girls were not allowed to speak of their past. In fact, they were not allowed to speak.
    Kitty’s case was slightly different. She was to be resident at the Abbey for just a few months, rather than years. Kitty had not been dropped at the door. Nor was she a