Little Drifters by Kathleen O'Shea

Author:Kathleen O'Shea [O'Shea, Kathleen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2014-01-21T11:00:00+00:00

One morning, two weeks later, we were getting dressed for school when Rosie put her head round the door to tell Tara not to bother getting dressed because she wasn’t going to school that day. We wanted to ask her why but she waddled away before we got the chance.

‘You’re so lucky!’ I teased as we skipped downstairs to breakfast a few minutes later, me in my blue uniform, Tara in her nightie.

Nobody was ever allowed to come to breakfast in their nightclothes. It was a real novelty. Suddenly we spotted a group of strange people gathered in the ‘good room’ – the Reverend Mother, another nun we’d not seen before and Jim Duffy, a man we recognised as the social worker. As soon as they caught sight of the two of us, they stopped talking.

Tara froze. She realised at once why they were there.

In that instant I saw a look of utter terror cross her face and she bolted, running up the corridor towards the stairs.

But Jim lunged and made a grab for her. It all happened so quickly we were too shocked to move, but then, in a second, all hell broke loose.

‘What do you want?’ I screamed at Jim.

‘All of you, get out and get to school!’ Sister Helen stood in front of us, blocking our way, ushering us out the door as Jim picked up Tara, who was now kicking and screaming, and shut her into a side room.

I was terrified. I didn’t know what was happening.

‘Tara! Tara!’ I screamed over and over. But Sister Helen had now taken my arm and was physically dragging me out of the house.

‘Get to school now!’ she barked, literally pushing me out of the door.

I hadn’t even had my breakfast.

Tara never did get dressed that day. She was taken in her nightie straight to the reformatory. That was the hardest day of my life – all day long I was in pieces, worried and frightened, just waiting to go home so I could see Tara again.

But when I returned that afternoon, she wasn’t there.

‘What’s happened to my sister?’ I asked Sister Helen.

‘Tara has been sent away to the reformatory and she isn’t coming back,’ she replied coldly.

I started to cry: ‘But why? Why is she there? Why did you send her away?’

Not a flicker of emotion passed over that heartless woman’s face. ‘She’s just gone and that’s that. And you’ll be going there too if you don’t behave yourself.’

I knew straight away why they’d sent her there – it was because we’d told them about the abuse. It was because I’d told them. It was my fault Tara was gone. I tried everything to get her back, to make it right again. Week after week I went to the Reverend Mother and begged her to let me see my sister but her reply was always the same: ‘Next week, maybe next week.’

But of course next week never came.

‘Please, please let her come back,’ I wept over and over again. ‘I’ll be so good, I promise, Sister.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.