The Magdalen (23 page)

Authors: Marita Conlon-McKenna

BOOK: The Magdalen

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Sitting in the flat, she realized just how alone she was. She had never ever really been alone like this, the novel peace and quiet unsettling her. In the distance she could hear the vague sound of someone's radio, and promised to buy herself one just as soon as she had some money earned. The bed was hard and rather damp, and despite the warm summer weather outside she was glad to get into bed and pull the blankets up around her. Silence enveloped her.

She thought of what the Maggies would be doing now, and of her mother's reaction when Patsy told her that she wasn't going back to Carraig Beag. She thought of Roisin and curled herself into the pillow, imagining her child beside her. Closing her eyes, she tried to sleep, pretending everything was all right.

Every day she walked the streets of Dublin, searching for work, all the employers wanting a reference from her previous job, something she was unwilling to provide. Having left the laundry, she was trying to forget all that had happened to her.

Yet guilt stalked her. How could she walk away from
her own flesh and blood, sign a form that would take away her rights of motherhood and leave her small daughter to the care of strangers? What kind of a woman was she, that she had done such a thing? They had all reassured her that she was making the right decision, the correct choice. Esther was not sure. Her eyes were constantly drawn to young mothers pushing prams with gurgling babies sheltered from the sun by white canopies and cute cotton bonnets; she would sit for hours watching as small toddlers threw bread to the ducks in St. Stephen's Green, their mothers and nursemaids keeping a good hold of them. At times she heard a child's cry that reminded her of her own baby and her heart swelled with the ridiculous hope of seeing her child again. Every precious day she had spent with Roisin in the nursery of the mother-and-baby home was recalled, the images seared on her soul for ever.

She'd been a young eejit of a country girl when she'd first gone into the Magdalen home; now she was changed. She would find a job, one that paid her decent wages and didn't make her feel like a slave. She was determined to earn money of her cwn and have the fun of spending it. She was still young, and perhaps in time she would meet another man, a good man that would love her and care for her and not go and break her heart. She thought of kind and dependable Jim Murray. He would never make her heart race and her breath catch the way Conor O'Hagan had done, but he would give her friendship and care. In time she longed for another baby, one that would fill the aching emptiness for the child she'd given up.

Roisin would grow up strong and free, unaware of the
circumstances of her birth, and the mother who loved her. Esther had to learn to accept that she could never play any part in her child's life.

No life is ever wasted, that's what Detta had believed. Everything has its purpose. Esther Doyle was not prepared to turn her back on life, stay hidden away like some of the Maggies. She was a Connemara woman, a survivor, a Magdalen ready to put the past behind her and begin again.

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

THE MAGDALEN

This book was originally published by Bantam Press, an imprint of Transworld Publishers, Ltd., in the United Kingdom.

Edited by Claire Eddy

A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
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New York, NY 10010

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eISBN 9781429968102

First eBook Edition : August 2011

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Conlon-McKenna, Marita.

The Magdalen / Marita Conlon-McKenna.â1st ed. p. cm.