Free The Ballymara Road by Nadine Dorries

energy even to cry. The only words she had spoken, as the car had pulled away from the Abbey, were, ‘Rosie, fetch the baby, fetch John,’ before sleep possessed her.
    Rosie made a decision there and then. She would drive as quickly as possible – in the opposite direction, to Maeve and Liam’s farmhouse on the Ballymara Road.
    She would pass the doctor’s house on the way and would collect some antibiotics and ask him to put up a drip that Rosie could look after whilst she nursed Kitty at Maeve’s. The doctor would trust her. She could provide him with an entirely false name for Kitty and, if he pushed, she would make him aware that no further information would be forthcoming. Not even a doctor would push for information regarding a young girl, with no baby to show for her pains.
    The drive to Bangornevin was tortuous. With the coming of night, the temperature had plummeted and what had earlier been the soft snow, during the day, had frozen into solid ice along the narrow country lanes. The road, which was not easy to drive on at the best of times, now felt to Rosie as unyielding as iron.
    She knew the route well, but the fog and mist that had rolled down and onto the fields confused her. Every few yards or so, a cow in search of warmth loomed up from the mist in the dim yellow headlights as a ghostly spectre, causing Rosie to yelp with fright.
    The moon was full, and the sky ahead appeared to go on forever, an inky-black carpet of glittering stars, interspersed with heavy clouds full of snow. Rosie gave thanks, more than once, for the ethereal, sparkling light, which reflected from the ice, transforming the road into a frosted satin ribbon, winding its way along the riverbank, leading them on.
    The moon kept with her all the way, refected in the fast-flowing river beside her, watching and guiding her. Even in her gloves, Rosie’s hands were near frozen and the heater struggled to make any difference whatsoever to the temperature inside the car.
    On a number of bends, Rosie missed the road entirely when the car jolted frighteningly against the roadside scrub and stones. At one point, she had to get out of the car and push the tyres out of a shallow dip. By the time she was back in the driver’s seat, wet and chilled to the bone, she had to scrape the ice from the inside of the windscreen before she could safely continue on her journey.
    They had not passed a single car along the way. She felt gripped with terror when she realized that if anything did happen to the car, both she and Kitty would surely freeze to death before they were discovered. She was glad that Kitty was sleeping and unaware of their danger.
    Rosie had no idea that since her baby boy had been born and taken away from her on Christmas morning, Kitty had lain awake, day and night, yearning for Rosie to arrive. She had barely moved her gaze from the window, watching for the car headlights. Kitty was now in the deepest sleep. With her pain controlled by the pethedine, her body had surrendered.
    Although she was cold, Rosie was sweating with fear and praying out loud.
    ‘Thank you, Lord, for bringing me here. Now, could you just take me a little further, please God.’
    Rosie prayed to every saint a day was named after, to every angel whose name she could remember and to the Holy Mother. She barely stopped to draw breath as she did so. She knew that if she stopped to think about their predicament, she might lose her resolve. Rosie was tough, having seen and dealt with most things. Now, however, she was alone. Her ability to reach help was at the mercy of the elements and she had never before felt so out of control, or been so afraid.
    Irish winters were harsh and the locals in Bangornevin still spoke sadly of the two brothers who had been discovered in their farmhouse, snowed in and frozen to death, in 1947, as though it had happened only yesterday.
    Rosie reached over to the back seat to place her hand on Kitty’s forehead. The girl appeared to be more