Free Making Marion by Beth Moran Page B

solid.
    â€œOh. I didn’t know.” I rushed over to the fridge, banging my shin on the door as I wrenched it open.
    â€œMy sister and I are nearly eighty years old. Eighty! We have been toiling in this heat for over two hours. You didn’t have to know anything! Have you no common sense? Or are you just cruel? Or selfish and thoughtless?”
    â€œSorry.” I blinked back the tears that sprang up, hot behind my eyes. I took two large bottles from the shelf and held them out to May. “Do you need anything else? I mean, um, is that enough? Would you like an ice-cream, or a cake?”
    May sneered at me. She didn’t take the drinks. “I shall be reporting you to your employer at the first opportunity. And if either my sister or I should suffer from any effects of dehydration, I shall be contacting my lawyer.” She pulled open the door. “I partly blame myself for expecting anything from such a shambles of a girl. Your bra is a joke. And surely Scarlett pays you enough to be able to afford a better moisturizer? If by some miracle you haven’t been fired by next week, I expect both situations to have been rectified.”
    Slamming the door shut, May marched back to where Ada waited by the side of the van, swigging from a can of ginger beer, a frozen ice-lolly in her other hand.
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    Valerie had made me promise to come along to Fire Night that Sunday, the last one having been cancelled due to the sudden disappearance of Grace, who still denied any connection with mybroken window. Rather than trying to make up my mind whether to believe her or not, I chose to cram it to the back of my brain behind all the other unresolved junk. Nothing else happened, and the coil of dread began to uncurl in my stomach as the days went by. However, I was nervous enough thinking about the evening ahead to drop the chocolate cake I had bought as I tried to tip it out onto a plate so I could pretend it was homemade.
    Having wasted ten minutes trying to squash the broken pieces back together, even though it had been on the floor, I dumped the cake in the bin. Dashing outside, I filled a large bowl with raspberries from the vegetable patch next to my caravan, making sure I carefully closed the vegetable patch gate behind me. But I forgot to close my own front door. Leaving the bowl on the side, I jumped straight in the shower. Only when I turned the water off did I hear the clicking, scraping sounds coming from outside the bathroom. Wrapped firmly in the towel, I held my breath, listening for a few seconds. Something had definitely come into my kitchen.
    The something clucked.
    The chickens and I had not been best buddies in my time at the Peace and Pigs. The very sight of me irritated them. Feeding or cleaning them out involved me dodging about whimpering in fear while chickens ran at me aggressively, jabbing their beaks at my ankles. During the day, the hens roamed loose in the campsite, led as a pack by Denver the freakishly huge cockerel, lord of all he surveyed. He swaggered from tent to tent, stealing bread out of babies’ hands, ripping up unattended cereal boxes, eating a few pecks of the contents until he got bored and wandered off, leaving his wives to form a frantic cloud of flapping feathers as they fought and jostled each other for the remaining cornflakes.
    I had imagined hens to be gentle, docile birds. These were like a gang of feral teenagers out on a Friday night looking for trouble. I had assumed the role of victim, and the chickens became my bullies. If I saw the mob making their way anywhere close, I would turn and hurry in the opposite direction. I found myself duckingbehind trees and even scrambling up the slide in the play park in my attempts to avoid them. This doubly complicated my efforts to steer clear of Jake where possible. The previous Thursday, finding the pack of chickens approaching menacingly from one side and Jake from the other, I had actually hidden in somebody’s