Free Promised Land by Marita Conlon-Mckenna Page B

sort of cheap labourer, to whom they would supply bed and board. She had no intentions of ending up a dried-up old spinster working on the farm dependent on the two of them for her keep.
    ‘It doesn’t matter what you say, Liam, I’m going and I’m not changing my mind.’
    ‘Do ye know something, Ella, when I met you when I came home from England, I thought that you’d turned out a grand girl, that I was lucky to have such a sister. But since Daddy died you’ve changed into a right selfish bitch. Fintra will be better off without you! I don’t want or need you on this land! So as far as I’m concerned you can piss off to Dublin and stay there!’
    Flinging his spade to the ground, Liam tramped back across the field and along the narrow boreen, leaving her to finish what they’d started.
    Shocked and hurt, she wondered why fights with Liam always had to end with him flinging things and screaming and shouting. Little had changed since they were younger.
    Ella felt like she’d been kicked in the guts and knew that any possibility of remaining on the farm she had grown up on was finally gone and any doubts she’d had about leaving Kilgarvan had been viciously pushed aside.
    ‘Don’t leave, Ella! Please don’t go!’ Carmel pleaded, when she heard. ‘Liam doesn’t mean it Ella, honest to God he doesn’t.’
    ‘I can’t stay here any more, Carmel, I just can’t,’ she insisted.
    ‘Ella, you don’t know how hard it was for Liam to come home to Ireland and your daddy and the farm after so many years away. He’s all upset about things at the moment. Half the time when he says something he doesn’t mean it, honest he doesn’t! He won’t admit it even to himself but he misses the sea. He’s a sailor, not a farmer. Farming is different from what he’s used to and it’s going to take him a time to settle down her in Kilgarvan. He’s worried about the money and trying to make a good job running the place, honest he knows that you’re a much better farmer than he is but he’s so stubborn he just won’t tell you. He needs you here Ella, we both do!’
    Ella could sense that Carmel was only trying to make the peace between them, for she was a gentle sort of girl who didn’t like rows and upsets. But no matter what she said or did this time there were no excuses for her brother.
    ‘He shouldn’t have said what he said,’ apologized Carmel again.
    How things had changed so much and fallen apart so quickly at home since her daddy’s death was beyond her. Desperate to get out of the house she pulled on her jacket and wellington boots.
    ‘Monty! Come on for a walk! That’s a good boy,’ she called, opening the back door and setting off across the farmyard, her hands dug deep in her pockets, willing herself not to break down and cry.
    Liam and she had managed to avoid each other for the best part of two days, and alone in her bedroom she packed her bag, an old brown suitcase that had belonged to her mother and father. She folded the best of her clothes into it, stacking them neatly on top of each other. She wondered if her few dresses and skirts would be suitable for a city like Dublin as they were hardly what you would call stylish. Kitty had led her to believe that the Dublin girls were all very glamorous and spent every penny of their money on fashion, hair and make-up and the like. She worried whether she’d fit in or not.
    She walked the fields of Fintra, acre after acre, noticing the way the sun slanted down along them at different hours of the day, the yellow gorse and the blaze of purple heather that bloomed up by Finns Hill, the boggy land known as Kennedy’s Keep, where her father used to cut turf for the winter, and all the things that made up her own place. She was glad that she’d got the seed potatoes down in time, for now it would be up to Liam to spray the drills and keep an eye on them. She’d also seen to it that the O’Gradys had mended the length of fencing destroyed by their