Ninemile House

  Ninemile House

  Title Page

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  EPILOGUE

  NINEMILE HOUSE

  By Tara Moore

  Copyright 2013 Tara Moore

  Smashwords Edition

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  Thank you for downloading this free ebook. Although this is a free book, it remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed form commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy at Smashwords.com, where they can also discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

  TO MY ABUSER

  When you took my name away from me

  Yours became tarnished

  When you took my dignity from me

  You too were debased

  When you mocked and scorned me

  You were belittled

  When you imprisoned my body

  You shackled your soul

  When you battered my spirit

  You shattered your own

  When you condemned me to death

  Your humanity died

  What a hollow victory is yours

  © Tara Moore

  NINEMILE HOUSE

  PROLOGUE

  St James’ Hospital – Dublin 1999

  “I have a secret. A dirty filthy secret I swore I’d take to my grave with me. But I won’t!” Agitated, the elderly woman struggled to sit up in the hospital bed. Claw-like, her hand reached for her daughter’s wrist, encircling it with surprising strength. “I won’t take it with me, Dervla. I’d never rest easy.”

  “Shush, Mam.” Freeing herself, Derry Quinn eased the wasted form back against the pillows. “You’re not going anywhere. So, don’t go getting yourself all worked up. You know what Dr Burke said. Rest and quiet, that’s what you need.”

  “No, Dervla, listen to me. Listen to me before it’s too late.” Urgency made the elderly woman’s voice strong and it was this that caused Derry to stop protesting and draw her chair closer to the bed.

  “All right. Let’s have it then. What’s bothering you?”

  For a moment it seemed as though the old woman had changed her mind. Her lips compressed themselves and her eyes with their paper-thin lids and tracery of prominent blue veins closed as though she might be going to drop off to sleep. But then they snapped right open again and fixed themselves on her daughter’s face with a clarity and intensity that had been absent for many a long year.

  “It’s about your sister.”

  “Theresa?” Taken aback, Derry raised her eyebrows.

  Her mother choked a little, coughed behind her hand, then nodded in an exhausted fashion. “Yes. Theresa.” Once again, the sharpness shone out. “Well, you have it that she died when she was only fifteen and you were five?”

  “Yes, she got TB. Go on.” Puzzled, Derry watched the elderly woman grope for the glass of water on her bedside cabinet, fingers trembling like dead twigs in a stiff breeze.

  Taking a sip, she leaned back against the pillows and when she spoke again her voice had a new tone to it, defiant almost. “No. No, she didn’t. She didn’t get TB. That’s just a story we told you. She got pregnant, that’s what she got.”

  Shocked, Derry half rose from her chair, fell back down again. She felt slightly sick, felt the faint throbbing start up behind her right temple that warned that the migraine that had been hovering all day, was now imminent. “What? You mean she died in childbirth?”

  “No! No! No!” Impatient, her mother jerked the glass and some of the water spilled like tears onto the bedclothes. “Isn’t that what I’m trying to tell you? She didn’t die at all. She’s not dead, Dervla. Your sister is still alive. She’s alive, Dervla. Alive. ”

  CHAPTER 1

  Ninemile House Convent – Tipperary 1999

  The nightmares were back with a vengeance.

  “Tereeesa. Tereeesa.”

  Slowly Theresa opened her eyes, lured by the singsong voice calling from outside the gate lodge. Disorientated, she panicked for a moment, then slowly her eyes adjusted to her surroundings and the memory of her earlier humiliation came flooding back.

  “Michael?” The name came out in a half-croak. “Michael?” Her heart lifted slightly. He had come looking for her. Everything would be okay. Through the broken window, she could see the moon riding high, a luminous spectre against the inky darkness of the sky. Panic set in again. It must be very late. Had Mammy and Daddy missed her yet? Were they out even now scouring the countryside, worried sick? Theresa quailed as she thought of the trouble she’d be in. Her father was not a man to cross.

  “Thereeesa? Thereesa?” The voice grew nearer.

  Conscious of the damp stiffness of her bones, she struggled up straighter.

  “Michael? Michael, is that you?” Scrabbling to her knees, she collapsed back in a heap as the head and shoulders of a man suddenly filled the window-frame, blotting out the moon and plunging the room into darkness. It wasn’t Michael!

  “Ah, there you are, now,” he said, almost conversationally. “I was worried you might not still be here. But, you know you shouldn’t have gone running away like a headless chicken. Anything could have happened, especially with you dressed like that.” He chuckled, but there was not one iota of humour in the sound and Theresa felt the very blood freeze in her veins.

  Backing up against the wall, she felt around for something, anything with which to defend herself, but there was nothing, just a bit of damp old straw and a few twigs, carried in by some tramp in search of shelter probably, or blasted through the broken door and window by the sweep of the wind.

  “G-go away,” she stammered, terrified out of her mind, as his bulk moved away from the window, reappearing a moment later in the doorway opposite a dark, malevolent and towering shadow. “L-leave me alone.”

  “Now, why on earth would I want to do that?” Ducking his head against the low lintel of the doorway, the man took a step inside, gave a mocking whistle as the moonlight fell full on her lovely face. “And a sweet little girl like you just begging for the feel of a man’s arms around you?”

  “Oh, please, please go away and leave me alone.” With something approaching shock, Theresa registered her own voice as if coming from a distance, reed thin and terrified, completely unrecognisable.

  The man came closer. A twig cracked under his feet, sharp, like a snapping bone. She could smell the drink on him, the sourness of his breath as he leaned threateningly over her. “You know what you are?” He spat in a gesture of contempt as, defensive, she wrapped her arms around her middle, curling up to make herself as small as possible, trying to make herself invisible. “You’re a tease, Theresa. You’re a little tart. I’ve known it for years. I could smell it off of you.” Her whole being prickling with fear, she jerked away as bending down, he caught a lock of her long hair and wound it roughly round his finger, tugging in rhythm with his words. “Look at the state of you! Running around with a skirt right up to your arse. A right little trollop, that’s what you are. And just asking for it. Don’t think I don’t
know what you got up to with Michael in the stables.” In the sprinkling of light thrown down by the moon outside, she saw him fumble for his belt, the hair thick and black on his forearms, the glisten of his watch as it angled towards the window. “And I’m the man to give it to you, so I am.”

  A moment later, he was on her, tearing at her clothes, the sand-paper pressure of his mouth silencing her screams as effectively as any gag, pawing roughly at her small under-developed breasts, bruising her, hurting her. And then, as he forced her legs apart and entered her violently, came a pain that ripped through her, a pain like nothing Theresa had ever experienced before and which she was certain must surely kill her, a pain that went on and on till no longer able to cope she gave herself up to the blessed numbness of unconsciousness. By the time he finally pulled away, grunting his satisfaction, his brow beaded with sweat, she lay bloodied and defiled, discarded like a battered and broken rag-doll. Getting to his feet, the man adjusted his clothing. “This never happened. You hear me?” He kicked viciously at her prone body. “No one would believe you, anyway. T’would be just your word against mine. No contest.” Clearing his throat, he spat on her again. “Besides, like I said, you were asking for it.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Killiney, South County Dublin – 1999

  “God almighty, Derry!” James Quinn, his handsome face pleated into folds of disbelief, slapped his fist down on his office desk, knocking a pile of papers onto the floor. “Are you trying to destroy me or what?”

  “Destroy you how?” Hunkering down, his wife gathered up the papers and put them neatly back on his desk, inadvertently knocking against an executive toy, two steel balls that immediately set up an annoying clacking as they bashed against each other. “I don’t understand.”

  “The election!” James roared, reaching out impatiently and silencing the toy. “The election! How do you think it’s going to look to Johnny-voter when he finds out the wife of his trusted MP has had her sister locked away in a nuthouse for years?” He smote his forehead. “Why now? Why couldn’t your bloody mother have simply kept her mouth shut? She managed it well enough for the last thirty years, damn her! Now is no time to go rattling skeletons.”

  Stunned, Derry gritted her teeth. Not for one moment had it crossed her mind that his reaction to the news that Theresa was alive would be anything other than hers. “My mother’s seriously ill,” she reminded him quietly. “And I suppose she needed to ease her conscience before . . . before . . .”

  “And you’re her priest, are you? Her confessor?” James’ voice turned into a shout, causing his secretary, the sneaky Sinéad, to peer round the door and enquire if everything was all right. Half-apologetically, he motioned her away, lowering his tone to a sibilant hiss. “Selfish, that’s what she is. Leaving her mess behind for you to clear up. Did it ever cross her mind to think about the effect her little revelation would have on you and your family. And what about the girls? Eh? What are we going to tell them when this . . . this creature turns up on the doorstep?”

  Derry’s lips tightened to a white line. “That creature just happens to be my sister and she’s in a convent, James, not a nuthouse. And believe me, there’s no chance of her turning up on our doorstep whatsoever. Do you not think if she’d had the chance she would have done so long before now?” She forced herself to remain calm, though she could feel her own temper rising. “Besides, the children are far too young for it to have any impact. In any case, kids are very resourceful. They take everything in their stride.”

  “But they don’t have to.” James’ expression changed suddenly from angry to reasonable. Derry had frequently seen him employ the same tactic with members of the opposition. Anyone who brooked him, in fact. The spoonful of sugar technique, he called it. “Because really, Derry, we don’t have to do anything about it at all, do we? I mean, looking at it logically, Theresa is not our problem, is she? Until today, you thought she was dead. To all intents and purposes, she still is. She doesn’t have to affect our lives – after all, nobody knows about her. Why don’t we just keep it that way, eh?”

  Scarcely able to believe the callousness of the words issuing so calmly from his mouth,

  Derry felt her blood run cold. Who on earth was this man, because he sure as hell wasn’t the man she’d stood beside in the church a little more than ten years ago and swore to love, honour and obey. Yes, obey! Unlike a lot of her generation, Derry had had no problem sticking with the traditional vows. It was James’s very equanimity and reasonable outlook that had attracted her in the first place, his refusal to run with the herd, the fact that he was always his own man, his honesty and integrity.

  “I know about her, James,” she told him, biting back tears. “And, yes, I admit it’s come as a huge shock. But let’s be clear on one thing. Now that the skeleton is out and rattling its bones, there’s no way, no way on this earth that it’s going to be pushed back in the cupboard again.” Reflective, she picked up a Mont Blanc fountain pen from his desk, turned it idly over and over in her hands, finding a modicum of comfort in the repetition of the act, the solid coolness of the solid silver case against her palms. “Theresa might be a problem, as you so charmingly put it, but she is also my sister and as it’s fallen to me to right the wrong done to her, that’s just what I intend to do.”

  “And what about me?” James’s spoonful of sugar technique flew straight out the window and his voice rose again. “The elections are just around the corner. You know how important retaining my seat is to me. God damn it, Derry, I’ve worked my butt off on this campaign. Do you want to ruin me? And don’t think your own colleagues in the gutter press will spare you either. Do you think they’d believe that you and, in consequence that I, didn’t have a clue?” His hand raked his hair, parting the springy blond waves that always reminded her of the ripe colour of corn just before it’s harvested. “At the very least, let it lie until after I’ve secured my seat. I mean she’s been in there for the last thirty years. What difference is another few weeks going to make? ”

  Accusing, Derry turned the full impact of her soft brown eyes on him. “That’s right, James. She’s been incarcerated for thirty years; thirty long years locked up like a criminal and enduring God only know what kind of treatment at the hands of the so-called Sisters of Compassion. Just think about that for a moment. Really think about it. Think about all those horror stories that have been coming out lately in the same so-called gutter press. Think of all those women who were locked up in the Magdalene homes, many treated little better than animals.” Her voice caught, stumbled over itself. “And now I find that one of them is my very own sister!” She plucked at the sleeve of his shirt. “Look, darling, maybe you just haven’t had time to really absorb what hearing Theresa is alive means to me yet. So, I’m begging you, please, we’ve always supported each other in the past. Please don’t fight me on this. If ever I needed you with me, it’s now.”

  The muscles of his arm, toned from many hours spent unwinding at the gym, contracted briefly under her touch as he shrugged her impatiently away. Image was important to James Quinn. In the cut-throat world of politics you used whatever you had to get ahead. He was a product, just like the latest fast car, or must have technological gadget and, as such, understood more than most the value of marketing. “I’m sorry, Derry, no can do. This one’s your call.” He raised a warning eyebrow. “But be sure, Boadicea, be very sure before you jump into your fiery chariot and go tearing off down the motorway on your crusade, that you don’t destroy your own family in the process.” Picking up a file of papers, he started to flick through them, making it abundantly clear that all conversation was at an end.

  Disheartened, Derry opened the door to leave, almost colliding with Sinéad who materialised far too quickly for it to have been mere coincidence.

  She smiled the kind of smile that doesn’t quite make it to the eyes. “Oh, leaving already, Mrs Quinn? I was just going to bring some coffee through. The good stuff, Bewley’s best.”

  Der
ry waved her away, finding it an effort to adopt a civil tone.

  “Thank you, but that won’t be necessary.” From the first moment James had introduced her to the younger woman, she had experienced a strong, almost primeval antipathy towards the girl and time had done nothing to lessen the impression. And honest analysis had shown that it wasn’t down to something as simple as plain jealousy, although the red-haired, green-eyed, willow-slim Sinead was certainly attractive and James was as appreciative of a good-looking woman as any other red-blooded male. It was something more than that. Something sensed rather than seen. Or, as Derry had once put it to her best friend, Sheila, “If I were a dog, my hackles would rise.”

  Sinead shrugged, the merest lifting of her shoulders, yet with that tiny gesture managing somehow to convey more insolence than if she’d let slip with the foulest tirade of abuse. “Oh well, I’ll just bring some in to James, so. He works so hard.”