Promised Land by Marita Conlon-Mckenna

for their own mother and each other. So Ella had in time become a part of their lives. Kitty supposed that growing up together, and spending all those hours and hours of childhood in each other’s company, meant that she and Ella could be good friends without the burden and rivalry of sisterhood.
    ‘Liam’s a bastard to take the farm from you!’ She couldn’t help but speak her mind, seeing the misery and hurt apparent in Ella’s face. ‘You worked that farm and slaved on the place and this is your reward, him telling you to feck off and go to Dublin!’ Kitty always believed in plain speaking and telling the truth, even if it did get her into trouble. She wasn’t going to try and palaver her cousin and pretend this was nothing.
    ‘It’s just that it’s so bloody unfair, Kitty! Farming and the land is all I know. I can’t imagine myself not living and working at Fintra.’
    ‘I hated the farm and the blasted farm work,’ Kitty admitted honestly. ‘Daddy was always complaining and trying to get me to do more. If he’d had his way I’d still be down there, queen of the milking parlour and married to some local farmer’s son.’
    ‘That wouldn’t be too bad.’
    ‘Bad!’ Kitty sighed. ‘It would be fecking awful, Ella! I’m not like you. Do you remember when Daddy used to make me walk the cows home in the evening for milking? I hated it! I’d pretend to be doing anything else but walking those stupid animals back to the parlour. Sure I’d walk nearly half a mile behind them, pretending that I hadn’t a clue how this herd of dairy cows had managed to get out on the Kilgarvan road, and that I was only out for a stroll myself. One time I even managed to lose five of them and it took us hours and hours to find them. Daddy was like a lunatic, he nearly killed me! Another time one of the stupid yokes fell into the ditch and I had to wade in to get her and pull and haul her out of it. I was knee-deep in shite and stagnant water. The smell of dung off me was only desperate! And didn’t I meet the Corish brothers on the way home and the jeer they made of me. I was puce! The youngest fellow used to hold his nose every time he ever saw me after that. I was mortified, Ella, plain mortified.’
    Ella couldn’t help herself laughing. And Kitty was glad to cheer her up. She had no regrets about leaving her farming roots behind her and had big plans to make something of herself here in the city and find the man of her dreams, who would when the time was right sweep her off her feet. It was tougher on Ella, because all her hopes and ambitions had always been tied up in the farm, and even Sean Flanagan had been part of that dream. Kitty hoped that Ella would start over again and make something of this new life in Dublin. She was welcome to share the flat and Kitty hoped that the right sort of job would turn up just when her cousin needed it.
    Kitty had to go to work early the next morning but had run over to the shops and left a loaf of crusty fresh bread and a pint bottle of milk for Ella. For the next two days her cousin slept and slept, not stirring from the flat at all. Kitty made no comments, only ensuring Ella ate and supplying her with constant cups of tea and a mug of hot whisky at night to make her sleep. It was as if her cousin was sick or injured, she seemed so exhausted and tired.
    Ella had little or no memory of the weekend, only that the blonde and dark-haired girls from the room across the landing, Terri and Gretta, seemed to be in and out of the flat all the time and she felt too tired to talk to any of them. On Sunday Kitty had made her get up and dressed and the two of them had walked through almost empty streets to mass at the church in Clarendon Street, Ella only realizing when Kitty passed her a cotton handkerchief that she was actually crying. Afterwards they had sat in the city centre park, St Stephen’s Green, watching a mother duck and her young ducklings swim up and down the lake, as Kitty