Page 46 of Hidden Daughters (Detective Lottie Parker #15)

Imelda Conroy believed… no, she knew she had been wrong.

Mistaken in everything she’d done and thought.

After all her work and scheming, she’d gone about it illogically, deviating from her rough plan of action.

The big reveal that she’d thought would shake the system awake would have been nothing but a damp squib compared to what had really gone on.

No one, not even her – particularly not her – could have predicted what had happened.

Her erroneous delving into the past had roused a monster, someone more dangerous than she could ever have imagined.

And the worst of it – some of the worst of it – was of her own making.

The pain had eased in her head, but she felt a scab beginning to form on her neck.

She’d snagged her hair on a nail as she’d run into the derelict house earlier.

And as she tried to free it, another nail had dug into the back of her neck.

The bleeding hadn’t stopped for ages. She couldn’t remember when she’d last had a tetanus jab, but she had worse things to fear.

She shivered in her new hiding place. An old barn on an abandoned farm that seemed to be situated at the end of the world. It was perhaps five kilometres from the O’Shaughnessy place, and even more remote. The sea roared its anger in the distance as if it wished to swallow up part of the land.

She was bloodied and her clothing torn. Her spirit worn out but not yet broken. Was that how those girls had felt? Locked up through no fault of their own. Made to work in inhumane conditions. All to hide what the Church called a sin. Society had given its blessing by its silence.

Darkness enveloped her. Tonight there were few stars, and cloud seemed to have obliterated the moon.

It was like being in a coffin. She sensed she was experiencing the same intense feeling those poor women had suffered when they’d been abandoned behind the doors of the laundries.

Those monster convents had acted like coffins within which live bodies slowly decayed.

Those who escaped were marked, stained by the experience.

Whose fault had it been? Really?

Not the girls’ or their babies’, definitely not.

Their families’? Maybe.

What about her own family? They must shoulder some of the blame. That was what she’d been trying to do. To mete out justice with her documentary. But someone else had their own idea of what justice should be, and she was suffering for it.

She’d been told a myriad of stories but she’d never really grasped the true story of her own birth.

There were a lot of mixed-up tales. Of girls being locked in the convent, where they’d found comfort and strength in each other and forged a link that bound them for ever.

There they’d also discovered degradation and humiliation.

Discovered hate. And eventually, they’d discovered how to retaliate.

Would Imelda ever get to confront the remains of her family with what they had done?

At the moment, she was consigned to her fate in a miserable, dark place.

She cried bitter tears of failure. By morning, she knew she would once again be filled with hope. Like those who survived life in the convent with the Sisters of Forgiveness.

Hope kept you going.

Hope kept you alive.

But sometimes hope destroyed you.