Mary She hated the hospital She hated walking through it She hated everything about it Except for one thing Her granny She hated the hospital but she loved her granny 1
One Mary O’Hara was walking up her street to the house she lived in with her parents and her brothers The school bus had dropped her at the corner at the bottom of the hill The street was long straight and quite steep and there were huge old chestnut trees growing all along both sides It was raining but Mary wasn’t getting very wet because the leaves and branches were like a roof above her Anyway rain and getting wet were things that worried adults but not Mary or anyone else under the age of twenty-one Mary was twelve She’d be twelve for another eight months Then she’d be what she already felt she was a teenager She came home at the same time most days and she usually came home with her best friend Ava But today was different because Ava wasn’t with Mary Ava had moved to another part of Dublin the day before with her 3
family Today some of the neighbors looked out their windows and saw Mary alone They knew all about it of course These were people who looked out windows They’d seen the removals lorry outside Ava’s house They’d seen Mary and Ava hug each other and they’d seen Ava get into their car and follow the removals lorry As the car moved slowly up the street they’d seen Mary wave and run into her house They might have heard the front door slam They might have heard Mary’s feet charging up the stairs and the springs under Mary’s mattress groan when she fell facedown on the bed They probably didn’t hear her crying and they definitely didn’t hear the softer sound of the bedsprings a little later when Mary realized that although she was heartbroken she was also starving So she got up and went downstairs to the kitchen and ate until her face was stiff Today Mary walked alone up the hill She was nearly home There were just a few houses left before she got to hers There was a gap between the trees for a while so the raindrops fell on her But she didn’t notice them or care Someone had once told her that people who’d had their leg cut off still felt the leg even a long time after they’d lost it They felt an itch and went to scratch and remembered 4
