Eva and the Hidden Diary Read Online Free PDF Page B

of rushed and untidy – like she was too upset toconcentrate properly. Whole days go by and she doesn’t write anything at all. The kids in her class gave her a hard time because her dad was in prison.’
    ‘And didn’t the teachers step in?’
    ‘It doesn’t sound like it. Remember they were the ones who were organising prayer meetings for the safe return of the chalice. I’m guessing they gave Daisy a hard time too. Soon she stopped going to school altogether.’
    ‘But what about her scholarship?’
    ‘The scholarship was the least of her worries,’ I said. ‘Listen to what she wrote a month after her dad went to jail:
    Dear Diary,
    The good china is getting dusty, because it is never used - Mammy’s friends don’t come to see her any more. When Mammy and I went to Mass last week, everyone pointed at us and whispered.
    Rose waved at me from the other side of the church. Shestarted to come over to us, but her mammy pulled her back. Mammy cries all the time now. I try to cheer her up but nothing works. She used to be so proud of her glossy hair and her trim figure, but now she doesn’t care about anything. She sits at the kitchen table and drinks tea and eats so much bread that she is getting fat. Some days she doesn’t get up out of bed at all. I don’t know what is going to happen to her. I don’t know what is going to happen to me.
    ‘OMG,’ said Kate. ‘The poor girl. She didn’t do anything to deserve this. None of it is her fault, and yet her whole world is collapsing around her. People must have been really mean back then.’
    ‘I know,’ I said, wondering if people would act differently nowadays. ‘It’s totally unfair.’
    ‘So how did Daisy survive like that until her dad got back?’
    I sighed. ‘I’m not finished yet. I’m afraidthings got even worse. Daisy’s mum couldn’t cope at all. In the end, she was so bad that she had to go to some kind of a psychiatric hospital.’
    ‘And did they make her better?’
    I shook my head. ‘No. I don’t think psychiatric hospitals made people better back in the olden days. It sounds like they locked poor Florrie up and threw away the key.’
    ‘And Daisy?’
    ‘In a way, she was lucky. She had a great aunt who lived in America, and arrangements were made to send Daisy to live with her.’
    ‘And she left her diary behind?’
    ‘Yes, but not by accident. This is her last entry:
    Dear Diary,
    Yesterday I went to see Mammy in the hospital and Daddy in the prison. We all cried for a long time. Mammy and Daddy both told me to be brave, but that is not easy. I am leaving for the boat first thing in the morning. I am afraid of travelling alone. I have never beenanywhere without Mammy and Daddy before. Rose gave me her bracelet to bring me luck. I will miss her very much. I am not going to bring this diary to America. I am going to hide it in my secret place at the back of the old hen-house. When Daddy’s name is cleared, things will be different. I will come back home to Seacove and Mammy will come out of hospital. We will have visitors and people will be nice to us again. I will go back to school and study for my scholarship. I will fill all the rest of these pages with happy stories.
    Goodbye for a while, my dear diary.
    I stopped reading and wiped the tears from my eyes. It might have been kind of embarrassing, except that Kate was crying too. We hugged for a bit, and then we sat back on the grass. It was weird, crying about something that had happened so long ago, to someone we had never met. It was almost like crying at a movie.
    ‘The poor girl never came back?’ said Kate inthe end.
    ‘That’s what it looks like. This diary was really important to her, but she never wrote in it again.’
    ‘So I’m guessing it’s been lying in the shed, untouched, since 1947,’ she said. ‘It’s like it was waiting for her.’
    ‘No,’ I said, feeling suddenly excited. ‘Maybe the diary wasn’t waiting for Daisy. Maybe it was waiting for