HOPE

By Tessa Harvey

CHAPTER THREE

(Continued)

Ester Grayson had been concerned about several of her pupils for some time. Mostly, she could do little except to encourage them. Seeing the growing friendship between the child Maya and Hope was pleasing, she thought.

She had met Maya's parents and considered them very nice people. Hope's father had come once to a parent-teacher meeting two years ago. It had been obvious to her that he drank heavily and his speech had been a little slurred. He could not seem to concentrate for long and kept meandering down irrelevant verbal pathways.

But he had made an effort to come. He had been reasonably polite and he said he wanted his daughter to do well at school and get "a proper job," as he put it. But Hope's clothes, though clean, were shabby.

She hoped there were neighbours who looked after her. There were no visible signs of abuse. The child just seemed sad. Miss Grayson knew there was no mother.

At that moment, that mother was thinking of her only daughter. Ayleen had tried so hard to blot out all the painful memories. She had fled from abuse with both her children, but not fast enough or cleverly enough. Within a few days, Steve had tracked her down with the dogged perseverance of a hunting animal.

In a nightmare scene of screaming children, and yelling adults, someone had called the police at the shabby lodgings and Steve had grabbed the nearest child, backing away, threatening to kill both the toddler and himself if she came after him.

By the time the police arrived, he had vanished. They had failed to trace him. When they finally did, he had spun such a plausible story that the authorities were completely taken in and had left the child with him.

For a while, Steve had been angry, cuffing the child to shut it up. He had wanted the boy, but it was Hope, not Tom. Daft name, Hope. Later he didn't mind. She soon began to be compliant and grew useful in the house, learning slowly to cook and clean. He encouraged the old woman's help. Free babysitting.

And the old man was a push-over (or so he thought). Anyway, he even liked the girl a little. He had gone to visit that teacher, hadn't he? Some dads were much worse.