Dear Diary
Why did I think I could mould 4 disadvantaged girls into young ladies with poise and elegance – alright, Jane wasn't so hard, she was already slipping nicely into a respectable young lady without losing all of the streetwise knowhow, but the others: Marie is an opportunist thief – she even tried to pinch Jack's pen! – Kitty was a bit of a wild child a welfare case, and Rose was a pyromaniac!
When Kitty didn't show for a lesson we headed to the foreshore where she was supposed to meet Rose and found her body washed up. Marie's theory was that she killed herself over a boy, she reads too many penny dreadful the story she spun Jack was worthy of one of those awful weekly serials.
It was all so dreadfully sad and wrong – the mayor using Kitty for his own pleasure, getting her pregnant and then killing her when she threatened to go to the authorities, Rose's grandfather selling his own granddaughter to the mayor before he found Kitty and kept her in a bathing box to use as he pleased and all evidence and statements leading to the mayor's nephew Derek who was totally innocent and rather confused.
Then Jane disappeared; her mother had shown up so she went to her place in a seedy boarding house to give her some money and try to get her to sign the adoption papers so she would fully be my daughter. I feel so for the poor child, her mother is clearly unbalanced but she is her mother and I understand Jane wanting her to be safe and not consigned to an asylum – that is something I can do, I am sure.
The mayor really believed Rose and Marie did not have enough clout in the legal system, but I have and so does Aunt P and Rose is standing firm – good for her, if that is all I have taught her then my school of social graces was a success.
Perhaps social graces are not just what these girls need, how to defend themselves out there on the streets is far more important, to not be able to go about their daily routines, attend school and parties without the fear of being assaulted is not the way to grow up.
Jack says I should be Jane's guardian angel, I am not mother material, I told him that when he first arranged for me to foster her, but when I thought I was about to leave her my heart almost broke – she is such a part of my life, my family I really can't imagine her not being there, and a trip to the continent in the future will help her grow into the smart young woman I am sure she will be. A guardian angel is just what I can be, and I shall see her mother is taken care of.