The Girl is the second instalment in The Lonely Ballerina Trilogy

 

Zoe lives a lonely existence under the roof of her domineering mother who, along with her partner Phil, refuses to buy into her insistence of paranormal jiggery-pokery down in East Moor Park. Her harrowing three months tenure was followed by an equally unpleasant spell in a psychiatric hospital. The horrors of that experience, in the little back-to-back, linger as she looks for a new start, back on her own patch, the huge Seacroft estate in East Leeds. Her mundane life takes a turn when a local oddball, tracks her down on the streets of Seacroft and relays a message from beyond the grave. As those around her ridicule the encounter, it's left to an old friend to persuade Zoe to take the message seriously but which ultimately results in a disastrous visit to the Kirkstall and Meanwood Spiritualist Church.

            Briggate in the centre of Leeds. The city's rough sleeping community bed down in the early hours but the still night air is ruptured by the drunken profanity of Yazz who's fallen foul of her pimp-on-the-street partner, Foxy. The huge shadow of Mitch, a drifter from Manchester, looms over her. He's the new kid on the block and looking for companionship and contacts, but his brief liaison with Yazz brings him into direct conflict with Foxy and the pack. Can he trust his inclination over his intuition? The arrival on the street of two bruisers dressed in black, test his convictions.

           During an evening in Leeds Zoe beholds a life-changing scene that rocks her soul to the core. She's forced to revisit the house in East Moor Park and its dark cellar, almost paying for it with her life. Her desperate attempts to inject substance and meaning into her life compel her into brushing shoulders with the cold and barbed existence of the city's rough-sleeping fraternity. She is forced into a race against time in which her efforts may be the difference between life and death.

            The Girl is a tale of betrayal, of friendship, of honour, of dishonour, of the harsh realities of life on the streets of Leeds, and of the journey of a strong-willed, spiky Seacroft lass, who never gives up.