Hope against Hope - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Sheena Wilkinson is one of Ireland’s most acclaimed writers of fiction for young people. Star by Star (Little Island, 2017) was selected as a BookTrust Future Classic in 2018 and won the Honour Award for Fiction at the Children's Books Ireland awards 2018. Grounded (Little Island, 2012) won the Book of the Year and Children's Choice awards at the Children's Books Ireland awards 2013. A recipient of special bursaries from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland for the development of her writing, Sheena is now a full time author and writing teacher. Her books have also won awards from the Reading Association of Ireland and have been placed on the IBBY Honour List.

Sheena lives in County Down in Northern Ireland, where she spends her time writing, singing, and walking in the forest thinking up more stories.

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Flora Galbraith was in our shop! Buying undies! At least her mother was buying; Flora was eyeing the shelves of old-lady nighties and boxes of men's handkerchiefs Ideal Gift!) and sighing.

Daddy was showing Flora's mother McCabe's best 'Junior Miss' range.

Of course you'll appreciate the quality, Mrs Galbraith,' he said, unfolding a flannel petticoat and running his hands down it. 'See how sturdy the seams are?'

I got the giggles seeing Daddy's big hands on a girl's petticoat. I was meant to be seen-and-not heard behind the counter writing labels – Ideal Gift!; Baby's Layette; Chil-Prufe Bests on Special Offer! I normally hated our shop, it was the most boring place in Mullankeen – which is saying quite a lot – but my brother Leo was having one of what Daddy called his 'spells'. Catherine, my cousin, lived next door, but for some reason Auntie May didn't want me there today, so Daddy had dragged me to the shop out of the way. I'd protested loudly that I was fifteen, not a baby, but I was secretly relieved. When Leo had one of his spells he was scary, shouting and roaring, which was bad, or crying, which was worse.

I caught Flora's eye and grinned, hoping I wasn't blushing. We didn't exactly know the Galbraiths – they were post and Protestant and lived in Lismore, a big stone house on the Armagh Road – but I had a secret kinship with Flora since I was twelve. So secret that she didn't know about it. Three years ago, at the Christmas fête in the Church of Ireland, I had bought ten books – school stories by Angela Brazil – and they were all marked neatly inside with her name. They had titles like The Luckiest Girl in the School and A Popular Schoolgirl .

I fell in love with the stories. Even the pictures were intoxicating: fine, detailed line drawings, all of girls. All the girls were pretty and all the girls were having fun. Girls in classrooms, girls on ponies, girls laughing with their arms round each other, girls running after a ball with what looked like hurling sticks but I soon found out where hockey sticks, girls girls girls. A world of girls. A world away from Mullankeen and the shop and Leo, and me having to do everything at home, and people talking all the time about the border and partition and what would become of us all.

Lucky Flora looked like the girls in the stories – all pout and profile and, very daring for Mullankeen in 1921, her dark hair neatly bobbed. Last time I saw her she'd had two plaits flying out behind her when she cantered along the lanes on her grey pony, Moonshine.

'I like your hair,' I said shyly now.

Flora tossed her head and the dark bob swung round and fell neatly back into place. I sighed with envy. My hair looked like a very angry ginger mop. It hadn't always; Mammy used to help me keep it nice.

'It's for school,' she said.'

Boarding school?' I could hardly keep the envy out of my voice.

She nodded gloomily. 'Next week. Some ghastly seminary for young ladies called Ellis House. I keep hoping there'll be some terrible riot or something up in Belfast to scare my parents off, but it's depressingly civilised around Ellis House, apparently.' She even sounded like the girls in the books.

I'd love to go to boarding school.' I considered saying that I had read all her cast-off stories, but I didn't want to sound babyish.

Flora's mother and Daddy looked up. As usual I must have been too loud. I was always getting told off for it.

'Polly,' Daddy said in a warning voice, 'I hope you aren't annoying Miss Galbraith.'

'Not at all,' Flora's mother said, as if Flora couldn't answer for herself. 'It sounds like your daughter has a most sensible attitude.' She beamed at me. I wasn't used to being called sensible. 'Flora's being very silly about leaving home,' Mrs Galbraith went on.

Flora looked mulish. 'You shouldn't have dismissed McMahon,' she muttered. 'I can't trust anyone else to look after Moonshine.'

Jamie McMahon was the groom and general outdoor servant up at Lismore. He was sweet on Catherine; I'd seen him looking at her at Mass.

'Why was Jamie – ?' I started to ask.

'Polly.' Daddy's warning voice again. 'Don't interrupt, and hurry up with those labels. I want to change the window display this afternoon for Easter. Now, Mrs Galbraith, a dozen pairs of navy?'

Mrs Galbraith frowned at the list in her hand. 'Yes, please,' she said. 'Such a relief that you have them – we ordered them from the school uniform supplier, but they've let us down, and I can't send her off to school with no – er – underthings.'

'Well, now you know where you are, you can always get what you need here in McCabe's.' This was Daddy's sneaky way of saying that the Galbraiths had never darkened our door before: the shop was in Main Street in Mullankeen so they can't not have known where it was. 'You'll be anxious about her, up in the city.' Daddy wrapped the navy knickers in tissue paper and rummaged under the counter for brown paper to make a parcel.

'Yes. She was to go in September but she had measles, and then we were worried about the political situation. But the part where the school is is very quiet,' Mrs Galbraith said. 'Well away from any nonsense,' she went on, as if the riots and murders we read about in the newspaper were a playground scuffle between silly boys.