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Chapter 1
     
     
     
                JENNY LESTER’S FATHER was the county court judge and a respected member
of the community of Oak Junction. He was on every committee and organization of
the town and county imaginable and with the long hours he worked he had no time
for Jenny. All he cared about was his work, his law practice and being one of
the most upstanding citizens of the community. She was lonely without him,
especially since her mother had died in a car accident four years previously.
It was this loneliness and the desire for respect and attention from him that
made her do what she did.
     
               
She didn’t totally blame herself for what happened, although in hindsight it
was all her fault. Nobody forced her to make the decision that caused so many
problems. But loneliness makes people do strange things like falling in love
and keeping it a secret. She couldn’t tell anyone about her illicit happiness. But
the guilt she felt by sneaking around behind her father’s back melted when she
was with the boy that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. Being with
him was worth all the problems that it caused even though it was like stealing
love with stolen kisses.
     
               
On the day that it happened she had lunch at home with her father. He had
finished court duties for the day and was on his way to a council meeting. It
was a rare occasion for them to eat together – she couldn’t remember the last
time it had happened - and it made her happy for a while. It was almost like
being a family again. She enjoyed talking with her father, until he began
talking about the cases he had heard in the morning. Then her happiness
dissolved.
     
                
“I had another young lawbreaker in court today,” he said, “from that cheap
housing estate. Those young hooligans are all the same.”
     
                
“Oh no daddy,” Jenny said, “I don’t agree.”
     
                
“I’m right. Cheap living, that’s what causes it. That new factory they built on
the old Adams farm has attracted all kinds of trash to our town.”
     
                
“But you had plenty of young delinquents in your court before the factory was
built,” Jenny said as she cleared away the lunch dishes.
     
                
She went back to her studies, disappointed with her father’s attitude, but she
didn’t want to argue with him.  She could never win and she didn’t want to
upset him. She saw so little of him that she didn’t want it to be an unhappy
experience and she certainly didn’t want him to discover that she had been
disobeying him for the last few months.
     
                 
“All the same Jenny,” he said. He stood behind her as she sat at the desk, “you
are not to mingle with those people. You have plenty of friends from old,
respectable families of the town. People who we know and can trust.”
     
                 
“Yes, Father.” Jenny was resigned to never winning this argument with him. He
still blamed the people from the estate for her mother’s death. A drunk, under
age driver from the new housing estate had ploughed into her car. The driver
had survived, but her mother had died from her injuries two days later. Jenny
was only fourteen when it happened and had needed her father’s support, but he
had become withdrawn, throwing himself into his work and taking on more
responsibilities to fill his time. That’s when the loneliness began and it lasted
until she met Geoff.  
     
                
If only she could have told her Father then. If only she had shouted from the
rooftops that she was already involved with those people, those awful people
whose only crime was being poor. If only she had been brave enough to admit
that she had met Geoff and had fallen deeply in love with him. How much misery
would she have avoided?
     
                
Her father put