Shadow Girl

It's midnight. Bridget Galloway is spending her sixteenth birthday at the local cemetery-the only place free from the brutal bullying of her alcoholic father. Alone and friendless, in dark clothes with over-dyed black hair, she is Shadow Girl at school. Bridget misses her mother. Why did she leave? Where did she go? Leah Antoine, celebrity fashion designer, sits at Sydney airport having emptied the house she shared with her husband and put it up for sale. Dressed in drab clothes and wearing a messy brown wig Leah constantly looks over her shoulder. One more hour and she'll be free... A chance meeting brings these two together. Leah provides a refuge for Bridget. For family secrets to be revealed, there are mishaps, mistakes, and a town of unconventional characters: a curious city cop, a gossipy Mayor's wife, a lost old lady and two determined teenage girls who introduce Bridget to real friendship. Shadow Girl reaches honestly into the issues of family abuse and intimate partner violence, addressing the support and courage necessary to escape and find voice. Two glossaries in the book contain terminology and definitions for violence, abuse and also the modern dating terms such as ghosting, gaslighting and stalking.