The Home 3 (Pages 120 - end)

 RATING: GOOD

SPOILERS!!!

The novel moves back and forwards in time, and we get to know Hope and Annie better. 

The story of Annie is about her unhinged mother. In her accounts Annie tells us how her father abandoned her mother when she fell pregnant at the age of 18. Caitlin, her mother, kept bringing up what a despicable man her father was. She was cruel to Annie; there was no money or food in the house, and Annie often found shelter in a café where people of limited resources went to eat. 

Hope's story is even worse. She grew up with a mother that resorted to drugs and was also a prostitute. Actually, she was left with Ace, her mother's pimp, very often, and when she was thirteen, she started working in the brothel. The relationship with Ace was complex because even though this man took advantage of her, she felt drawn to him. 

Then her mother got pregnant and had a baby daughter, Jade. From the first moment Hope looked after her little sister, and when her mother left the baby alone, Hope took herself and her sister to Ace's and told her mother that she couldn't be near Jade. Ace told her that he would force her mother to join a methadone programme, and a few weeks later Bex came back, contrite and regretful. When she asked to have the baby alone, Hope couldn't refuse as she had to work. This was a turning point. When she returned home, neither her mother nor Jade were in, and she found them outside, Jade dying as she had taken her mother's methadone by mistake. It was then that Hope reported her mother and she was sent to prison.

Hope and Annie become close and more than friends. However, there is a turning point in their relationship when Hope receives a letter from her mother, and she thinks that the content is threatening. So she decides to run away and find Ace. During those weeks she sleeps with him, and after she returns to the home, she tells Annie, who reacts angrily. The relationship between the two girls becomes distant, especially as she tells her that she is pregnant. Ace wants her to have an abortion, but Hope won't, and Annie thinks that the baby will be the end of them. The home is to close down in April, and when Helen tells them where they will go, Hope is enraged but Annie agrees that some time away could do them well, and when they turn 16, they can find each other again and live together. Hope has other plans. She wants to keep the baby, and Ace will provide the money, and she and Annie will live as a family with the baby. Annie does not agree, and Hope accuses her of killing her mother, using painkillers. This is true, but the report on her mother's death concluded that it was suicide. 

When Annie and Hope fall out, Hope becomes closer to Lara, and she convinces her that they need to run away. They will live with Ace, who will provide the money. Annie overhears them, and she knows that this is crazy. Ace will corrupt Lara, who is in a very vulnerable position. It is Hope that makes Lara talk, but promises to keep her secret.

On New Year's Eve Lara and Hope escape, and Annie follows them to the church which had been so special to them. Annie goes into the church where Lara is, but it is in darkness. Outside she hears Hope and Ace having sex, and then when she goes out, she confronts both of them. Hope is drinking, and Annie says that she needs to stop drinking or she'll harm the baby. Hope had told Ace that she had had an abortion, so he is not happy. Then the two girls start fighting, and Hope falls into the water, and it is Ace., who jumps and rescues Hope's body, but she is already dead.

In present time Annie tells the police her own version of the events, which means accusing Ace of the murder, and Ace is arrested but he has too much to hide and cannot speak up. So he keeps saying 'no comment'.

In the last chapter we learn that Lara was in the home, not because her father killed her mother and baby sister. It was her who shot them when the arguments in the family were too much, but her father took the blame. The night with Hope and Annie, she came out of the church, adn when she saw Hope standing on the jetty, she pushed her intentionally and it was her who killed her. Annie knows it, but she keeps quiet, and thinks that Lara did a good thing because now a paedophile is in prison.

I enjoyed the book, but I found that it dragged a bit too much.