My girl is FINALLY HOME

Tracy Glover faced every parent’s worst nightmare when her ex-partner fled the country with their daughter

- SARAH WHITELEY, ANN CUSACK.

For most parents, curling up on the sofa to watch a box set with their teenager is an everyday occurrence, barely noteworthy. Yet, as Tracy Glover snuggles up with her 14-year-old daughter Eliska and the pair put on Gilmore Girls, she can hardly believe it. In fact, she treasures every moment because, for five long and lonely years, the pair were torn apart after Eliska's father Jarek* fled with her to his home country of the Czech Republic.

'It was a living hell,' Tracy, 48, from Bradford, remembers. 'In the early days, I kept thinking it was a nightmare, or that he would change his mind - but he didn't.'

When Tracy met Jarek, in a local pub in 2005, there was no sign of the horror that was to unfold. 'He was handsome and charming. I guess it was curiosity that led me to talking to him,' Tracy admits.

They became a couple, going on trips to the Czech Republic to visit Jarek's family and moving in together after 18 months.

'We were really happy, I trained to be a teacher things were going well,' Tracy recalls.

Then, in 2008, Tracy fell pregnant. 'I was excited to start a family. I was adopted and had always wanted children,' Tracy smiles. 'I had vivid dreams about having a girl - I could see her face so clearly - and when Eliska was born, she was the girl I'd imagined.'

Nearly five years younger than Tracy, Jarek, then 29, seemed overwhelmed but was loving and caring toward his daughter. And for Tracy, with her new baby, came new worries. 'I became anxious that social services would try to take her away, Tracy says. "There was no reason for it - maybe because I'd been separated from my biological mother as a baby.