If a man cannot keep pace with his companions,

Perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer,

Let him step to the music that he hears,

However measured or far away.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU

In 1950s Scotland, life is changing for the Grace girls.

Heather and Kirsty Grace are sisters growing up in Rowanhill Village, near Glasgow, surrounded by a big Irish family and a host of friends and neighbours. Older sister Heather seems to have everything – a steady job, good friends and a boyfriend eager to marry her. Why then does she long to escape small town life and find love and excitement among the bright city lights?

Kirsty, two years younger, also yearns for more out of life. Although she works in a local chemist, at nights she sings with a band in church halls and clubs. When a charismatic Irishman, Larry Delaney, spots her singing one evening and soon becomes her manager, Heather suspects Larry has his sights set on more than just Kirsty’s singing talents. Young cousin Lily brings laughter and life into the Grace family, but when fate singles her out, she is forced to find a strength and determination beyond her years.

Although the Grace girls have a warm, caring family around them, 1956 brings a dark winter of fear and suspicion to all women in the Glasgow Area. Just as Heather and Kirsty begin to enjoy the wider world outside Rowanhill, they suddenly find their wings are in danger of being clipped.

You can now read chapter one of The Grace Girls

Chapter One

Scotland
November 1955

It was raining. A thick, sleety sort of rain that could easily turn into snow. The first snow this winter. It had been cold enough for it the last few days, Heather Grace thought hopefully, having always retained a childish pleasure from snow. And it wouldn’t be that unusual – she often remembered walking to school in a late November snow.
But it wouldn’t be walking to school in the snow now, or catching the bus into the office in Wishaw. From now on it would be walking up to the old Victorian Station to catch the train into Glasgow. Right into the middle of the city.
She sat sideways on the stool in front of the walnut, kidney-shaped dressing-table, in the bedroom she shared with her younger sister, Kirsty - her brown eyes gazing out into the dark, drizzly evening, and over the shadowy, square back gardens of her surrounding neighbours. But these were not gardens where frivolous flowers grew, as most of the men grew only the earnest potatoes and carrots, turnips and cabbages they had been reared with back in Ireland.
There were a few men like her father who grew roses or hydrangea bushes under the front windows, or straight lines of wall-flowers or marigolds at either of the path leading to the side entrance of the house. Apart from those odd floral glimpses of colour in the summer, most of the houses in the mining-village remained stoically grey or stony-beige.
There was a slight knuckle-tap on the bedroom door, then Sophie Grace came in carrying a plain pink mug in one hand, and a china mug decorated with freesias and the word Mother in gold handwriting in the other. A short while before she had changed her knitted working jumper for a soft grey fitted cardigan with pearls, which showed off the trim figure that the bubbly Kirsty had inherited. Unlike her blonde petite sister, Heather had taken her mother’s height, but her Irish father’s stocky, more athletic build and his almost black, glossy hair.
“ I have the dinner nearly ready, and we’ll have it the minute your father and Kirsty get in,” Sophie announced, in her local Lanarkshire accent. Unlike her Irish- spoken husband who had come over from Ballygrace in County Offaly in his twenties, Sophie was more Scottish, having been born in Motherwell to an Irish father and Scottish mother. Her allegiance at times leaned more towards her birth country, and tellingly, she had picked traditional Scottish names for her daughters unlike her in-laws who came very firmly down on the more Irish side. “What time did you say your film started?”
“ Twenty past seven,” Heather said. “And thanks for hurrying everything up on account of me.”
“ Well,” her mother said, smiling fondly at her, “it’s not often that you go out on a Thursday night so I suppose we can make a wee bit of an effort for you.”
“ I was just weighing all this up about Glasgow …”
“ Are you having any second thoughts?” Sophie asked gently, jostling for a space on the busy dressing-table for the pink mug. She moved a small, navy glass bottle of Avon perfume and the turquoise plastic basket that held the hair-rollers and pins.
“ Nope,” Heather smiled, catching her mother’s eye through the mirror. She reached over to the transistor radio on her bedside cabinet, to turn down Connie Francis. “I think …I’m definitely going to take it.” She finished putting the last spiky roller in her long dark hair, and deftly stuck a small plastic pin through it now to secure it. “I’m going to hand my notice in at the office in the morning.”
Sophie patted her daughter’s shoulder then sat down on the end of Kirsty’s single bed. “As your father and I told you, hen, it’s your own decision – and we’re very proud of you getting such an important job. You’ve done well for yourself.”
Heather took a sip of the hot tea, enjoying the chance to talk things out with her mother on her own. “I’m really excited about it in one way, but if I was to tell the truth …I suppose I’m a wee bit nervous about it as well.” Her newly plucked dark brows creased. “It’ll feel funny travelling all the way into Glasgow on the train every day,” she said in a low voice, “but to be honest, I can’t stick the thought of snooty Mrs Anderson always being my boss forever and going on the same bus to the same office for the rest of my life.”
“ A lot of people do …” Sophie said thoughtfully, “and you’re still only nineteen.” She took a drink of her tea.
“ I know.” Heather swung around on the stool to face her mother - “But it’s too good a chance to miss – a job in a big office in Glasgow. It’s a real step up for me, and if I don’t take the chance of it now, I might never get it again.”
Sophie nodded her head thoughtfully. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained, as they say.”
“ My Auntie Mona wasn’t exactly enthusiastic when I showed her the letter last night, was she?” Heather said, rolling her eyes. “Talk about doom and disaster.” She gave a giggle now. “You’d think I was going to Sodom and Gomorrah the way she was goin’ on, instead of Glasgow.”
Sophie smiled now. “Och, don’t pay any heed to what she says. If I listened to everything your Auntie Mona says, I’d never put my nose outside the door. She’d have me tied to the sewing machine and if I ran out of work, she’d have me down on my knees scrubbing and cleaning all day. Then when my own house was spotless she’d expect me over in the chapel to start scrubbing there as well, or maybe polishing the brass on the altar.”
“She doesn’t half go on when she gets the bit between her teeth, doesn’t she?” Heather said tutting. “And she expects everybody in our family to be right holy-willies just because she’s the priest’s housekeeper. She’d have us at early mass every weekday morning before work if she had her way.”
“ Och, she doesn’t mean any harm. It’s the way she was brought up in Galway with her uncle a priest and her auntie a nun. She feels she’s got to keep up the family’s standards even though she hasn’t seen some of them for years.” Sophie rolled her eyes now, looking exactly like an older version of her daughter. “She’s nearly worse about house-keeping than she is about religion. I was in trouble with her again this afternoon for forgetting to bring in the washing. She’d warned me several times that there was rain forecast, and there I was, sitting down and all relaxed listening to a play on the wireless when she landed at the back door carrying the basket and the washing, telling me how she’d saved it from getting a real soaking. You should have seen her face when she realised I was sitting down doing nothing.”
“ Oh!” Heather teased. “You’ll be the talk of the street!”
“ If I am, it won’t be the first time,” Sophie said wryly, taking a drink of her tea. “She told me that I might at least have been doing my sewing and listening to the radio at the same time.”
“ And you could have tied dusters around your feet and polished the linoleum while you were at it!” Heather said, giggling now at the thought.
“ Och, she was probably looking for that skirt she asked me to hem last night, but I’ve told her that I had two bridesmaids’ dresses to hem before I could look at her skirt.” Sophie had a small sewing business going, and was kept very busy by the locals repairing torn items, hemming and altering garments and running up curtains.
The front door opened, and Kirsty’s cheery voice called a greeting. “It’s me –e!”
“ We’re upstairs!” Sophie called back.
There was the sound of footsteps thumping up the stairs and then the bedroom door was energetically thrust open. “Sorry I’m a bit late, Mammy, I met this lassie from school that I hadn’t seen for ages and we got chatting,” the younger, curly blonde-haired girl explained. Her hair and camel-coloured duffel-coat that she wore daily to work glistened around the edges with droplets of rain. “Anything new or exciting happened since this morning?” Kirsty was always looking for something exciting to happen.
Heather shrugged. “Nothing – we’re just talking about me going to work in Glasgow.”
“ You lucky thing! It’ll be brilliant,” Kirsty said, sinking down on the bed beside her mother. “I wish it was me. I’d love to be in the city every day, being able to walk around the big shops in your lunch-break.” Her eyes took on a dreamy look. “I wish I was in Oklahoma or South Pacific or any of the shows that are on in the big music halls …then when the weather gets better we could tour around all the big cities like Edinburgh and London.” She closed her eyes. “It would be my greatest wish … I’d just love it.”
“ You’re doing well enough for eighteen years old,” Heather reminded her. “You’re one of the youngest singers in any of the bands, and you’re earning more money between your two jobs than I make at the office.”
“ And you’re certainly doing more than enough travelling, Madam,” Sophie said, stroking her youngest daughter’s damp, blonde, curly hair, which was restrained by a large clasp as her job in the local chemist shop dictated. “Some evenings you’re hardly in the door, until you’re back out it again.”
“ I know, I know,” Kirsty said, her blue eyes brightening. “We’re out tomorrow night in Coatbridge playing at a dance, and then on Saturday night we’re playing at a talent competition in Hamilton.”
“ Well,” her mother said, her eyebrows raised in concern, “you’d better make sure you get an early night tonight. You can’t be burning the candle at both ends.”
“ We’ll see …” Kirsty said vaguely. She turned to her sister. “Who’s going out tonight?”
“ The four of us,” Heather said, unpinning a roller now to check if her hair was dry yet. It was still a bit damp, so she rolled it back up again.
“ And who’s the four?” Kirsty persisted.
Heather made a little impatient sound. “Oh … me and Gerry, and Liz and Jim.”
“ Oh ...Gerry.” Kirsty said meaningfully, then started to unbutton the toggles on her coat. “And what are you going to see?”
Heather shrugged. “I’m not sure … I think it might be some kind of a gangster film.” Her face darkened a little. “It was Gerry’s idea – so no doubt it will be a fella’s kind of film.”
“ Well, at least it’s a night out, and it won’t cost you anything if Gerry’s taking you,” Kirsty pointed out.
“ Sometimes I pay,” Heather retorted, “and if he gets the tickets first, I often buy the ice-creams and the drinks.” She looked over at her mother. “I must make sure that we don’t stuff ourselves with hot-dogs again tonight, I can feel my working skirts getting a bit too tight again.”
“ Just cut out the rubbish,” Sophie said firmly, “and you’ll be fine.”
“ You’re daft,” Kirsty stated, “I wouldn’t be arguing with him if he wanted to pay for everything. It leaves you more money to spend on yourself. Anyway, he earns more than you – and you’ve been going out with him for nearly six months.”
“ Maybe I don’t want to let him pay for everything,” Heather said, her voice rising in indignation. Although they got on well for sisters, sometimes Kirsty really got on her nerves the way she voiced her opinions on everything so forcefully. And it was especially irritating when the opinions were about Gerry.
“ Right,” Sophie said, standing up now. She could always tell when things needed diffusing between the girls. She made toward the hallway now. “I’ll go down and check that the potatoes aren’t boiling too quickly and you ladies can follow me down shortly. Put that wet coat in the airing cupboard now, Kirsty, so that it’s dry right through for work in the morning.”
“ What’s for dinner, Mam?” Kirsty asked, getting to her feet now. “I’m absolutely starving.”
“ Stew and carrots and peas.”
“ Brilliant! I’ll have a big plateful, because I’ve only had a roll and a wee Dairylea triangle since I left the house this morning.”
“ You should have come home at lunchtime and I’d have made you something decent,” Sophie told her.
“ I know,” Kirsty agreed, “but the others were all staying in the shop, and anyway, it was that miserable out I couldn’t be bothered walking home in case I got soaked.”
“ A cheese triangle and a roll - it’s no wonder you’re so skinny, if that’s all you’re eating during the day,” Heather told her, secretly wishing she could last all day on such a small amount. Maybe her skirts would fit better if she tried to copy her sister. “That’s a really stupid way to be carrying on.” Even after a breakfast of cereal and boiled egg and toast, Heather often found herself starving by eleven o’clock in the morning, and could quite easily demolish the two rounds of sandwiches, crisps and chocolate biscuits she took to work every day for her lunch. Some days she did exactly that, and other days she made do with a bun or a hot sausage-roll when the tea-trolley came around her office, and kept the sandwiches until one o’clock.
“ Och, that’s very unusual,” Kirsty said airily for her mother’s benefit, but she pulled a face at her sister as soon as Sophie’s back was turned. “Most days I usually eat a lot more. But sometimes I could easily go all day without eating and it wouldn’t bother me. If we get busy or if I’m doing my nails during my lunch-break I often forget to eat - it’s only when I come in the door at home and I smell the cooking that it suddenly hits me.”
“ I hope you’re not on some daft diet, and making yourself ill,” Sophie said, as she went down the stairs. “Maybe you should start coming back home again for your lunch-break every day where I could make sure you’re havin’ something decent to eat.”
Kirsty passed by Heather now, giving her a poke in the back. “Stop getting’ me into trouble, you!” she said in a low, joking hiss.
“ I don’t need to,” Heather retorted. “You’re well able to get into trouble without my help.”
Kirsty went out to the airing cupboard with her coat, and then returned to lean against the doorjamb. “Are you getting’ fed up with Gerry?” she asked, her eyes narrowed.
“ What makes you ask that?” Heather said, frowning.
“ Oh, I can tell,” her younger sister said airily. “I always know the signs. You’re not bringing him back to the house as often …and I can tell he’s starting to get on your nerves already. All the little habits that you liked in the beginning are starting to irritate you …”
A broad smile suddenly broke out over Heather’s face, and then she reached into the plastic basket. “I’ll tell you what’s starting to really irritate me Kirsty Grace – ” A small pink roller came flying across the room. “You!”

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