Chapter 1

‘Leave me alone, you pig,’ Grace hissed as, once more, she pushed Billy’s groping hand away from her leg. She wanted nothing more than to immerse herself in the play but Billy’s boorish behaviour was completely spoiling her evening. All the while, her mother, who was sitting on Billy’s other side, seemed blind to what was going on. From the very start, Billy had shown no interest in the play whatsoever and it was now perfectly clear he didn’t know that one of the most poignant moments in any Shakespearean play was about to take place.
When, a few minutes later, that fateful dagger flashed in the spotlight, Grace looked on in frightened fascination. Indeed, so carried away by the moment was she, she didn’t even notice that Billy’s hand once more had started on its wandering course. The slender blade caught the light as it hung suspended in the air for a drama-filled moment before, with force and passion, it flashed down to burst through clothing, flesh and sinew, finally piercing Juliet’s very heart. With amazing realism, blood immediately began to well from the fatal wound as the ill-fated child fell across the body of her already dead lover. Grace was spellbound and horrified in equal measure as, with new realism and power, the well- known Shakespearean tragedy drew to a close.
Romeo and Juliet was in its second week in Edinburgh’s annual International Arts and Music Festival and, for once, the critics were unanimous in giving the production rave revues. The theatre was full to capacity and thanks to those favourable revues, future performances were fully booked for weeks ahead. The Festival organisers were already rubbing their hands together with delight. At least this part of the programme they were instrumental in bringing to the City promised to be a financial as well as an artistic success.
Sixteen-year old Grace Robinson was stage-struck. Even more, she was convinced acting was in her blood; after all, her mother’s brother, Oliver Wheeler, Uncle Ollie to Grace, was a well-known and very successful theatrical agent. Uncle Ollie represented many internationally famous stars, including the stunningly handsome Dean Brodie superbly playing the part of Romeo in that season’s festival offering and it was Grace’s firm conviction that, someday soon, she too would be as famous. It was now her fervent hope her mother might persuade Uncle Ollie to help her when she started out on her theatrical career.
Grace’s acting talents were as yet untested and, to-date, her acting opportunities were limited to minor roles in the annual school play but in the last twelve months she had grown and matured in every way. She now looked much older than her still tender years and was now an attractive, confident young woman who expected – and all her friends told her she was right to expect – far more important and better acting roles in this, her final year at Pilrig Academy. Of course, wanting something, and even being properly qualified and prepared for that something, is no guarantee of receiving it.
By no means a stupid girl, Grace was perfectly well aware that until very recently, she had largely wasted the long years she had spent in school but was determined that this, her final year, would be different. Not before time she recognised the importance of getting decent examination results and was now determined to give it her best shot. This was her last chance to demonstrate to her teachers her true worth, certain in the knowledge that one day soon she would be the centre of international attention. Her name would be on everyone’s lips and when the press went back to her old school to research articles about her for magazines like “Hello”, her drama teacher would be able to say, ‘I really feel I discovered her, you know. But then, I always knew she had it in her. And of course, her performance in the school play during her final year was quite exceptional; she practically brought the house down.’
Grace allowed herself to bask for a moment in the treacherous glow of achievements yet to be attained and at that moment life for here was full of excitement and promise. She was convinced she had a massive talent bottled up inside her, just waiting to be released. She felt she might burst. Little did she realise just how soon her dreams of fame would become a reality.
Prettier by far than most teenagers, in reality, Grace was actually an average, unexceptional young girl – except in her dreams. While most of her contemporaries dreamed of meeting Mr Right, getting married, setting up home and starting a family, though not necessarily in that order, Grace dreamed of fame and riches, two commodities she had so far been denied. When she compared herself with the starlets whose photographs took up so much space in the magazines she read, it was plain to see that not only was she prettier, she already had a much better figure than most of them. She was convinced she only needed one good break before the world of show biz would be beating a path to her door.
Sadly, Grace lived in a broken home; a home in which money was scarce. To make ends meet, a few years earlier Yvonne, Grace’s mother, had started her own little business making novelty cushions and, in a small way, the enterprise had flourished and was now quite successful. The downside was that it demanded most of Yvonne’s time and what little spare time she did have, Yvonne shared between her daughter and a string of lovers, the latest and longest lasting being Billy Jenkins. While he brought some much-needed stability to the Robinson household, Billy brought little else.
At twenty-eight years old, Billy was nine years younger than Yvonne. That said, Yvonne might easily have passed for someone much younger if her sixteen-year-old daughter hadn’t given the lie to any claims she might make to fewer years. Yvonne had been an innocent, sheltered, twenty-year-old when she married Frank Robinson. At thirty, he was ten years older, a worryingly large age gap as far as Yvonne’s parents were concerned but Yvonne wouldn’t listen to them. Frank’s maturity and sophistication had eventually swept her off her feet. Sadly, Frank soon bored of his pretty but shallow wife but, largely for the sake of their child, the marriage struggled on for a number of years before the final and inevitable breakdown occurred.
During the first few glorious years of being married to Frank, the physical side of her relationship with her husband became very important to her. But that side declined and died as his interest turned in a quite different direction. Frank had awakened Yvonne’s dormant need for physical gratification and then, callously, he had ignored it. This might explain why, since separating from and then divorcing her husband, Yvonne had entertained herself with a series of minor flirtations. She enjoyed being in charge for the first time in her life and used her lovers quite shamelessly. But her life underwent a dramatic transformation when Billy Jenkins appeared on the scene.
Billy Jenkins was roughly mid-way in age between Yvonne and young Grace. He was handsome in a rough sort of way and when he made an effort to spruce himself up he could make himself look quite presentable. Yvonne was flattered to have attracted such a young and virile lover but, for all the pleasure she derived from her relationship with Billy, she had no illusions that it would ever mature into anything deeper and more long lasting. In any case, Billy was out of work and she had no intention of keeping him a moment longer than he failed to satisfy her needs or remained other than her exclusive property. In the meantime, he was good company and was there when she needed him. He had few talents but he was a gifted lover and he kept Yvonne completely satisfied. Because of this, she was prepared to forgive him the innocent and comparatively minor teasing that went on when he amused himself with Grace.
When Billy had agreed to part with some of his hard-won winnings, thanks to a lucky win on the horses, and had bought three upper circle tickets to Romeo and Juliet, it was in the mistaken belief that the play would be sexy and might ‘do him a bit of good’, as he put it to his pals down at the local. The curtain had hardly rolled back, however, before he recognised his mistake. The quickly spoken words and the complex sentences were far too difficult for his less than agile mind to follow and the clever puns and subtle nuances of the play – which he was only made aware of when the audience around him laughed or sniggered – were quite lost on him. He should have listened to his pals, he thought ruefully. They had told him he was making a mistake but he had refused to listen. Still, ever the optimist, and sitting next to Grace as he was, he still harboured hopes that the evening would not be a total washout.
Living in the same house as Grace but not being able to touch her as and when he wanted was a constant frustration to Billy. With her blond, flowing hair, her regular features and her smooth complexion, she was already taller than her petite mother. Physically, Grace took after her father, Frank Robinson, who, four years earlier, had run off with his lover. At the time it had been an awful shock for the twelve-year-old child. It is always difficult for a young, impressionable child to understand why their father should want to leave them and their mother to run off with another woman but when Frank Robinson ran off with another man, his action came as a complete surprise to both of them and generated feelings of loathing and humiliation in both of them.
As part of her divorce settlement, Yvonne had kept the family house in East Pilrig Terrace, situated to the north east of the city centre. A small, two bed-roomed, terraced house, it was conveniently located both for the city centre and for the shops in Leith. With no front garden, the front door opened directly onto the pavement outside. But the street, which was set back away from the busy main road, was a quiet one with only the occasional child or dog to disturb its tranquillity. It was also so narrow that when cars were parked on both sides, only a very narrow gap remained for the occasional visiting traffic.
Her divorce had forced Yvonne to reassess her life and Frank would have been surprised to see her now. For a start, her business success gave her a confidence she had not previously known. She was now her own woman and, for the first time, felt good about herself. Never again would she be a slave to any man. From now on, she was determined to control her own destiny.
If Yvonne was pleased with her Billy goat, as she privately but affectionately called him, her daughter positively loathed the young man and was by no means convinced that Billy’s “teasing” was as innocent as her mother believed it to be. In fact, Grace did not trust Billy Jenkins. She knew him to be an exhibitionist and someone who was far too free with his hands. Whenever the opportunity presented itself, and in Yvonne’s small house many such opportunities did indeed present themselves, he took whatever liberties he could. Naturally, Grace complained to her mother but Yvonne merely laughed and called Grace a silly little prude. She would live to regret that opinion.
In the Festival Theatre, the play was coming to its climax and Grace had eyes only for the action on stage. How she envied the actors. Her Uncle Ollie was due to arrive in Edinburgh in a few days’ time and over the phone had promised he would introduce her to some of the actors. She would be sure to remind him of his promise. It was some years since Grace had last met her Uncle Ollie in person and she remembered him as being a bit weird, both in the way he dressed and in the way he walked. He also had an unnaturally high voice and effeminate ways and, with the narrowness of youth, Grace was already prejudiced against him. Nevertheless, with a toughness that would have surprised her mother had she been aware of it, Grace was astute enough to recognise that her “weird” uncle represented a unique opportunity for her. So, while he could be useful to her, she was quite prepared to forgive him his little idiosyncrasies.
When the curtain finally came down, Grace stood with the rest of the audience to give the players the ovation they so richly deserved. So overcome with the emotion of the experience was she, her eyes filled with tears, and she was by no means the only one in the audience to succumb to the moment. Grace could fully relate to Juliet’s tragedy. After all, was she not also misunderstood? Not even her own mother understood her.
Grace was also acutely aware that at the advanced age of sixteen she had not yet experienced the deep passion that thirteen-year-old Juliet had already experienced before her untimely death. Billy’s crude advances to her might bear some resemblance to the crude ways of Romeo’s friend, Mercutio but without any of the charm of the latter and she now recognized she needed a Romeo in her life. Where to find him was the problem.
Standing in the Grand Circle less than twenty feet away and immediately below Grace, completely oblivious to the circumstances that would soon link their lives, Detective Inspector Ralph Kingdom of the Lothian and Borders Police stood next to Sara Bakewell, his close companion on this as on many other evenings.
Ralph Kingdom was a big-boned, rather gaunt-looking man with a heavily scarred face. The scars gave him a sinister and even dangerous appearance and there were many stories to explain them, including knife fights with murderous gangs in dark alleyways. In fact, the truth was much less exciting. He had received them sixteen years earlier when he was thrown through the windscreen of a friend’s car. They were university students at the time returning home from a late party during which both had drunk far more than was good for them. His friend, the driver, was not so lucky; he had lost the use of his legs.
Sara, Kingdom’s companion, was a tall, athletic, rather statuesque-looking woman with a flawless complexion and beautifully regular features, except for a slightly twisted nose, which she had broken as a child when she had fallen from her horse on her first foxhunt. She was the Equestrian Events Organizing Officer for Scotland and coach to the Scottish Eventing Team. She and Kingdom had met some months earlier and were now steady companions and lovers.
Many years earlier, as a schoolboy, Kingdom had studied Romeo and Juliet and, fortunately, still half-remember the plot. That earlier study enabled him to appreciate some of the finer aspects of the play and he now proceeded, enthusiastically, to demonstrate that appreciation. Sara, who had purchased the tickets months earlier, stood beside him with tears flowing freely and unashamedly down her cheeks as she too clapped her admiration for the outstanding performance.
Unheard by Kingdom amidst all the emotion of the experience, so magnificently drawn out by the players, Grace heard Billy say, ‘What a load of old tosh. When I think how much these tickets cost me I could cry. Come on Grace, move that pretty little butt of yours. If we hurry we’ll be in time to catch the late film on cable TV.’ She could have died with embarrassment to be associated with so coarse and stupid a man.
Yvonne, however, seemed quite undisturbed by her lover’s comment and replied a trifle petulantly, ‘I thought we were going to stop off for a drink first, Billy.’
‘We can’t take young Grace into a pub can we, Yvonne? Use your head. She’s under-age, ain’t she?’ Billy was anxious not to miss his film and was pleased to have found a plausible sounding excuse.
‘Well just you remember she is under-age then, Billy Boy,’ Yvonne said petulantly and meaningfully.
Like a plague of locusts descending on a harvest, taxis arrived outside the theatre to gobble up the emotionally drained theatregoers as they emerged into Edinburgh’s balmy evening air. And it was only by moving quickly that Grace managed to position herself in the taxi such that her mother was between herself and Billy.
‘What a load of prats those actors looked like poncing about in their tights,’ Billy said, giving his first studied comment on the performance. ‘You wouldn’t catch me dressed like that, I can tell you.’
‘Their taxi dropped them outside Yvonne’s blue-fronted little house in Pilrig some fifteen minutes later. While Yvonne searched for her key, Billy put his arm around Grace’s waist and tried to give her a squeeze but she immediately pulled away from him with a scowl, which made him laugh.
Once inside, Grace made straight for her bedroom while Yvonne and Billy made themselves drinks in the kitchen prior to watching the late night film. Grace could guess what film it would be. Mandy, her special friend at school, and a few of the other girls had joked about it during the day. Mandy was much more experienced and worldly-wise than was Grace and often bragged about her exploits with her many boy-friends but Grace often wondered if her friend really had ever done what she claimed. As for Billy Boy’s film, she was surprised her mother was even prepared to watch it. Sadly, since her divorce, Yvonne’s actions had become odd, to say the least. So, after washing and cleaning her teeth in the tiny, cluttered bathroom, Grace changed and made herself ready for bed.
One of the last tasks she routinely did before going to bed was to write a short note in the diary she kept hidden at the back of her wardrobe. She had little to fear from anyone reading her diary since her entries, although entirely innocent, were written in a special, cryptic code she used to disguise her true meaning. That done, she took up the writing pad a friend had given her for Christmas and wrote a short but passionate note to her current favourite star whose performance she had so enjoyed watching earlier in the evening. After finishing her letter, she placed it carefully in an envelope and, as carefully, addressed it. A first-class stamp was stuck in the corner and, turning the envelope over, she sealed it and kissed it. Finally, across the seal she wrote ‘SWALK’. She would post it on her way to school the next morning.
Behind her door hung a colourful poster advertising ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and down both edges of the poster were photographs of the principal actors. In pride of place at the top on one side was the handsome Romeo, Dean Brodie. On the other side was the lovely Catherine Preston who played Juliet. Below Dean Brodie was the photograph of Raymond Dewar who played Mercutio, while below Catherine Preston were photographs of Maurice Brookes and Amanda Prentice who played Benvolio and the Nurse, respectively. ‘Good night,’ she whispered as she kissed her favourite.
Grace was bending over rearranging the covers of her bed when she felt rather than heard someone behind her. Casually she looked over her shoulder. Billy was standing framed in the doorway, slowly licking his lips and leering at her.
‘Very tasty,’ he muttered quietly.
Grace had long since outgrown her thin, cotton nightdress which barely covered the tops of her thighs but she liked it still because she thought it made her look sexy, it being the nearest she had to a genuine shorty-nightdress. More practically, since there was so little of it, on hot summer evenings it kept her cool. The view young Grace had unwittingly provided had clearly inflamed Billy and he now stood breathing heavily devouring her with his eyes.
‘Get out,’ Grace hissed. ‘Get out or I’ll scream.’
‘Don’t be like that,’ Billy wheedled taking a tentative step into the room. ‘I only came to ask you if you wanted a nightcap. Yvonne and I are having mugs of hot chocolate and I thought you might like something hot, too.’ His eyes never left her as he took another step forward.
Grace tried to pull her nightdress down but only succeeded in pulling it yet more revealingly across her swelling breasts. ‘Get out, I said. Mum, Mum, Billy’s in my room,’ she shouted.
This had the desired effect on Billy who, still breathing heavily and leering at her, slowly backed out of the room. There was no sign of Yvonne, however. The sound on the television was on high volume below and she hadn’t heard what had gone on above her head. She was, however, surprised but by no means displeased by Billy Boy later that night.

While Grace was occupied between the Shakespearean play and fending off Billy Jenkins, Steve Morrisey, with no such distractions to upset his concentration, was carefully constructing his letter bomb. While he was so engaged, his girl friend, Jane Reay, occupied herself composing the letter that would accompany the bomb. Steve had located the instructions for making this highly specialised device from a publicly available web site on the Internet and after practising with various prototypes, was now satisfied with the power and efficiency of his planned device, which was now near completion. Jane was by no means certain her letter would survive the detonation, but she still took no chances that she or her friends would be identified through it. She was using cuttings from a variety of newspapers collected from different parts of the country, which, presently were littered across the floor of their already untidy little flat in Leith, a well-known port on the Forth Estuary to the northeast of Edinburgh. At one time a small town in its own right, Leith has long since become absorbed by its much larger neighbour and like many other small villages once on the outskirts of Edinburgh, it is now a district within the capital.
Steve was a big-boned, redheaded Scot originating from Coatbridge, a small town to the east of Glasgow. His shaven head and earring gave him a threatening appearance, which was at variance with his true personality while Jane, his girl friend of long-standing, was tall and painfully thin. A clever girl originally from Inverness, she had arrived at university full of hope and enthusiasm. In the last few years, however, partly because of the worry of doing well in her examinations, partly because she was trying to keep hold of her boy-friend and partly as a result of trying to keep body and soul together, all of which had influenced her, she was now anorexic. Her gaunt face, her skeleton-like body and her shapeless clothes were distasteful to Steve but his feelings of loyalty towards his long-time girl friend still kept them together. Even so, it was hard not to make comparisons between Jane and Enid Irvine, the other girl in the flat. As Jane became ever more skeletal and more drably dressed, Enid had blossomed.
Steve and Jane had founded the ‘HAME’, ‘Horse Abuse Must End’ Group with two other friends while they were at Glasgow Caledonian University. Steve had coined the name, which had a nice ring to it he thought, with its Scottish connotations of ‘home’ and, of course, there was also its clever connection with the collars of draught horses’. Originally, they had joined up with a wider organisation whose target for protest was laboratory animals, but after seeing a beautiful horse break its neck after failing to clear a massively solid fence during the Kirklea Castle horse trials the previous summer, Steve had persuaded his friends they would do more good and be more effective if they formed their own, breakaway group.
Steve could remember the scene as if it were yesterday. The fence had caused difficulties for many horses and riders that day. It really was a formidable barrier made worse by the wet weather, which made the approach slippery. Steve had often watched horse trials on television but until he stood next to the fences the horses were required to clear, he had not fully realised just how enormous and solid they were. That fifth fence was a tall, wide barrier of rustic poles with a sharply banked downward slope leading to a stream on the far side and with a smaller fence barring the exit from the stream. Many horses refused to jump forcing their riders to take a slower, less direct, but safer route. The little chestnut mare had been all heart but she too refused the jump on her first approach. Unfortunately, her rider, needing to put in a good, fast time, declined to take the longer route and with three sharp cuts with his crop, duly noted by the marshals supervising the jump, he forced the brave animal to try to do what she knew was beyond her. Her forelegs had caught the top of the fence and horse and rider somersaulted over the jump. Somehow, the rider was thrown clear but the horse tumbled down the slope and into the rocky stream below, breaking her neck in the process. With a pathetic whinny of anguish and a few brief twitches the horse died. That the poor animal’s rider walked away muddied but otherwise unscathed, in the circumstances, seemed obscene to Steve.
On his return, Steve had described the death of that brave horse in graphic detail to his friends and had persuaded them that, since so many other people were fighting to protect laboratory animals, they might do more good concentrating their efforts on just this one, narrow activity. They would do what they could to protect competition horses and, in particular, horses participating in Three-Day Evens.
‘After all,’ he argued, ‘no-one else seems to be looking after their welfare.’
Their campaign was carefully planned and they left nothing to chance. In particular, they were determined to make it impossible for the police to trace them to their home base and because it was the catalyst for their formation, the summer horse trials in Kirklea Castle would be their first target. If they hoped to be a successful animal-rights group, this first venture had to be a triumph. Success would encourage others to join them.
Steve had contributed the programme from the previous year’s event and, while masquerading as a potential competitor, Enid Irvine’s boy friend, Johnny Fredricks, the fourth member of ‘HAME’, had sent off for an application form. As expected, the form contained the name of the principal organiser of the event. This, as in the previous three years, was Sara Bakewell and she was destined to become the primary target of the HAME gang of four.
The address on the application form was that of Kirklea Castle but after making discrete enquiries, the group quickly and easily identified Sara’s home address. They took their project seriously to the extent that they even mounted a surveillance operation on Sara’s home. All four ‘HAME’ members were unemployed so they had plenty of spare time on their hands and over the following months, they built up a surprisingly detailed picture of her routines and her lifestyle.
Two months before the event was due to start, they sent Sara a letter, also created from newspaper cuttings, advising her that unless she cancelled the Kirklea Castle competition, it would become HAME’s first target. At the same time, they let Sara know that she, as principal organiser of the event, would be the first one to suffer if their demand was not met. They deliberately avoided being too specific with their threats, their intention being merely to unsettle the organizing committee in general and Sara Bakewell in particular.
The organisers had taken no notice of that first letter and there had been no announcement of a cancellation nor had there been any mention they had even received a threats. Secretly, Steve was not at all displeased by the lack of response. He wanted revenge for the life of that poor horse and was desperate to do something that would hurt the event’s organisers. In any case, he would have been surprised had that first letter achieved their purpose. With a distorted feeling of righteousness, he now felt vindicated to move on to the next stage of his campaign. Of one thing he was certain, their next move would definitely make the organisers sit up and take notice. Almost certainly they would call the police in but until they had identified and taken into custody those responsible for sending the letter bomb, they would have to postpone, or even cancel the event. If, in the unlikely event that phase-two of his campaign failed to achieve their purpose, Steve was quite confident phase-three most definitely would.
With a clatter, Johnny Fredricks and Enid Irvine returned to the cramped, upper flat they all called home. Johnny was clutching a large, take-away pizza while Enid carried four cans of cola.
‘Stop what you’re doing and let’s eat while it’s still hot,’ Johnny urged. He was anxious to satisfy the hunger, which the appetising smells in the local, take-away pizzeria had fully triggered. Carefully the near completed bomb, the letter, the cuttings and the newspapers were put to one side and all four fell on the pizza like starving vultures.
Between mouthfuls Enid asked, ‘How are you getting on with the bomb, Steve? Will it be ready for posting by tomorrow?’
With his mouth full of pizza Steve looked across to her. She looked the picture of health with her mass of dark, wavy hair framing her quite pretty face. She and Jane were approximately the same height but Enid must have been at least forty pounds heavier, and in all the right places, Steve couldn’t help but notice.
‘My bit will be. It all depends on when Jane finishes the letter,’ he replied. ‘But there’s no rush; if it’s not ready by tomorrow, we can always send it the day after.’
‘I don’t know about that, Steve,’ Enid replied, daintily removing tomato sauce from the edge of her mouth with her little finger. ‘The event is only a couple of weeks away so the sooner we send this last warning, the better. We must give the organisers time to cancel. If we don’t hurry it’ll be too late for them to do anything about it and we don’t want to give them any excuses, do we?’
Steve swallowed another large mouthful of pizza before answering. ‘Don’t you believe it. They can always cancel if they want to, even if it’s just a day before the event. At least, this way we give them less chance to arrange extra security and if they involve the police which, let’s face it, they’re bound to do, there’ll be less time for them to do anything.’
‘What could the police do?’ Johnny asked, a shade nervously.
‘You getting ready to wet yourself, Johnny boy?’ Steve taunted.
Johnny Fredricks was nervous, slim and bespectacled and seemed an unlikely boy friend for Enid but the two seemed to hit it off very well, much to Steve’s chagrin. Lately, Steve seemed to have lost patience with Johnny’s more timid approach to life, a fact not lost on either girl.
‘It’s just that I’m the one who sent off for the application form,’ Johnny said, trying to sound nonchalant.
‘And a stupid bugger you were too,’ Steve shot back. ‘Fancy using your own name! I’m surprised you didn’t tell them what we were going to do. Bloody daft you are.’
‘Leave him alone,’ Enid interrupted. ‘Just remember, they might have Johnny’s name but they also have our address. So if Johnny drops in it, we all drop in it.’
‘I wish you’d all stop arguing,’ Jane said. She too was irritated by the way Steve always seemed to pick on Johnny. She was even beginning to ask herself why? ‘If we all get stuck in, we should be able to finish the letter tonight. Then we can post it tomorrow. In any case, I agree with Enid. If we’re going to do it, it’s probably best if we send it out as soon as possible.’
Steve looked surly but swallowing the last of his pizza he threw the empty package into the corner of the room – an action which brought a scowl of distaste to Enid’s face – then, wiping his hand on his faded jeans, he once again gathered up his unfinished letter bomb and continued with its creation. While Enid tidied up, Jane, assisted by Johnny, gathered up the newspapers again to continue the task of cutting out words and phrases to place in the letter.

The morning following their visit to the theatre, Grace complained directly to her mother about Billy’s behaviour of the previous evening. She told how Billy had kept touching her leg in the theatre and how he had gone uninvited into her room when she had only been dressed in her minute night dress. But Yvonne was in no mood to listen to complaints against her Billy Boy.
‘I don’t know what you’ve got against Billy. He treated you to your play last night, didn’t he? Frankly, my girl, I thought that was really nice of him. He didn’t have to do it, did he? And, god knows, he’s got no interest in Shakespeare. In any case, they were so mean with the space between the seats, it’s small wonder he did keep touching you. It would have been a miracle if he hadn’t. You could at least try to be a bit nice to him. And for your information, Grace, he told me you were rude to him when he went up to ask you if you wanted a hot chocolate before going to sleep. And as for him going into your room, he said your door was already open. That’s the trouble with you; you always think the worst of Billy. You want to lighten up, young lady. Now hurry along or you’ll be late for school.’
Faced with such obduracy, Grace could see it was no use discussing Billy any further. Her mother was in any case so besotted with him she could see no harm or fault in him. Grace would just have to deal with the problem as best she could. She remembered to post her letter in the post-box on the corner of the street and, with the resilience of a typical adolescent, she was once more in good spirits by the time she reached school.
Grace had just started her final, “Highers” year at Pilrig Academy. Not being particularly academic or interested in her studies, she had struggled with her five ‘O’ grades but, fortunately, did sufficiently well to be allowed to proceed on to her Higher School Certificate examinations in the following late spring.
When she left school, she wanted to go on to the Glasgow School of Music and Drama but she now knew she needed to do well in her Highers if she were to stand any chance of being accepted. This would be a crunch year for Grace. All her hopes for the future depended on whether or not she did well in her examinations and she was determined to do her best. But it wasn’t going to be easy. As well as the necessary grades, she also needed good references from her teachers and Grace was honest enough with herself to acknowledge that in both areas she had much leeway to make up. She just had to show everyone during this final year what she was made of.
School had started two weeks earlier. In the past she had always felt cheated when school recommenced in August but this year she was full of enthusiasm and had immediately knuckled down to her self-imposed task. Nor had her actions gone unnoticed by her teachers. Indeed, some of them had already commented favourably on Grace in the staff common room.
Later that day, during the mid-day school break, Grace and Mandy Miller, her special friend, were sitting together on a low wall in one corner of the playground. Together, they were eating their lunch and soaking up the hot summer sun. As she listened to her friend enthusing about the play she had seen the previous evening, Mandy had one eye on a group of boys who were fooling about on the other side of the yard. Mandy, with long, straight, blond hair, which swept down to her waist, had small, dainty features with cute dimples in her cheeks. There was no dress code in the school, and recently Mandy had started wearing tight black designer jeans and a black imitation leather jacket over a light coloured sweater. The latest fashion in shoes was platform heals, which she could carry off to perfection and she was already well aware of the power she had over the opposite sex. She was experienced well beyond her years. Her mother would have been horrified had she been aware of one half of what Mandy got up to. Not surprisingly, Grace admired and respected her friend for her worldliness even though Mandy was a thoroughly bad influence on her.
When Grace mentioned she had gone to the theatre with her mother and Billy Jenkins the previous evening, Mandy was immediately interested. She had no interest in Shakespeare but she was interested in Billy.
‘So, you went with your mother and Billy Jenkins, did you?’ she enquired.
‘Yes, that’s right. Billy paid for the seats. He’d just won some money on the horses, I think.’
‘That Billy’s a real hunk.’ Reflectively, Mandy stretched her arms above her head, an action that momentarily caused the boys opposite to pause in their larking about.
Grace had been frightened by the look on Billy’s face when he had pushed his way into her room the previous evening. Only later, in the privacy of her bed had she allowed herself to feel pleased that she had such power over a grown man. Mandy was the one who always told about her exploits, but now she, Grace, had something to tell her friend.
‘You’ll never guess what he did last night.’ Grace paused dramatically and Mandy’s imagination actually went into free-fall. ‘He just walked into my bedroom last night without knocking just as I was going to bed and I was practically naked. I only had on that old nightie of mine and I know he saw everything. You should have seen the look on his face. He was in a real state I can tell you and it was obvious what he wanted.’
‘What happened? Did he…’ Mandy struggled for the right word.
‘No, of course he didn’t,’ Grace was all indignation. ‘What do you take me for? I screamed and made him go away.’
Mandy was disappointed. ‘I should be so lucky,’ she commented with a smile. She continued with a nasty snigger. ‘He could tuck me up in bed, anytime. I keep telling you, Grace, you don’t know what you’re missing.’
‘I don’t care,’ Grace vehemently replied, ‘and he’d better not try it again, either.’
Mandy suddenly poked Grace in the ribs. ‘Don’t look now, but Robin West is staring at you again.’
A recent arrival in the school, Robin was in the same year as the two girls and, for a short while, Grace had gone out with him. She had enjoyed his company initially but he soon become so completely obsessed with her, he wouldn’t so much as let her speak to another boy. She had ‘chucked’ Robin at the beginning of term but since that time, he was forever trailing around after her. He always seemed to be watching her.
‘I wish he’d leave me alone,’ she complained to Mandy. ‘You know, he even waits for me outside my house. He follows me around like a dog and I don’t like the way he looks at me. He makes me nervous.’
‘I keep telling you, Grace, play your cards right and you could have half the boys in school trailing after you.’ Mandy’s influence was already having an effect on Grace and she knew it.
‘Be that as it may,’ Grace said, changing the subject but secretly rather pleased with her friend’s comment, ‘but did I tell you, my Uncle Ollie is visiting us next week and he’s promised he’ll introduce me to Dean Brodie and Catherine Preston. You know, they’re the ones who are playing Romeo and Juliet in the Festival production. I’m hoping he’ll introduce me to some of the other actors as well. I’d really like to meet Raymond Dewar. He looks so nice and gentle and he’s such a wonderful actor. I’m going to ask my uncle if he can get hold of a couple of spare complimentary seats to the play. If he can, would you like to come with me?’
‘Count me out, Grace. Shakespeare I can do without. Now if you were inviting me to see Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise, that would be different.’
At that moment the bell sounded signalling the start of the afternoon session and the girls started drifting back for roll-call. Just before they reached their classrooms, Robin West overtook them. Ever hopeful, he said, ‘Hello, Grace. Can I walk home with you today?’
‘No you can’t. And I want you to stop following me around and pestering me.’ Mandy looked on lending moral support to her friend as Grace gave Robin a piece of her mind.
When a crestfallen Robin was once more out of earshot, Mandy said, ‘He may be a bit odd but he’s very good looking. Would you mind if I take a shot at him?’
‘Not a bit. Be my guest,’ Grace said with feeling. ‘If you can keep him away from me, you’ll be most welcome to him.’
Mandy was quite confident she would easily be able to distract Robin’s attention away from Grace and smiled a quiet smile of satisfaction.