A new series from the author of Garnethill. 1981: Paddy Meehan is an 18-year-old Catholic, living at home in working-class Glasgow. She works as a copy boy at a newspaper and aspires to be a journalist. In what seems to be an open-and-shut case, a three-year-old boy is murdered by two unnamed ten-year-olds. One of them is her fiancé’s cousin. She blurts that out in shock; the newspaper publishes it, causing her tight-knit community to shun her.

Paddy is forced to do a lot of growing up, while she in­ves­ti­gates who led the ten-year-olds on. The shunning changes her. She realizes that she’s not cut out to be the good little housewife expected by her family and fiancé, that she’d really rather be a journalist. Quick witted, she learns to give as good as she gets in the over­whelm­ing­ly male newsroom. Her duplicity causes one death and causes other havoc; the re­al­iza­tions will hit her hard.