The Confirmation
by L G Dickson
It is 1990. Annie is a 31 year old Scottish lawyer living in Edinburgh's New Town and at the centre of a tight group of friends: Kirsty, from Galloway farming stock and her husband Duncan, a bordering alcoholic lawyer, who never quite measures up in his father's eyes, and Virginia and her husband Gordon, living a bohemian life in fashionable Stockbridge with a passion for sustainable living. Annie's father left the family home when she was a teenager, leaving Annie feeling abandoned and unwanted. As a result she spurns any opportunity for love and resists change to her safe and ordered life. At the same time she remains fearful that she could end up like her increasingly embittered mother. When she meets her friends' new neighbour, James, she finds him attractive but is fearful of commitment. He is 10 years older, a slightly irascible and frustrated senior civil servant with a passion for political change. Annie begins to understand his convictions in particular the importance of...