The ‘Saltbury Chronicles’ series is at heart the story of two very different women: Hazel Fauld and Christine (Tina) Burns.  They’ve been best friends since school and we follow them from the age of sixteen, eventually into their thirties.  Both are lesbians, but while Hazel is totally at ease with the fact from very early on, Tina suffers years of denial before being able to accept herself as she is.

My original intention was that the friends would eventually become lovers, after years of adventures and other loves.  They’d have made a lovely couple, after all, and get very close to falling in love on occasions.  But, as so often, the characters had other ideas and by the time I’m writing about in my next but one book, ‘Fracture’ (due out next March), which is set when the pair are twenty two, they’re in stable long-term relationships with others that I don’t have the heart to break up.

That doesn’t mean they don’t occasionally think about the road not travelled, though.  In other words, about how things might have been if their lives had gone differently, and it’s been interesting to see them explore that.  In their case the speculation is mutual.  Both are very happy with their actual partners and neither is even slightly tempted to stray.  They just know, but without regret, that they would have been good together if that’s how the world had panned out.

But what if the same feelings are only held by one of a former couple?  So that she’s left blaming herself that a love didn’t work out and still regretting it years later, while the other, if she thinks about the past at all, only harbours dislike and resentment towards the person she used to love.  That’s something we’ll explore in ‘Gold’, the next book after ‘Fracture’ (due out next summer).  Here sparks fly when Carol Baxter’s hated ex-girlfriend Loren makes a distinctly unwelcome return, with perhaps surprising results.