As it says elsewhere on my website, the ‘Saltbury Chronicles’ series follows two women through their last days of school and on into adult life.  When we first meet Hazel and Tina they are sixteen, an age chosen because it happens to be the age of consent here in Britain.  By the time of my latest book, ‘Debbie’s Gift’, they are entering their mid twenties and I have a future book called ‘Sofia’ in first draft where they have reached their mid thirties.

The two are very close friends, closer than many lovers.  Both are lesbians, although they never become a couple (at least so far).  But they are very different characters.  Tina is the younger by a month or two, but in many ways she’s always the most mature, albeit the less self-confident.

Hazel is something of a gilded youth, being the younger of the two daughters of an immensely wealthy same-sex couple, both of whom are household names in their own field.  She is perhaps a little spoilt, and could easily have become a conceited little miss.  Instead she’s perhaps something of an innocent abroad, having had a very sheltered upbringing.  In fact, when we meet her she’s perhaps too innocent to realise just how naïve she is.  She’s friendly, giggly and perhaps inclined to think herself more witty and worldly wise than she is.

Tina, meanwhile, is from a more conventional, small-town middle class background, with a lawyer father, a housewife mother and a strong ambition, right from childhood, to make a career in her Dad’s law firm.  She’s almost always top of her class at school, despite a terror of exams.  But again, she’s not proud.  She’s a kind, loyal and devoted friend who always feels like she should be able to solve the problems of those she cares about.

And then Hazel has the giggles knocked out of her.  Without giving too much of the story away, she faces a terrible tragedy when Annie, the woman she loves, is badly harmed and for two years fails even to recognise her.  We see a new side develop to this now somewhat older, 19 to 20 year old Hazel.  She becomes a much sadder figure, but she also proves herself to be a woman of courage and profound loyalty.  Even then fate deals harshly with her when her true love recovers just as she’s finally found someone else, breaking her heart anew.

Later though, we see flashes of the old teenage spirit in the Hazel who eventually emerges.  There’s no doubting her love, but there’s also a strong sense of responsibility, because she knows that Annie will always need a degree of nursing.  Her impish humour returns, but there’s a feeling it can be a little forced at times.  Nevertheless, for all the trauma, she is happy, talented and now truly an adult.

Tina, meanwhile, has a smoother progression to adulthood.  Like so many of us, she deals with a number of relationships which, however precious at the time, eventually break up.  It’s temporary heartbreak perhaps, but nothing most people in their teens and early twenties don’t go through.  But then, after a rocky start, a very different relationship begins with a woman some six to seven years older than her.  This is a woman of iron will with indefatigable energy and self-discipline, and at first Tina worries that she risks becoming a mere cipher to a dominant personality.  But there’s a lot more steel to Tina than her gentle nature might initially suggest and my next book ‘Fracture’, out in March, shows how their relationship matures.

My books all have first-person, narrators, almost always Hazel or Tina, so the difficulty I face as an author is how to show not just the different voices of the two main characters, but to follow how those voices change over time as they grow older and the experience of their lives changes them.  There’s also something else.  It evolves to be sure, but the great constant in their lives is the profound friendship between the two women, which survives all other changes.  How well I’ve succeeded in letting those voices ring true, only my readers can judge.