The Peacetime Pepper Girls - SANDRA SAVAGE

The second world war is over and the people of Dundee are beginning to salvage what they can of their lives and rebuild their broken homes and families, but for Lexie and Nancy, the battle for their futures had just begun.  For Lexie, coming home to Dundee and her old life of living at home with her mother, Annie and Annie's husband, Billy Dawson, filled her with horror.  Having found independence when she enlisted in the Womens Auxiliary Air Force in 1942 and having loved and lost her own husband, Robbie Robertson to Hitler's U Boat attack on Robbie's ship, Lexie is hungry for everything the world outside Dundee can offer and nothing her mother can say or do is going to stop her.  If she is to find love and happiness again, something told her it wouldn't be in Dundee.

For Nancy too, the war had brought her freedom and the chance to make her own decisions.  With her estranged husband, Billy Donnelly, away fighting with the Scots Guards, Nancy had returned to work, as a Weaver at Baxters Jute Mill, giving her the means and independence to taste the sweetness of being desired by sexually-starved soldiers, but especially desired by the married man, Jim Murphy, her Gaffer at the Mill.  But the war was now over and Billy Donnelly was being demobbed and was on his way back to Nancy and his three bairns, wee Billy, Mary Anne and King|Kevin.  But his first thoughts weren't about Nancy, but about Gladys Kelly, the Prostitute who had loved him, unconditionally, for years and was waiting for him to knock, once more, on her door.

For Billy Dawson, marriage to Annie had been a dream come true, but having Lexie back at the home he now shared with her mother was proving heart breaking, as he watched Annie fade into depression as Lexie confronted her mother about her wish for Lexie to remain at home, instead of following her own need to 'flee the coop' and get back the independence she relished.  But Billy had a plan to bring Annie back to her old self. Only time would tell if his secret plan would work out, for all their sakes, but it was something he had to try.

Annie and Billy had come a long way since they first met all those years ago in Ireland, when Annie Peppeer was a young, innocent girl and Billy an itinerant weaver, looking for work and finding more than he'd bargained for in the shape of Annie and her sister Mary.  But, so much water had flowed under the bridge since then and the two were now married and Billy just wanted peace and contentment in his heart and mind and was hoping that his  plan would be the route to both himself and Annie's future happiness.