Eating grapes downwards - Jill Roe

Alma and Coral had grown up together in an autonomous, conspiratorial world of adult mystery and children's submission. As they grew older, each regarded the other as an impediment from which there seemed to be no escape. So perhaps it was inevitable that they were to inflict a similar relationship on their daughters, Dorcas and Lally.

Coral's expedient conversion to her husband's Catholic religion gives her the opportunity of keeping Lally in uncomprehending subjugation. Lally is an investment, the most valuable asset in Coral's possession, rather than a child to love and cherish. As she waits for her investment to mature, Coral practises petty acts of calculated cruelty and humiliation on Dorcas, whose mother is struggling to make ends meet after her husband's death.

But then Alma remarries and Dorcas is befriended by Gerry Jarvie: the balance of power subtly shifts. As the three girls move into adulthood, it is Lally who becomes the outsider. And when, during those long, sunny Devon summers, they turn their attention to young men it is Lally, in love with Gerry's cousin, Eugene, who suffers the consequences of Coral's legacy.