Walk with me here: Lori was raised in a strict Protestant household in Castlemilk, a post-war housing estate built to alliviate the overcrowding in inner Glasgow, where Catholics also lived. She went to school with her eventual scissor sister, Maura, and as young girls they exchanged stolen kisses. But it's the 1960s and she must eventually marry a man.
Enter a young handsome Catholic, Patrick Kennedy, whom she's known most of her life and catches her eye now that he's a man. And she catches his. They begin a harmless flirtation that neither of their families are thrilled about. Eventually when they're 18 and leaving school, she gets pregnant by him. This is the early 1970s, the Kirk (Church of Scotland) is losing it's hold on society, the Catholic Church as well but not as fast. Lori's father, and by extension her whole family, are staunch Kirk members and are scandalized both that their daughter is pregnant out of wedlock and, gasp, by a Catholic.
The potential bastard grandchild is only just the bigger sin to him. So Lori must marry him.
The Kennedys are also not thrilled, but for them it's mostly because the youngsters aren't married, not becuse Lori is a Protestant. They also assume that the child will be raised Catholic, like his father.
Lori's mother and father are the only members of her family to attend, they've forbidden her siblings to have anything to do with her for fear of corrupting them with her sinful ways and Papist sympathies. They leave after the ceremony, and Lori never sees her father again.
Lori and Patrick move in with his mother, but their small council house is already packed. So they apply for a house and like many young couples in the early 1970s are moved to Cumbernauld, on the other side of Glasgow from where they grew up. A few years later, she gets a call from her old friend Maura now Pallister, excitedly telling her that her and her husband and their little boy have been given a council flat in Cumbernauld as well. This makes Lori feel more alive than she has in years.
And who knows, maybe her son could become a friend to her shy and gentle boy, Niall.
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