Keys Cut While You Wait

About this book

Glasgow, 2026. In a lane shop off the Gallowgate, the Rennie women cut two kinds of key: one for doors, and one that locks a feeling away. At fifteen, Ailsa Rennie was the youngest keysmith the secret Bench had passed in ninety years. At sixteen she was struck off, after she spent five months selling keys to classmates and one of them, her best friend's brother, walked off a scaffold forty feet above Duke Street. Now the Bench will let her work for one purpose only: to find the eleven people she locked and offer to open what she shut away, before each lock sets for good. But grief, fear and heartbreak are hard things to hand back. Some keys are lost, some customers refuse, and her best friend won't speak to her. And Gran is keeping a secret of her own.