War rages but sometimes the enemy is closer than you think.
Aged 14, Mhairi is forced into adulthood. Evicted from her family home in rural Scotland, separated from her parents, she must find her own way in life. As she fights for survival in a city of strangers, she finds companionship in the most unlikely of places. And she finds love.
But there is war, the world is a terrible place, and the cost of standing up for what you believe in can be high. Mhairi has made an enemy and he is powerful. Women like her have no place in his world and he will do whatever it takes to suppress her.
When the unthinkable happens she loses everything again, including her freedom.
She had the best of friends and the greatest love. Now she has nothing. Will she have the strength to carry out the fight of her life?
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Women Like That by Fiona Curnow was published on 1 December 2025. As part of this #RandomThingsTours Virtual Book Tour, I am delighted to share an extract from the book with you today.
Extract from Women Like That by Fiona Curnow
It was a cruel and heartless place when the navvies had arrived. Mud and machinery. Rock-face and desolation. A brutal wind howled up the valley, over the loch, and into their very souls. Rain lashed alongside it. This was a place needing tamed before it could be inhabited, but there was no taming of the weather. Tame the land. That was their job. Work it. Master it. But that weather? Christ!
Houses weren’t yet built. Not that any house would be for them. No. They would be cast out like intruders, vagrants, people of no use. No worth. Apart from to build and slave and grind away at life as best they could. Shelter for them was minimal. Canvas haphazard as if thrown down by some greater power with no care. No design. But this was at least a job. Money to be made. Lives to be bettered. That was what they had been told, and when you have less than nothing the chance of something is a call to be answered. And they had. Hundreds of men and a handful of women with promises of dinner. A settling of hungry stomachs. Shelter.
Mhairi had cut off all of her hair—rough like a navvy’s—baulked as she had taken the clothes from Jamie, her dead brother, stuffed rags into the toes of his boots so that they would stay on her feet and joined the people of the road. Itinerant workers. People of no importance. People who had fled their homes to look for something, anything, to lighten their load. People like her.
It was easier than she had thought, this disguise, this slip into someone else. She had Jamie to thank for that. The big brother who had toughened her up, challenged her, and she would not be beaten. She worked hard and the strength came of its own accord. Muscles to rival most boys of her age.
Jamie had joked. ‘Ye’ll no be finding a man when it’s time, wi muscles like that!’
‘Oh, and who says I’ll be wanting a man?’ Mhairi had answered, proudly flexing her arm, poking at the muscle she had worked so hard to create. She looked across at him, a grin breaking up her face.
‘Aye, well, just saying,’ he said, with a playful slap to her head.
They raced up the hill, as they had done at the end of every day when they’d been offered casual work at one of the nearby farms. Their income was small, almost insignificant, but it helped to put food on the table. What they had been working on was what they were paid in: potatoes, turnips, cabbage, eggs, milk, oats. It was all welcome.
Dying bracken, brown and crispy, snapped at their legs. A wind was whipping up, shouting its presence through the trees—aspen and birch with tall, tall pine trees stretching above it all, keeping an eye out—an eerie sound, almost ghostlike. The aspen and birch swayed to its rhythm, casting off their remaining leaves. Hooded crows, rooks, and ravens cawed out their warning. Magpies mimicked the sounds, a flash of white and a swirl of the colours of petrol, barely seen in the decreasing light, but their presence was felt, nevertheless.
When Jamie and Mhairi rounded the brow of the hill everything looked wrong. There was no smoke from the fire twisting out of the chimney. Strangers stood on their land. Their mother, father and the two youngest were huddled together by the front door. A rag-taggle collection of bags at their feet.
‘You’re turning a family out into nothing! How can a man of the cloth do such a thing?’ their father shouted. His wife bowed her head in grief. The children clung onto their mother’s skirt, and she to them. They were too young to understand fully, but they could feel it. The fear. The desperation.
‘You’ve had more than enough warnings to pay your rent or leave. You haven't paid and now it’s time for you to go. Let’s not make this ugly for your children now.’
‘But…’ their father began. But what? There was nothing to be done and he knew it. Their lives had been hard, a challenge, poverty always biting at their bellies, at the clothes on their backs, but they had their home. A place that was full of hope and love, most of the time. No more.
And that was that. Everything had gone. Jamie and Mhairi were old enough to look after themselves now. To find a job of some sort or other. Their parents had agreed that they should leave, fend for themselves. The family would survive easier with just the youngsters. Fewer mouths to feed. More chance of finding some sort of lodgings. A room somewhere. The family were heading to Glasgow, big and dirty and strange, but maybe something for them.
‘You take care o yer wee sister, Jamie,’ their mother called in the wind, a break in her voice, tears streaking her face. She glanced back at them every few steps until she tripped, almost fell.
Her husband caught her elbow, held her up. ‘That’ll do ye no good, now,’ he said. ‘You need all o yer strength for these two.’ He nodded down at the children still clinging to her skirt. ‘Come on now.’
She knew that he was right, but it broke her heart nonetheless to turn away and walk on, her family splintered, separated in a way she hadn’t anticipated. Yes, they were nearly grown up. They would have moved out with their own loved ones soon enough. Started their own homes, and with luck, their own families. That would have been normal. Expected. Joyous even. It wasn’t meant to be like this. Not in her wildest dreams had she anticipated this. Yet here it was, and she was powerless. A failure of a mother.
Her husband took her hand and squeezed it tight, before reaching for the hands of his children, a forced smile on his lips. ‘What an adventure this is going to be!’ he said.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I was the delighted winner of the Federation of Writers (Scotland) short story competition 2023.
I studied primary education at Edinburgh University, graduating with honours in 1996. As soon as I graduated, I packed everything I owned into my Renault 11, including my daughter, two dogs and a cat, and headed off to Estonia to become an international school teacher.
After fifteen years of teaching, predominantly in Eastern Europe, I became ill and had to return home. Unable to work, but not one to remain idle, I turned to the Open University where I studied creative writing, completing both courses with distinction, and discovering a new passion. Writing is what I do, and I love it!
I find it difficult to be content without a work in progress. That escape into a world of my own making is something very special!
I live on the east coast of Scotland and have written four books under the pen name of F J Curlew. I have now reverted to using my given name.
My writing has been described as, "Human experience impacted upon by political situation, interwoven with a love of nature." That pretty much sums my writing up!
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