You can never go back. That’s what people say now, isn’t it, lambsie? Usually they mean it in a wistful way because their memories are fond and they wish for simpler times, better times, gilded times. If they truly could go back, maybe they would not find the past so perfect as they had held it in their hearts to be.

For me, it’s different. Roanhaven is a dark place in my mind—not gilded, not better—and the but-and-ben at number 8 Tiller Street is the darkest place of all. But suddenly the angle will skew, to shine like moonlight over that house of granite and stone, and I remember something else: its quietness. You might be wondering how a place could ever be quiet with eight people crowded into two wee rooms. Perhaps it’s because we ate there, slept there, we clustered around the fire at the close of day, but we lived our lives on the boatie shore, up on the braes, on the Lily Maud, in the schoolroom, on the moors. Men, women and children all with their places to be, their work to do.

And perhaps, too, because we were people steeped in the ins and outs of restraint. It comes as a shock to me now, writing these words, to discover this thing about myself: that there is some small part of me that finds a thread of affection for restraint.

But not then, no. When I went back to Roanhaven at the end of 1905, restraint was all around me—in the village, in my family. And it ate away every kindly feeling I had for those sea people I had come from. And what happened in the months before I left again hardened my resolve never to return.

16

Kitta!

She drops the bundle of ganseys and stockings and hugs me. In her layers of wool, she is lumpish, heavy in my arms. The pallor of her face scares me.

I grasp her hand. Let me see. How is it, your poor hand?

A thick red scar snakes up her wrist, but although the skin looks to be healed, her hand feels loose in mine.

She shrugs. Better than it were, Meggie mine. An’ well enough to do for Ma now. But her eyes slide away, avoiding me.

Where’s Ma?

Asleep. Let her sleep while she can. The cough … Doctor’s been.

A look between us.

I don’t know. He shakes his head an awful lot. And Kitta begins to cry.