I canna remember packing my kist, nor the journey to Stornaway with Clementina Slater and Liza, who was taking Kitta’s place. It was a few weeks into the season, but Nicol & Mair needed every team they could get that year. Da had relented about the Western Isles, sending his permission by the Three Bees in from Castlebay. I don’t think he cared overmuch about anything since Ma’s passing.

Eight weeks, I was, in Stornaway. I know it is in the western isle of Lewis, I could show it to you on a map, lambsie, but I canna tell you a thing about it. It was a blur to me, a blur of guts and blood and scales and sores and sleep. Of forgetting.

I’d not have gone at all if Kitta was still abed but she surprised us, Unty Jinna and me, she was on her feet again. Cooking again, reddin’ lines, washing clothes, aye. As though nothing had happened.

No-one had seen me half carrying Kitta home in the darkening dusk. In that small village where everyone thought they knew everything, no-one ever knew about that. Not even Granda Jeemsie, when he came back next morning on the Lily Maud. Influenza, as far as he was concerned, as far as they all were concerned. He didn’t so much as poke his head around from the but—he had no wish to be catchin’ anythin’ nasty. Liza suspected, of that I am sure, but was never told to her face.

Unty Jinna had stopped the bleeding with the old herbs that knit and heal. I held a shawl over Kitta’s mouth and turned my face away as Jinna pulled from my sister’s body the bloody rope that had not passed.

If I had looked closer in the sheddie, lambsie, when I was searching for Kitta that day, I would have seen the bloodstained rags she’d left there. If I had looked down, I would have seen spots of blood on the sand, a speckled trail between the sheddie and the sea. But I hadn’t seen what was there, only what was not. Later I burned the rags in the fire, kicked away the trail.

Kitta lay in bed a week, with no-one but Unty Jinna and me to see. And then she got up as though from sleep and stumbled weakly back into the world. Hardly sprightly, no, but no-one expected her to be, not after wrestling influenza. I cooked soup to make her strong, collected roots from the moor for Unty Jinna’s tonics, and soon the ash faded a little from my sister’s face.