On Sundays we’d tramp across the Gremista hill with a picnic of bread and jam that often we’d forget to eat. I know you, I would think suddenly, listening to him talk, watching him listening to me and not turning away. And when he spoke without words, with his fingertips on my face, I would have to tell myself, Breathe, breathe.

As I gutted and sorted and sang Harry Lauder songs, I would see him going about his work, topping up barrels with pickle, tossing salt into the farlins, inspecting the baskets with his wooden gauge, checking the packers’ tallies against the number of barrels packed. Random glimpses of that long dark hair, a wry frown to tease Clementina and Isobel, broad arms encircling a barrel of salt. I found myself thinking about him, about those arms, and earning myself a few sharp words from Clementina for losing speed. Sometimes I would catch him looking at me too.

I know you, I would think again. I recognise you. Aye, you are that person to me.

And as the Lerwick season wore on, I began to wonder: Is this what love is? A force that makes you learn how to breathe again, breathe in a new way, because your heart is taking up more space in your body than ever it did, and nothing fits together any more, nor feels like it is human? Feathers in my lungs. Air in my blood. Bones as light as mussel shell. The core of me lifts on small beating wings and I know I can never be still again, nor earthbound, never again be just that girl.

And I remember thinking this: I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to be like this.

How does any one of us ever survive love?

~

I am sorry, lambsie. Sometimes I forget I am writing to you and not just trying to explain to myself the things that have mystified me forever. But if I am making you squirm to think of your grunnie feeling this way, then no, I am not sorry for that. You must just get past it as best you can—pretend I am the girl in the story and not your grunnie. Because I will not rewrite the story to spare you. I will not dishonour love like that.

Love …

If there is just one thing you learn from me, I would wish it to be this: love can be as strong as muscle, as constant as heartbeat, but when you hold it up to the light, you must place it in the chalice of both hands, protect the butterfly it can also be.

21

Before I left Lerwick for Great Yarmouth that year, Mrs Leask, one of the lady deputies at the Mission to Fisherfolk, told me something I did not want to hear.

We canna just keep patching them up with dressings forever, lass. Ye’ll not be gutting much longer.