I stared at her, then down at my hands.

Ye Scottie lassies are tough, aye, I’ll give ye that, but there’s not just the matter of pain. This finger be almost gone ta bone.

But that’s what I am. A gutting quine.

Mrs Leask laughed. That’s not what ye are, lass. That’s what ye do.

But they were the same. Oh aye. How could they not be the same thing?

She ran her hand down my sleeve, rueful. I don’t know why it be so, but the red-haired lasses seem ta feel the salt worse, an’ get poorly with the kidney pain too.

Cursed and cursed again, I thought. Ginger Meggie cross your leggie.

~

Magnus Tulloch came with us to Great Yarmouth, with Old Boy Jackie and other Lerwick coopers. I hoped this would spare us from Old Bloddy but it didn’t: he was one of the yard supervisors where our team worked. At least I was used to his temper. Poor Liza was terrified.

And I saw other familiar faces in the yards. Limpy Davy, still an apprentice, mixing pickle for Magnus Tulloch and Old Bloddy. Wee Daisy, now in a team of her own but still standing on a box to reach into the farlin. And Bella Strahan at the farlin next to mine, with a cluster of teams from Aberdeen.

Ma says Bella Strahan has a bairn now, Clementina told me, matter-of-fact, when we finished for the day. A wee thing only a couple of months.

I glanced at Clementina. No wonder she’d thought me feeble.

Home with her sister at Fitdee while she’s at the fish. They need the money, Strahans do.

Bella Strahan stopped me one night when we were buying a pie for our tea.

How’s your sister, eh, quinie? What news of her, eh?

She eyed me curiously when I told her Kitta was home since Ma had died and she could not go to the fish any more.

Well, that’s sometimes the way of it, eh. An’ she be well?

Aye.

She waited but I said no more.

Aye then. She shrugged as she turned away.

~

In truth, I could not really say that Kitta was well or not. I’d had no news of Roanhaven since leaving at the beginning of the season. Da and the boys—well, I’d have dropped in surprise if one of them had thought to write. They never had done it before. Granda, no. He could not write, nor read neither. Unty Jinna sent a note once, addressed to Liza and me, but it was short and plain and if there was a message for me there, buried among details of the weather and the number of whiting caught on the Lily, I could not find it.

Nothing from Kitta.

No news is good, I told myself, and I told Magnus Tulloch the same.

August 1973

August 1973