It’s so long ago, lambsie, so long. What good is anger now? They probably thought they were doing right by Kitta, doing the right thing. We’re supposed to forgive people for their ignorance, aren’t we. But me? Even then, I knew it was wrong. I knew I should not stand by and do nothing, I should do something to make it right. I was worse, see, because I knew.

Aye, lambsie, it’s myself I’m angry at.

22

One morning I was last down to the farlins because it took so long for me to pack the bread poultices on my fingers before tying on the clooties.

Ye’ve a visitor, Izzy announced, fit to burst.

Something of a hush came over our farlin. Visitors to the yards were few, and they were never welcome. If Old Bloddy were to catch anyone with a visitor …

I looked at Clementina.

She sighed, a huge gusting noise, sad and weary. Aye, quinie. She jerked her chin towards the salt store, away from the coopers’ sheds.

I did not recognise him at first, tall and thin and gangly in sailor whites. But he started scratching his scalp under the close-fitting cap, jiggling about on his feet, and I knew him then. My youngest brother. Will.

He had left the drifters, hadn’t gone south to Lowestoft with Da, Archie and Jamie at the end of the Gadlehead season. He was now with the merchant navy, and his ship, the Veleteer, was leaving for India tomorrow.

The wide world, I thought, awed. Truly the wide world. I went to hug him but he fended me off, and not until that moment did it occur to me: my brother had not come to say goodbye.

He looked down while he was speaking, shuffling his feet. He cleared his throat a lot. Will wasn’t used to saying overmuch.

His little speech struck me mute.

Later I remembered how embarrassed he was—not by what had happened to Kitta, mind. No, he was embarrassed by her. I raged to think of it but at the time I just stood there, a great useless quinie, scarcely able to breathe. Until finally Magnus Tulloch rushed over from the coopers’ shed to gather me up.

~

Maybe there’s only so long you can go on putting one foot after the other before the thing you are pretending never happened pops in you like a seed and starts to grow, faster and faster because it has been waiting so long, bigger and bigger until it finds a way to escape and then there is no stopping it, it wraps you up, round and round like a winding sheet, until it is everything and you are nothing, you are lost inside and it is pretending you never happened …

~