She finds the office she was told to look for—REGISTRAR. She waits to be noticed by the several people in smart clothes, pens in their smooth, white hands. Finally, she makes herself step into their space and sees surprise break on their faces. To be confronted so, in here, by a red-haired girl in country dress, a creel on her back, in hulking wet boots and smelling of fish.

Yes?

I am a gutting girl, she tells herself, brave and strong.

My name is Meggie Duthie Tulloch an’ I am the sister of Kathryn Neish Duthie of Roanhaven an’ there’s been a mistake, she should never be here, an’ I want to take her away with me now. Please.

The woman closest to her, wearing eyeglasses clamped onto her nose, stands up. She is looking at the girl strangely but gentle now.

Kathryn Duthie? Kitta?

The girl nods.

The suited man behind a desk says, The girl who …?

He stops.

The woman’s face changes again, sympathetic. Sad.

The girl is suddenly too afraid to breathe.

~

She had been quiet and docile at Birch Hill, my sister. She spoke politely and answered their questions. She nodded at whatever the doctors said. After a while, they thought to let her walk in the garden. And still she was no trouble. Placid and calm. And then one day she climbed through a hedge. She found ballast stones on the shore and stuffed them into the pockets of her skirt. She tied a shawl around her eyes—why did you do that, Kitta?—and she walked into the sea. And this time, there was no-one to stop her. She just kept walking.

August 1973

August 1973

Oh, lambsie. There will probably be things you want to ask me now, but don’t. I canna say more about it, no, not ever.

I could not bring Kitta back.

What else is there to say?

26

1907 was the first year of my married life, the first year of making a home far from the home that was not mine any more. A beginning. But a beginning that had to weave itself through an ending and find its way.

Magnus Tulloch gave me a wedding gift the night he brought me to the tiny fisherman’s cottage, one of a cluster on the Gremista road, that would be our home together now.

I sat on the hearthrug by a peat fire, arms around my long grey skirt, hugging my knees. Would ever I feel warm again, would ever I thaw?

Magnus knelt down beside me. Wordless, he placed something on the floor between us. I forced myself to look.

A small package, the size of a hand, loosely wrapped.

My eyes went back to the fire, and I sank my chin further into the folds of my skirt.

He pushed it towards me. I felt it there, the edge of something.

Please? His voice soft.