Magnus Tulloch would grab me by the hand and we’d run along the shore with the clean wind in our faces. Often there’d be no-one else there, it was like we’d the new world to ourselves. The wind would never leave my hair alone, no mind how well I tied or pinned it, and Magnus Tulloch would kiss me, gathering up the wildness in his hands. He’d pretend his palms were burning to the touch of it—ee, ach!—but it was gentle teasing, sweet and gentle. Promise me, Meggie, he’d say, promise ye’ll never cut it. And I did promise, aye. I’d have promised anything when the wide sky was in Magnus Tulloch’s eyes.

As we walked back through the dunes, Magnus Tulloch would stop and look at every plant—the spiky, the tough and weathered, the ones with furry leaves and clear green sap. He’d pick away at mussels on limestone rocks that crumbled easily into fine sand, and I would wonder could they last, how long could they last, the buildings made of this soft stuff, and before I knew it I would be thinking of pink granite houses with their backs to the North Sea, and having to stop myself. I did not want those thoughts. I didn’t want Roanhaven in my head at all. But it seemed that every new thing reminded me of something of the old.

One clear day, while Magnus Tulloch paddled through the wavelets, I stood on the beach, looking across to the ripple of an island on the horizon. We had been told there were small animals that lived there and nowhere else—something like kangaroos but the size of hares. I walked along the beach a little further, where a woman and a young girl were sitting on the sand. Both wore dresses of well-patched worsted, and handknitted scarves. The woman smiled and I asked the child what she was searching for. She held up her bucket timidly. Inside, a collection of shells, shiny on one side, chalky smooth on the other.

Beautiful, I told her, the whitest shells I ever did see.

She looked pleased and put the bucket down, but then she noticed my hand, the stump of my middle finger. Children often stared.

Roisin! her mother said, embarrassed, a hand on the little girl’s shoulder.

What name has the island over there? I asked the woman.

She stood up and shaded her eyes, looking across to the horizon where I was pointing. Oh, Rottnest, that is.

Do people live there?

Prisoners, she said. And many have died there, so they have. Natives. She made a cross on her chest and her head dipped. Also the people at the saltworks. And the Governor hisself sometimes.

I looked at her, confused.

Has a house there, he do.