And that’s what saved the Oven Room girls’ fingers for the remainder of the war. I brought in strips cut from flour bags and showed them what to do, and although some were inclined to wrinkle their noses at first, soon they could see that it just made plain sense to do it. What a colourful sight in the Oven Room: the girls’ fingers strapped in clooties made from whatever they could spare from the ragbag at home.

Not long after, Mr Prentice made me a forewoman, and then I learned another thing about myself: that I could guide and lead and keep one eye on the running of my team while joining in the chatter and singing that kept us all from going crazy. Aye, and that when I spoke, the girls would listen, and didn’t resent me for it, either, because I was one of them, with as much to lose, now Magnus was at war.

But another thing I learned during those years was that somewhere along the journey from the Northern Hemisphere to this bluesky place, I had begun to feel the pull of the earth beneath me. Imagine: this from a water quinie from Roanhaven, a fisher girl!

Mrs Laskon had given us a part of the backyard for keeping chickens and growing what we could. You need to keep those kiddies strong, she said. Everything in the shops is gone to blazes, and the Lord helps those who help themselves.

How Clementina loved the scrawny yellow-white chickens we bought for next to nothing from Enzia’s brother—pecky, skittish things, I thought. Look at them, she’d say, smiling as they squabbled and strutted about in the sand. They lay eggs, they eat our leavings, they give us muck for the garden. Perfect creatures, chickens—what more could ye ask from them?

I suspected there was more to it—a kindly feeling, a gentleness, among the hard memories of her time at Merredin. But she didn’t tell me and I didn’t press. Clementina had drawn a line under her years on the farm: finished, done, gone.