Humiliating, aye, to talk of gratitude. I know already I will read these words again and scratch them away in shame, lambsie. But in hindsight truly I must be grateful. Because from those sorrowful, bewildering times, when I knew that never would he be coming back, came a gift.

Your mother.

October 1974

October 1974

Ye’re not still queasy about blood, are you, lambsie? Such a worrisome little thing you were, dizzy every time you skinned your knees. Fainting at school when that boy in class broke his nose—do you remember? I had to pick you up at dinnertime and bring you home with me. I never knew what to say to make it better, because I knew how upsetting …

Jam, oh aye, that was the thing. You could always be comforted with a spoonful of jeely.

Maybe you still are that way with blood, maybe it’s a thing you don’t grow out of.

Me, I seemed to grow into it. All those years with blood up to my elbows, the smell of it in my mouth, the taste of it in my ears. Knowing it was a thing left over from life when life had gone. Maybe it was always going to catch up with me, that knowing. Because, in time, it became fear.

13

Kathryn, 1922

It’s a funny thing, lambsie. Sometimes we fear something so much that we canna bear it, feel we might die from the effort of holding it down with a fist of iron. And then, like a miracle, the thing feared doesn’t come to pass. And don’t we think ourselves foolish then, to have been twisted inside, knotted like wool, to have felt our fingernails breaking skin, so hard have we held the fear at bay. And so we loosen our grip a little, let the knots unravel just enough.

My first time being pregnant, with Steven, was like that. Every minute afraid, consumed by it—and then nothing ill happened, all was well.

But. The second time.

Dr Hamilton, kind in his way, wasn’t one for false hopes. Go home, rest, but be ready. You’ll not keep this one, my dear. And eat plenty of liver to make up for the blood you’re losing.

His words crashed on me, green like waves, dragging me under. When? I managed. He could not tell me.

Now, you’re upsetting yourself with morbid fancies, Mrs Tulloch. Keep your mind on the child you have. There’s those less fortunate than you.

That day, the day after next, I see it now through a wash of red: