Oh, lambsie, I don’t want your mother ever reading this. What would she think? That I look back on her arrival in the world and all I can see is blood and sorrow? No, Kathryn, no. Such joy you brought to us all, aye. I remember that, too, and the gentle times when Clementina and I would sit by the stove at night, knitting, talking, sometimes looking back, mostly towards what would come for our children.

The future is all there is, I told her once, an’ the Lord make it a safe world for them.

Clementina chuckled.

What?

I was just thinkin’, quinie, about the safe world we’ve brought them into. Back home, Hal an’ Jessie would be lookin’ after themselves by now. None of this playin’ with balls an’ dressin’ up dollies. Ha! Did ye ever in your life see a dolly in your village?

I had a wee dog once, a dog of my own.

Ooo-hoo! A dog! Well, wasn’t a dog nor a doll in Fitdee, just a world of things to do an’ not a spare moment to think it were a hardship, an’ if ye thought a spare moment might poke up an’ say boo ye’d whip out your needles an’ knit a sock for it!

Oh, aye, the same, the same!

And we laughed and made promises, especially for our girls, who would never—never—hold a gipper in their hands. And there’d be no sock-knitting—oh no! As far as we were concerned, you and Jessie could collect spare moments in a jar and string them together like shiny beads.

Not you, lambsie. Kathryn, I mean. Your mother.

And Magnus, aye, he loved her. He loved them both, her and Steven, in his way.

Oh Kathryn, so much you missed out on. The war stole from us both.

October 1974

October 1974

Dearest lambsie, I’ve just had a visitor. It was you, my Laura-lamb! You turned up on your way to the university with a shepherd’s pie from your mother and a message she will be by tonight. A bag of shopping, too. I canna mind asking her to go to the shop for me but she’s bought things I have run out of, so I must have. Aye, I think I did, I remember now.

I wonder whether you will remember when you read this. Maybe not. You were in a great hurry to be away. You sat there with the cup of tea I fancy your mother told you to stay for. Your fingers drumming on the table. How beautiful you looked in that long purple dress with the little mirror things sewn on the hems of your sleeves. Bless you, lambsie, never were you good at pretending to be happy about a thing when you weren’t.

I opened a packet of Shortbread Creams and arranged some on a saucer. Not a patch on the ones we used to make at the factory …