But I have been to town, lambsie—given your mother the slip—and I’ve bought myself this case of pens, blue and red and green, these books of lined paper, fresh and white. I have things to tell you before they take me off to one of those places where people put their bloomers on their heads and you have to eat blancmange whether you like it or not.

It won’t be what you’re expecting, not the fairytales of Fish Meggie you used to love. Even if I could remember exactly how I used to tell them, they wouldn’t sound the same, now you are no longer a wee thing and no longer begging for stories. And I canna remember them exactly, no. I used to make things up, hither and thither, or turn the details upside down, just to keep the smile on your face. I know there is much I left out. We don’t tell children how sad the world can be.

Aye, and there are things I’ve never told anyone. Some things are not spoken of even when they are happening, and as the years go by it’s like the words that might explain them have been taken by the tide.

I am past eighty now, and I have done a fine job of forgetting a good many things in my life. But when I look at you, lambsie, nearly twenty-one and thinking there’s nothing of value you don’t already know, I am ashamed of myself. You don’t know who you are until you know where you’ve come from. Even when … Ah, well. Even when.

So I will write my story, if I can find the words. I will pull the pictures from my memory and try.

I am seeing with the eye of a bird. There’s a coastline, there are canvas sails, wee boats painted blue. Coming in closer, the boatie shore, the long stony sweep of it, and the soles of my feet are tingling. Everywhere, skinny children, barefoot on the shingle. I am blown from the shore, up the slope to a grid of four streets. Tiller Street—my street—crosses through them, rows of stone houses with their backs to the North Sea. The wind is a howl the likes of which I have never heard since. And in the air, a sea tang, fresh and sharp and rotten all at once, spiced up with old bait, fish guts, plumes from chimneys where the fish are hung to dry and smoke. I can see the stiff striped aprons of the women, the wifies. My mother’s face.