She closes her eyes, revelling in the untethering of body from earth.

Goodbye, beauties!

She becomes aware of the smell of eucalypts, their earthy bark, medicinal leaves. Her eyes snap open. She sniffs again. Yes, thyme between the stepping stones, its leaflets bruised by the soles of her shoes. And somewhere close by, someone is baking. Beautiful smells. Good, she thinks, and takes a peppermint from her coat pocket—not because she needs it now but because she’s grown to like the taste, hot and sharp and sweet.

One of the Monarchs, dizzy with freedom, lands briefly on the back of her hand. Spectacular, these wings, like stained glass, with their elaborate spots and veins and dappled bands. It lifts on a gust of air, and she is left looking at her hand. Once firm and unblemished, it is beginning to take on the look of parchment, time-weathered, with a history to tell. It’s the hand of a woman who has earned her way through life but has not had to do it with a gipper in her hand.

She picks up the now-empty box frame and is heading back towards the shed when she hears a call from behind.

Laura turns to see a figure stumping up the drive with a cloth-covered plate, a shock of greying hair blowing about in the wind, a shapeless cardigan hanging from his back. She laughs. There’s something almost biblical about a man bearing a loaf of bread. This man.

I know you, she thinks suddenly.

Glossary

Glossary of Scots, Doric* and Shetland words

[* The richly expressive dialect spoken in north-east Scotland.]