I folded the silk over and over, smoothing the frothy air from it, flattening it into the smallest square I could make and wrapping the paper around it. And I stowed it in the netting shed, right in the back corner, further back even than Crusoe would go when he was fleeing from Granda. From time to time, when the men and boys were out on the Lily Maud, when Ma was off with her creel, I would take the package out and unwrap the wondrous thing that Kitta had given me, trailing the lush fabric across my skin, examining the finely woven fibres—a world apart from the scratchy wool we used to knit our clothes. All the way from India, Kitta had told me in a hush of awe. All the quines wear silk in India. Their dresses an’ shawls, the scarves on their heads, even their drawers! And we looked at each other, trying to imagine such extravagance, such indulgence, and thinking what a scandalous, perfect place it must be, this place called India. When I returned to school and traced a path between Aberdeen and India on the globe of the world, I took into my head the notion that the further you got from Roanhaven, the more startling, the more colourful, the more exciting the world must become.

And I made another promise to myself, lambsie. As I huddled at the back of the netting shed in the briny must, I vowed that one day I would wrap the purple silk around my throat and stride out into the world, with no mind to those who might look askance or think ill of me. One day I would be brave and reckless. I would wear Kitta’s beautiful scarf like a brand.

8

When we ushered in that New Year, what I wanted to celebrate was the close of the last, a year when everything had changed, and so little of it to my liking. Surely 1904 could do no worse. Or so I thought as Ma and I kissed Kitta goodbye at the end of Tiller Street.

Kitta made every appearance of listening to Ma’s words about duty and respectable quines and hard work to please the Lord an’ your da, but I caught the lift of her eyes, even if Ma missed it. I didn’t think her beaming face had the world to do with hard work.