D’ye miss it? I asked her eventually. D’ye wish ye were back there? Somewhere else?

She snapped back to life, my Kitta again, and half snorted, half laughed. I don’t miss the guts, Meggie mine! But this … this place … She waved an arm, drawing an arc around the village.

What d’ye mean, this place? Home?

Home! That snorting laugh again. And then Kitta sighed, cupping her chin in mittened hands, and told me about her homecoming.

~

A gutting girl, rumpled and weary and hefting an overstuffed calico bag, kisses her friends goodbye at the station in Gadlehead and looks around her. She doesn’t expect anyone to be waiting but she has discovered there is something about railway platforms, something about the bustle of people with straining necks and anxious faces. Something that makes you foolish and hopeful that someone will be watching for you.

No-one knows when she is to arrive, so no-one, of course, is here.

Jamming her woollen hat over her long plaits, she begins the walk home to the village. Her kist, well labelled, will follow her by and by.

As she nears Roanhaven, a bent figure joins the road from a seaward path, an old man burdened with a wicker basket of fish.

Eh, Piper Stewie! Can I help ye with your load? the girl calls, shouldering her own bag the better to free her hands.

The old man stops, glad of the prospect of help. He sets the basket down, he wipes his eyes with his sleeve and he looks her up and down to see who it is, this youthful traveller who knows his name. And then he stiffens, he takes up the basket again. Inclining his chin in the girl’s direction, he spits on the ground.

~

There was no question about whether Kitta was going back to the fish. She was a gutting girl now. She was just biding her time until the season began again, like Da and the boys. But it turned out that her wait would be longer than theirs, because Da would not consent to her signing on for the early season in the Western Isles. Too far from home, he said, ye’ll begin in the Shetlands, closer by, and that was his final word. All Kitta’s tears and the stamp of her foot did no good at all. She was frantic she would lose her place in the team—such a good team, it was, one of the best—but luck was with her there. Clementina Slater, in Aberdeen, was laid low with measles, and the third member of Kitta’s team had married a Gadlehead cooper at Hogmanay and was in no hurry to leave just yet.

What am I to do with myself till May? Kitta wailed.