Lambsie, there are moments in your life when it seems like the skin covering the core of you is peeled away and a new one, a harder one, begins to grow. The end of one thing and the beginning of another—aye, the old and the new again. While they are happening, you don’t always see them for what they are. Only later do you say, Ah, it was then. But sometimes you look them in the eye, and you know.

It was not long, the space between Da and the boys leaving for Stornaway and Kitta’s next season at Lerwick. But in that space were three terrible things. The world shifted, and me with it.

13

Such a cold winter it was that year. It was all anyone talked about, even Granda Jeemsie, who was never a man to feel the cold and scorned shivering as weakness. But this year he pulled an extra gansey over his head and blamed it all on the poverty of knittin’ skill among our womenfolk these days.

With the cold came sickness. Ma had influenza again. Unty Leebie, too.

On a day Granda was preparing to put to sea on the Lily Maud, Kitta and I sat inside the doorway of the netting shed with the longlines laid out in careful figures of eight to prevent them tangling. Our fingers turned white, the nails purple, as we prised apart icy mussels from our pails and forced hooks through them, one by one. For a while we sang, to take our minds off the pain, but Granda shouted from inside for us to halt that muckle racket afore the devil rises up to take us all to hell!

We checked on Ma from time to time, taking turns with her hot-water bottle and a fresh brew to ease her cough. And to tend to Granda’s wants. We were glad enough, for once, to see to them, just to escape the cold a wee while.

That night, when it came near time for the crew of the Lily Maud to be loading up and leaving, Granda stumped outside. He stood there, pulling on his gloves, his woollen cap down over his ears, and he barked at Kitta: Hash yourself, quinie, your ma wants ye.

Kitta poked out her tongue as she passed behind him, which would normally make me laugh, but the sight of Granda glowering doused all the laughter in me.

When Kitta came back, her face was the colour of the sleety sky.

~

I climbed up to my usual place on the stone wall that night, and I’d to steel myself to look across to the boatie shore. Guilty, I felt. Guilty that I couldn’t help. Guiltier still to feel so relieved about it.