Cacophony again. This time there was also the screaming of hundreds of gulls circling above the farlins, and calls of Fill up! and Over here! I had never in my life seen so many people working together. And it hit me with a great rush: I was a gutting girl now, and soon I would be among them.

3

When you are young and dreaming, you imagine there will be signs from heaven—a shower of shooting stars, the dancing of the Northern Lights. At least the tap of fate on your shoulder to make sure you’re awake.

But it doesn’t usually happen that way, lambsie.

~

We met that night, my very first night in Gremista, over a splinter, a sliver of spruce hived off a barrel. The boy was one of the apprentice coopers given the job of helping girls clear out the huts up on the rise behind the yards, which were used as store sheds during the winter. These would be our homes, our wee hoosies, for the months to come.

Ach, the dismay of arriving at Gremista, tired and wind-ravelled. No clean beds. No welcoming fires for a cup of tea, no. Those wooden huts were full of barrels and mice and the sticky webs of small black spiders. I looked at Kitta, at Clementina. No disgust. No surprise. This was just the way of it.

What’s that? I whispered to Kitta, pointing to a shallow hole in the earthen floor in a corner of our hut.

Glory hole, she said, matter of fact.

Was she teasing? At home, all in Tiller Street had to share a three-seater laavie draining into the sea, but there were walls around it, walls and a door.

Kitta laughed. Get that frown from your face, quinie! Is the same for us all. An’ if ye want more privacy … She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. Well, walk over the hill an’ ye can have all the privacy in the world. Miles of it. Just yeself an’ the wind an’ the rabbits!

Six of us, it took, to make our hut fit to live in. We’d to light sulphur candles to chase out wee beasties, scrub it clean of mud and dust and scat, fetch coal from the yards and water from rain barrels. And we’d to make the two beds fit for six to sleep in, with chaff mattresses and linen we’d carried with us in our kists from home. The other girls in our hoosie had brought pictures in frames—Jesus on the Cross, Mary with her babe—and a wee pink china vase, which made it seem cosy. Kitta and I had nothing like that, nor Clementina. It would be hours before we could tumble into those beds, but at least our chores were lit by a sky that seemed unwilling to darken even after ten at night.