If Da and the boys had been here, Kitta and I would be doing the same. Bound to tend to them, to mind what they said. As it was, we could dance a reel with the girls as we pleased. Oftentimes the coopers and the fishers joined in. When I close my eyes now … ach, I can feel it, the stamping of feet on the wooden boards of the jetty, thump-thump in time to clapping hands. The cooling air on my clammy face as the girls swing me from arm to arm. The first time I felt a man’s warm hand at my back, I flustered about, lost my step. Almost tripped over my own boldness. But a glance around at the neat-stepping fishers, all kindly and cheerful, quelled the urge to run away. There was none to call it wrong or even to put such a thought in our heads, none to call us names. If anyone had something to say at all it was just, Eh, Fish Meggie is light on her feet, or Mary’s Kirsty’s Jeannie, ye’ve a sweet voice to hear. I wasn’t runnin’ wild, I was no disgrace to my own, but what I chose to do with the hours away from the farlins was my say-so and no-one else’s. What happiness to a fisher girl, happiness undreamed of.

The Highland girls didn’t think much of the rest of us. Polite enough, aye, but kept to themselves. They spoke in Gaelic, the strangest kind of babble, and it drew a veil between them and us. They have the blackest eyes, those girls. Beautiful. And dark hair, thick, sheening like glass so you felt you might catch your own face mirrored there if ever they shook free the tartan headsquares tucked so primly behind their ears. Was that why they looked on me, on my wild flame of hair, with such pity? And sometimes, I think, with fear? They skirted around me whenever they could. Walked the long way round to avoid crossing my path. Or was I imagining that? Perhaps, but I fancied there was a special brand of wariness in how some of the girls looked at me. No mind. I was finding my way, and would answer no more to Ginger Meggie.