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Chapters (142)
  1. About the Author
  2. Title Page
  3. Dedication
  4. Epigraph
  5. NOTEBOOK 1
  6. Brukie’s Sandy
  7. April 1972
  8. 1
  9. May 1972
  10. 2
  11. 3
  12. June 1972
  13. 4
  14. July 1972
  15. 5
  16. 6
  17. 7
  18. 8
  19. October 1972
  20. 9
  21. 10
  22. 11
  23. October 1972
  24. 12
  25. December 1972
  26. 13
  27. December 1972
  28. 14
  29. December 1972
  30. NOTEBOOK 2
  31. Brukie’s Sandy
  32. January 1973
  33. 1
  34. 2
  35. 3
  36. 4
  37. 5
  38. 6
  39. March 1973
  40. 7
  41. 8
  42. 9
  43. 10
  44. April 1973
  45. 11
  46. 12
  47. 13
  48. 14
  49. June 1973
  50. 15
  51. July 1973
  52. 16
  53. 17
  54. 18
  55. 19
  56. August 1973
  57. 20
  58. 21
  59. August 1973
  60. 22
  61. 23
  62. 24
  63. August 1973
  64. 25
  65. August 1973
  66. 26
  67. August 1973
  68. 27
  69. NOTEBOOK 3
  70. Brukie’s Sandy
  71. March 1974
  72. 1
  73. 2
  74. 3
  75. 4
  76. 5
  77. April 1974
  78. 6
  79. 7
  80. June 1974
  81. 8
  82. July 1974
  83. 9
  84. August 1974
  85. 10
  86. August 1974
  87. 11
  88. October 1974
  89. 12
  90. October 1974
  91. 13
  92. October 1974
  93. October 1974
  94. 14
  95. October 1974
  96. 15
  97. 16
  98. November 1974
  99. 17
  100. November 1974
  101. December 1974
  102. CODA
  103. Brukie’s Sandy
  104. 1
  105. 2
  106. 3
  107. 4
  108. 5
  109. 6
  110. 7
  111. 8
  112. 9
  113. 10
  114. 11
  115. 12
  116. 13
  117. 14
  118. 15
  119. 16
  120. 17
  121. 18
  122. 19
  123. 20
  124. 21
  125. 22
  126. 23
  127. 24
  128. 25
  129. 26
  130. 27
  131. April 1975
  132. Brukie’s Sandy
  133. 28
  134. 29
  135. 30
  136. 31
  137. 32
  138. 33
  139. Glossary
  140. Note
  141. Acknowledgments
  142. Works Cited

Since leaving home, I had always felt a needle of terror that someone, someone from Gadlehead, perhaps, would arrive on the station—someone who’d heard a whisper of what had happened. The Ross girls were not at Gremista, nor the Roanhaven fishers, and in any case they would be close-lipped about village matters. But people from close parts have a way of sensing scandal and will seek out scraps and hints and bits of fact to patch together into something to tell. If anyone had found out, if anyone made the connection between Kitta and me and what happened on the Lily Maud, gossip could hurt us. And facts—well, they could hurt us more.

April 1973

April 1973

Your mother is always telling me that I forget things, lambsie. I forget to write down when my doctor’s appointment is, or I tell her something a second time because I canna remember the first. It frightens me, this feeling I am losing a piece of what’s in my head. But then I pluck a memory from that same store and it is so clear and sparkling and perfect, so alive before my eyes, that I am not afraid any more.

11

The Knab is spectacular. You can see forever from its wild summit. Rabbits scamper this way and that among the gorse and marigolds, and the cliff face is home to hundreds of puffins, hunkering down among the small mauve flowers—I don’t know their name—that cluster over rocks, sheltering burrows. Ye canna look at a tammie norie without smiling, Magnus Tulloch says, and I think: Aye, they are the strangest little things, birds that look as though they’ve been put together on the Lord’s day off by someone with a sense of humour—a hodgepodge thrown together with the bits left over from other birds, some I’ve only ever seen in The Class Book of the Natural World at school. Fat, stumpy bodies in black and white penguin clothes. The brightly tropic-coloured beaks of toucans. Enormous orange feet, webbed like a duck’s, splaying all ungainly as they come in to land on graceful eagle wings. Who could dream up anything as—what’s the word? Anything as preposterous as a puffin?