Aye, Kitta said, but she rolled her eyes and pouted when Clementina went back to packing.

I frowned. Something was wrong, but I knew better than to be the third person to take Kitta to task. And I’d an idea it had nothing to do with fish.

After a while I ventured, Are ye goin’ to the ceilidh tonight, our Kitta?

An’ just wherever else would I be goin’?

Where indeed?

It was not something unreasonable I’d asked. Kitta had been in to Lerwick with Bella Strahan the week before, and the week before that. Even when she stayed on the station she often seemed to disappear for a time.

But who was I to be calling anyone else distracted when all I cared to do on ceilidh night was dance? I decided I must pay more attention to my work. And to Kitta.

~

Town folk an’ fisherfolk never do mix is what Granda Jeemsie always used to say. Suspicious, he was, of anyone from Gadlehead, more so of anyone from further afield. I always used to think it was a fisher belief, ignorant and shameful, jumbled up with the darkness I’d left behind. But on that Saturday night I learned something about people: that it is not just fisherfolk who believe they are the centre of the world, who shun all others as lesser works of God.

~

I see her leave the fishermen’s fire where we have our supper. She gets to her feet as though to join in the dancing but veers off towards the hoosies. Anyone watching might think she’s fetching a shawl. That’s the excuse I give Magnus Tulloch when I leave, too, but I follow Kitta, creep behind her a little way distant.

She moves beyond the huts, up towards the rise. Look, I am blushing, ashamed of myself, of my prying. Kitta is going over the hill for privacy, unwilling to use the laavie on the shore when the boats are in port. So weary, we all are, of the crewmen’s crude calls, the childish gestures they would never dare make when passing us on the way to kirk.

I sit outside our wee hoosie, shawl in hand, waiting for Kitta, but she is a long time gone. A long time.

Over the rise, in the fresh darkening of dusk, I stumble and wish I had thought to bring a lantern. I look up: the full moon is hemmed in but the clouds are alive this night, pummelling against each other, barrelling across the sky. It canna be long before the moon is freed to light my way.

I hear before I see them. Not far from me. Kitta and someone. A man. It can only be the man from Lerwick, the man who says he loves my sister. A cry of pain skirls into the wind.

I hunker down, afraid.