We sat on the grass, high above the town, a sheer drop down a rocky cliff face to the sea below. I threaded weedy flowers, looping the stems together with hands that smelled of salt and fish no mind how much I scrubbed them.

Next year I’ll have my papers an’ I’ll be coming with ye.

I looked up from my flower chain. Magnus Tulloch could see a next year for us! But it was next year, all the same. Such a very long time.

So, Great Yarmouth, Fish Meggie. The Sooth! Another big town, another big adventure for ye an’ your sister.

Aye, I murmured, watching the waves far below us. The wide world.

I felt guilty that, while I was here, Kitta and Clementina and the Cruden Bay girls were doing the work. Scrubbing the wee hoosie, cleaning out the grate in the fire, returning oilies and rubber boots, packing up kists. They had given me leave to go, but hooted and called me vain as a gobbler when I unwrapped the dressings that the lady deputies had told me I must keep on all the time, whether or not my fingers were tied for gutting. I took care they did not see me take Kitta’s silk scarf from my kist and stuff it into the pocket of my Sunday pinafore.

I could not bear to think of Kitta this day. Nor of what lay ahead. There would be time enough for thinking when the St Siniver left. For now, I just wanted to be here, free, with Magnus Tulloch.

I take the scarf from my pocket and let the silk warm through my fingers. There is this thing I must say to him, and I am finicking with words. Trying them out in my head, adding, taking away. How can a few words contain something so big? In the end I just blurt it out, like a child:

I don’t want ye to forget me.

The wind howls around us, and I think it is a good thing he doesn’t hear what I’ve said.

The outrageous purple scarf is whipped from my hands and Magnus Tulloch catches it by a corner just in time, so I don’t lose it forever. It shoots into the sky, purple on grey, snapping like a mainsail in a gale.

I look at this magnificent gift that my sister gave me, wild as a seabird, and remember a promise I made to myself that I would wear it in public one day, that I would be brave and reckless. I am a gutting girl now, only somewhat short of a disaster still, with a job to do in the wide world, but is that a brave and reckless thing or does it just mean I have run away?

Scrambling to my feet, I take the scarf from Magnus Tulloch’s grip, reel in the silk from the sky and wind it around me.