I eyed her, lying there on the bed in this brown-papered room we would share till near to Christmas. She is harmless, Kitta had told me. Ye just don’t know her. But even like this, she made me nervous, Bella Strahan did.

Kitta was making me nervous, too, all Bright Carefree Quinie. Would I have my sister wretched and sorrowing? Of course I wouldn’t, of course not, but it was a performance; she wasn’t fooling me. The knitted smile again. I had been waiting all this time for her to tell me about the man, but now I knew she never would because of what it would cost her to unpick the stitches of that smile.

In the time it had taken to travel south, the sores on my hands had improved a little. Those few days had been a rest from the salt, but I liked to think it was the cradling of Magnus Tulloch’s hands around mine on the day we said goodbye that had brought me healing, brought me luck. In Mrs Booth’s windowless room, I peeled back the dressings and held my fingers under candlelight. Look, I whispered, look, Magnus Tulloch. The skin was pink and puckered at the edges—itchy, tender healing skin—and the yellow-green centres did not look so angry now. I took from my kist the little store of poultices and carbolic that the mission ladies had given me and hoped it would be enough to see me through.

~

Great Yarmouth was not so congenial as Gremista. The yards were on the South Denes, away from the heart of town, but were still more crowded. The work at the farlins was the same, but now the weather was getting colder. A frost was on the fish when we began in the morning. That’s nothing, Kitta told me. A few more weeks an’ we’ll be breakin’ ice!

I imagined myself describing the scene to Magnus Tulloch: The boats sail up the river, straight in from the sea, and unload the catch right at the station. You look up from the farlins, an’ there they are, the boats, there in front of ye. And the noise! The gulls are smaller here but they swoop in like a shrieking white cloud. An’ have ye heard about the cooper shops, the way they’re in between the stations, right down near the salt stores?

I stopped to test my pulse. No, it was not helping, not comforting at all, this talking in my head to Magnus Tulloch. The distance between us was larger than my imagination. I could not put to rights the facts: he was not here, I was not there with him.