I wiped my hand on my greasy skirt and took the package.

Come on, then, lass, who it from?

Never ye mind, Limpy Davy, just never ye mind!

All day it lay in my pocket, warm as a promise, the beat of a heart. I could not wait to open it, but there was a cran of herring in front of me, a yard full of girls, and wait is all I could do. And at the end of the day I had to wait some more. What foolishness to open a package when Clementina Slater was watching, when Bella Strahan would be itching to snatch it from my hands.

It was late, by the light of one of Mrs Booth’s candles, when I untied the string and peeled back the paper. Inside were two more sheets of paper, folded one inside the other into a thick square. One was half a page of newsprint cut from The Shetland Times, with a circle drawn in ink around an article. I smoothed it flat, smiling, until I read the headline: ACCIDENT IN BARREL FACTORY. Then I raced through the rest of it: cooper’s apprentice injured … piece of wood jammed one of the machines … shield flew off and struck the young man on the back of the head … rendered unconscious … Gilbert Bain Hospital.

Blood. I could imagine it everywhere, on the machine, on the factory floor, the barrel hoops, the doctor’s hands. Magnus Tulloch lying there, not waking, awash in blood.

I grabbed the other page, handwritten in blue ink:

Dearest Meggie

Don’t fret I am all right good as new since coming from the hospital but I did not want you to hear of the accident from others and think the news bad. Already I am back to work nothing left of the bruise but a yellowing now where the doctor shaved my head Nicol & Mair paid the doctor bill the hospital too and I am to be held only 2 day wages when I was away from factory 1 whole week!

Forgive me I am rushing to get this to Stivvy Ratter on the Girl Bessie.

I miss you promise you will come back Fish Meggie.

Yours aye

Magnus Tulloch

I let it go, my tattered breath.

He is all right, he is all right, I sang to myself over and over, shivering, until a new song took its place, and oh how feverish I was, and flurried and guilty all at once:

I miss you, I miss you, I miss you …

June 1973

June 1973

I remember your hands when you were a baby, lambsie, always cold, your small fingers so white. I would blow on them with warm breath and wrap them up in woollen mittens, and I used to tell your mother: She has her grunnie’s hands, the North Sea instead of blood in her veins.

And Kathryn would say: Another thing she’ll never thank you for.

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