She knew better than to voice this idea to her mother, who would tell her, Katrina knew, not to be so silly, that she wasn’t cut out for journalism, that you had to be much tougher and quicker than Katrina to make it as a journalist. She would say it in a kindly, smiling way, of course, as though all she wanted was to help Katrina. But Katrina was starting to distrust her mother’s help. For so many years she had felt as though she could hardly breathe, that there was no space left over for her; her mother took it all. She wasn’t yet able to view her mother with any level of detachment, but nevertheless she began to feel a fierce impulse to get away.

After Callum finally left, following many months of shouting and door slamming (Katrina had come to regard these things wearily as a fact of life), Katrina’s mother retired to her bed, just as she had done after Katrina’s father walked out. Katrina—sixteen, by now—took it in her stride. She worked on Saturdays and Sundays at the local newsagent’s, so at least they would have enough money for vegetables to make soup if her mother lost her job. They would not starve. Over the next week, she brought her mother cups of tea and slices of toast with jam, and encouraged her to wash from time to time. This storm, she knew, would pass, just as all the others had.

And naturally it did. Katrina’s mother rose up from her bed like Lazarus, washed and set her hair, applied her bright lipstick and declared that all she needed in life was her daughter, and that as long as they had each other, no man could hurt them. She did not know, of course, that Katrina was already starting to harden her heart against her.

The following year, Katrina sat her Highers and did well. She left school not long before she turned eighteen and, much to her own and her mother’s surprise, secured her first job at the Stirling Reporter without too much effort, writing the death notices.

“They just want someone to make the tea,” her mother said. “You watch out, hen. You’re only there so they can take advantage of you. They hired you for your looks.”