I thought you’d be pleased, she says to me, when we were in that wee café in Ayr. She was aye saying that. She’d tell me all these things that she was doing, always something different every year, could never settle down, that wan. And she aye said it like she was back at school, showing me a shitey picture, you know the sort of thing that weans do, bless them, like she was wanting me to be proud of her. Proud! Of whit? Of her in that big bloody rabble that were on the telly marching in London, with tattoos and those scaffy black boots? I saw them. We had a word for folk like that when I was growing up, hen. Naw, she never got that it wisnae aboot the action you took. It wis aboot why ye did it. We did it because we were a community and they were ripping oot oor heart, and we had tae fight them. We did it because ordinary working folk aw over the country were being put oot their jobs they’d had all their lives, their hooses. Her, she just floated. I told her that, under that Christmas tree, I said you just drift aboot, don’t you? She meant nothing more than a wee bitty thistledown, my girl did, at the end of the day. Oh, she would always have these causes, she’d tell me, these issues, these things that had to be fought, but I would be trying to say to her, what do they mean to you, eh hen, really? I’m doing what’s right, Mum, she’d say. And do you know whit, oan her last birthday I’d finally had enough of it. This nonsense. I said, aye, could have done with you daein whit wis right when you were sixteen, missy. Bit late noo, noo you’ve wasted your life, is it not? Because I could see she was trying. The lassie wis trying. But we couldny have her in the house again. No eftir.