When we got to the train station she was calmer. She was holding the neck of her binbag tight. I never liked that place, she told me. Aye, I said, well it knows that noo, doesn’t it? There’ll be trains to Ayr coming, my girl. Your best bet is to get as far as possible, then choose a town, look for work in a hotel. You’ll need to scrub floors now. And I pulled the jar out of my bag, the savings jar. That’s yours and Alec’s money, she said. Aye, I said, but you’re going to need it more than us, hen. Well, I was wrong there. Oor Alec never got another job eftir the mines and I ended up with another wan living off me, although at least it wisnae his fault. The cough finished him off in the end, so it did. It got most of them that way, no compensation either. Oh, I’ve seen a lotty people die, hen, and I bet I’m no as old as most of them in here. No as old as that wan, anyway. State of her. You’ve got dribble on your face, dear! Dribble! Goan wipe her mouth, hen, it’s making me sick to look at her.

I took a wee bit of her hair in my finger, but I didnae touch her, and she got oot the car and went to the platform. She didnae wave, and I didnae see my girl again till she was – whit, twenty-five? Twenty-seven? She wrote me a letter. Alec found it but he didnae say anything. I couldny talk aboot her again, in the hoose, or in the town. I wis allowed to stay as long as I didnae mention my girl. And where else would I have gone? Back up to Inverness? Back to the islands, to her father’s snooty Wee Free sister? Naw, I wasn’t having that thrawn wee besom take my life away from me. No my home.