I had made friends, though. The Institute had provided an opportunity to reinvent myself in a place where my peers did not judge me as the daughter of Mad Murdo. I told them my father had been an adventurer and my mother an actress, both of them lost in a tragic sea crossing as they returned to me from America. I relished the way they looked at me in response. There was wonder in their expressions, but also sadness for me at what I had lost. It reminded them nonetheless that I was made of better stuff than they might assume.

Not everyone took to me for it, though. I had enemies there, not least Joyce Meechan, who was seated in the row behind as I sidled along the pew.

Joyce had arrived a few months previously, and I was dismayed to recognise her from playing in the back courts of Cumberland Street. Joyce was a year older, a pinch-faced girl who said I was a liar and a thief. She told people that my real father was a madman who killed my mother. If anything went astray, she accused me of taking it, and said I was getting fat because I stole from other people’s plates.

On this morning, however, Joyce did not greet me with her usual sour sneer. Instead she wore a contrite expression and gave me a gentle, beckoning wave as I took my seat.

‘I have urgent news,’ she said, her voice low in recognition of the growing silence in the hall as the Reverend Gillies ascended his pulpit.

I turned and leaned across the back of the bench, impatient to learn what had led to this change in Joyce’s demeanour. Joyce in turn leaned forward, presenting her ear.

‘What news?’ I asked in a whisper.

Joyce let out a shriek and recoiled, throwing her hands back dramatically in shock.

The Reverend Gillies’ attention was immediately upon her and she was hauled to her feet by one of the masters, dragged to the front and was tearful by the time she was standing before the Reverend.

‘What occasioned this indecorous outburst?’ he demanded.

I did not hear her mumbled reply, but I did see Joyce raise her arm and point directly back towards where I sat.

The Reverend’s face was crimson. He strode down into the body of the hall and grabbed me by the neck. I was dragged along the pew and forced into the aisle, where the Reverend whipped at my backside with his stick to drive me forward, sending me through the doors of the hall and all the way outside to the yard at the back.

I wanted to ask what I had done to merit such punishment, but experience had told me this would be folly. The impertinence of such a question would only anger him further.

He ordered me to lie face-down in the dirt. I obeyed.