Whenever he launched into one of his stories, her mor would turn away, a sorrowful expression on her face. She no more wanted her children to give their life to the sea than she wanted to remain in Pittenweem; but as Sorcha oft heard her father say, they’d no choice. Rather than getting angry with his wife or being hurt by her aversion to his home, he would kiss her head, explaining to his children that their mother couldn’t be expected to understand local customs, being an incomer from Bergen and the daughter of a Kontor merchant — a man with his feet firmly planted on the ground. However, if his children were to survive, to be one with the Weem folk, he’d say, they needed not only to learn the tales and the rites they described, but to accept them as well.

What he never revealed, and Sorcha only learned later, was the price he paid for marrying her mor.

It was expected that fishermen would eventually take one of the local fishwives as a bride. Called ‘wives’ whether they were single or not, these were lasses born and bred to the sea, the daughters or widows of fishermen, and raised to their ways. In marrying an incomer, a foreigner who knew nothing of a fisherman’s lot, let alone Pittenweem, Charlie McIntyre had done the unforgivable: spurned the customs of his village and the families he’d been raised among. But it was his wife who paid the price for what became known as his Norwegian folly — the beautiful, wide-eyed Astrid Grimmsdatter.

‘You wait, Charlie McIntyre,’ grumbled those who either hadn’t profited from the journey that brought Astrid to Pittenweem, or had eligible daughters they felt had been spurned. ‘Bad luck will find you, mark my words. Just pray it doesn’t find us too.’

They were right. Bad luck found them all and there were many who could never forget or forgive Charlie for his wife, her strangeness, and the sorrow that wreathed her like an eternal evendoon.

There were many who couldn’t forgive Sorcha either, and not merely because she was Charlie’s daughter.

Sorcha’s throat grew tight, her heart a weight anchoring her to the spot. Despising her self-pity, blaming the flood of remembrances, tiredness and her aching head, she willed herself to enter the cottage, noting with a half-hearted air that while the rain had all but ceased, the day had gone to bed. Night had begun to draw its cloak, casting deep shadows over the road and houses.

Again, she heard the remote ring of hooves. Closer this time was the distinct tread of boots.