Sorcha had been prepared to share everything with her friends, longing for the release of speaking the truth and the comfort of their understanding. Looking at the four anxious faces she loved, she knew she could not. It would not be fair. She was strong. She could bear this. What choice did she have?

Instead, she chose a different tack.

She recounted Janet’s last moments. How brave she was, how defiant. How even when she knew the intentions of those who hunted her, that they would stop at nothing until she was dead, she refused to bow to fear, to the terror and chaos they tried to create.

‘You know what her last words were?’

As she spoke, the women wept. Great tears streaked their cheeks. Beatrix had her arm around Isobel. Nicolas clung to Nettie.

‘Keep going, hen,’ said Nettie huskily when Sorcha hesitated. She too was finding it difficult to speak.

‘She said, “Live for me”.’

Nettie sucked in her breath. The weeping stilled. There was silence.

‘Then that’s what we must do,’ said Nettie finally, reaching first for Sorcha’s hand, then Beatrix’s, Isobel’s and Nicolas’s, bringing them together in the centre of their tight circle. One by one, the women nodded.

After that, they never raised the matter again. When they saw each other over the following days, and when Sorcha and Nettie would stumble home exhausted each night after working at the harbour and selling fish upon the streets, they would ask about each other’s families. They’d discuss the catch, the cold, which ships had returned and where the rest were. The condition of the boats and the harbour. Every time, the women would ask after Aidan. Sorcha had told them she’d written to him. She also admitted to writing to his colonel in Edinburgh about Janet’s death, but thus far she’d had no response.

By tacit agreement, what no one shared was how hard it was becoming for them; how they were terrified that what happened to Janet might yet befall them; that the lunacy that had infected the Weem that night would reignite. More and more shopkeepers were refusing to serve them, more and more townsfolk turned their backs when they arrived on their stoops with fish, or simply strolled past on the streets. Dark mutterings followed them once more, dark mutterings and a sprinkling of abuse.

With each passing hour, it was getting worse.

Every night, Sorcha would lie under the covers and stare at the ceiling, uncaring of the shapes above. They no longer had the ability to transport her to other places and times. Instead, she’d wait for dawn to arrive.