It was our last school assembly before Christmas, and I would not be returning to finish the school year. The headmistress of St. Barnabas girls’ school, Mrs. Todd, wanted to wish me well, so I sat on a chair at the front of the hall, facing the assembled girls. They were children of Jericho. Daughters of the Press and Wolvercote paper mill. Their brothers attended St. Barnabas boys’, and would grow up to work at the mill or on the presses. Half the girls in my class would be binding books within the year. I’d always felt out of place.

There were the usual announcements. I sat rigid, looking down at my hands and wishing the time would pass more quickly. I barely heard what Mrs. Todd said, but when the girls began to clap I looked up. I was to receive the history prize and the prize for English. Mrs. Todd nodded for me to approach, and as I did she told the school that I was leaving to attend Cauldshiels School for Young Ladies.

“All the way up in Scotland,” she said, turning to me. The girls clapped again, though this time with less enthusiasm. They couldn’t imagine leaving, I thought. As I couldn’t imagine it. But then Ditte said it would prepare me. “For what?” I’d asked. “For doing whatever it is you dream of,” she’d said.

The week after Christmas was wet and dreary. “Good preparation for the Scottish Borders,” Mrs. Ballard said one day, and I burst into tears. She stopped her kneading and came to where I sat shelling peas at the kitchen table. “Oh, pet,” she said, holding my face in both hands and dusting flour across my cheeks. When I stopped my snivelling, she put a mixing bowl in front of me and measured out quantities of butter, flour, sugar and raisins. She took the cinnamon jar from the top shelf of the pantry and put it beside me: “Just a pinch, remember.”

Mrs. Ballard used to say that rock cakes didn’t care if your hands were warm or cold, deft or clumsy. She relied on them to distract me whenever I was unable to accompany Lizzie, or when I was out of sorts. They’d become my speciality. Mrs. Ballard went back to her kneading, and I began to break the butter into bits and rub it into the flour. As usual, my right hand felt gloved. I had to watch my funny fingers do their work to really feel the crumbs begin to form.

Mrs. Ballard chatted on. “Scotland is beautiful.” She’d been there when she was a young woman. Walking, with a friend. I couldn’t imagine her young. And I couldn’t imagine her anywhere other than in the kitchen at Sunnyside. “And it’s not forever,” she said.