A new century started, and although there was a feeling that anything might happen, I never thought I’d see Dr. Murray come to the kitchen door. When Mrs. Ballard saw him striding across the lawn, she brushed down her apron and fixed the hair that had come loose from her cap. She unlatched the top door, and Dr. Murray leaned in, his long beard wafting on the warm breath coming from the hearth.

“And where is Lizzie?” he asked, glancing at where I stood by the bench, stirring the batter of a cake.

“I sent her to fetch a few things, Dr. Murray, sir,” said Mrs. Ballard. “She’ll be back in no time, and then Esme will help her with hanging laundry in the drying cupboard. She’s a great help to us, is Esme.”

“Well, that may be so, but I’d like Esme to come with me to the Scriptorium.”

Instinctively, I checked my pockets. Mrs. Ballard looked at me. I shook my head as if to say, I’ve done nothing, I promise.

“Off you go now, Esme. Follow Dr. Murray to the Scrippy.” I took off my apron and walked, as if through treacle, to the kitchen door.

When I came into the Scriptorium, Da was there, smiling. He had many kinds of smiles, but his “caged smile” was my favourite. It struggled to be released from behind pursed lips and twitching eyebrows. My fingers unfurled from the fists they’d been making.

Da took my hand, and the three of us walked to the back of the Scriptorium.

“This, Essy, is for you,” Da said, freeing his smile.

Behind a shelf of old dictionaries was a wooden desk. It was the kind I’d sat at in a cold room at Cauldshiels. My fingers twitched remembering the pain of the lid being brought down. A whispered taunt that my fingers were already good for nothing echoed in my head. I began to shake, but Da’s hand on my shoulder brought me back to the Scriptorium. When Dr. Murray lifted the lid, it revealed new pencils and blank slips, and two books that I immediately recognised.

“They belong to Elsie,” I heard myself say to Dr. Murray, wanting to clarify that I hadn’t taken them.

“Elsie has read them, Esme. She’d like you to have them. Consider them a late Christmas gift—or, better still, a gift for the new century.”

Then I noticed that the underside of the lid had been pasted with an offcut of wallpaper—a pale green with tiny yellow roses. It was the same paper that covered the walls of the sitting room in the Murray house. The desk was different from those at Cauldshiels in other ways too: it was bigger, with polished wood and hinges that caught the light, and the seat was separate.