Oh no, sang a panicked fugue in the back of my head, don’t do this to me, Jane Warner! Don’t leave me alone again, I like it here, I like it with you, this hasn’t been long enough, who will play duets with me? We haven’t finished the last lot of library books, we need to buy you a new gramophone, there’s no one else! Oh God, did Jamie feel like this, like this, when his best friend let go and sank in the icy black water? How did he bear it, how did he not let go himself?

But he was there. He was there for Silver. And I was here for Jane.

I didn’t let her know how I was panicking.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I repeated. “You’re not alone.”

I held her, while we waited for what would happen next, and I sang softly.

“Jane and Louisa will soon come home,

They will soon come home,

They will soon come home;

Jane and Louisa will soon come home,

Into this beautiful garden.”

Music. Right till the end.

So proud of my girl, said my daddy’s voice in my head. A real voyager.

Ellen:

“Are you all right, Louisa?” I whispered.

We lay together one night later inside the dark-as-dark of an old-fashioned box bed, a thing like a huge cupboard in the big room of Morag Torrie’s cottage. It had a heather mattress such as I slept on all my life until I joined up, piled with quilts and blankets. Another box bed beside ours held Morag and her parents—Phyllis and Nan were in a different cottage.

“I think I’m all right,” she whispered back. “What about you?”

“Och, no bother.”

We lay among the lumps of dry heather staring into blackness.

“You always say that. Really, ‘no bother’?” Louisa asked.

“Well, a mite done in.”

I came back to Windyedge the day after the fire. I sat in the hospital in Aberdeen all night while Jamie had his fingers and toes chopped off, and then I stayed to comfort his mam the next morning while he slept off the sedatives and the morphine before the doctors let anybody see him.

“I’m awfully glad you’re here,” Louisa said. “I was by myself last night, and it was dreadful. Nan didn’t want to share with me and I was so worn out and miserable after the firemen left, I just gave in for once and let Phyllis sort things. But I hated being alone.”

Morag’s parents hadn’t wanted me under their roof, either, after she told them I was a Traveller. But Phyllis sorted that, too. Of course you must put Ellen up, she is a servicewoman! Louisa won’t mind sharing. Aye, throw the two outcasts together.

Neither of us minded sharing, but it is not nice to feel unwelcome.