The car had long since left the verge in front of number 4 and Effie was both happy and dismayed to see the graceful figure of Jayne Ferguson sitting on a stool outside the front door, knitting a sock, as if she’d always sat there. For where Jayne was to be found, Norman was too and Effie didn’t want to see him, not ever again. She wouldn’t forgive him for what he’d done.

‘It is you,’ Jayne smiled, as Effie approached. ‘I’m glad.’

‘Are you?’

‘Of course. I’ll sleep better knowing we’ve got you to protect us, you know, in case the headless piper comes.’ Her feet too were bare in the grass, her boots neatly placed by the front door.

‘Don’t tell Mhairi that.’ Effie rolled her pale eyes. ‘Besides, you’ve got Norman.’

‘Aye, but there’s none so fierce as you, Effie Gillies, everyone knows that.’

Effie stood at the gate. ‘Is he here?’

Jayne heard the contempt in her words and knew exactly Effie’s feelings about her husband. ‘No, he’s walked back to town to get a measure of the distances. He has an early start in the morning and he wants to make a good impression.’

At that, Effie let the gate spring back behind her as she walked up the path. ‘Can I?’ she asked, thumbing towards the front door.

‘Of course,’ Jayne smiled, her hands never pausing from their work. Click-clack, click-clack. It was as much the sound of her home as her father’s pipe was the smell of it.

Effie walked through the cottage quickly, lest Norman should unexpectedly return. The layout was identical but there was no need of a dividing sheet in the bedroom, a jug of heather already sat prettily on the kitchen table and Jayne had hung curtains at the windows, bringing a shock of colour and sense of homely cheer. The small distinctions between their two homes seemed more significant, amplified even, than if they’d been back on the isle and Effie felt a sense of failure that she couldn’t – or hadn’t – done more to bring a feminine touch to their own home. Would that kind of thing matter here? She had never thought her duties as a good daughter needed to extend to fripperies before; what little pride her father had in her stemmed from her ability to climb a rope faster than any other on the isle. But she already sensed there would need to be new ways of pleasing him here. She resolved to pick some heather on her way back down the road again. It could sit in the milk pail till they got their cow back.