Still, she was but a quarter mile behind the men. The land rolled in heathered waves all around and had any of them looked back, they would have caught sight of her solitary figure; but they had disappeared from view now and she hastened to a jog, the distant purple hills inching closer. She summited a small hillock and looked down into the shallow dip where the forestry yard was sited. It was just a courtyard with several large storage buildings in it – larger than she’d ever seen – and huge stacked piles of logs that had once been trees. Shorn of their bushy heads and enquiring arms, they lay denuded and inert and she couldn’t help but think of the life that had once flourished within and on them, and had been cast out to find other homes. There were several trucks parked at one end and a sequence of long, low huts with tin roofs. She could see some of the men she had grown up with standing in the doorway of the middle one, their attention on something within.

She broke into a sprint for the final few hundred yards, not wanting to miss anything.

‘Hey,’ she panted, drawing up beside Finlay and Angus McKinnon standing at the back. ‘Did I miss anything?’

Angus looked down at her, an open look of scorn crossing his face as he took in the sight of her. She was taken aback to see it. She knew their rivalry back home had sometimes crossed lines but she had hoped that here, where they were all among strangers, a familiar face would be accepted as a friendly one. ‘What are you doing here?’ he sneered.

‘Same as you. Reporting for work,’ she tossed back, standing on tiptoe and looking forward as she tried to see who was in charge.

A laugh of disbelief escaped him.

‘This isn’t the parliament now, Effie,’ his brother Fin hissed as she put a hand to his shoulder for balance. ‘Get, now. Things are different here. You can’t stay. The women are in the town.’

‘That’s no good for me,’ she whispered back.

Fin shrugged his shoulder, trying to dislodge her. ‘Effie, stop with your games. This is serious now. We’ve all to adapt and that includes you.’

The voice that had been speaking stopped.

‘. . . You. At the back. Is something wrong?’ a man enquired from the other side of the room. Effie wasn’t tall enough to see to whom it belonged.

‘Actually, yes, sir,’ Angus replied, lifting his chin so that everyone could see he was the one talking. ‘There’s someone here who says she’s come to report for work.’

‘Sssht, get,’ Finlay hissed at her again as everyone turned. He was younger than his eldest brother by three years and two years older than her. ‘. . . We’ve all to make a good fist of it. Don’t cause a nuisance, Effie, just for once in your life.’