‘I’m not wearing someone else’s clothes.’

‘Uh . . . you already are,’ Angus stage-whispered.

‘Look,’ the foreman said. ‘You said yourself you need to earn a wage to put food on the table. And how else can you do that if you won’t meet Mrs Buchanan’s standards?’

‘Well, not the other way, that’s for sure. No one’d pay for her,’ Angus drawled, emboldened by the men’s enduring silence.

If he thought he was quick-witted, Effie proved her fists were faster and she connected a strong sucker-punch to his kidneys – just the way John had taught her – before he’d finished laughing at his own joke. He staggered sideways for a few steps before he could recover himself.

‘Beaten up by a girl?’ she crowed through the red mist as he advanced towards her with an open hand.

The foreman positioned himself between the two warring St Kildans.

‘That will do,’ he said firmly, standing eyeball to eyeball with the younger man and making his intention plain. Angus’s hand dropped.

Effie breathed heavily as she stared at Angus over the foreman’s shoulder. She felt wild. She wanted to continue the fight, to show him – all of them – that she wasn’t what they said she was: weak, frail, feeble. She would defend herself no matter what. He had no idea what she was capable of, the things she had done . . . Her bloodlust was still up. It had been since the night before evacuation, outside the kirk, and nothing since could make it settle. Her heart was jumpy, her nerves scattered.

But the argument was already lost. No matter how strong or brave or hard-working she might be, whatever merits she might offer, this was simply a question of how things looked, and she couldn’t fight that. Her presence there would be an embarrassment. This was how things were over here. These were the things that mattered.

Without another word, she turned and left the hut.

‘You’re crazy, you know that? You’re out of control!’ Angus shouted after her. ‘You think you’re something special but you’re not. You’re nothing, Effie Gillies! You hear me? Nothing!’

She could hear the low whirr of the spinning wheels, the clack of the looms, before she’d even stepped through the door, a buzz of chatter bouncing over the machines the way a woodpecker flew, in a rising and falling rhythm.