‘You’re back,’ her father said as she opened the gate. He was sitting by the door in his chair, smoking his pipe. A figure, crudely carved, was beginning to emerge from the stick resting on his lap. She wondered how long he’d been working on it today.

She forced a wan smile. ‘Aye. And I have dinner.’ She held up the bag of mutton chops the butcher had given her ‘on account’ till her first wages were paid. After work, she had stood and queued in a room lined with white shiny walls with Flora, Jayne, Lorna and Mhairi’s mother, Rachel. There’d been no sign of Mhairi still. ‘Her nerves,’ Rachel had tutted, as they stood meekly awaiting the butcher’s beneficence. ‘The journey did for her.’ One of the men had come through from the back at that moment and she’d glimpsed great carcasses hanging from hooks, blood running like a river into the drain. It had seemed a grotesque emblem for this land of plenty where food, and therefore survival, could be assumed.

‘It’s a treat and no mistake,’ she said, walking through to the kitchen and dropping the brown paper parcel on the table. It rocked slightly, the four legs – like her bed – not quite touching at once on the uneven floor. ‘We got mutton chops but there’s a butcher in the village with a choice like you’ve never seen. We could have had kidneys, or hogget . . .’ The butcher had laughed as the St Kildan women had looked on at the trays of assorted cuts with astonished expressions – so much choice; so much just there. ‘Well, not today. He was doling it out, like it or not today, but once my wages are in hand, we can choose what we get.’ She pulled out the potatoes and leeks and set them on the table. ‘Can you imagine that? What will you want when we can choose?’

Her father shuffled in, the pipe still dangling from his lips as he bore his weight down on his stick. ‘Whatever’ll survive your boiling it to leather.’

‘Ha!’ she said flatly. ‘Rachel McKinnon got given a shoulder and Jayne’s got kidneys. They were so shiny! Like . . . lips!’ She pulled a face. ‘I’m not sure about those. She’s going to tell me how they taste.’

She bent down to undo her laces, pulling off her boots and socks and spreading her feet on the bare stone. She felt the day’s tension lift off her shoulders, returning something of her to herself.

‘You smell bad,’ her father muttered, sniffing the air.