‘—Father!’ With a start, remembering why she was even here, she jumped out of the car and ran through, her skirt hanging low on her hips, the bent nail not quite bent enough. Steam billowed like a drunken sea mist as she looked up and then down the platform. She could see no sign of Sholto but it cleared just enough for her to catch sight of a silhouetted man making his way unsteadily, leaning heavily on his stick. Her father was stooped and seemed smaller than she remembered, even his cloth cap seeming too big for his head.

She ran towards the frail figure with a gasp. Until that moment, she hadn’t realized how much she’d missed him. How much more she had left to lose. What would he do without her when justice came?

‘Father!’ she cried.

‘Effie,’ he breathed, looking relieved to see her. She threw her arms around his neck and inhaled the smell of him – black twist tobacco and peat smoke; the smell of home . . . It was all too much. She began to sob for what she’d lost, for what she’d got back, for what she could never have.

Her father patted her back as he’d always done when she was little. ‘There, there,’ he said kindly. He hadn’t hugged her in four years, not since John had died, but his large, rough hands felt familiar and comforting, reminding her of happier times before their family had been cleaved by death. It only made her cry harder. ‘We’re together again lass. Things will be better now.’

They’d never been parted in eighteen years and if he only knew how much had happened in the past eleven days. ‘I missed you, Father,’ she said, pulling back eventually and wiping the tears from her eyes.

‘And I you,’ he said softly. ‘It’s not been the same wi’out you about the place. Too quiet. Too clean.’

She laughed, but the sound was still a half-sob. She noticed something around his neck. It was a placard hung on string.

‘Bearer speaks no English. See through to Auchinleck.’

‘Jayne’s idea,’ he said as Effie pulled it over his head.

‘Well, you won’t be needing that now,’ she said protectively, throwing it into a bin. She was all he had and he was all she had.

She took his bag in one hand and linked her other arm through his. ‘Have we far t’ go?’ he asked. ‘It looks awful flat.’

‘Not far. His lordship’s going to drive us home,’ she said, trying to keep her tone neutral. But she was angry now, and growing angrier at how close they’d just come to having nowhere to go, their livelihood utterly dependent upon the whims of a capricious man.