Chapters (43)
- Pronunciation
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Acknowledgments
The woman delivered four steaming plates to the table. Some kind of meat in a gravy swimming with grease, and potatoes boiled to the point of disintegration. The man closed his eyes and muttered something in a language I didn’t understand, then as he started to eat he said to us in English, “My name is Donald Seamus. This is my sister, Mary-Anne. Mr. and Miss Gillies to you. This is our house, and this is your home now. Forget wherever it is you came from. That’s history. From now on you’ll be Donald John and Donald Peter Gillies, and if you don’t do what you’re told, so help me you’ll regret the day you were born.” He shoved a forkful of food into his mouth and glanced at his sister as he chewed on it. She remained silent and passive the whole time. He looked back at us. “We speak Gaelic in this house, so you’d better learn it bloody fast. Just like the poor souls who speak Gaelic in the English court, if you utter a word of English in my presence you’ll be deemed not to have spoken. Is that understood?”
I nodded, and Peter glanced at me for confirmation before nodding too. I had no idea what Gaelic was, or how it would be possible for me to speak it. But I didn’t say so.
When we had finished eating, he handed me a shovel and said, “You’ll be needing to relieve yourselves before you go to bed. You can just water the heather. But if you need anything more you can dig a hole for it. Not too near the house, mind.”
And so we were tipped out into the night to do our toilet. The wind had risen, and clouds scurried across the vast expanse of sky overhead, moonlight flitting in sporadic bursts across the hillside. I led Peter away from the house to where we had an uninterrupted view back across the water, and I began to dig, wondering what on earth we would do if it was raining.
“Hiya!” The little voice, caught on the wind, startled us both, and I turned in amazement to find Catherine standing there grinning at us in the dark.
I could barely formulate the question. “How . . . ?”
“I saw you come across in the wee boat, about half an hour after me.” She turned and pointed across the hillside. “I’m just over there, with Mrs. O’Henley. She says I’ve to be called Ceit now. Funny spelling. C - E - I - T. But pronounced Kate. It’s Gaelic.”
“Ceit,” I said. And I liked the sound of it.
“It seems we’re what they call homers. Kids that the fucking Church has dumped here from the mainland. There’s dozens of us on this wee island.” Her face clouded for a moment. “I thought I’d lost you.”