“A boy or a girl from a home, a ghràidh. There were hundreds of them taken out of orphanages and local authority homes by the councils and the Catholic Church, and shipped out here to the islands. Just handed over to complete strangers, they were. No vetting in those days. Kids were dumped off the ferry at Lochboisdale to stand on the pier with family names tied around their necks, waiting to be claimed. The primary school up on the hill there was full of them. Nearly a hundred at one time.”

Fin was shocked. “I had no idea.”

Morag lit a cigarette and puffed away on it as she spoke. “Aye, they were at it right into the sixties. I once heard the priest saying it was good to have fresh blood in the islands after generations of inbreeding. I think that was the idea. Though they weren’t all orphans, you know. Some came from broken homes. But there was no going back. Once you got sent out here all ties with the past were cut. You were forbidden contact with parents or family. Poor little bastards. Some of them got terribly abused. Beaten, or worse. Most were just treated like slave labour. A few were luckier, like me.”

Fin raised an eyebrow. “You were a homer?”

“I was, Mr. Macleod. Boarded with a family at Parks, over on the other side of the island. All gone now, of course. No children of their own, you see. But unlike many, I have happy memories of my time here. Which is why I had no problems about coming back.” She emptied her glass. “I need a wee top-up. How about you?”

“No thanks.” Fin had barely touched his.

Morag moved Dino off her knee and eased herself out of the settee to pour another drink. “Of course, it wasn’t just the locals who gave the kids a hard time. There were incomers, too. Mostly English. Like the headmaster at Daliburgh school.” She smiled. “Thought he was coming here to civilize us, a ghràidh, and banned the Gillean Cullaig.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s the name they gave to the Hogmanay tradition when gangs of boys went around the houses on New Year’s Eve blessing each house with a poem, and being rewarded with bread and scones, and cake and fruit. All dropped into the white flour sacks they carried. They’d been doing it for centuries. But Mr. Bidgood thought it smacked of begging, and issued an edict forbidding any of his pupils to take part.”

“And everyone obeyed?”

“Well, most did. But there was one boy in my class. Donald John. A homer. He boarded with the Gillies family, a brother and sister, over there on the other side the hill. He defied the ban and went out with the older boys. When Bidgood found out he gave that lad such a leathering with the tawse.”