I think I had a couple of weeks of this before I was called to the office with news. A parish official sat behind the desk and the constable stood next to him. Matron stood beside me and, though there was a chair and I was exhausted, I was not invited to sit in it.

‘You will be removed to Edinburgh,’ the parish official said. ‘A coach is being readied as we speak.’ There was a parchment in front of him, lying on the desk, and he kept pointing to it with his gloved fingers. It was crammed full of looped writing.

‘What does that note say?’ I asked. ‘Who’s it from?’

He looked surprised, as if he did not expect me to be so curious about my own fate.

‘It is from the clerk of the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh,’ he said. ‘In response to the letter sent by the constables of Kelso. It requires that you are brought to the court to have your case heard there. It says,’ here he frowned as though reading something distasteful, ‘that the accusation of concealment of pregnancy is a grievous one and must heard in the capital, not the shires, so that it can be given due scrutiny by learned judges.’

‘The child’s body is already in Edinburgh,’ added the constable. ‘At the Incorporation of Surgeons and Barbers. They are conducting post-mortem tests on it, to try to determine its cause of death.’

Bile rose in my throat, and I thought I might vomit. I staggered. Matron put her hand on my back. They all stared.

‘Someone ought to inform your kin,’ said the parish official. ‘If you give details, we will have a letter drawn up. The constable will take it; he is accompanying you. Your family will have to make preparations for you to be admitted to the jail next to the courthouse. You’ll need suitable clothing and blankets, and food sent.’

I was hot, too hot, as though a fever was coming. My armpits and the back of my neck erupted in sweat. ‘But my ma and da can’t read,’ I gasped, ‘and it will come as a terrible shock to them. They will need the letter read out to them, and my sister too, although Joan knows full well the baby was born alive. She was there. You will need to find Joan.’ Everything felt like it was galloping at me, and I had to grip onto the chair to steady myself.

‘Careful with what you say to her,’ admonished the constable to the parish official. ‘She is nervous and agitated. But I’ll keep a note of this Joan and will make sure she is questioned.’

‘We will send her up to Edinburgh with blankets and an extra shawl,’ said Matron, ‘or she will perish on the journey and that will be the fault of us in the shires.’

Everyone agreed to that, with a round of reluctant grunts.