We had to wait half an hour for Sheriff McAllister, and I spent it watching the time tick past nine of the clock on a brass lantern clock that hung on a wood-panelled wall, and searching the assembled mass for my family.

I could hear what was being said about me loud and clear, for no one seemed to care if they spoke too loudly in my presence.

‘She has the broad shoulders of a fishwife, look – she would have crushed that baby to death quite easily!’

‘No wonder the husband joined the Navy; look how she scowls, imagine the temper on her!’

‘The hangman’s work will be cut out for him, for she will kick like a mule on the rope, mark my words!’

And then the chuckles and the guffaws, and the passing of hip flasks and the sniff of snuff-taking, and the crunch of comfits and the scraping of quills as the hand of the clock dragged itself forward, inch by inch.

I could not see Ma or Da or anyone else amongst the spectators. My dress itched and stank of damp. My young advocate, Mr Suttie, kept himself deep in conversation with the man next to him, but would constantly wipe his hands on his breeches, which made me think he was nervous. Finally Sheriff McAllister appeared.

‘Bring in the witnesses,’ he said, and at that a man opened a door and out poured everyone I knew. The Baxters, Cook, Ma, Da, Joan and even the fisherman who had found the baby. Ma wore a black gown I had never seen before, so it must have been new, and a pair of black gloves. She looked more sombre than I had ever seen her, as though in mourning for me already. Da looked bedraggled, as though he had just got off the boat. Joan trembled. Ma looked about the room, searching for me, and when she found me her face collapsed like wet sand. She buckled and Da had to grip her arm and make her stand up properly, and a murmur swept around the room that sounded like ‘Shame, shame’.

That was when I really understood how awful it all was.

They put Da on the stand first. He looked sober and scared. A man called Lord Leith led the prosecution, which is to say that he probed around, looking to make me out to be a baby-killer, and occasionally Mr Suttie would stand up and object.

‘We are trying to establish a picture of Mistress Dickson’s life and background,’ announced Lord Leith. ‘What sort of a daughter would you say she was?’

‘She was a good girl, she was brought up to be decent and law-abiding and God-fearing,’ said Da, his voice weak and gravelly compared to the strident tones of the other men. ‘Until she met a man called Patrick Spencer and it all went downhill from there.’