‘But is Edinburgh home?’ asks Betty. ‘Does it feel like a place where you could live out the rest of your days?’

Well, of course it does not, for I know that if I stay in Edinburgh I will put Mrs Rose in a lair, and I will drink more and more gin and live out my days as Half-Hanged Maggie: half-woman, half-myth. And the thing with Dr McTavish, well, it will always be staring me in the face every time I walk past his well-appointed rooms. I will always look up and think I catch a glimpse in the boarded-up window of something awful.

I turn to Betty.

‘Let me come back with you today,’ I say suddenly. ‘If there’s room on the cart. I’ll squeeze in and come home and see everyone.’

There are shrieks of excitement at that, but I urge the fishwives not to make more of a fuss, for I do not want word leaking out and somehow getting back to Dr McTavish that I am running away.

The Fisherrow carts leave town at three of the clock. At five to three I go back. I have my belongings from Aunt Jenever’s, and she was unsurprised to see me flee. I told her I was going home, but if anyone should ask, then the story is that I have finally gone to London, to make my fortune there.

Dr McTavish will come looking for me, see, and I want to muddy the trail. I did not tell Aunt Jenever about him. I do not want her to try to talk me out of it, or get her into any of my own trouble.

By five past three I am back with the fishwives, tucked amongst them and hidden under my scarf. The cart rolls out of Fishmarket Close and off down the High Street. The women rub their feet and roll their shoulders and pat my arms, and tell me what a good choice I have made, coming home.

I think of Mrs Rose going about her business in Greyfriars, none the wiser to any of this. I think of Dr McTavish waiting for me to arrive tomorrow with her, waiting and waiting and growing more restless and urgent and furious, and finally realizing in the small hours that I am not going to come.

He will look for me. I know it. He will search the streets and quiz Aunt Jenever and eventually he will hear word that I fled with the fishwives.

I think of Patrick Spencer.

But for now, home is the safest place I can be.

It is the only place I want to be.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Fisherrow
October 1724

It is not quite supper time when I arrive home, and the cottage looks smaller than I remember, with no sign of life and no smoke billowing from the chimney. I don’t know what greeting I will be met with.