‘What a relief to see you,’ she replies. ‘We didn’t know what to do, and when we heard you’d been released from jail, we knew you needed to be left to make up your own mind about whether to come home.’

‘I needed time to think,’ I tell her.

‘Mibbie Joan can put a fresh pot of tea on,’ says Ma and she sits down at the table.

Joan busies herself – Joan busies herself! – and Ma regards me with a pucker to her lip.

‘Are you back to stay?’

‘I am back for the time being,’ I answer, for truthfully I am here to hide from Dr McTavish, all the while knowing that a half-hanged woman cannot hide for long.

Ma sits, chin in one hand and the other hand running idly up and down the wood grain of the table. Her hands look bonier and more scarred than ever. I take a deep breath.

‘I have let you down badly. I have shamed you,’ I tell her.

Ma’s gaze doesn’t lift from the table, but there’s a flicker in her jaw. ‘I have not been a good enough mother to you, Maggie Dickson,’ she says. ‘You ran and ran, didn’t you? Ran until you were dragged back.’

‘No one dragged me back today,’ I reply. ‘Motherhood is hard, Ma. All the world looking upon us, waiting for us to put a foot wrong. I did not want it – the babe was an accident. I was feared of childbirth, and of the hard work of being a mother. But it seems there is another side to it altogether, and that is the way we are judged.’

‘You can judge me all you like,’ she tells me. ‘You are my daughter, after all.’

‘I do not judge you,’ I answer.

Ma makes to say something, but her voice sticks in her throat and what comes out is something else entirely. A sob, a heave and she puts her face in her hands. My heart rises in my chest and I don’t know what to say, so I say nothing. Eventually she wipes her face and clears her throat.

‘I have mourned you so many times, I am frightened to take you back into my heart again,’ she whispers.

Oh, Ma!