‘When you ran away, I didn’t know if you were alive or dead. And when the letter came – the letter you had written to us from Kelso – I ran down to the Mussel Inn myself to have someone read it out to me, for I thought it would say you had died. But you were still alive, and then the only thing I could think to do was ask Joan to fetch you. It should have been your father, but he is in no fit state to do anything responsible, for he drinks and loses his temper. So there was a time when both my girls were miles away from me, and all I could do was hope and pray.’

I open my mouth to say something, but Ma has an urgency to her, a compulsion, and I think that I must let it take its course. Even though I hate what I am hearing, for it fills me with shame.

‘And when those constables came’ – here even more shame erupts, in a rush – ‘all I could think was that if you had been here, and if I had been looking after you, none of it would have happened. For we would all have taken care of the babe, regardless of whatever had become of Patrick Spencer. And the fact that you felt you could not come home, well, that was the worst thing about it.’

‘It was not for hatred of you that I didn’t want to come home,’ I reply. ‘It was because I had my own wishes for how I wanted to live my life.’ I do not say anything about what happened between Joan and Spencer. I think that is better left unsaid.

‘But we have failed you,’ she goes on. ‘For this has not been much of a home to you, has it?’

‘Mibbie not,’ I admit.

‘And when they said you were to hang, Maggie, that was my biggest failure of all.’

‘I thought you were relieved to see me hanged,’ I say. ‘When I watched you all, for a minute or two after the hanging, and when I came alive again at the Sheep Heid Inn.’

‘I was relieved your suffering was at an end,’ confesses Ma. ‘I was relieved to be bringing you home to rest. But I knew that the end of your life would bring the end of my life. And I was relieved at that too. For I did not want to live much, after that. And everyone was decent enough – we were not shunned or told to leave Fisherrow, or anything like that – so I knew your sister and your da would be fine. But if they could have hanged me on the gallows beside you, I would gladly have let them.’