My poor broken ma. She sinks back into her chair – her rickety chair in her smoky parlour – her only home comforts stolen crockery and meat bought with the profits of smuggled tea. She wipes her face with her hands again, her red-knuckled hands scarred with cuts from fish hooks and gutting knives.

‘I came home to make things right again,’ I tell her. It’s not quite the truth, but I do earnestly mean it now.

‘How did you survive that hanging, Maggie?’ she asks. ‘All of the others that were hanged that day died. Only you survived. Do you think we were given a second chance – our family?’

‘I cannot tell you how I survived,’ I say to Ma, for that is the truth. I cannot tell her I bribed a hangman, for I do not want to burden her with that knowledge. ‘All I can say is that I sit here today with you, and we are a family once again.’

Joan comes back with the tea, and with something else.

‘Look, Maggie, some sage from the garden – we can make a poultice for your neck.’

It is likely a bit late for poultices now, but I let her do it: chop the leaves and mix them with hot water, and put it all in a muslin cloth. I tell them I’ve put no poultice on my neck, nor did anyone in Edinburgh offer, and Ma tuts and asks does no one in Edinburgh know how to do anything right, but drink gin and haggle over the price of fish?

And then we three talk. Ma tells me that Joan has her eye on a mill man, and Joan blushes and says let’s change the subject. Then we talk about our lost Susanna, like I had never imagined we would. Joan tells Ma about Susanna’s delicate skin and little face, and Ma talks about her own lost babes, and for the first time I feel I can talk openly about my babe. And even though the poor soul still floats somewhere in Edinburgh, in a physician’s jar, I feel as though she is part of my family.

All this lasts until Da comes home.

I first know he is here by the way Ma’s face falls at his footsteps outside the door, which are so faint I cannot hear them myself, but her ears are trained to listen out for them. Joan stiffens.

Da walks into the parlour and drops his bag. It thuds onto the mat. He is smaller than I remember, and rougher-looking too. He needs a haircut and his smock is filthy.

‘I thought you were living in Edinburgh now,’ he says.

‘I have come home for a while,’ I tell him.

‘Well, there is no room for you,’ he replies. ‘We cannot have us all sharing a bed, now you are married.’