‘Not yet,’ I say. ‘I have worked in an inn, but I don’t fancy that again – all that cooking and cleaning. I was thinking of selling salt or spices, something like that. Mibbie making some connections in that regard and taking it from there.’

‘That might take a while,’ he muses. ‘The setting-up of connections in trade is not an easy one. Not in honest trade anyway.’

‘I want an honest trade, more than anything,’ I tell him.

The fire burns in the grate and the gulls cry distantly. I cast my eye around the room and think it a cosy one, despite the pamphlets and the chaos of papers. On the desk is a paper bag and the remnants of a pie crust, and I wonder if Mr Munroe has a wife at home or takes his meals alone at his desk all the time.

Finally he seems decided.

‘I could use an assistant here in my office,’ he says. ‘Someone to keep the place neat and tidy and take messages and make tea for visitors.’

‘Oh,’ I reply, taken aback. ‘I had not thought of an office job. I have not worked in any kind of clerking job before. I don’t read well, sir.’

He smiles. ‘But, as you say, you want an honest job. Well, this is honest work. Keeping things ticking over here. Now, will you take it?’

I say I will take it.

When I close Mr Munroe’s door behind me, leaving him to scribble and scrape the details of his new appointment into his books, I must confess I feel proud of myself. The old Maggie Dickson would have been horrified of course. She would never have worked in the office at Fisherrow harbour. But she never reached the London of her dreams, which likely does not exist anyway and is not as decent a place as Fisherrow.

An office assistant! I cannot wait to tell Ma and Joan. I could skip for joy. But then I remember Dr McTavish and my heart sinks.

That night the fishwives come to our cottage to hear their fortunes and to touch my neck.

I had known it was bound to happen sooner or later. They weren’t invited, for Ma would not have welcomed the attention, nor Joan. But rather word got out and I was seen that day at the Friday market and, it being a Friday night, the men were down at the inn and the women were at a loose end, so they came wandering up to ours.