Back then, I lived with Ma, Da and Joan in the tiny cottages at Fisherrow Harbour in Musselburgh, on the Firth of Forth. We lived in close quarters – too close. They call Musselburgh the Honest Toun on account of the nature of its folk, which is by and large true, for it is a town of fishwives and fishermen and mill workers. Industrious, from riverbank to beach. By day it hums with machinery that makes coarse, cheap cloth for servants’ gowns. By night it thrums with the waves that bring the whitefish home from the shallow estuary waters to the wooden pier at the harbour.

An honest toun. But I don’t think you could say honest types came in and out of our particular cottage. It was barely even a cottage, just one big room with a box-bed, like all the others on the row. Da was out on the water five days a week, dawn ’til dusk when the weather allowed it, and when he was not on the water he was at the Mussel Inn. He was part of a crew of men who worked one of the Fisherrow boats and we were all glad when he went and dreaded his return, for the certain thing you could say about Da – whether he was out on the estuary or whether he was on shore – was that he was an angry man. He carried resentment around with him like a companion. He was angry at his lowly status in life and had schemes afoot to try to get himself out of it, but they never came to anything much.

Me and Joan helped Ma clean the lines and fix the bait, then sell our share of the catch on a stall at the harbour, where fishmongers from all around would come each morning, so our hands were more often than not red-raw and tinged with whelk and mussel brine and cuts from the hooks.

Ma’s hands were the most weather-beaten and work-beaten you have ever seen. She would hide them under soft suede gloves, which she bought from the haberdasher on Musselburgh High Street, when she went to kirk or whenever she ventured out of Fisherrow. None of the other fishwives bothered. Ma was different, like that.

One day she came home with a new pair that looked soft as a baby’s skin. Palest pink, they were, and long too, so that they stretched halfway up her arms.

‘Summer gloves,’ she said, showing them off to me and Joan. ‘The haberdasher says ladies wear them on day-trips.’

Joan and I cooed over them, although I could not think of anything worse than having to wear gloves on a hot day. When Da saw her put them on the next Sunday morning, just as we were about to leave for kirk, his face soured. He was already hungover and grey and was looking for a fight.