Dorothy looks solemn now. ‘My dear Maggie, is this to be goodbye?’

‘I think so,’ I tell her. ‘I cannot see myself returning here, for all my family are by the Forth and that is where I belong.’ I suddenly want to talk to her about Mr Munroe, the harbourmaster, and that I felt something for him, an affection towards him that I haven’t felt towards a man for a while. Dorothy would understand and would tell me what to do, how to behave with him. But I can’t say anything like that in front of Cornelius, and anyway Mr Munroe might not even wish to see me again. Not after I left him in the lurch like that – upped and off on my first day working for him.

‘But you must return for visits, and we can take a night out together and drink a bottle of wine, can’t we?’ she pleads.

‘Indeed we shall,’ I say. But I know, in my heart, I will not return. And that is nothing to do with Dorothy, for she is a most amusing and entertaining woman really. But I am not at home in Edinburgh, the town that tried to hang me.

‘I shall find a boy with a cart,’ says Cornelius, ‘whilst you say goodbye to Aunt Jenever.’

The woman herself is just emerging. Ready to fill her customers with gin and make their troubles disappear for a few hours. She comes creaking down the stairs, her skirts sighing with age.

‘The very woman, for I have something you might want to buy from me, at a very good price,’ I say, reaching for the perfume box. ‘Patrick Spencer sells these bottles in his perfume emporium up the street, and terribly expensive they are too. But I have obtained a few and I am sure you can do something with them.’

Aunt Jenever picks up a bottle of the perfume and unstoppers it and dabs some on. The scent of musk and spice rises from her wrist.

‘Oh,’ breathes Dorothy, ‘that is magnificent.’

‘Can you take them?’ I ask Aunt Jenever.

She sniffs her wrist and nods her head.

‘It is mighty strong, though. I might need to water it down – what say you, Cornelius? I’m sure I have something in my gin shop we could dilute it with. We’d have twice the bottles then, would we not? And make much more coin!’

We agree a nice price, and it is not long before my cart is waiting, with an impatient boy and an impatient horse, and I am saying my goodbyes to Aunt Jenever.

She comes outside with me and fastens a threadbare shawl round me.