‘You want to look poor,’ she says. ‘So that no one guesses at the fortune you carry. You have quite cleaned me out, my dear, but I dare say it was a good investment. I will make a tidy bit from that perfume, and I could do with it too, for what is to come.’ She grows solemn. ‘Now I am nobody’s fool, but I don’t think I will see you again. I’m not in my first flush of youth and winter is coming, and the Edinburgh winters are wicked. I might need a nurse, and medicines. I nearly succumbed to the past winter, and I do not fancy my chances with this one.’

‘Oh, don’t talk of such things,’ I plead.

‘Age makes us face up to such matters,’ she replies. ‘One day it will make you face up to them too, but that day will be a long time coming. You are not just a survivor, Maggie Dickson – you are reinventing yourself. I see it in the way you carry yourself with confidence. So when you go back to Fisherrow, do not let them dwell on your past. Make them see that you have a bright and shining future.’

She watches as I clamber onto the cart, and the wisps of her hair float in a breeze that sweeps up the street, bringing a few golden leaves with it, and her hair dances around her face.

That is the way I will look back and remember Aunt Jenever, when the snow falls in a few months’ time, and the windows ice up and the winter coughs start.

But for now, forward! The cart leaps into life.

My money is fastened tight under my skirts where no one can reach it.

I have travelled too far in this world, and met too many of its inhabitants, to risk letting it out of my sight.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Fisherrow
October 1724

They say many things of fishwives. That we are gossips, and that we are rough and coarse and loud. That we are greedy, and that we berate and browbeat our poor husbands. That we pile our coins high, and that we strive to break out of our place in the world, although we really know nothing but fish. And that we stink.

Many of these things may be true of us, from time to time. But we know of far more than just fish.

We know of freezing mornings, monstrously dark, standing on the beach as the sun rises and the boats go out, picking up shellfish with our bare hands. We know of grit under our fingernails that never scrubs quite clean, and we know of waiting for boats to return as the storms rise. We know of back-breaking work.

Proud as I am of that life, and though it has taught me much about being resilient, I want more now, for me and Ma and Joan.