‘Who do you think you are, buying fancies like these?’ he scoffed.

‘I can’t take these old hands into the kirk,’ said Ma. ‘These mitts are light and airy.’

‘You’re ashamed of your work,’ growled Da. ‘Embarrassed of who you are.’

I pretended my boot laces needed tightening and cowered over my feet. I could hear Joan swallow nervously next to me.

‘God knows I’m not ashamed of myself,’ said Ma.

Da held out his hands for the gloves. Ma hesitated, for she knew that if Da took them, she might not get them back.

They stood there like that for a moment or two. We were all crowded near the front door, and I did not dare stand up or say anything.

‘Please don’t take the gloves. They were expensive,’ said Ma.

‘Keep them then,’ he said. ‘And use them to cover those ugly hands of yours.’

If it sounds unpleasant, it was – watching him leave the house in a bad mood and seeing Ma wipe tears from her eyes, staining her new pink gloves. But at least he had not hit her that morning, likely because he might have felt guilty about it, sitting in kirk.

But now you will be wondering how Ma could afford such nice gloves from the Musselburgh haberdasher. Well, the fishing life was only half our story. By night, visitors came to our cottage. Folks from near and far. Folks we knew, and others who were strangers who knew of us. For we were not just fisher folk. We were caught up in the world of tea-smuggling, which I suppose sounds very daring, but to me was simply ordinary life. The visitors would bring sacks of black tea from the Orient that had slipped their way to Scotland via Gothenburg, in the Swedish empire, and these folks always stayed for a cup to sample it. Da – or Ma, if he was out – would hold on to these sacks for a few days, hiding them in a cavity under the box-bed, which was in a cupboard off the kitchen side of the room, then pass these sacks on to other folks that came a-calling for them with codewords.