One evening, Joan sat at her broth, dipping her bread in and saying very little, and then afterwards she sat silently by the fire as I helped Ma wash up. Then she said she would walk me home.

‘I am capable of walking myself,’ I told her.

‘Let Joan walk you,’ said Ma. ‘It will do her good to get a stretch of her legs.’

So we put on our shawls and Ma put together a package of bread and butter and milk for me, not knowing about my stash of money of course, and we headed straight into the icy wind and the roar of the choppy waters. I was desperate to get out of the gale and reach home as fast as I could, but Joan gripped my hand.

‘I can’t live with Da a minute longer,’ she said. ‘You’ll need to let me come and stay with you a while, Maggie. Say you will.’ The wind almost took her words, but I heard them good and proper. My heart sank. I shook her off.

‘But I am a married woman now,’ I replied. ‘Spencer will come back, I know he will. You can’t just take his place.’

‘And when he comes back I’ll move home again, I promise,’ Joan said, ‘And he will come back – we know that. But give me a few weeks. I’m at my wits’ end.’ She looked desperate.

‘Has something happened?’ I asked. ‘Has he hit you again?’

She looked away, but her grip on my hand tightened.

‘He pushed me,’ she said. ‘It happened this morning. He put his hand on my chest and pushed me out of the way. Nothing happened really, but it scared me. He’d calmed down a bit since your wedding, and I thought mibbie having another man in the family meant Da might be feared of getting a punch himself from Spencer, if he stepped out of line.’

‘But Spencer’s gone now,’ I said. I started walking again, to get round the corner and into town. I felt sick thinking of Da, then even sicker thinking of poor Spencer out there, at the mercy of the sea.

‘Please don’t turn me away, Sister,’ pleaded Joan.

I suppose it came to this: that, bicker and bitch as we might, I would not turn my sister away.

‘All right, you can stay,’ I agreed. ‘But I am not running around looking after you, Joan Dickson. You will have to do chores. I am not soft on you, like Ma. And you’ll do as you’re told, for I am mistress of my own house. Do you promise?’

But she barely gave me ’til the end of the sentence, for as soon as she saw that I had relented she stopped in her tracks and squeezed me tight in a most uncharacteristic hug, and I ended up finishing my speech into her shawl.