It was expected of me that I would bring forth children, as my mother had done, and her mother before her. But I had seen what it did to them, the way it changed their bodies and their minds. The mourning of the ones that didn’t survive. The drudge of caring for the ones that lived. Babies changed their mothers. Ma swore she lost a tooth for each one of her pregnancies, as they sucked the very essence from her. Babies scared me. The birth of them. The death of them. I did not hate them or even dislike them.

I just knew I did not want one. Not here, in Kelso – and, if I was being honest with myself, then certainly not in London when I was trying to get myself established.

There was talk, in Fisherrow, of a neighbour who had grown weary of baby-carrying and, at the first sign of her tenth pregnancy, had tried another option. I was a girl when I overheard this story. We were cleaning and gutting in a huddle on the harbour, and my hands were near numb from the cold. As I dipped my hands into the basin of catch, the low gasp in my ma’s voice caught my attention as the story unravelled. I can’t remember the details; didn’t really understand them. But one woman said, ‘She tried to bring it down before the quickening’; and another said, ‘She visited a house in Edinburgh’; and the first said, ‘She nearly bled to death – they used an iron skewer’ and there were more gasps and shudders. My gutting knife nearly slipped out of my fingers. The icy water burned my skin. Another woman said, ‘Did she not douche after the conjugals?’; and yet another said, ‘Shh, the youngsters will hear.’

I did not know what a douche was, although I have figured it out now, and mibbie someone should have told me to douche after my conjugals with Spencer if I did not want a babe, but no one did.

I knew what an iron skewer was, as we kept two by the kitchen fire and we put chickens on them to roast. I knew they pierced flesh.

Fear came to me that morning on the harbour, as I slid my knife into the bellies of fish after fish and spilled their guts onto the slab. If you try to stop a babe once it has started, you might bleed to death. You are better off abandoning it and leaving it at the mercy of the parish. Mibbie that would be the best thing. But I needed the anonymity of London to do that, for if I did it in Kelso, folk might guess it was mine.

Fear came to me again that day in the River Inn when I looked at myself in the mirror and saw the bulge of my stomach.