Oh, I had been green all right. Perhaps I ought to forget all about him. But then what would I tell the baby when it asked about its da? A hero lost at sea? Or that one day Daddy might be back. Any day now.

‘You are doing well for yourself now, Maggie, aren’t you, though?’ Joan interrupted my thoughts, as she’d always had a habit of doing. ‘To afford a letter sent by post.’

‘I am doing all right,’ I agreed.

She screwed up her face.

‘There’s something new about you, though. You look well. Wholesome. It must be the change in the air.’

Oh God, she will guess, she will guess. ‘I am the same as I ever was,’ I huffed, pulling my shawl about me.

But Joan was undeterred. She came closer – so close I could feel her breath on my face. She smelled like home: of old smoke and old fishing lines. I must have smelled the same once. She put her finger on my chin and tilted my face up.

‘Oh, you are wearing rouge, you wench!’ she shrieked. ‘Rouge right there, on your cheeks. ‘Are you a whore, Maggie? Is that what’s become of you in Kelso?’

‘I am not a whore, you cheeky cow,’ I told her. ‘I found some rouge lying around, left by another patron at the inn where I live. And how long have you been in Kelso anyway?’

She blushed. ‘A couple of days,’ she admitted. ‘I arrived at the River Inn, but I couldn’t face speaking to you.’

‘So where have you been sleeping?’

‘Two nights under the stars,’ she said. ‘When I told Ma I was coming to find you, she gave me ten shillings, but I did not want to waste them.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake.’ Joan was impossible. ‘Anything could have happened to you. Men are passing in and out of this town all the time. Thieves and runaways, and all sorts. And besides all that, there are parish officers who police the town for immoral behaviour, and there’s a House of Correction down the road where you’d be sent as a vagrant.’

‘Well, I’m a vagrant no more,’ she replied firmly. ‘I’ve found you. So we can be together now, can’t we? You and I. Sisters again.’ She took my hands in hers then and squeezed them.