‘But it’s mine! Mammy said it was for me to have the rainbow necklace. She can’t have it!’ The child stood defiantly, expecting him to back down.

‘Haud yer wheest! She did no such thing. Jeanie wore it on her wedding day. Peg is yer mother now.’ Angus made towards the child.

‘That pink blancmange is no my mother. If I can’t wear my beads, I’m no going to yer wedding…’

He dragged the girl, taffeta skirts rustling, out into the passageway and took his razor strap to her backside. This is for cheeking Peg on her wedding day! Never talk to my wife like that again or you’re no a daughter of mine. This is her home now. You can stay in your room all day for all I care but Peg can choose what she wants to wear without your permission, missie. Do you hear me?’

Steely-eyed, red with tears and with a stinging backside and crumpled dress, Netta stood stony-faced with the rest of the small congregation gathered for the service. Later they went to the Stratharvar Hotel for high tea and she drank lemonade while the grown-ups drank whisky. Then Netta was sent to stay next door with the Patersons for a long weekend while Peg and Angus took the train to Edinburgh for their honeymoon.

Peg had no stomach to wear Angus’s gift after all the carry on. A dead woman’s promise had spoiled the pleasure of it all so she made do with the corsage of roses and white heather. The necklace was put carefully back in its box and she never touched it again.

May 1949, Friday

Peg lay wide awake now. Only two days of the visit left. It was no use stirring up old wounds. Netta could turn the attic over all morning if it kept her out of the kitchen. What she’s really after is no up there, Peg thought to herself, and it’s no hers for the taking either.

Netta opened the trap door and sniffed the dusty air. A moth fluttered towards her lamp, casting flickering shadows. The floor was cluttered with the flotsam and jetsam of departed Nichols packed in boxes and cabin trunks; a musty graveyard, overgrown and neglected in the usual out-of-sight, out-of-mind way of most attic dumping grounds. All the history of the ancient family must be at her feet but she was in no mood to explore the distant past.