What she was looking for would be tucked away in cardboard boxes and leather attaché cases; stuff flung up here in the last ten years or so. It would take some sifting through so she would start at her feet and work backwards. The dust was gritty in her throat and her back was aching already but Netta was not deterred. Even if it took all day she would find the bits and pieces of her past among this lot. She would not give Peg the satisfaction of ignoring her requests. There were so many important details of her own journey that were hazy; her memories were often distorted and all mixed up in her brain.

Netta edged herself down on to the floorboards and cleared a space for the lamp. She dusted the nearest square box and opened it. It was a gas mask of all things! How she had hated fire drill and air raid warnings, the smell of the rubber up her nose choking her like a dentist’s mask sending her to sleep. She was made to carry this wretched box across her chest for a whole year until they grew lax at the School and she transferred to the Academy. Inside the box was tucked a handwritten programme for some concert but it was not in her own fancy script but a misspelt list of items. The wartime concerts, of course, with the evacuees from Glasgow. Glory to heaven! There was one bright spark in her schooldays which had brought fireworks to Stratharvar: Wilma Dixey and her brother Malky, the Lang Gang; Miss Lennox and Miss Murchison, their teachers. What a shot in the arm to such a dozy village they were! How Netta wished she had a snapshot of them all lined up on the stage for that first Christmas shindig but film was scarce and saved for only the most important occasions. The coming of the evacuees had been a shock to Stratharvar School and they had certainly changed the direction of her life forever. ‘Oh, Dixie!’ Netta sighed. ‘We were always trouble, you and me. We didn’t have a very good start, did we?’

September 1939

A few weeks after war was declared the Dixeys exploded into Brigg Farm like Catherine wheels: a girl of ten with a shock of straw-coloured hair which stood up like Strewwelpeter’s, and a small boy of about six with knees like doorknobs who looked as if he’d not seen a square meal in years. They seemed to be labelled up and parcelled in brown paper, carrying gas masks and paper bags, following behind Peg’s ample rump like stray pups. Netta, being in her Anne of Green Gables dreamy phase at the time, was not looking forward to sharing all her things with strangers. It was enough trying to be nice to Peg as part of her war effort.