To Netta’s astonishment her father climbed the stairs and helped them settle down without another murmur.

The evacuees were now sharing the use of Stratharvar School which ran two working shifts. In the mornings Miss Armour Broun and Mr McCurdy took the local pupils, and in the afternoon Miss Lennox and Miss Murchison ruled over the visitors. Officially they mixed only when necessary but there were many informal skirmishes behind the hedges and in the dykes, and especially on the green when the Glasgow boys kicked the football and the shins of the local eleven. On the way home, however, having the advantage of the lay of the land, Netta’s school friends got their revenge. There were chessie fights with conkers the size of ping-pong balls, and hit and run raids. When the locals were tied down in their classrooms the Dixeys and the Lang brothers and all the other Glasgow toerags roamed over Stratharvar district, getting into mischief, pulling down washing lines and stealing from the delivery vans.

‘Wilma Dixey is so light-fingered she’d steal the salt off my porridge if I didn’t watch her,’ Netta moaned to her school friends. Then she noticed her pencils were disappearing, her rubber and her purple crayon too. Her satchel was no longer safe slung over the banister rail at the foot of the stairs. Her favourite tartan ribbons that finished off her two plaits disappeared next. She couldn’t prove anything, but when her precious packet of ju-jubes walked out of her room, she decided to take action.

Netta found the tablet of Ex-Lax laxative, kept for emergencies, wrapped in silver paper in the medicine cabinet alongside the suppositories and Syrup of Figs. Peg kept everyone dosed in winter. Netta found some old silvery toffee paper and wrapped pieces of laxative up neatly, leaving them perched on her satchel for all to see. ‘That’ll teach you!’ She smiled, waiting for Miss Greedy Guts to pounce. It did not take long for it all to vanish. When they were all tucking into their prunes and custard, Netta started counting her stones.

‘Silk, satin, calico, lace… I’m lace!’

‘No, yer no! It’s silk, satin, cotton, rags and you’s just rags,’ piped up Wilma. ‘I’m gonna be dressed in silk, see?’

Netta ignored her and called to Peg, ‘I left some laxatives on my satchel but they seem to have vanished. Anyway I don’t need them now… yon stuff goes through me like the Royal Scot!’

She saw Wilma going green as she bent her head. That night Netta noted with grim glee that the evacuee was up and down to the lavvy, clutching her stomach. Something to confess to the parish priest who called each Sunday to take the pair off to the little Catholic Chapel down the coast.