easy for her, and sometimes she forgot just how much it affected her aunt and uncle and their family too. She followed him through the bottom gate and into the farm courtyard, where the sheep were already gathered around the entrance to their pen, bleating their desire for their dinner. Lizzie helped him usher them in and lift the large grain sacks to feed the sheep, taking a moment to remember.
Thinking back to the time five years before, which had been so difficult. Her cousin, Fiona, was that age now. Just fourteen Lizzie had been when she’d fallen in love with Fergus McGregor. The boy from the next farm on Barra. The whole thing seemed so foolish now as she thought back, but she had been convinced she was in love, and they had been barely children, experimenting, caught up in emerging feelings. But what had started out so innocently for her had changed rapidly for him. Lizzie thought back to how it had all turned so ugly so quickly that night and pushed the unbearable memories away. She had confessed it to her best friend, who instead of supporting her had turned against her and turned many of her other friends against her too. The pain of the rejection had been heartbreaking, and she’d vowed she would never trust a friend in the same way again. Lizzie had never told her parents what had really happened between her and Fergus that night and she never would have, if not for the fact that she’d found out she was pregnant. With both families being devout Catholics, they had got together to discuss it in the cold, unwelcoming, visitors’ parlour as the two of them had sat there staring at their hands, shame-faced. She was unable to look at him without feeling sick and angry.
There had been much toing and froing between both the families, but eventually it had been decided that she would go away to her aunt and uncle’s across the water in the Highlands, have the baby, and give it up for adoption. Everyone had been clear: fourteen was no age to start a family, especially with a baby conceived out of wedlock. Fergus had wanted to finish his schooling and Lizzie had family obligations. It just wasn’t right to saddle her with a young one when she was still a child herself, her father had insisted, his hand resting heavily on her shoulder as tears had streamed down her face.
Lizzie remembered the stony-faced disappointment on her parents’ faces as they had seen her off onto the boat, and how she had cried with the loneliness on the train journey afterwards. Before she found a kinder home with her aunt and uncle, she’d had been desperate, leaving the only home she had known on the isle in the Outer Hebrides, wondering what was to become of her. And then again, when she gave up the baby. Which was the hardest thing she’d ever done. Harder even than seeing her own parents turn against her when she’d found herself pregnant in the first place. Quickly, she pushed the painful thoughts away from her mind as she felt the reassuring hand of her uncle on her shoulder again.
‘Come on, girl, sheep are fed. Let’s get ourselves in for something to eat. We need to get you to bed early tonight if you’re going to make that train in the morning.’
She nodded as she walked by his side, across the slate grey cobblestones of the farmyard, and towards the tiny farmhouse that was their home. She sat on a step to pull off her boots and looked out across the Highlands one last time. It had been a grey day, but all at once, the sun broke through the dark clouds as it started to set on the west side of the loch, its rays stretching out across the heathered banks, turning the loch into a sea of molten silver and illuminating the geese still foraging for their food before laying up for the night.
Yes, she would definitely miss this, but she had to admit her uncle was right. This would be a fresh start for her in a place where nobody knew about her past, for even though she’d been whisked away from the isle before she had started to show, there had been stories back home, and even here, as much as she had tried to hide it, people had known. And she’d felt not just the guilt of