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whole house had been changed somehow when she had walked into it on the afternoon following. She should have guessed. People had always said that they were very close, even for brother and sister. Unnaturally close. She should have known. She stroked her daughter's silvery dark hair and contemplated telling her husband the news. Would he guess what she had deduced?

    As it turned out, Mary's father said nothing, just drifted further into his own numbed world where nothing, it seemed, could hurt him. Mary's mother was not surprised by this. She had always seen herself as the stronger of the two.
    He often called her 'the battler' (in the earlier years of their marriage at least) and she supposed it was true enough.
    Resilience, she had found, was needed in plenty. She went to church regularly, and knew that every trial was something more than it seemed - a higher test and a kind of judgement.
    She prayed to God at her bedside on the evening after she had told her husband the bitter news, and she made him get down on his knees too.

    This needs all our strength, Hugh,' she said, but his words were slurred and he collapsed his head on to the bed after a few moments and wept himself silently to sleep.
    Mary's mother raised her own head towards heaven and prayed with even more intensity. Strength was needed, Lord, strength was needed.

    'But our reserves are not limitless, Lord. Help us in our need. Help Mary to get over all of this. She is a young girl.
    Forgive her if you can. Bless my son and my husband, Lord.
    Both are good men at heart. And dear Lord God, please let the baby die at birth. I beseech thee, let the baby die. Amen.'

6

    If the unthinkable had happened, then for Mary's mother the worst had yet to come. For some time her husband had been friendly with George Patterson, a bachelor of forty who owned the town's dusty and outdated sweet shop. They often went further afield in their drinking bouts, travelling to Lochgelly or Kirkcaldy for an evening's entertainment and having to walk the sobering miles home after missing the last bus. In early April, with the town already knowing, as it inevitably would, that Mary was pregnant, and her mother stressing the need for her still to sit her exams, Hugh Miller was walking home with his friehd George Patterson.

    It was midnight, and enshrouded in a light mist the two men were unevenly trudging the grass verge towards Carsden. They had spent the evening in Kirkcaldy, and had gone down to the promenade after the pubs had closed in order to sniff the sea air. Hugh had sat on the sea-wall and had told George about the many occasions when he had walked with his children along the sands and bought them ices in the now defunct cafe. Having told his story, and having missed the last bus, they had begun to walk out of town along the main road. They tried hitch-hiking, but were too drunk for anyone to have wished to stop for them, and both knew it. By midnight they were halfway between the two towns. They had become separated to the sight by the mist, but kept up a shouted conversation, the substance of which was lost to the wind and the bitter cold. A car came towards them from Kirkcaldy. Its lights caught George Patterson, and it slowed a little. He jumped from the road on to the verge and waved the car past. It was picking up speed again when George heard Hugh say something out loud and then there was a sickeningly dull and heavy thud. The car stopped. George Patterson could see its red taillights through the mist and ran towards them. At the side of the road lay his friend.

    Tor Christ's sake,' the driver was saying as he stood above the body in apparent horror. 'I mean, he just jumped out of nowhere. For Christ's sake.'

    'Hugh, Hugh man, are you all right?' Patterson's breath was heavy as he crouched unsteadily beside his friend.
    Mary's father was able to raise his head a few inches from the frozen ground.

    'I loved her, though, George,' he murmured, and then coughed a