The next phase was Musselburgh. Plucked from teuchter life and dropped into a council house on the edge of Edinburgh. No more sheep shit. Just slabs and snails. Still wet, still wild in its own way.
We found snails in the garden like treasure. We hunted them in the undergrowth, noses to the earth, breathing in that sharp green smell that only city soil has – something damp and secretive. I remember the smell more than the snails. It lives in me like a basement.
I had a plastic tractor and trailer we’d brought from Scourie. The front wheel snapped right off, so it got welded back on – backwards. I didn’t care. It still moved. It still carried things. So did I.
We walked to school along little paths – narrow like the Highland roads we’d left behind, but now scattered with glass and crisp packets. The wildness was still there, just broken up and littered. It had corners instead of curves.
Me and Kirsty were sensitive. Extra soft. Twin-soft. So shy we barely spoke. Our mum had to carry us into school because we were too scared to go in. The kids were wild there – fast, loud, already brittle.
There was a boy called Gordon Ledbetter who used to climb the school wall at lunchtime and run home. I envied him. He knew how to escape.
Mum got a job in the playground, as a supervisor. It helped, having her there – a known shape in the chaos. My sister Cat, who was still small, stuck to her like a limpet. Sometimes she’d sit in our little car in the car park, a blanket on her knee, the engine ticking quietly – a kind of mobile refuge. A soft shelter in a sharp world.
I dreaded break time.
Not because of the noise or the playground-though they were hard enough – but because of the juice. My apple juice. Organic concentrate, of course. Packed with care. But always, always in a bottle I couldn’t open.
I’d sit at my desk, fingers slick with sweat, trying to twist the lid with hands that weren’t strong enough yet. My palms slipping. My breath held. I knew what was coming.
Without fail, it would spill. A little tsunami of apple-sugar panic across the desk. I remember the sound it made- thin and soft, like embarrassment spreading.
It wasn’t the juice that hurt. It was the moment of trying too hard, in front of others. Of failing quietly. Of being seen.
In Musselburgh, I had a bike.
A massive red thing- far too big for me. I don’t know why I was given it. I think it was an adult’s bike. I had to climb onto it like a gate. It took forever to learn. I kept falling off. Every time I did, I felt my face burn – not from the fall, but from being watched. I was so self-conscious I forgot how to move.
Eventually, the neighbours stole it. They didn’t even hide it – they propped it up in their front garden like a sculpture. My red bike. On display.
They denied it was mine. Just flatly said no. And I don’t think I did anything. I just let it go.
That’s the sort of thing that teaches you something – about scale, and silence, and how even your own belongings can be claimed by someone louder.
Once, we went away for the weekend – I think it was to visit the farm we’d later move to. A kind of hopeful escape.
While we were gone, the neighbours broke in through the window. This wasn’t shocking. Apparently, it was normal in Musselburgh.
They didn’t steal much. Just presence. They played with our toys. Left them in the wrong places. Moved through the house like ghosts trying on a different life.
They found my brother’s birthday cake – a Fungus the Bogeyman cake my mum had made. Bright green, wrapped in foil. Red hair made from strawberry laces.
They ate some of it. Not all. Just enough to know they’d been there. Enough to leave a bite mark shaped memory.
Around that time, my mum Sally met Bruce.
Bruce would become a huge part of our lives – though we didn’t know it yet. For now, he was a weekend visitor. He came from a farm in Fife, arriving in what I think was a Morris Minor, with a dog called Carrot.
Carrot was a proper farm dog. The sort that smelled of rain and earth and had rules of her own. Once, she got left in the van overnight. In the morning, we went to check on her, and she’d dug a hole in one of the seats. And done a shit in it.
It’s funny, the things you remember. Not the big speeches or the turning points. Just a dog named after a vegetable, and a ripped car seat steaming with truth.
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