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Tom, who was working in a light engineering firm in Glenrothes but stayed at home still, being just seventeen. She would be leaving school in nine months or so. The prospect excited her, though Tom shook his head when she enthused about it. He looked less cheerful now than when he had still been at school. A gradual process of disaffection had led him to argue a few times with his father. Mary did not usually understand the cause or substance of these fights, but would take Tom's side against the wheezing, ruddy-faced man anyway, and then feel guilty afterwards. Her father would be in a sullen mood for days, and she would make him cups of tea and try to smile him into cheerfulness. She thought that she might like to be a nurse one day.

    She had a boyfriend too: a friend of Tom's, though a year younger than him. She was not sure that she liked the boy, but he was older than her so she persisted with him. He would talk with Tom about emigrating, and Tom would listen keenly. When Tom said one evening at the dinner table that he was emigrating to Canada, Mary ran upstairs and locked herself in the bathroom. Tom sat the whole evening at the kitchen table talking with his parents. His father brought out a bottle of whisky and two of the good glasses so that they could discuss things in the proper tones.
    Tom's mother was pale and silent. She studied her hands for most of the evening. The boy looked at her hands, hands capable of intricate weavings, and felt about to give in to their silent pressure. But this was not a decision that he had made easily. He had gone into it with various people, and had been in touch with an old family friend, Jimmy Gallacher, who worked in Canada and would put Tom up and see that he got a job in one of the sections of his own factory. A Scot, it was said, could always get a start in Canada. All Tom wanted now was the chance to try. He needed his parents' consent, though, or the leaving would be all the harder. His father conceded to most of his points, while Mary coughed out her sobs as she sat in the bathroom.

    That night, when Tom finally went to bed, having made sure that Mary had her back to him before he changed into his pyjamas, the whole house felt as though it had gone through a death. The air was full of a choking intensity.

    There might have been a coffin on the table in the front room.

    As soon as Mary heard the unmistakable creak of Tom's bed and the rustle of the sheets being pulled up to his chin, she turned and sat up.

    'Are you really going, Tom?' His hands were confidently behind his head, supporting him on the pillows. He had the look of a person who needed to do no more thinking, the look of a person who would not allow himself to go to sleep for some considerable time.

    'It looks like it. Will you miss me?'
    'Oh, Tom,' she said, but could find nothing else to say, nothing that would have made any sense. It was a strange, tongue-tied feeling.

    Well, that's good,' he said. 'If I'm missed, it'll make trips home all the nicer, won't it?' He chuckled. Mary hurried from her bed and knelt on the cold linoleum at the side of her brother's bed. She was crying softly, the tears dredged up from some last ineffable source. His hands were in her hair, patting her, comforting her. He was struck dumb in a pleasing way. He had always been her big brother, but had never realised just what the bond entailed.

    They sat together in silence for a time. Mary's sobbing eased eventually, and a little later Tom thought that he had found some words for his little sister.

    'We've all got to make this decision sooner or later, Mary.
    You'll have to make it yourself when you decide to leave home and get married or whatever.'

    'I'll never leave here,' she said, her eyes searching his for some weak point. Tom shook his head.

    'Come on,' he said. 'You're fifteen. You're not a baby any more. You'll want to leave soon enough when you see what it's like outside of school. Suddenly you're not special any