From Scotland to Russia

It's funny where stories lead you. My granny had a head full of them. Every year we used to go to the west coast of Scotland. As we crossed the border, I would ask her to tell me about Flora MacDonald, who rowed Bonnie Prince Charlie to safety across the water. Every time, she reduced me to tears in the passenger seat of her muddy Subaru, surrounded by smelly, panting dogs and Thermos flasks of steaming soup.

When we got to wherever we were going - a lodge hidden among twisted rhododendrons, or overlooking a glimmering loch - we roamed across hills with strange names that only she could pronounce. We crossed slivers of burns, just cracks of glistening water, and then larger ones, crashing and frothing over slippery boulders into deep peaty pools. We combed the beaches looking for interesting bits of wood and cowrie shells. We motored out to sea, pointing at lazy seals and birds with wonderful names: shearwaters, puffins, guillemots, storm petrels. We listened to the oystercatchers calling across the water. We spied red deer - rusty blobs on hills miles away. Golden eagles flew above us. There were remnants of the ancient Caledonian forest. At night we heard the stags grunting and we lit candles while she recited stories and poems thick with Gaelic names. It turned out she had once lived in the West Highlands: a safe place for five young sisters while there was a real threat of Nazi invasion down south. So Scotland got into her blood, weaving itself into her own story.

In those short years at the start of the second world war, the five girls were allowed to run wild. They raced barefoot through the hills together. They rowed and swam and climbed and sang. They fished. They stalked. The war did not affect them.

But then their father's ship appeared in the loch, sliding across the glassy water like a vast predator.

More ships arrived, bristling with guns. People were issued with special passes to show they were allowed to be there. (Unless they were children: children weren't considered a threat. The girls were disappointed.) There were checkpoints and sailors everywhere. Gun batteries. The loch grew black with ships. My granny's mother was reported for being a spy because she ordered macaroni from the local store. Macaroni sounded foreign.

My granny is long gone, but her stories had lodged themselves in my head and wouldn't leave me alone. I talked to my great-aunt, the only surviving sister. She recalled long-lining in the loch and selling lobsters to the Navy. The oldest sister taught them to read in the evenings as she wrote her own novel. My aunt remembered hearing the men calling to each other across the water. Except they weren't men: just boys, their voices still high because they hadn't broken yet.

I Googled. The story grew. Many of the Arctic Convoys taking supplies to Russia left from that very place, to run the gauntlet of U-boats and Luftwaffe, relentless ice and stormy seas. My granny's loch was the last thing many of those boys ever saw.

Stories about Arctic Convoys started leaping out at me from the papers. The government finally awarded veterans of convoys the Arctic medal: too late for all but a few. I began to interview and read about them: a Fleet Air Arm pilot who flew Fairey Swordfish through blizzards in an open cockpit. A Russian translator for the Navy, one of the few British allowed to live in that cold place among people starving, men and women under attack, hidden letters, hidden love. A pilot who fixed a broken wing with a bootlace. Men and boys surviving against all odds....

And now I've written my own story. Or their story, I suppose. The story of those men and boys, women and girls. The ones who sailed and the ones they left behind.