Fergus’s “younger” sister Freya was more enamoured of the Western Isles than Fergus, but largely because she spent all of her free time roaming and exploring, finding nooks and crannies in which to read or write. Her facility for languages became clear at an early stage as she was the only member of the family to become fluent in Gaelic, a fact that came to light when Freya told her mother how unpleasant a couple of women in the street had been about her. She was reluctant to move to Glasgow and much to her disgust, was sent to Craigholme School for girls, a complex and time-consuming journey from Bearsden. Like Verity, Freya was picked on for being clever, and for her very sharp tongue. Unlike Verity, she was more regularly in trouble for defending herself. Although her mother was tall, Freya herself, while similar facially, was short and slight. As she grew up, she became more and more eccentric in terms of dress style. She was always enthusiastic for trying out “new experiences” and appeared to have little sense of fear or self preservation. She enrolled at Glasgow University Medical School at the same time as Fergus but, unlike her brother, easily completed the course, graduating with honours. Upon leaving, although her mother wanted her to go into lucrative general practice in Bearsden (where there was a gap in the market), Freya decided to go to work as an orderly in a psychiatric hospital for women near Heidelberg. This gave her a great deal of insight into mental illness, and, combined with discovering Freud through a book gifted to her by her brother on his return from Vienna, she set her mind on becoming a psychoanalyst. It also made her fluent, and totally idiomatic in German (specialising in florid and profane language). From Heidelberg, Freya moved to Vienna, where she tried unsuccessfully to meet Freud, although she did meet Adler. Her objective was to be accepted as a student by one of the psychoanalysts, but, by August 1914, had had no success. Later, she said it was being so young, but particularly being a woman that had closed doors to her.

She returned to Scotland on the outbreak of war and spent more than a year carrying out initial medical assessments of men conscripted to fight in France. Freya absolutely hated the work, not least as she was legally unable to exempt any but those with the most serious mental health problems. Her mother volunteered to go France in 1916 to work in field hospitals, and Freya was minded to go with her, proposing to the War Office that, with her insights into the mind, she could give initial support to men with what came to be described as “shell shock”. However, the War Office sent her to the outskirts of Paris where she was expected to carry out interrogations of captured senior officers, debriefings of freed British officers and, worst of all, suspected spies. She found the work immensely stressful, and developed a (self-diagnosed) problem with fear of failure, heightened every time she heard the distinctive sound of a firing squad. “Major” Freya was quartered in a small flat in the 18^th Arrondissement, close to her work in St Ouen, but also close to the hundreds of bars, restaurants and night clubs  in Pigalle and Montmartre. Be the end of the war, Freya was burned out from stress, not eating, drinking to excess and a fondness for cannabis. Although she had been expected to stay on in St Ouen to continue her work, she simply walked out and, in the flood of people, was able to return home without at any point having valid papers or a travel warrant. Her CO, recognising the mess she was in, retrospectively signed her discharge papers.

As book 1 opens, Freya was living at home, dressing apparently randomly and working with an exiled psychotherapist, Dr Bruckner, to help sort her own problems and, in the longer term, to secure a place in Vienna.  Fergus called Freya the “cleverest person in any room”, and Verity was initially overwhelmed by her, but they soon bonded over their shared experiences of being bullied, being outsiders both at school and in a man’s occupation, and, as they got to know each other better, the trauma visited on them by their experiences in the war.