Silver Darlings, by Catriona Buchan

An original novel extract set in the twentieth century.

Jessie Main had followed the herring since she was fifteen, and in 1936, at twenty-six, she was the girl the others in Port Allan waited for before they would sign on with a curer. Every autumn she packed her kist with oilskins, a Bible and three balls of navy wool, and travelled south with the fleet as far as Yarmouth, sleeping in wooden huts where the rain came through the roof onto the blankets. On the long train journeys she knitted ganseys for her four brothers, and she could turn the heel of a sock in the dark without dropping a stitch. She was always first onto the floor at the Saturday dances on the pier and the last to leave. She sent half her wages home to her mother every Friday and spent the rest on a single pair of good shoes each season, which she wore only on Sundays. The coopers were afraid of her tongue. When a skipper once tried to pay the girls short, Jessie walked the length of the quay and stood in front of his boat with her arms folded until he found the missing shillings.

List five things you learn about Jessie Main in this extract.