After James left for London, I did what I always do when I'm sad.

I worked.

That year, the council was asked to come up with a plan for the old docks in Leith. Acres of empty land. Rusting cranes. Warehouses with smashed windows. The place my dad had worked for twenty-five years, until it all shut down.

The experts from London wanted to build expensive flats for bankers, and a big shopping centre.

I went a different way. I went and asked the people who lived there.

I held meetings in church halls and community centres and the back rooms of pubs. Two hundred of them. I listened to old dockers and young mums and teenagers and shop owners.

They wanted homes they could actually afford. A swimming pool. A park by the water. Jobs. Somewhere for the kids to go. And they wanted the old cranes kept, because the cranes were Leith.

I wrote it all down. Then I wrote a plan.

The plan had one rule on the front page, in big letters.

Build it with the people who live here.

The experts laughed at it. Then the residents voted for it. Then the government read it. And then everything changed.