Page 1 of The Midnight Secret

Prologue

3 November 1926

Village Bay, St Kilda

It was raining, but that was auspicious, they said.

Not that Jayne needed luck. She was marrying the handsomest, tallest man on the isle, a man who made her stomach cartwheel whenever she looked at him. His eyes were the colour of a June sky, his glossy dark hair worn a little longer – shaggy, Mad Annie had said once, ‘like the sheep in moult’ – than the other men. He had broad, flat shoulders and long arms and legs, standing a whole head taller than all the men except for Angus MacKinnon.

That he was the most handsome man on the isle was never disputed. Jayne could still remember the stunned silence that had fallen on her when Norman had first approached her after kirk in the summer, asking if she’d like to join him for a walk. She had been so sure he was going to ask their new nurse, Lorna, whose arrival was all the women talked about as they did the washing in the burn. Lorna had only recently come to the isle – ‘New blood!’ Ma Peg had happily exclaimed – and at twenty-six, she was four years older than Norman. ‘A woman of the world,’ Mad Annie had said with rare admiration. Shewas serious-minded but pretty with it, educated and clever and able to help people in all the ways Jayne, just turned eighteen and brilliant at nothing, couldn’t. Anyone could see that Lorna was a finer prospect for the village’s most eligible male. And yet, it was Jayne he had wanted!

Their first walk had been awkward, there was no denying it. Jayne had caught Rachel MacKinnon and Christina MacQueen’s astonished looks as she and Norman had peeled away from the others and headed for the rocks. Neither of them had known what to say, either talking over one another or lapsing into silence at the same time, but he had been careful to keep her within sight of the village. People were going to talk and he wouldn’t compromise her virtue, even though she had no family left to care.

Her father had left for Australia after her mother’s death, taking her two younger brothers with him. He hadn’t believed Jayne when she’d said she wouldn’t leave with them. Even as he climbed aboard the whaling ship that would take them to the mainland he still expected her to relent ‘from this nonsense’ and follow. But then, he had never understood his own wife either, nor the burden of the curse both mother and daughter carried: to go into the wider world and expand their community was to risk the visions increasing, and those were bad enough in a village of forty. And so he had stared back at Jayne with open-mouthed dismay as she stood, white-faced, on the shore with everyone else, waving them goodbye.

When the ship rounded the headland, everyone had turned back to their cottages and walked in a tight huddle, their footsteps darning the hole left in their wake. It was Ma Peg, seeing Jayne tremble on the shore amid her own self-imposed abandonment, who had reached for her hand and taken her back to her croft for supper – and Jayne had never left. Lornahad moved into Jayne’s former home when she had arrived this summer, two years later, and so the wheel of village life had kept turning: a little bit different, but still the same.

But today Jayne would be leaving here. Within the hour, she would be Mrs Norman Ferguson and tonight she would sleep beside her new husband in Cottage number two. He lived there with his younger sister Molly; the two of them had been orphaned when he was fifteen and Molly just nine, and he was fiercely protective of her. None of the village boys dared pullherhair or leave cow pats ontheirfront doorstep!

The two girls had grown close in recent months, in spite of their age gap. Molly had been quick to ask her if she would walk with Norman again, even though he wasn’t a sentimental man. She had told her all his favourite things so they had something to talk on the next time – and it had worked, easing the stiffness between them so that their walks became regular.

‘There, I knew I still had it somewhere,’ Ma Peg said, straightening up slowly from where she was reaching into the chest, one hand on her back, the other holding a thin chemise deeply wrinkled and yellowed with age. The only things in its favour, so far as Jayne could see, were that it was a much lighter cotton than their usual garments – even their summer shirts – and a faint lilac floral pattern could just be discerned. ‘I wore this on my own wedding night,’ Ma Peg said, pressing it against her ample body. ‘Of course, I was a lot more spry in those days,’ she chuckled. ‘It fit me like a dream back then. I can still remember my Hamish’s expression...’ Her face softened with the memories and she nodded to herself in silent reminiscence.

Jayne waited anxiously for more. She needed more. Tonight, Molly would be sleeping here so that Jayne and Norman could spend their first night together alone, and she had no ideawhat to expect. She had tried asking Ma Peg what she ‘should do’ and her response had been to let things take their natural course – but if even conversation hadn’t come naturally to her and Norman, she didn’t know howthatwould.

Her face must have betrayed as much because it had prompted the old woman to get down on her hands and knees and start rummaging through the blanket chest.

‘...Just make sure to stand by the firelight, lassie,’ Ma Peg said, looking back at her with a knowing smile. ‘That’ll have him running to y’.’

Jayne was confused. ‘The firelight?’

‘Y’ll see,’ Ma Peg nodded, pushing the garment into Jayne’s hands just as the door opened and young Mhairi MacKinnon peered in.

‘He and Molly have just left!’ she said excitedly. Mhairi and Flora had been on watch, intently surveilling the groom’s cottage for the past forty minutes as if making sure he didn’t flee (Jayne wasn’t sure exactly where hecouldescape to on a two-mile island in the the Atlantic). Meanwhile, Effie Gillies was ‘stationed’ by the church door to make sure he actually went in. Poor Norman, Jayne thought with a smile. The girls would make sure he married her whether he wanted to or not!

‘Oh, Jayne!’ Mhairi gasped. ‘You look so pretty, just like a fairy!’

Did she? Ma Peg had brushed her light brown hair with a hundred strokes to bring up the shine before intricately threading it with daisies and buttercups. There were no trees on the islands, so a crown of blossoms had never been an option, but this wasn’t the season for wildflowers either. Daisies and buttercups were the best they could muster, and the girls had been out picking them for her all morning.

‘Let me see,’ Flora said, bursting through after her, eager to see the bride. ‘...Oh! You’re the most beautiful bride I’ve ever seen!’

Jayne didn’t like to point out she was the only bride Flora had ever seen as the young girl’s hands clasped over her heart, her hazel-green eyes shining at the thrill of it all. Even at fourteen, Flora was a prodigious beauty, surely destined for a far brighter life than St Kilda could provide. Jayne had a sense thatherwedding would be more sensational than anything this small isle had ever seen.

‘Thank you,’ she said quietly. She would have to take their word for it that she looked...presentable. Sometimes it felt daunting, the prospect of marrying such a good-looking man, and she had to remind herself thathehad chosenher; that he had seen something in her that he liked. ‘Y’re a fine young lass,’ Ma Peg would always say as they sat by the fire in the evenings, knitting and talking over the day’s events; but that felt hard to believe when Jayne had been overlooked her entire life. People kept their distance with her, as they had with her mother.There’s a look that comes into their eyes when they see us, child. They’ll still smile but they’re always wary, frightened of what we might have seen.

It felt to Jayne like wearing a shroud – it was what people saw first, the ‘gift’ of second sight always a step ahead of her so that she was perpetually in its shadow. She didn’t know how it felt to have the sun on her face.

‘Effie Gillies, look at the state o’ you!’ Ma Peg scolded as Effie tore into the cottage moments later. ‘Your feet are black!’

‘Aye, it’s raining,’ Effie panted, looking completely unconcerned.

‘And could y’ not have put a brush through y’ hair?’

The girl frowned. ‘Why?I’mnot getting married.’

‘Honestly,’ the old woman tutted, despairing.

‘What’s that?’ Effie asked curiously, seeing the chemise bundled in Jayne’s hands.

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