Page 102 of The Midnight Secret

A collective silence blanketed the boat. Tears pricked her eyes as she saw their own ghosts: Mad Annie sitting on the wall, knitting...Ma Peg carding on the stool in herdoorway...White sheets flapping in the wind down the long allotments that stretched all the way to the beach...Angus and Fin patching a roof...The men hauling the smack...Children running barefoot around the cleits...Chimneys puffing and golden squares from windows on moonlit grass...Effie dangling playfully on a rope...Mhairi and Flora dancing on the sand...Lorna washing bandages in the burn...Molly and David kissing on a path...And Jayne herself, sitting on the rocks as the sun went down, a silvered silhouette upon which bruises couldn’t be read.

She saw it all, the lives they had lived here, and it seemed to her their laughter still echoed around the glen, hymns sounding in the kirk, their shouts forever red-hot in the snow.

Another yacht was already at anchor, shadowy figures on the beach telling them that the lairds and their minister had arrived in advance. One head glinted like a nugget of gold.

Beside her, Effie startled. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘What’shedoing here?’

Jayne felt the sand between her toes as she waded in to the beach, her skirt gathered about her legs. Everyone up ahead was already shaking hands with MacLeod and the earl, the minister clutching his Bible and ready to work. There was a celebratory atmosphere ashore, as if this was more than a transfer of deeds.

Effie was right beside her. Jayne saw the way Sholto swallowed at her head-down approach, taking care not to get her rope wet nor meet his eyes.

‘Did you not know he was coming, Effie?’ she asked quietly.

‘No.’ The word was a breath, without shape or hope, and Jayne could hear the pain in it. Would Effie have come if she’d known? ‘...How does he seem?’

‘Nervous...He’s watching you.’ Jayne tried to talk without moving her lips.

They stepped out of the water and towards the dignitaries waiting for them on the shore.

‘...And this is Mrs Ferguson, Norman’s wife,’ Donald said, introducing her as Sir John offered her a hand.

‘How d’you do, Mrs Ferguson?’

‘Sir,’ she nodded, seeing David was watching on. Norman was on the beach already too, trousers still rolled up to his knees, his hands on his hips as he looked up at the glen.

‘And Miss Gillies, who you...already know,’ Donald faltered.

Effie stopped before them with a sigh and a nod. ‘Your lordships.’ She was wearing her brother’s breeks again. Nostalgia, perhaps? Or just practicality?

‘Effie,’ Sir John said warmly. ‘Our guest of honour!’

Effie frowned, as did Norman, who had turned back to watch. ‘I wouldn’t say that exactly, sir,’ she demurred.

‘Oh, I would. It’s thanks to you we’re all gathered here today.’

‘Really?’ Donald asked, curious. ‘And why’s that, then?’

Everyone listened keenly. The exact reason for this homecoming hadn’t been made explicitly clear, beyond Effie helping them to find something – but MacLeod just tapped the tip of his nose. ‘All in good time, I promise.’

‘Hello, Effie,’ Sholto said.

Effie looked across at him. ‘...Hello, sir.’

Sholto winced at her formality. Everyone did. Jayne saw a sharp look of pain cross his features as Effie began walking up the beach towards the grassy allotment of her old home. For a moment no one else stirred, but then they disbanded too, making straight for the cottages they knew so well. Norman led the pack.

‘Shall we proceed to the kirk then, gentlemen?’ the earl’s minister asked. ‘We can offer up our blessings while the villagers reacquaint themselves.’

Both Sholto and MacLeod looked agitated, watching Effie as she stalked away across the grass, but reluctantly they nodded. ‘...Of course.’

Jayne headed for her home, her spirit soaring as she trod barefoot on the lush grass – everyone had left their boots on the boat – her senses assaulted by the intensity of being back. She could taste the salt on the breeze, could feel those familiar winds tussle and tug at her hair. The heavy slump of the waves and the cries of the birds crowded her mind, pushing out all other thoughts so that she could almost forget what was coming.

The door of number two was still closed. She had assumed Norman had gone ahead to come here, but as she pushed it, she felt the air of desertion she remembered from that last morning here. Complete abandonment. No one lived here; no one had ever loved here, either.

She walked in and stared at the bare rooms, where no visible trace of the Fergusons remained. They were devoid of furniture but not of memories. No one would ever know he had thrown her against that wall or kicked her against that door as she’d tried to escape. The tin bath where he’d once held her head under the water was no longer tipped upside down round the back.

She stood at the doorway to Molly’s box room, the place where she had died. Closing her eyes, she tried to feel her presence; but nothing lingered. The girl’s spirit was free now, far from here, and it was another presence Jayne felt instead – the darkness, like a black smoke that billowed behind her and wouldn’t come free now, not tillitwas done. She knew theywere on borrowed time, that the clock was already running down.

It would be soon, she knew that. The visions came with a hyperbaric pressure system that steadily ratcheted up inside her body. She could feel the moment building as the elements came together, and she had felt a sharp surge as she stepped onto the sand here, onto the grass – the very grass where it would happen.

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