Page 12 of The Midnight Secret

She cast her gaze around for a sighting of her husband, but he was still nowhere to be seen. Her eyes rose up to Mullach Bi where she had last seen the factor striding out alone. The men had been separated by then, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t met up again minutes later, or even hours. She felt an anxious tightening in her gut as to what it all might mean when the vision had been clear this time.

Norman hadn’t come home. What had he been doing all night?

She looked away sharply, pushing the thoughts down. He wouldn’t do such a thing, she told herself. For all his faults, he wasn’t capable ofthat, surely?

But her body was on high alert – heart pounding, nausea rising in her throat. She knew what her neighbours did not. She had seen the rage that gleamed in the back of Norman’s eyes some nights. He wasn’t a man to be crossed.

She looked over at Ian MacKinnon, Angus and Fin; at Hamish and Neil Gillies, Archie MacQueen. What would they do to Norman if she shared her fears?

And if she was wrong, what would Norman to do to her? Last night had been a delirium, swirling with confused images and imaginings. What had been real and what a dream? No one yet knew that tragedy had even struck.

She took a deep breath, trying to steady herself. She was allowing her fears to get the better of her. She would not think about what lay on the other side of that ridge, and she would not sound the alarm. She must keep to herself, as she always had.

But for someone who hadn’t wanted to leave here, suddenly escape couldn’t come soon enough.

It was thirty minutes past the seventh hour and the last of the furniture had been loaded. The cottages had been locked, the front steps swept and Bibles left open on the surfaces that remained. The younger children, mothers and elders were already on board, and Jayne stood on the jetty awaiting her turn.

Beside her, David, Fin MacKinnon and Neil Gillies stood as silent as statues, their wet trousers dripping onto the stone. Drowning the dogs had been a distressing but necessary final chore. The islanders hadn’t the means to pay for the dog licences that were obligatory on the mainland, and without any natural prey on the isles for the dogs to hunt, the only mercy available had been to kill them quickly.

Jayne could see from the anguished looks on all three of the men’s faces that they wouldn’t forget it quickly.

‘Effie Gillies!’

Robert’s voice resounded around the glen. From here Effie was but a bright spot on the bluffs, but even at this distance, they could see how she clutched Poppit tightly to her as Angus MacKinnon and Hamish Gillies began to climb the cliffs. There could be no exceptions. Not even for the girl whose dog was family, her most constant companion – the only friend she had known this past summer, with Mhairi and Flora in the other glen and the earl’s son long gone over the horizon.

‘Miss?’

Jayne looked down to find the sailors had moored next to the jetty again, one of them holding out a hand to help her down.

She glanced back at Mullach Mor, then at the three young men she had known her whole life. ‘But Norman—’ she protested.

‘Is coming. Stop fretting. There’s no one wants to get away from here more than him,’ Neil said.

She knew he was right on that score at least. Norman had finally made an appearance an hour earlier, striding along the street and manhandling Mr Bonner, claiming he had found him ‘hiding out’ in one of the cleits. The reporter had protested he had merely been ‘exploring’ the isle, but Norman had been adamant he found him crouched in the far end, trying to stay hidden and out of the light.

Quite why the reporter should want to do that, Norman couldn’t explain. He would have been risking his life. With all their paltry crops lifted from the ground and the livestock removed to the mainland, there was nothing left here to sustain a man – not unless he could crag a cliff like the St Kildans, and from the look of his shiny leather shoes and coat, that didn’t seem likely. TheDunara Castlewas scheduled to make a tourist trip several days after the evacuation to what they were now touting as ‘the ghost isle’ but it was entirely weather dependent; there were no guarantees of a sailing, and therefore, of rescue.

Mr Bonner had been dispatched back to HMSHarebellwith the first of the bed deliveries and Norman had gone off again, seeming to forget he had a wife. He didn’t come back to their cottage for a ‘last look’ and he hadn’t offered any explanation for his absence last night. Jayne had caught pitying looksbetween Mad Annie and Old Fin as he’d headed round the back and disappeared once more, but that wasn’t what bothered her. His rage at the reporter had been disconcerting. Her husband clearly wasn’t himself.

‘Miss,’ the sailor said again.

Jayne accepted his help and stepped carefully into the boat. It frightened her, going out on the water. She couldn’t swim, and it was usually only the men who rowed out into the bay to the visiting ships. Jayne herself had only stepped foot off St Kildan rock once, when she was a child and her father had allowed her to join them on a row for the postbag.

The three men, well versed in jumping into the smack and the wallowy feeling of bobbing on the waves, leapt in after her. She gripped the sides as the boat rocked, swallowing down a gasp and unable to understand why none of them were terrified. Fin and Neil were positioned right in front of her, David beyond them, his gaze pinned back to shore. She knew it wasn’t Effie he was staring at as the sailors released the tethering rope and they began to row towards the ship.

The children on board were either gathered at the bow rails or running around the bulkheads as the mothers clustered together, talking intently. Mr Bonner was standing apart, his gaze fixed firmly upon the drama unfolding on shore. Would he write about it in his newspaper report? What had he been hoping to achieve by staying back here?

‘Welcome aboard,’ a naval man said as they drew alongside the stern. Jayne was disembarked first. She only realized her hands were shaking when the sailor took them to steady her as she stepped on deck.

Ma Peg was singing a lament, Mad Annie puffing on her pipe and looking back at her home through slitted eyes. Jayne caught sight of Mhairi and Flora sitting together and talkingin whispers, as if they had been separated the entire summer and not in fact sequestered together. She supposed they had grown even closer during that time. It was hard not to think once more of Molly, left behind now in every way possible.

Automatically, she looked around to see where David had gone. Drowning the dogs would have been a terrible duty for him when he had such a gentle nature. She found him at the far end of the deck, his hands gripping the bow rail as he stared back to land, and she turned in his direction.

A piercing scream tore suddenly into the sky.

Everyone paused their singing, talking, playing as the scream was followed by more. The sound was heartrending.

‘Oh my goodness! Who—?’ Rachel gasped.

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