Page 24 of The Midnight Secret

James kept telling her they would make up the difference once they docked, that Mary and Lorna’s head start wouldfall back once the realities of the immigration process kicked in. Third-class passengers had a far longer wait than first-class, for one thing; for another, the Depression had hit Canada particularly hard, and the authorities weren’t accepting just anyone over their borders now. Not to mention that with a newborn to care for they would need to find lodgings, food, milk for the baby...Being on the road with a newborn would make them slow and conspicuous, he reassured her – Flora and James would catch them. But Flora was still terrified. How were they going to find two women and a baby in a city of 130,000 people? In a country of ten million? Canada was vast – they might go anywhere, change their names...The only advantage she could see was that Mary and Lorna had no idea they were being pursued.

‘I’ve been looking all over for you.’

‘I needed some air,’ she apologized, seeing the worry in his eyes.

‘Well, you’ve come to the right place,’ he said with his usual dry humour.

The wind was growing ever more quarrelsome as they headed for land, and James shivered. He tried to hide it from her, of course; he was used to the cold after a winter spent on the tundra in Greenland. But he was wearing only his towelling robe, his dark hair still wet and slicked back after a swim in the pool.

‘Let’s go back to the room,’ she said, swinging her legs off the deckchair, knowing he would stay here for as long as she did.

‘You’re quite sure? I’m happy to take some air.’

‘Yes, I hadn’t realized how cold I’d become...How was your swim?’ she asked instead, threading her hand through his arm and clutching it tightly, pressing her cheek to his armas they strolled along the deck: her in fur, him barefoot in his robe. One of the many things Flora could never have imagined when she lived on St Kilda was a swimming pool on board an ocean liner.

James gave a small groan. ‘Unproductive. Digby Tucker arrived after three laps.’

‘Again?’

‘It’s as if he’s tipping the staff to keep him abreast of my whereabouts. Wherever I go, there he is. He’s like a bad penny.’

‘Oh no.’ Digby Tucker and his wife, Mallory, were seated at their dinner table with the captain, and it was one of the other reasons Flora was so desperate to get off this ship. Tucker – ‘a big noise in the shipping business’, according to their new friend Dickie Grainger – clearly considered himself charming, but he was just a little too loud, his jokes a little too risqué for James’s taste, and he always stared at Flora for a little too long. Mallory Tucker, by contrast, was almost silent and mealy-mouthed, permanently sipping gin cocktails – and she dripped with diamonds ‘by day’, which James had panned asde trop.

‘Mm. He was bending my ear again about investing in the company. Says he wants to diversify.’

She squeezed his arm consolingly. News of James’s transatlantic air-mapping expedition had spread fast, and everyone wanted in on the new venture. With a route now confirmed between Britain and Canada, aeroplanes were being touted as the future of commercial travel; even liners with swimming pools wouldn’t be able to compete. ‘Well, thank God we’re almost ashore, and then we’ll never have to see him again.’

They had reached the door and he opened it for her, allowing her to step through. Immediately the wind was denied access, whipping past with a howl, the air inside warmand comforting as they went down the stairs. Flora smoothed her black hair, aware she must look like a wild thing, but James reached for her and pulled her into him, stealing a kiss in the empty stairwell. ‘You look beautiful,’ he whispered.

Their ardour for one another was constant, a heat others could feel. She often caught envious looks from people who passed them on deck or in the dining room, her hand on his arm. She could tell there was a curiosity about them, the handsome couple who, unlike other first-class passengers, didn’t spend their days socializing in the lounges or splashing in the pool. They were elusive, preferring to stay sequestered in their suite.

They had told their fellow guests they were honeymooners, and it wasn’t exactly a lie – just what James called a ‘scheduling issue’. They were engaged, of course, but he had registered them for the voyage as Mr and Mrs Callaghan for propriety’s sake; and, although their mad rush to get here had allowed no time for a wedding ceremony, they had shared a private moment in Paris when he had slipped a thin gold band onto her finger with the words: ‘With this ring, Iwillthee wed.’ They would marry the first chance they had, but they also knew their time together as a couple was finite; once they brought their son home, life would change yet again into a different form, and they would be a family. To all intents and purposes, this was their honeymoon, even if it was cart before horse.

They talked endlessly into the night and through each day, sharing every detail of their lives during the year they had been separated. Mostly, Flora talked and James listened. There was a lot for him to learn about her secret pregnancy, Mary’s lies and Lorna’s duplicity. Flora knew she would never forget the look on his face that night in Paris, when he had discoveredin the same breath that they’d had a son and then lost him. The circumstances that had forced her to give up their baby had been complex, indelibly intertwined with the fates and actions of others. James wanted to know about every conversation, every argument that had transpired between the St Kildans in his absence: Mhairi and Donald’s illicit love affair, Mary’s cold rage, Lorna’s cunning, Frank Mathieson’s murder. Anything that might yet impede the success of their mission.

The sound of a door opening just around the corner made them pull apart, but Flora saw the gleam in James’s eye and knew they wouldn’t be talking when they got back to their room. He took her hand and led on, turning onto their corridor.

James slid his key in the door and Flora’s eyes ran dispassionately over the opulent decor as she entered: silk-covered chairs in the sitting room, a satin eiderdown on the bed, crystal glasses, fresh flowers in the vases...That was something she still couldn’t understand – how were the staff producing new bouquets after five days at sea? But she didn’t care enough to find out. The extravagant lifestyle that had, once upon a time, back in St Kilda, held her in its thrall now offered no comfort. All she wanted was her family reunited.

She unbuttoned her coat and draped it over a chair to reveal the deep berry crepe dress they had also bought in Paris before their hasty flight from the city. It had a belt at the waist, epaulettes at the shoulders and a silk lining that slipped over her skin as she moved. She turned to find James already moving towards her with a hungry look. Losing themselves in one another was one way to escape their pain, if only for a while...

A low, deep groan rumbled through the belly of the ship, stopping him in his tracks.

‘What was that?’ she asked, unused to the vagaries of transatlantic travel.

They both instinctively turned to the windows, but from this vantage point there was nothing to see but grey skies over a grey sea.

‘Are we...slowing down?’ she asked, following James as he crossed over for a better look.

Outside the glass, the horizon held steady. Terrible storms had blighted central Europe, but here, further west, the weather had been on their side and the crossing had been uneventful.

‘I’m not sure. Possibly,’ he murmured. ‘It does take these things several miles to stop, although...I don’t see the tugs.’ He stepped out onto the balcony, but returned moments later; there was nothing to see. ‘I thought we were still a good few hours away from port.’ He tightened the belt on his robe again. ‘I’ll go and find the steward. Ask what’s going on.’

His hand was already on the doorknob when a crackle came through the speakers that were set into the ceilings throughout the ship.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking.’

His tone was sombre. Flora and James exchanged an apprehensive look. They had dined at the captain’s table and knew him to be a pleasant, avuncular man, but there was no lightness in his voice now.

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