Page 28 of The Midnight Secret

Flora sat in distracted silence, listening to how they discussed these far-flung places with insouciance. The world was far smaller for them than it was for her.

‘I say,’ Digby Tucker interrupted, leaning forward suddenly in his chair. ‘Wouldn’t it be fun if we were all aboard for the return trip in the spring?’

There was a momentary silence as the other men turned to him, riled that he made no attempt to disguise his eavesdropping.

‘Well, I...sadly, I very much doubt we’ll be heading back from here, that’s the thing, you see,’ Bertie demurred. ‘Possibly Quebec, hard to say at the moment.’

‘I should imagine we’ll be in New York by then,’ Dickie drawled unapologetically, moving slowly as he reached for his cigarette case. He was completely unhurried by life, and Flora liked him and his wife best of them all: Dickie didn’t look at her with want, and Ginnie didn’t look at her with envy. It was a marked relief to go unscrutinized for once.

‘What a pity,’ Tucker pined. ‘Callaghan? What shall you and your lovely wife be doing come the thaw?’

‘Our plans are open-ended,’ James said smoothly. ‘It’s impossible to predict, I’m afraid. We like to be fairly spontaneous.’

‘Indeed,’ Tucker nodded, falling back with a peeved look, seeming to recognize their reluctance to embed the acquaintance. ‘Well...that is a shame.’

‘You’re travelling back from here, are you?’ Bertie enquired, unable to restrain his politeness.

‘Oh yes. Got our berth booked already. Mrs T is very particular about where she sleeps.’

Not particular enough, Flora thought to herself. She couldn’t imagine how that woman could bear to lie next to him at night. ‘Well, I think I’ll have a rest,’ she murmured; she had had quite enough small talk for one afternoon, and she had a wall to stare at and hours to count down before there was another dinner to suffer. They had another eleven days aboard before they were due to haul anchor and make their way landward.

She rose to standing, the men following suit as one.

‘See you at cocktail hour,’ Dickie said cheerily.

‘Aye,’ she smiled, ‘I’ll see you anon.’

She caught James’s eye as she turned to leave.

‘Actually...’ he said, and she turned back to find him setting down his cards, disappointed looks growing on the other men’s faces. ‘I think I’ll come with you, darling.’

‘You will?’

‘Yes. I’m feeling rather weary. A little shut-eye might be in order.’

There was a tiny pause and she felt loaded looks, as if no one believed they were going to be sleeping. She found DigbyTucker’s eyes on her again, his wife stitching by his side, oblivious. He gave a benign smile, but in the moment before his face could change, she saw something penetrating in his gaze that unsettled her – a surprising sharpness for a man widely considered a fool.

‘Forgive me, chaps, won’t you?’ James asked, pushing back his chair.

‘Not at all,’ Dickie demurred with twinkling eyes. ‘We’d be tired too if we were you,’ he added under his breath as James slipped his hand into hers and led her out.

Flora sat at the desk in the writing room, her back to the room. She came in here most days to write letters that could not yet be sent. It should have been one of the upsides of the enforced delay, as it meant she finally had the time to write to her parents and tell them everything that had happened to her in the past year, starting from the day James had landed his seaplane in Glen Bay.

But every day, although she rewrote the same letter, she tore it up and threw it into the bin. How could she ever tell this story on paper – revealing to her parents that they were grandparents, but the child was gone; that James was alive, but they were still unwed? She had lied and lied for months about her situation, and with every new twist in the tale, it felt harder to start with the truth.

Only Mhairi knew about this latest chapter of James’s return and their race to Canada. It was Mhairi who had picked up the telephone in Effie’s hotel room in Oban, when Flora had called back the night James had found her in Paris – the same night Donald had been released. The others had been downstairs in the hotel bar with Sholto, celebrating freedom, when Mhairi had come up for a shawl.

Flora had sworn her friend to secrecy that night. She was so terrified of losing track of her son in Canada, she didn’t dare risk anyone else knowing that they knew the truth, at least about Lorna and Mary’s relationship. Mhairi had been stunned, naturally, but Flora knew the secret would be safe until their return; and in the meantime, she had managed to send a telegram to her family telling them she was well and happy, without making mention of her flight from Paris.

But as she looked down at the latest iteration of the letter, she knew this was yet another one she would not send. The words, so bold in ink, might as well have been written in blood for all the horror they contained. The very least she owed her parents was to tell them this story face to face.

She heard footsteps coming into the room behind her, paying them no mind as she shuffled the sheets of longhand. But as she waited for the scrape of a chair, the rustle of a skirt, the gentle clearing of a throat before a pen began to scratch over paper...it didn’t come.

She turned.

‘Ah, Mrs Callaghan. What a pleasant surprise, finding you in here,’ Digby Tucker said.

Flora closed her eyes briefly, trying to summon her manners as well as strength. ‘Mr Tucker,’ she said with a strained smile.

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