Page 64 of The Midnight Secret

Mary took several steps back, her mouth agape. ‘I dinna’ know what y’re talking about.’

‘Denials are pointless. We both know the truth. And the truth is you’re in a sore predicament, Mary. If Lorna doesn’t recover from the typhus, you’re going to be deported back to the UK.’

Her mouth opened and closed as she tried to keep up with him. Flora could see Mary trying to work out how he could know all these things as she struggled to believe her eyes that he was actually standing here: that he had not only followed her to and found her in Quebec, but somehow negotiated a way in here to confront her.

‘...She’s almost well again,’ Mary stammered. ‘We’ll be gone from here within the week.’

‘Not according to my sources,’ James lied.

‘But she wrote to me last week.’

‘Then perhaps she’s sparing you the distress.’

Flora saw Mary’s shock at the bluff. She wasn’t sure what to believe. He clearly had these ‘sources’; how else had he come to be standing here?

‘Of course, once you’re back home, I’m sure it wouldn’t be difficult to persuade the police to take an interest in you. You stole the money to get here, after all.’

‘It was our money! I’m his wife. What’s Donald’s is mine.’

‘It suits you to be married to him now, does it? Even though you deserted him by coming here?’

Mary’s eyes narrowed, and Flora could see her beginning to get to grips with the situation unfolding before her. If there was one thing she knew about the woman, it was that Mary had never been one to back down from a fight.

‘And then, of course, you stole my child by deception and left the country with him. That’s kidnapping. These are far more serious offences.’

‘You can’t prove them.’ Mary’s chin jutted defiantly into the air as she began to rock the baby in her arms, almost in a taunt. ‘His birth certificate hasmyname down as the mother. His passport listsmeas his mother. I’ve a registered nurse ready to testify on oath that she deliveredmeof this child the night before we evacuated. My neighbours in St Kilda saw me confined throughout the pregnancy, they visited me in bed holding my newborn. My neighbours in Oban will swear on the Bible they saw me with the child, day and night, tending to him as my own...Who’s to say he’s not mine?’

Her rationale was like a spray of bullets hitting them in the chest, one after the other...

‘Donald. The other person whose name is on the birth certificate.’

‘Pah!’ she scoffed. ‘He’s a known liar and a cheat! He’s gone on record to the police saying he deserted me in the hours after the birth to lie with that harlot! Why should anyone believe a wordhehas to say?’

James didn’t reply and, as a silence stretched, Flora lookedover at him in growing horror. They had banked on a strategy of surprise, intimidation, capitulation.Say something else, she willed him.

But what else was there to say? Theydidn’thave proof. Lorna had constructed a cast-iron alibi in which their entire community had unwittingly served as witnesses. Flora and Mhairi themselves had gone to great lengths to hide their pregnancies on the other side of the isle, and none of the villagers had had cause to doubt Lorna when she said Mary’s pregnancy was precarious and advised lengthy bed rest. There was no reason for the minister to have doubted that Mary was the birth mother when Lorna had told him she’d delivered the baby herself. The only person – besides Donald and James – who had ever known,seen, the truth was Frank Mathieson.

And he was dead.

‘Tell me your price,’ James said finally.

‘What?’ Mary looked bewildered by the question.

‘How much to give up the child? Take a number, double it, I don’t care. How much?’

There was a long silence. For a moment, Flora thought she really was choosing one. But then Mary began to smile. ‘You think there’s a number for this?’ And she pulled the baby closer to her, kissing his head and nuzzling him affectionately.

Flora had to look away, her hand pressed over her mouth. It took everything she had not to leap out from her hiding place and rip the baby from Mary’s arms.

‘Do you really think I’ll ever be able to buy myself another one ofthese?’ she asked, angling the baby so that they could finally see his face.

James flinched as he saw his son’s face for the first time – in the moonlight, in the snow, in a foreign country, in another woman’s arms.

The baby squirmed, giving a sudden cry as he felt the cold upon his skin.

Flora thought she was going to throw up.

Mary pulled him back in again, soothing his cries by pushing her crooked pinky into his mouth. ‘What do you think it’s like, eh, for women like us? We’re denied, always on the outside...Butyourmistake – yours and hers! – gave us an opportunity to be a family. A proper family!...And it’ll never come again, we both know that.

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