Page 68 of The Midnight Secret

Room 237.There it was, a card on the wall beside the door:Lorna MacDonald, 31,Scotland. Dis. Empress of Scotland, 23/11/1930. Typhus.

Flora stared at the words, seeing how they gave a summary of a woman she knew now from all angles. A woman with whom she had once laughed, talked, danced, gossiped in the burn as they washed clothes...A woman who was intelligent, educated and principled, but also overbearing, bossy and domineering; who had saved her fair share of lives, and been capable of extraordinary cruelty...A self-proclaimed old maid with no interest in marrying – because she was already, secretly, in love.

Flora held her breath as she looked at the doorknob. One turn and she would see again the woman who had tended her throughout her pregnancy and shown her the greatest kindness, before delivering her of a baby she would take.

It made her a monster, didn’t it? James wanted to believe Lorna had goodness in her, but what woman could do that to another? For all of Mary’s desperation to have a child, it was Lorna who had brought the plot to life: smiling as she lied to Flora’s face, day after day after day. It was Lorna who had told her James was dead and held her as she cried. It was Lorna who had given her the herbs that induced her labour two weeks early.

She opened the door and peered in, feeling a jolt nonethelessas she saw the oh-so-familiar figure of Lorna sitting in a chair. She was quietly reading a book, a model of composure and self-improvement. No one could guess, just from looking at her, what evil she had done.

Flora slipped into the room, feeling her anger harden. ‘Hello, Lorna.’

Lorna looked up, a frown already crumpling her brow as her ears caught the accent that told her one story, her eyes telling her another.

‘Nurse Nanc—?’ She stopped short as she caught a better sight of the nurse approaching her.

A silence exploded in the room as, slowly, Flora removed the mask to reveal her startling, astonishing face.

‘This is a turnaround, is it not, Lorna?’ she said. ‘Me the nurse and you the patient.’

Lorna’s eyes travelled over her in disbelief – that she was here, that she was dressed like this.

‘You’re only dressed as a nurse,’ she corrected – she had always been so correct, so officious – but her voice still betrayed her great shock.

‘Aye, but you’re very much a patient, from what I’ve heard.’ Flora perched on the end of the bed, setting down the dummy file as she took a better look at Lorna. ‘Typhus is serious. You’ve had a hard time of it lately.’

She regarded her foe through narrowed eyes, taking in the changes since their last meeting. To all intents and purposes, it had been the night of the birth, for she had scarcely seen Lorna on the boat over to Lochaline the next day. Flora had been on all fours as she laboured, crying, wailing, moaning like an animal as Lorna had mopped her brow and shushed her. Lorna had been the one in control back then. She had held all the power.

How the tables had turned.

Lorna was thinner, her face pale and haggard, dark moons cradling beneath her eyes. Unlike the healthy detainees with their roof garden, she looked like she hadn’t been outside for weeks. Her auburn hair had lost its rich colour, as if she was bleeding pigment, and there was an overall impression oflack. This crossing had come at a high cost to her, that was evident; she certainly hadn’t set eyes on a swimming pool or a billiards table, or slept on silk sheets in a suite. She had suffered.

She sank back into her seat, seeing Flora’s reading of her: pitiable and pathetic, she was diminished, no longer the woman who had quietly gathered a revolution on a small Scottish isle. Lorna looked away, but there was nothing to look at; the windows were set high in the walls, providing light but no view. ‘...You hate me.’

‘Only appropriate under the circumstances, don’t you think?’ Flora replied. ‘I had thought us friends once. I trusted you with my life, the life of my baby.’

‘I would never have hurt or endangered either one of you.’

‘How can you say that?’ Flora asked coldly. ‘You told me James was dead to trick me into giving him up. You forced me into a birth that my body wasn’t yet ready for. And then you brought my baby on a transatlantic crossing, exposing him to dangerous diseases you yourself have been unable to fight off.’

There was a long pause. ‘...We had no choice.’

‘Another lie. You just wanted to be sure I would never find you. You knew at some point James would come back and your lies would be revealed. You knew I’d come after you.’

Lorna nodded, admitting it. ‘...Of course. What mother wouldn’t?’

The two women’s eyes met then.Wasshe a mother? Did love alone make her so, or biological fact?

A silence bloomed between them.

‘Was it worth it?’ Flora asked, feeling a vague pity she hadn’t anticipated.

‘...Aye. For a few weeks, we were a family. Just us, together, as we’d always dreamt.’

Flora watched her, wondering how she had been so blind to a truth that had been right in front of her all those years. Innocuous events were cast in a new light now – like the time she had seen Lorna and Mary holding hands around the back of the cottage as she had been talking to Effie at the bull house. Donald had just returned from Boreray after his fight with Mathieson, and she had taken the gesture as one of sympathy, a nurse’s friendly care.

She wanted to hate Lorna, but the woman before her looked broken, nothing like the warrior she had known. Love had come at a high price.

‘When did it begin between you?’

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