Page 7 of The Midnight Secret

Jayne didn’t know – she was versed in deaths, not births – but she let the comment pass. Rachel loved to gossip and she often forgot her audience. ‘So then it could come tomorrow instead?’ Was that even worse? ‘How would we get her on the boat?’

Rachel pulled a face. ‘If they can get the cows up, they’ll get Mary up too.’

Jayne hoped they wouldn’t have to lash her with ropes andhoist her. ‘But a boat’s no place to have a bairn,’ she said. ‘If I was her, I’d be crossing m’ legs and holding on till we land tomorrow.’

‘The way Mary holds a grudge, I’m sure she could hold on for another month,’ Rachel grinned. ‘What’s twenty-four hours?’

Jayne smiled at the joke, but she looked back out to sea, hiding her eyes from scrutiny. She knew exactly how much could –would –change in the space of a day, but it wasn’t her place to warn her friends. Nor to frighten them.

The silence that fell had lead weights in its skirts, pulling down from the rafters of the old kirk and settling heavily upon the villagers as they knelt on their cushions, praying into clasped hands. Jayne glanced around, not a hair on her head stirring as she took in her neighbours’ white knuckles, tears falling past scrunched-shut eyes, whispers hovering on moving lips. Even the Reverend, standing in full power at his pulpit, had run out of words. His sermon done, his warnings spent, all any of them could do now was hope that this was for the best after all, and that a bright new beginning really was coming on the back of this ancient goodbye.

Almost every seat in the tiny chapel was occupied. The smallest of the children sat quietly for once, and even Mad Annie – notorious for her resolute abstinence from God’s house since the drowning of her husband fourteen years prior – was sitting stiffly on the wooden bench beside Ma Peg and Old Fin. Her lips didn’t move and she wouldn’t bend her head, but nonetheless she was here, reluctantly surrendering to forces even greater than her indignation. Only four villagers were absent: Mhairi and Flora still in Glen Bay, and Crabbit Mary and Lorna. Mary’s waters had broken after all, andDonald was sitting in the pew alone, wearing the apprehensive expression of every expectant father.

There was a stranger among them, too: Mr Bonner, a reporter fromTheTimesin London, had come over on theDunara Castleto bear witness to the ‘historic event’. He was staying at the Manse with the reverend and his wife, and in the space of a day had made a nuisance of himself, wanting to ask the villagers questions while they finished packing up and cleaning their homes. No one believed him when he said the evacuation had caught the public’s imagination. Why should anyone care what their thirty-six souls did or didn’t do?

Jayne looked past him as she scanned the congregation, taking in the faces young and old that she knew as well as her own, and trying to memorize this moment. Never again would they sit here as a community, praying to the God whose mercy had been but a thin skin protecting them from the full might of Mother Nature.

Next to her, Norman cleared his throat; it was an innocuous gesture but she knew her husband too well and recognized the impatience it contained. He was a man of action, not of contemplation, and there were still jobs to be completed before they could step onto the boat in the morning.

Stirred by the prompt, the minister’s voice rose into the silence, the islanders sitting back on the benches in a muted symphony of rustling tweeds and creaky joints as he invoked a final blessing upon their souls. None of them were ignorant, now, to the mortal temptations awaiting them on the other side of the water; he had made sure not to squander this opportunity to terrify his flock into moral obedience.

They watched with lowered gazes as he strode down the aisle and took his position by the door. There was a pause, then the villagers rose, turning to one another and beginningto talk in low voices. Usually there was a rush for the doors, but tonight was different. This was the final time they would ever walk out of here.

Jayne looked around at the simple white walls and beamed roof of the kirk they were leaving behind. There was no master stonemasonry here or dazzling stained-glass windows. Take out the pews and the altar and, to anyone else, it could be a schoolroom. Only the St Kildans themselves knew of the hope that had breathed colour into this space: marriages and christenings marking the high days; frantic prayers uttered as the crops failed, the seas rose, the winds blew and the babies died. Lockjaw and smallpox had bludgeoned their community in times past, but it was comfort and ease – or at least the promise of it – that was finally propelling them away from here.

That and a needless death.

Jayne stared down at her feet, shuffling on the wooden floorboards in a slow-motion stampede as everyone talked around her without quite seeing her. She stole a look towards the MacQueen pew, where Archie and Christina MacQueen had bookended their boisterous brood. David, as if sensing her stare, looked up and caught her gaze; his lashes were wet, his cheeks flushed. She knew it was a struggle for him to contain himself. If he had been able to find Molly anywhere, it had been in here...but now, no more.

She smiled, trying to remind him with her eyes that they still had tonight to say goodbye too, and his head dipped fractionally, confirming the plan, but she saw no comfort in his face.

She glanced over at Norman. He was a step ahead, talking with Neil Gillies about the bother with getting the cows onto the boat earlier. She hadn’t yet found the opportunity – or words, or courage – to explain the plan to him, and hernerves pitched. What if he said no? Defying him, even arguing with him, was impossible to consider.

They were almost outside now, and she could feel the cool night breeze whickering past the doorframe, peering in like a curious cat but not quite able to curl inside. She felt clammy and a little dizzy, for reasons other than the heat, and she needed to gulp down some fresh air.

‘Norman. Jayne,’ the minister said, shaking Norman’s hand and nodding his head at her. ‘I trust you found comfort in the sermon? You were in the forefront of my mind when I was making my selection about leaving our loved one—’

‘Aye, thank ye. Keep us in your prayers, Reverend,’ Norman said briskly; he had a way of saying the right thing and yet somehow undercutting it too. Jayne knew it suited him to have someone to pray on his behalf. He had never been a natural churchgoer and he had resented the power the minister had wielded over their island community; but like the factor’s, the minister’s power was now on the wane here. As of tomorrow, he would no longer be the guardian of their souls.

‘Thank you, Reverend,’ Jayne said, smiling apologetically for her husband’s curt manner as he stepped past the churchman without further ceremony or thanks. ‘It was good of you to remember us on such a momentous occasion.’

‘One might argue this evacuation is all but happening in Molly’s name, and of course your loss is still fresh...’

Rawwas a better word, she thought, still smiling politely.

‘...I know it shall be difficult for you to leave her behind.’

‘Aye, but we’ll carry her with us in our hearts,’ Jayne said quietly, squeezing her hands to suppress the tingles. She felt a shadow pass over her.

‘Honour her memory through good deeds. I know you will, Jayne.’

‘I’ll try,’ she said, stepping out into the night. Though it was only just past nine, the days were already growing short and the stars were beginning to peep above them, distant galaxies winking in a white haze. The tide was out and the curlew moon threw a silver shadow onto the water.

Norman had already gone ahead, oblivious to her absence at his side. Ahead of him she saw Effie’s father, Robert Gillies, limping along the street with his brother Hamish, and it struck her that although she and many of the villagers were leaving behind the dead, some would be parted from the living too. The Gillies brothers had spent their entire lives – fifty years or more – never more than thirty yards apart. But tomorrow, when the majority of the islanders disembarked at Lochaline, Hamish and his family, along with Donald and Mary McKinnon, would continue on to Oban, further down the coast. The rupture was already beneath their feet, the first tremors beginning to be felt.

Many of the villagers were already halfway back up the street now, their voices carrying over the hiss of the sea sinking into the sand. She could see the youngsters – having dodged around legs in the kirk – were now tearing over the grassy path and jumping onto the low stone wall, knowing tonight was no ordinary night. Ahead of them, Lorna was standing by the door of the McKinnons’ cottage, watching the villagers heading back. Was there any further news on the baby?

She looked for Donald, wondering if he had seen the nurse too, but she caught sight of him peeling away from the crowd instead and heading somewhere with a determined look. She watched as he strode over to where Effie was standing; she was in conversation with someone hidden by the coffin cleit – only, conversation wasn’t the right word. Argument looked more like it. She was standing rigid, her arm outstretched,though she was pulling back, and it was only dropped as Donald made his fierce approach.

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