Page 92 of The Midnight Secret

Unless she could.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

JAYNE

16 April 1931

Lochaline

Like a cat on a sun-warmed wall, the evenings were beginning to stretch. Every afternoon now, as the women swarmed into the factory yard, shadows fell upon the cobbles beneath a gladdening sky. The hills were resplendent, clad in their magnificent yellow gorse blossoms, and the trees were filling with returning birds: Effie had so far spotted willow warblers, tree pipits, yellow wagtails and wheatears.

Jayne quietly waited her turn in the queue at the butcher’s, eyeing the cuts laid out behind the glass and wondering which her husband would want for his dinner tonight. Ahead of her, Mhairi, Effie and Ishbel were laughing about Mrs Buchanan’s skirt being caught tucked in her undergarments all afternoon and how no one had cared to mention it to her. It was a petty victory that put a smile back on Effie’s face. She had been listless ever since returning from the day trip with her new gentleman friend last month, and his blue sports car had been conspicuous by its absence eversince too. But, although the girls laughed here and there, they rarely smiled. Effie, Mhairi and Jayne herself – none could really claim to be happy.

Mhairi stepped backwards, standing on Jayne’s foot. She was beginning to show now and her balance was a little off.

‘Och, Jayne, I’m sorry!’ she apologized. ‘I didn’t see you there!’

‘Not to worry,’ Jayne smiled.

‘Hai, Jayne,’ Effie said in surprise, turning too.

‘Have you heard anything more on the visit back, Eff?’ she asked, moving the conversation away from her invisibility.

The news that the Earl of Dumfries had bought their island home was all the former villagers had been able to talk about for weeks. Jealousy was rife that Effie would be going back with the lairds to St Kilda for a formal handover ceremony.

‘Not yet.’

‘I heard people are asking the size of the boat,’ Mhairi said as they shuffled forward in the queue.

‘What boat?’

‘The earl’s, of course. How many passengers can he take?’

‘How should I know?’

‘Did you never go on it?’ Ishbel asked.

Effie shook her head.

‘But you saw it,’ Mhairi pushed. ‘When it was anchored in the bay last summer.’ Mhairi had been sequestered in Glen Bay, on the other side of the ridge, by then, but Flora had kept her up to date with all the news from her fleeting visits back to the village.

‘That wasn’t the earl’s boat, it was MacLeod’s,’ Effie corrected. ‘And I saw no more of it than anyone else.’

‘Oh,’ Ishbel said disappointedly. ‘What a pity.’

‘Why do they want to know, anyway?’

‘Others want to go back with you,’ Jayne said simply. It was all Old Fin could talk about when she went to sit with him at her lunchtimes. ‘They don’t think it’s fair you should get to go and not them, just because you...well, because of your relationship with Sholto.’

Effie stiffened. ‘But I don’t have a relationship with Sholto.’

Jayne felt a swell of sadness as she took in the young woman’s doleful expression.

‘So then why have you been invited?’ Ishbel asked. It didn’t make sense.

Effie blushed, and Jayne had a feeling she was holding something back. She quickly changed the subject. ‘Anyway, no matter – but I think they’re going to write to the earl and ask to go along too, just so you know.’

‘Aye...thanks, Jay—’

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