Page 93 of The Midnight Secret

‘Fight!’

The word cracked like a gunshot and a sudden contraction rippled through the crowd of women in the butcher’s shop. It was as if an energy bomb had been dropped. The hairs on the back of Jayne’s neck stood up and she felt a tingle of dread. Her stomach lurched. Fights always made her sick.

‘They’re fighting!’ someone cried again.

‘Who is?’ someone from the back asked.

‘Brodie MacDougall and Norman Ferguson.’

Jayne felt the blood still in her veins as everyone disgorged onto the pavement to watch the drama unfold. She felt as if she was moving through treacle, the shouts and roars distant to her ear as she stepped outside to witness the flailing of fists.

She knew exactly why they were fighting. She had heard the rumours about Fiona MacDougall and her husband, even though everyone thought she was unaware. They thought hertoo foolish to know where her husband slept on those nights he didn’t come home, or why he smelled of perfume when she owned none. But she knew everything. She knew so much more than he knew.

She blinked at the frenzied spectacle. Her husband was a tall man and powerfully built, with strong shoulders and muscled arms. His opponent had none of his physical prowess – but he had fury on his side. Being cuckolded could make a lion of a lamb, and she watched as MacDougall landed several direct hits on her husband’s planed cheeks. Norman’s piercing blue eyes were bloodshot, and there was a deep cut above his brow already bleeding that she would need to tend to later.

The men, on their way to the pub after their own long shifts at the Forestry, were gathered around in a loose huddle, as if keeping the warriors penned in like fighting cockerels while they cheered on the action. As if this was exciting. Fun.Funny.

Was Fiona MacDougall here? Was she watching as the two men fought over her? Jayne lifted her head, casting a hollow-eyed gaze around the faces that had not once considered her in the fracas. This was a three-way drama. She wasn’t even in the equation.

But someone was staring at her. His stillness matched hers, conspicuous amid the twitching, baiting mêlée: hazel-green eyes, as sorrowful as her own, watching her from across the street.

She saw his sympathy for her predicament – his pity – and it was even worse than being overlooked.

Jayne wrenched her gaze away with a gasp. She saw Effie’s bicycle propped against the butcher’s wall and she grabbed it, throwing her leg over and beginning to pedal. It was an uphill climb, but fury propelled her. Being humiliated could make a betrayed wife fly.

‘Jayne?’ she heard Effie call, turning a moment too late tostop her. But Jayne didn’t stop. As she glanced back, she saw David following her, chasing in silence.

Her breathing became ragged quickly; she could scarcely see through her tears, but she wouldn’t stop or slow down, her muscles burning, her lungs squeezing as she left the scene – left him – far behind her and took the path for home.

On the lane, she passed Mad Annie in her front garden, staking runner beans in the beds she had dug out that week. ‘Jayne?’ the old woman asked, a frown creasing her wizened brow, as Jayne whizzed by in silence.

She passed the Wee Gillies’ place too, further along, finally reaching her own threshold twelve minutes after she had left the fight in the street. She threw the bicycle down on the ground and ran through to the kitchen, running the tap and splashing the water on her face as she gasped to catch her breath.

She let the water run, her hands splayed wide on the counter and her head hanging as she gulped for oxygen. Minutes passed. The physical exertion of getting back here had extinguished her tears – she couldn’t cry and pedal uphill at the same time – and all she felt now was bitter, stinging humiliation at her husband’s indiscretions having been so publicly aired. She knew Fiona MacDougall was not his only lover, and she also knew she wouldn’t be his last. Norman hadn’t touched Jayne once since they had arrived in Lochaline. It was both a mercy and a blessing, for back home his nightly attentions had been difficult to bear. And yet...it had also shown her how very unwanted, undesired and unseen she was to her husband. Now that Norman had choices, she was nothing more than his housekeeper and cook. She had been able to bear the shame of her inadequacy when it was private, but there was no hiding from it now. Everyone knew. David had seen with his own eyes that she was an unsatisfactory wife.

The sound of the gate creaking on its hinges made her straighten up just as the door was thrown back and David himself filled the doorway. He was breathing heavily. Had he really sprinted the whole way here? She had expected him to fall back, to give up. ‘Jayne—’

‘Don’t!’ she cried, as he came into the kitchen he knew so well. He sat at that table every evening, more often even than Norman, so that now she had come to regard the chair as his and not her husband’s. ‘I don’t want to hear it! I don’t want your pity!’

Anyone but his.

She turned away, but she felt him watching her. She always could. His gaze had become her silent companion over these past few months, always there.

‘Well, too bad,’ he said in a hard tone she didn’t recognize as his. ‘You’ve got it. Everyone pities you now! Is this what you wanted?’

She turned back in shock that he was being so cruel. Norman, yes, she expected nothing else. But David...? ‘How can you ask me that?’ she gasped.

‘What else am I to think? Why else would you stay when you know what he’s been doing? Everyone knows, even the kiddies in the playground!’

‘Stop it! I want you to go.’

‘No!’ he said curtly, stepping further into the house instead. ‘What will it take, Jayne?’ he demanded. ‘When will you admit what he is and leave him?’

‘Never! I can’t!’

‘Yes, you can! He uses you! He abuses you! And now this? He’s humiliating you!’ His eyes were flaming. She had never seen him so enraged. ‘God almighty, Jayne, where’s your self-respect?’

‘Stop it!’ she cried, putting her hands to her ears; but he crossed the space between them and took hold of her wrists, lifting them away again in the next moment.

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