Page 103 of The Midnight Secret

She went back to the doorway and leaned against the wooden frame as she always used to, watching the activity of her neighbours. Angus and Fin MacKinnon were checking the metal ties that kept the roof strapped down in high winds. One had seemingly come loose, and they were tightening it in tandem. Mad Annie was sitting on the wall, smoking her pipe and kicking her legs as she looked back in at her cottage, as if it was a child she couldn’t decide was in need of a hard hug or a good scolding. David was sweeping Ma Peg’s doorstep, a promise he must have made to her. It had always been one of his chores, and Jayne supposed old habits were hard to give up.

Much like loving him.

She looked across at Lorna’s cottage, right at the very end of the street. It stood slightly apart, with the blackhouses either side she had once used as medical stores and a clinic room. The roof was in poor order from its more exposed position and the cottage had a forlorn, melancholic air, as if aware of its owner’s fate.

David stepped back inside and Jayne felt seized by the urge to talk to him. If she couldn’t adequately explain herself, at the very least she had to apologize for rejecting him in the moment he’d offered her everything.

She strode quickly along the familiar path, knowing the pitchand size of every slab. She glanced in the windows of number five, the Wee Gillies’ old home, as she passed, catching sight of two figures in the bedroom. She’d not seen Effie since she’d all but run away from Sholto on the beach. Jayne had assumed he had gone to the kirk with his father and MacLeod, to endure the official ceremony the lairds were insisting upon, but...

Her feet stopped. No, it wasn’t Sholto she’d seen. And as her mind played back the glancing image, she heard sounds. She knew all too well what a struggle sounded like, and she ran back into the cottage.

‘Where is it?’ Norman growled.

‘Norman!’ Jayne gasped in utter horror as she stood in the bedroom doorway. ‘What are you doing?’

He turned, and she saw the black look in his eyes she knew all too well. He had Effie caught against the wall, her arm pinned awkwardly behind her back. She was whimpering in pain as he turned her arm at the wrist a little, threatening to break it. Jayne knew exactly how much that hurt. He had done it to her many times over the years, but to see it so graphically being inflicted upon someone else...Upon wee Effie, of all people. She was strong, but she had no chance against a man of Norman’s size.

Norman bared his teeth, unconcerned by her interruption. ‘Get out, Jayne,’ he growled again. ‘This doesn’t concern you.’

But Jayne’s body wouldn’t obey his commands. Not this time.

‘Leave her alone. Let her go.’

‘I said get out! Don’t make me make you regret waking up this morning!’

She felt herself start to shake. His threats, so familiar, provoked a reflexive response in her now. She knew when to run, and this was it...Turn around. Go.

She stepped forward. Two steps.

Norman’s eyes narrowed at the defiance. A confrontation had been brewing between them for days now, and she knew exactly the consequences of provoking him like this. Until now, she had known there was safety in numbers – he wouldn’t beat her till they were home – but if he was doing this to Effie, he wouldn’t hesitate to strike her in front of Effie too. Neither one of them was safe.

Slowly, Jayne raised her hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘Just tell me what it is you want from her, Norman,’ she said in her calmest voice.

‘She knows what!’ he sneered, twisting harder on Effie’s arm and making her cry out.

‘Do you, Eff?’ Jayne’s voice quavered on the question, but she knew she had to pacify her husband. He was like a cornered rat, never more dangerous than he was right now. To have thrown off his veneer of respectability like this, to expose his true self to one of their neighbours, could only mean one thing – he had nothing left to lose.

‘I’m not telling him anything!’ Effie gasped through gritted teeth.

She cried out as he wrenched her arm around, holding it at a grotesque angle so that Effie’s knees buckled and she fell to the floor.

‘Effie, tell him!’ Jayne pleaded. ‘Whatever it is, it’s not worth this!’

‘You don’t know that,’ Effie whimpered.

‘I do.Really, I do...Please just give him what he wants...Please. Trust me. Whatever you’ve got, give it to him.’

Norman pressed his face up to Effie’s ear. ‘Listen to her,’ he sneered. ‘She’s talking sense for once.’

The empty room echoed with Effie’s laboured breaths. Shewas panting hard as she tried to withstand the pain, but Norman kept twisting her arm just a little bit more, a little bit more...Once more and he’d break her arm.

‘Fine,’ she gasped. ‘Fine!’

‘Where is it?’ Norman whispered menacingly.

A tear slid down Effie’s cheek. ‘...In the inky pool,’ she gasped. ‘I put it in the inky pool.’

Jayne watched as Norman’s entire body softened, the tension lifting off him at last. She had no idea what Effie had hidden, but the inky pool was over in Glen Bay, a curiously dark, small pond in which the water glistened black like an oil slick. No one could account for the phenomenon, but the villagers’ best explanation was that the grease or lanolin from the sheep and birds, cleaning themselves, somehow made its way into the water courses and pooled there.

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