Page 13 of The Midnight Secret

‘What was that?’ Christina asked. But they knew it could only have come from Effie.

The villagers rushed to the side of the ship, looking for a sighting of her. Every pair of eyes scanned the bottom of the cliffs, finding no trace of her anywhere, even though both Angus MacKinnon and Hamish Gillies could be seen still scrambling up the bluffs.

Rachel and Big Mary looked at one another in horror. Had their son and husband, charging up the cliffs after her, provoked a fatal error in Effie? A desperate leap? Effie had been guarding her dog with her life. They all knew she would never give Poppit up.

For several minutes no one spoke as they tried to make sense of what was happening back on shore.

Jayne felt a hand on her shoulder and looked over to see Flora had come to stand beside her. The young woman was pale beneath her sunburnt skin, her eyes puffy and red-rimmed with tears. Jayne didn’t know if she was crying for her lost lover, for leaving here, or out of fear over Effie’s fate. But shetook Flora’s hand and squeezed it, trying to reassure her as they looked back towards the Ruival cliffs again.

Angus and Hamish were getting to their feet now, the bluff scaled, but there was movement to their right and Jayne could make out another two figures: just pale dots against the grass, coming down the slopes. Effie’s bright hair shone like glinting glass in the sunlight. From her lurching gait, it was clear she was being dragged along.

It was a moment before Jayne noticed Poppit was nowhere to be seen. Effie’s shadow, she was usually never more than a few feet away from her mistress.

Jayne felt her stomach drop as she realized the reason for the scream – and the reason Flora had come over to consoleher. Angus and Hamish had been too far away to have been involved. Norman was the only one other person left on the isle who would have done what had to be done.

Her husband had never been a sentimental man. But she couldn’t say he wasn’t also a bad one.

The last of the villagers climbed aboard just before eight o’clock, the crew swinging into action as the whaler was slowly winched up and the smokestack began to puff. Big Mary had taken up singing the lament now, but the passengers were otherwise silent, every set of eyes trained upon Effie as she walked barefoot, without her shadow.

Instinctively Jayne’s hand went out as she passed. ‘Effie, I’m so sorry.’

The girl looked at her, but her eyes were blank. She was hollowed out with shock. She had lost too many that she loved recently and the pain sat upon her like a gauze veil.

Jayne’s hand fell back. What good was her apology when she was married to the man who had done this to Effie?

Without a word, Effie staggered over to where Flora was sitting and the two young women collapsed into each other like folded petals, just as Flora and Mhairi had done earlier. Jayne felt not just Molly’s exclusion from the three girls’ close bond, but her own too. She sat apart from everyone – too old for the girls but too young (and childless) to fall in with the mothers.

‘So there y’are,’ Norman muttered, coming to sit beside her as if she was the one who had been missing all night and almost all morning. As if he hadn’t just committed an act of atrocious cruelty.

It took her a moment to find her voice. ‘Did you finish what you were doing?’ she asked, seeing the dark expression he still wore. He was outwardly composed but she knew him too well; his spirit was agitated.

He gave a small grunt. ‘Well enough.’

‘That’s good then,’ she said lightly. ‘We can leave with no regrets.’

Norman looked down at her but she had turned away. The anchor chain was rattling loudly, the sailors running through their drills, the vibration of the engines beginning to hum beneath their feet as they powered up. There was a collective pull of tension as the St Kildans realized the moment was finally, truly here.

They were leaving. They were really going.

Everyone rose and looked back to shore as slowly the ship began to pivot, pushing away huge volumes of water that rolled in waves to crash upon their beach. It was impossible to believe that the cottages now stood empty, the chimneys cold, the cleits cleared. Jayne’s gaze rose over the slopes, cliffs, moors and crags they knew so well, the birds flying in their thousands overhead, as yet unaware that all this was now theirs.

From this vantage point, the islanders could finally see how very small their home truly was. A two-mile-long rock in the Atlantic, unable to bear crops or trees and surrounded on almost all sides by precipitous sea cliffs, had somehow sustained human life since the Bronze Age.

Until today.

None of them knew what they were sailing towards. Norman was dreaming of riches and position, but all Jayne wanted was security: close neighbours and a good friend nearby. For the first time she was facing the prospect of living truly alone with her husband – and it terrified her.

She looked around, seeing how every islander was lost in their own thoughts. David still stood alone, his eyes trained upon the distinctive oval wall of the burial ground; Flora was weeping silently as the wind rippled her dark hair, Effie shell-shocked beside her; Lorna was below deck with the McKinnons, helping them adjust to life as new parents. Celebrations for the baby’s overnight birth had had to be largely ‘postponed’, although with the new family travelling on in the minority to Oban, it was unlikely anything would come of it. The villagers’ salutary visits to the McKinnon cottage following the birth, just after midnight, would have to suffice.

To her relief, no one had asked Jayne where she had been, just as none of them seemingly noticed the glaring absence in their midst. Frank Mathieson hadn’t been seen all day, and she alone knew why. Of course, everyone was highly distracted, she knew that – there were several decks on the ship, so the islanders were scattered, orcouldbe, if they so chose. The drama with Effie and Poppit had diverted attention too, and the high emotion as they pulled away was driving everyone into introspection. They weren’t thinking about what they couldn’t see. Not yet, anyway.

But Norman, who hadn’t let the man out of his sights for the past few days, hadn’t uttered Mathieson’s name once. And he was gripping the bow rail with blanched knuckles, his gaze trained on a distant spot, out of sight. She watched his finger tap-tap-tap impatiently on the chrome until the giant anchor finally burst out of the water like a whale’s tail and they all felt the ship come free, untethered now from the island’s last grasp. The rudders shifted, the vessel gaining traction as they began to splice through the bay.

She watched her husband’s hands loosen their grip, becoming relaxed at last, and she stole a horrified glance at his beautiful, brooding profile. She already knew he had blood on his hands this morning from his altercation with the reporter, his casual violence towards Poppit...But more than that?

She stared at the open horizon where their future lay, with one question on her mind.

What exactly was her husband capable of?

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