Page 69 of The Midnight Secret

Lorna’sbrown eyes flashed in her direction. Had she ever told their story before? Unlike Flora, Mhairi, Effie and Molly’s love stories, hers had had to live in the shadows, existing without a form. ‘When Mary was sick. She was brought into the cottage hospital where I was working on the mainland.’

Flora remembered it. She had been a young teenager when Mary had fallen desperately ill and she vividly recalled the drama of Mary being carried from her cottage by the men and taken over to the mainland on Captain McGregor’s trawler. She’d been gone several weeks in all, though it had felt longer at the time.

‘...And you came to St Kilda the following summer,’ Flora murmured, remembering the excitement as word had spread that a nurse was coming to live among them. Vaguely she recalled a bet between the mothers down by the washingburn – Christina had wagered Rachel a pocketful of crotal that ‘the new lass’ would start walking out with Norman Ferguson. It all seemed laughable now. ‘You never said you knew Mary.’

‘Of course not. We had to act as strangers.’ Lorna’s eyes simmered with bitterness. ‘No one thought twice when we gradually became friends.’

‘Did Donald know?’

She scoffed and looked away. ‘I don’t suppose it ever crossed his mind. He’s not exactly a man of great imagination.’

Flora bridled on her friend’s behalf. Mhairi loved the man in a way his own wife had never been able to. ‘He deserved better than he got,’ she said stiffly. ‘He’s a good man.’

‘And us? Did we not deserve better too? To know love? Are we not good people because we were born this way and not that? No one would willingly choose this path, Flora.’ She swallowed. ‘Me moving to St Kilda was the only way for us to be together. A few stolen moments here and there was all we could ever hope for. It had to be enough for us.’

‘So what changed that it wasn’t?’ Flora heard a hardness in her own voice that she didn’t recognize.

Lorna swallowed. ‘...Molly’s death,’ she said finally. ‘I took it badly, as you know. I couldn’t accept losing a healthy young patient to something that is now avoidable. I began to feel enraged...frustrated...at the limitations of life there. It made me think about moving on.’

‘And so you thought the entire community should go with you?’ Flora asked angrily. ‘What about Ma Peg and Old Fin, Robert Gillies and Mad Annie, who expected to live out their last days there? What about Mary Gillies, who buried five children there and had to leave them behind, their unvisited graves being mauled by the winds?’

Lorna looked at her, unrepentant. ‘I had all their best interests at heart. The world was moving on and St Kilda was being left behind.’

‘St Kilda wasalwaysbehind! But it was our home. You were just an incomer who came for her own reasons and then left for them too.’

‘...I truly believed evacuation was the best choice for everyone.’

‘You expect me to believe that?’

Lorna fell still, conflict running over her face like a spring storm. She looked tired, as if the words and the anger were draining her. ‘I admit that...when I discovered Mhairi’s...predicament, I realized it presented a unique opportunity. She was pregnant by a married man and she had two choices: disgrace or discretion. Mary had already discovered the affair anyway. Her assuming the baby as her own was a way for themallto recover the situation: it would be her husband’s child, halfway to legitimacy. Mhairi would be spared the shame and could still go on to marry the farmer’s son. It was a good plan for everyone,’ she insisted.

An unspoken word hovered between them.

Until.

Until Mhairi had made one wrong decision. The ‘sheep drama’ that had killed Molly had had another knock-on effect: they had lost over sixty sheep that winter, threatening their ability to make their rent quotas when the factor came over in the summer. In trying to make up the shortfall and deliver that ewe of her triplets, Mhairi had lost her own baby – and put Flora in the spotlight.

It had been a game of dominoes. One of them falling and toppling all the rest.

Flora looked back at her, seeing the gleam of desperation in the other woman’s eyes.

‘No. Your arrangement with Mhairi was made with her consent,’ Flora said in a low voice. ‘She had made her choice and was prepared to live with it.Iwas never granted that mercy. What you did to me was cold and calculated. I had a fiancé on his way back to me, coming to marry me. We would have been a family and you knew that. That’s why you stole it from me with lies.’ Her voice broke under the strain of emotion. ‘You know what you did, Lorna! It wasnotthe same thing! It was monstrous, what you did! Monstrous! How can you live with yourself?’

‘I’m sorry!’ Lorna cried, the words pulled from her as if on a wire so that she slumped forward, her head in her hands. She began to sob. ‘...I’m sorry, Flora. What I did to you...it’s haunted me...’ She looked up with reddened eyes. ‘But to have come so close to having a child of our own with Mhairi, only to have it ripped away again at the eleventh hour...Mary was beside herself. Nothing could console her! In the months leading up to the birth, we had dared to dream of a future that wenevercould have foreseen, and then it was gone again in the blink of an eye. It was cruel! Stepping back from that was...it was desperate! We both knew there would never be another chance for us.’

‘SoIwas the sacrifice?’

‘Look at you, Flora!’ Lorna cried, her brown eyes wide. ‘Everything’s always come so easily to you. You’d have your pick of princes and kings if you wanted them! You could have as many babies as you like! Don’t pretend things are equal for us when they’re not!’

Flora stared back at her, seeing the wretchedness in the other woman’s face. But desperation was no justification.

‘What you did was wrong,’ she said flatly. ‘In the eyes of God, of everyone, you have sinned.’

‘...I know.’

‘You have to put it right.’

Lorna’s head whipped up. ‘What?’

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