Page 84 of The Midnight Secret

‘No, there isn’t,’ he grinned. ‘Norman looked like he was chewing a wasp when he was talking about that car.’

‘Effie doesn’t care about cars.’

‘I know, but this one sounds like a daredevil too. Y’ never know – Effie might actually have met her match this time.’

Mhairi swallowed. Was he right? Was she confusing first love for everlasting love – not just for Effie, but herself too? Effie was facing facts, but Mhairi...she was as anchored to Donald as she’d ever been.

‘Don’t look so sad,’ he said, knocking her affectionately with his arm. ‘I’m only playing...I know you and Donald are the real thing. Everyone does.’

They had been brought in from the cold now that the full truth had been revealed. Mhairi and her mother had talked at length about the love affair – how it had begun, Alexander McLennan’s abuses, and how Donald had tried to protect her from him. The pendulum of public opinion had swung fully in their favour, and it was Mary and Lorna who were now vilified. The St Kildans had rallied around her, but also the MacQueens, who had lost their grandson on account of the women’s deception and lies, which had left their daughter bereft. The only brightness on their horizon had been a telegram from Flora – finally – telling them that she had been reunited with James, and that they had married in Canada. She had written that she had ‘much to tell’ when she returned, little knowing that everyone already knew.

‘Have you heard from him?’

‘A letter came yesterday.’

‘And how is he?’

Mhairi sighed. ‘...He’s not doing well. He’s so alone; he hasn’t the heart to go to the pub with the others after work. He just sits in the flat.’ She glanced at David. ‘I’m worried he’s going to come up here.’

‘But he can’t,’ David frowned. ‘His bail conditions—’

‘I know. I keep telling him that, but...he’s desperate. I’m worried he’ll do something rash.’

‘You’ve got to make him understand that he has to wait. It can’t be easy remaining under police caution, but it won’t be for ever.’

‘It’s been four months now, though.’

‘Aye, so any day now they’ll surely release him from enquiries. They have no proof—’

‘They’re sticking with motive. They believe they can put a case together on that alone.’

‘You gave him an alibi, remember? They can’t disregard that because it’s inconvenient to them. Trust me, they’re just throwing their weight around because they’ve not got anyone else on the hook.’

She glanced at him, Norman’s name a spectre between them.

‘Did you try talking to Jayne again about...your suspicions?’

He winced. ‘Aye, I tried. I told her it’s about letting justice be done. Both of us going to the police and telling them we are each other’s alibis doesn’t mean she’s incriminating Norman. If he’s guilty, then the truth will out. Itshouldcome out. And if’s not, then there’ll be nothing for them to find.’

‘But...?’

‘She won’t do it. She says he wouldn’t be able to prove he had been at home alone all night, and she knows for a fact he didn’t do it.’

Mhairi tutted. ‘She can’t possibly know that.’

‘Of course not. She’s just frightened of him and what he’d do if he found out she was with me that night.’

Mhairi looked at him, hearing the bitterness in his words. He hated Norman, she knew that – he resented everything the man had done to keep him and Molly apart in the months before she died, believing his sister could ‘do better’ than David. There was no doubt David and Jayne had become good friends after Molly’s death, united by grief, but since moving back to Lochaline, she had noticed something else too. It was something she kept tryingnotto see, but couldn’t help recognizing – because she too had once been in love with someone who was married. She knew how it was to go years seeing someone in a certain light, only for something to shift so that they were recast in a golden haze. Did Jayne know?

Did David?

Their white terraced houses were in view now, the neat walled front gardens running down to the track, the smart new telephone box sitting proudly on the other side. Lights glowed in the windows of the smaller property wedged between the MacQueen and MacKinnon houses, where Mad Annie and Ma Peg lived; they looked after the children after school while Christina and Rachel finished their shifts at the factory.

‘Come to ours,’ David said, opening the gate for her. ‘Ma made some batter for drop scones this morning.’

‘Drop scones, you say?’ she smiled, needing no further persuasion.

They walked into the house. The younger ones were playingupstairs, and they found his mother prodding the fire in the front room and throwing on a bucket of coal.

---