Page 26 of The Midnight Secret

‘Homewrecker!’

‘Slut!’

‘Whore!’

There was no way to avoid it; the women had learned her routine and knew exactly when she left each morning. Theythought they knew her story too, but there was no use in telling them the truth about Mary fleeing with the baby. It would only rob them of their sport. Her mother had always warned her, every dog sets upon the stranger dog.

Chapter Eight

FLORA

Mid-December 1930

International waters, East Coast Canada

Flora walked into the lounge, feeling eyes settle upon her as she surveyed the room. The faces were all familiar now – every evening she was obliged to socialize and make small talk with them at dinner, and it was always the longest three hours of the day.

She quickly found James seated at a table with Dickie Grainger and Bertie Sykes; the three men had become fast friends and met most afternoons when the wives were resting, to enjoy a gin and tonic over a game of poker. The men’s days had come to acquire a rhythm on board a ship going nowhere. Their mornings were spent furiously swimming laps in the pool before lifting weights in the gymnasium; after lunch and a constitutional walk on deck or in the covered promenade when the weather was bad (which was most days), they came to the lounge either to read or play bridge, backgammon or in the younger men’s cases, poker. After dinner, they danced to the live jazz band, drank cocktails and regaled the companywith amusing anecdotes. They were all making a good fist of things.

Flora couldn’t say the same of her own days. She had no desire to make new friends and she stayed in their suite whenever she could, writing in her diary, sleeping or staring at the wall, counting down the weeks, days, hours and minutes until they could get off this ship. She tried telling herself it could still be so much worse: they could have missed the passage from Southampton altogether and that would have been it for the year, no more transatlantic crossings till the spring. But she wasn’t like Mhairi or, bless her soul, dear Molly: she had never been a convincing Pollyanna, and she could think of nothing but getting her son back.

James’s face brightened as he saw her making her way towards him – a rare outing – and he pushed his chair back, rising to greet her. Dickie and Bertie did likewise. Flora noticed the Tuckers sitting at the next table – Digby Tucker reading a book, his wife doing some needlepoint embroidery on a hoop. Lurking.

‘Flora,’ Bertie smiled as James kissed her particularly flushed, cold cheek. ‘You look refreshed. Another walk outside?’

His eyes darted to her hair and she realized she must be windswept.

‘Aye. I can’t be indoors so much.’ In truth, it made her feel like a bird in a cage. Even pacing up and down the same straight stretch of deck day after day was enough to drive her mad.

‘It’s a joy to behold a woman in touch with nature,’ Dickie sighed. ‘My dear wife catches pneumonia if I so much as crack open the window. A snake could boil to death in our bedroom.’

Mallory Tucker leaned over slightly. ‘I don’t know how youmanage it, Flora. You must be as tough as old boots to survive the temperatures out there.’

Eyebrows lifted between the men at the interruption.

‘Aye, I suppose I must,’ Flora agreed. She had quickly decided on submission as the best form of defence while they were all sequestered here together; she had no desire to go into competition with the other women. She didn’t debut a new hairstyle each evening, new jewels, nor even new clothes. She emerged simply to eat and then retreated to her room again, as quickly and quietly as she could. She wanted no attention at all, and yet eyes still followed her wherever she went.

‘Darling, would you like a drink?’ James asked, pulling out a chair for her as they all resettled themselves.

She shook her head. She didn’t intend to stay. She had only wanted to see him for a few minutes. Although they shared the same grief, their ways of coping were very different: James needed to keep himself busy while she needed to keep herself small. It was different for her. He had never seen their baby boy’s face, nor held him in his arms; he didn’t know what it had felt like to walk off a ship and leave him in the arms of another woman, trying to do the right thing when it felt like the very worst...

‘See any icebergs today?’ Bertie asked, catching sight of her frozen expression.

‘Not today, no,’ she said, pulling herself back. Her sighting a few days earlier of a huge iceberg had caused a flurry of excitement on the upper decks and an unwelcome rush of company for her.

‘Any ice floes?’

She sensed he was humouring her. Did they see her as eccentric, scanning the horizon for signs of any furtherobstructions to their destination? ‘...I saw a small one, but it was quite a way off.’

‘But it was out to sea, yes?’ James asked. He was looking at her, reassuring her that it wasn’t the sea ice they needed to worry about. They were in another race against time, this one with the risk of being ‘locked out’ of their destination; they hadn’t banked on a quarantine situation when they’d made the desperate dash to catch the final ocean crossing of the year, and now, with every day that passed, the St Lawrence River and estuary where they were due to dock was icing over. One day very soon – today, tomorrow, next week – it was going to become impassable. They could only hope and pray that they would make it through in time.

‘Aye,’ she nodded.

‘Good. Remember, Iceberg Alley isn’t our concern just now.’ He winked at her, seeing the worry on her face.

‘Tell that to the passengers onTitanic!’ Digby Tucker quipped from behind, making them all startle.

‘...Indeed.’ James swapped looks with Bertie and Dickie.

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