Page 61 of The Midnight Secret

‘Good riddance!’ someone yelled.

‘The witch is leaving!’ cried another.

Mhairi walked on, her head held high, unmoved by their jeers. She would not let them hurt her any more. She had already lost a baby once before and she wouldn’t go through it again.

She knew Donald loved her, but he couldn’t leave.

She loved him too – but she could not stay.

Chapter Seventeen

FLORA

5 January 1931

Quebec City

The room was low-lit and shadowy, red cloths thrown over round tables, people sitting on rush-back chairs and leather banquettes as waiters slunk through like cats. James surveyed the room, quickly finding Landon sitting in a corner. There was a newspaper in front of him, but he wasn’t reading it. A tendril of cigarette smoke curled from his lip as he watched them approach.

‘Mr Landon,’ James said as they approached. ‘Thank you for your note.’

Several days of silence had passed since their initial meeting, and Flora had grown increasingly terrified that Tucker had somehow ‘got’ to Landon and warned him off.

‘Y’ found it all right, then?’ the man asked as they sat down opposite him.

‘Indeed. A well-chosen spot.’

His gaze dragged over her like thorns as she fidgeted beside James, trying to control her nerves. She fiddled with the prizedgold wedding ring that now sat beside her sapphire, the ultimate token of respectability. They were legitimately married at last, man and wife...and ready to become a family of three.

The moment was upon them.

A waiter came over and they ordered some red wine that would doubtless be too sweet or too cool, but drinking it was beside the point. They merely had to go through the motions to get to the reason for being here.

Landon seemed especially unhurried, watching the waiter disappear, taking another drag of his cigarette before he looked back at them.

‘So,’ he said finally. ‘Your friends, the widows.’

‘Yes.’ James managed to make the word sound like a confirmation and not an eager question.

‘It’s not a straightforward picture.’

Flora felt her heart dive to her boots but forced herself not to outwardly react. She watched as Landon ground the cigarette stub into the ashtray, but she knew what he was going to say – they had boarded a train and disappeared.

‘One of them’s been quarantined. Typhus.’

Flora gasped so loudly that James had to take her hand in his own. ‘Who?’

‘Lorna MacDonald. She was infected on the crossing over. She actually passed the first two medical checks after disembarkation, but there was a query to the other one’s papers—’

‘Mary’s?’

‘Yes. Her paperwork was irregular on first inspection.’

Flora could guess why. Pepper had taken it upon himself to arrange her passport for her to travel over to Paris, but that had been a lucky exception. Upon evacuation, the islanders hadn’t been issued with any formal travel documents. A census had been taken as they disembarked, and of coursethe minister had always recorded births, deaths and marriages in the kirk register. But passports and visas were down to each islander to sort for themselves...It would have been easy for something to go amiss for international travel.

‘They were held in civil detention for a few days till it was all checked out, but in the meantime the MacDonald woman came down with symptoms. Lucky for us, or they’d have been stamped through.’

‘So where is she now?’

---