Flora was kindling the fire and boiling the pot when she saw Lorna and Effie’s spry figures coming down the slope. The sun had only just peeped above the Mullach Bi peak and the air was unsettlingly still once more, the night’s storm clouds darkening someone else’s horizon. Flora watched as they drew ever nearer, arms swinging, Lorna’s bag in her grasp; neither of them could have had more than four hours’ sleep.
Lorna nodded at Flora in greeting as she approached, but she didn’t stop. ‘How is she?’ the nurse asked, direct as ever and heading straight for the souterrain.
‘As well as you could hope. She slept soundly.’
‘And the bleeding?’ Lorna asked over her shoulder.
‘Seems to have stopped.’
‘Good. Good.’ The nurse slipped into the souterrain, leaving Effie and Flora together around the pit. Effie was pale and seemed somehow thinner than before, if that was even possible in the space of a day. Always skinny, she had never looked fragile – until now. There was a faint bruise on her cheek, some dirt still too, suggesting she’d been on the ground; images of the factor fighting her, overpowering her, filled Flora’s mind.
What must she have thought as she saw the broom lying there, as his terrible intentions had been revealed, in the very moments before the man she loved was driven from these shores?
Her gaze rose to meet Effie’s. ‘Eff—’
‘You should have told me.’ Effie’s voice was flinty and with a stab of shock and guilt, Flora realized Effie had discovered the truth of Mhairi’s condition in the most terrible of ways. The deception had been revealed in a crisis – no time for explanations, no excuses given for why one of them had been trusted and the other left out in the cold. It was self-evident that Flora, being here, was on the inside of the secret. Complicit.
‘Eff, I’m sorry,’ she began, as Effie turned her face away. ‘She made me swear not to tell a soul.’
‘And I’m just anyone, am I?’ Effie snapped. ‘I considered you my sisters.’
‘I am! We are. But . . .’
‘But?’
‘She’s terrified, Eff. She didn’t even understand what was happening until a few weeks past . . . She had no idea she was carrying a baby.’ Flora looked at her, willing her to understand. ‘It was actually Donald who first noticed the signs.’
Effie frowned. ‘Donald?’ Her tone was blank, but she could read Flora too easily and as she saw Flora’s own surprise that the name meant nothing to her in this context, she suddenly understood it perfectly. ‘Donald?’
She almost spat the word, incredulous at the revelation, and Flora realized Effie must have assumed the baby was Alexander’s; it was by far the more logical leap.
‘They’re in love.’
‘Mhairi and Donald?’
‘They’re in love, Eff. Like you and—’
‘Don’t!’ Effie hissed, a finger suddenly pointing to Flora’s face, lips trembling. ‘Don’t say his name. It is not the same.’
Flora swallowed. Effie was a hothead but Flora had still never seen her so angry. ‘They never meant for it to happen. There was never any sinful intention between them. They fell in love without meaning to.’ It sounded so simple in theory. ‘You can understand that, surely? It just happens – when you’re not looking for it. Even if it’s the wrong person . . . You know what love is now.’
‘Except he’s married! He took vows before God.’
‘Aye.’
‘And she’s engaged!’
‘. . . Aye.’ Flora swallowed, not wanting to excuse, merely to explain. ‘But Alexander’s not . . . he’s not what she made him out to be.’
Effie looked utterly disbelieving, as if nothing could excuse their transgression. And yet, Flora knew that if she repeated the story Mhairi had told her – if Effie understood there had been an obscenity, a sin against God—
‘He’s no gentleman,’ she faltered.
‘No gentleman? Of course not, he’s a crofter!’
‘Yes, but . . .’ How could she say it? ‘He’s a brutish man. Donald tried to protect her from him and . . . But it was never about keeping secrets from you. Mhairi just didn’t want you to be involved in something that would have troubled you; she felt that the fewer who knew, the better for everyone.’
‘Lorna knows!’
‘Because she’s a nurse. If it wasn’t for the baby coming, it would have remained a secret between just the two of them: Mhairi and Donald.’
‘And Mary? Does she know what her husband has been doing behind her back?’
‘Aye, she does now – and she doesn’t care.’
‘I don’t believe that.’
‘There’s no love in that marriage, Eff. She won’t lie with him. It’s dead—’
‘Won’t lie with him? She’s pregnant!’ Effie blinked as she saw Flora’s expression. ‘. . . What? Why are you looking at me like that?’
Flora froze, feeling the denial stick in her throat. ‘I . . .’ But the words wouldn’t come.
The two women stared at one another. There had never been a moment in their lives that they remembered without each other; there was eight months between them and they were sisters in every way but blood. They could read each other, even without words, and Flora saw the first crease of a frown begin to fold between Effie’s brows.
Effie gave a small sudden laugh, but there was no humour in it. ‘Mary’s pregnant!’ she reiterated. ‘I saw her when Donald was brought off the boat. I went to get her and I saw her with my own eyes getting off the bed . . .’ Effie’s voice trailed off and a silence followed. Puzzlement crossed her face. ‘She was in discomfort, but she . . . she wouldn’t let me near . . .’ She looked back at Flora with fresh understanding. ‘She’s not pregnant?’ she asked, pressing her hands to her mouth.
‘No,’ Flora mumbled, sounding choked. ‘She’s not.’
‘So then the baby . . .’ Effie looked ashen as the plan revealed itself and she looked towards the door of the souterrain, where Mhairi lay in the dark, trying to hold onto her unborn child.
‘Will go to live with its father after the birth and no one else will ever know.’
‘No!’ Effie protested fiercely. ‘That’s . . . awful! They can’t take a baby from its mother!’
‘Believe me, I feel exactly the same way. I can’t even begin to comprehend how she could give up her own baby. I’ve been trying to get through to her every time we talk, but she’s adamant, Eff: Donald’s married and she’s betrothed to Alexander. There’s no other way forward that she can see. She says that knowing the child will be raised by its father will sustain her. She believes this is the only way she can repent.’
‘By ripping out her own heart?!’
Flora held her hands out in despair. ‘I’m still trying to talk her out of it, but you know how stubborn she is once she sets her mind on something.’ She sighed. ‘Her spirits are very low.’
Flora saw Effie’s body slump at the words, everything making sense at last. ‘. . . So that’s why she was in the panic about the cuts on Boreray. And the McKinnons’ curse.’
‘Aye.’
Effie stared at the ground, not speaking for a long time. She looked broken, just as she had after her brother John’s death.
‘How’s Poppit?’ Flora ventured. Mhairi had told her, as they had lain together in the dark last night, that the dog’s leg had been broken as the collie protected both young women from the factor’s attack. The dog’s warm body had been Mhairi’s only comfort as she lay on the ground, in the storm, waiting for Effie to come back with the nurse. After fetching Lorna, Effie had carried the dog back down to Village Bay and waited there, while Lorna had brought Mhairi back over here.
‘Lorna’s set her leg. She may end up with a limp but Lorna says it doesn’t bother them so much as us.’
‘No,’ Flora agreed, trying to sound bright at the news. ‘She’s right about that. Three legs are no bother to them.’
‘Aye. She’s a faithful friend.’
The sarcasm told Flora she was not yet forgiven. ‘Eff, Mhairi never chose me over you. Her reasons were . . . practical.’ She watched, seeing how Effie’s jaw had locked, stubbornly repelling her words, refusing to be consoled. She knew there was only one way she could make it up to her. ‘. . . Did you not think it strange that I should have volunteered when Donald first suggested two of us summer over here with the flock?’
Effie frowned at her words but didn’t stir.
‘Think about it – this is my last summer here. Before word of the evacuation came through, I knew I would be leaving here for good, leaving all of you, my family, behind . . . Why should I want to spend it then, with just Mhairi, over here?’
Effie looked back at her now, confusion blooming on her face.
‘Why should I have worn my shawl around my waist, fastened with a brooch . . .? Why do I look so bonny?’
Flora watched as Effie’s mouth dropped open, followed by her eyes dropping down Flora’s body. Standing upright, in the thick woollen skirt, she looked as she always had, but as she relaxed her muscles and cupped her arm around her belly . . .
Effie gasped, her eyes widening, and she took a step back. ‘You . . .?’
‘Six weeks behind Mhairi – but, aye, she and I are in the same boat.’
It wasn’t strictly true. They were adrift on the same sea, but Flora wasn’t facing anything like the rupture coming for Mhairi.
‘Does James know?’ Effie whispered, looking stunned.
Flora shook her head. ‘Not yet. He’s out of contact now until the summer.’
‘But . . .’
‘Don’t look so worried. It’s different for him and me – we can be married before the baby comes in September. He’ll make an honest woman of me.’
‘. . . Your parents?’
Flora dropped her head, ashamed. ‘Donald’s suggestion that I help Mhairi over here buys me time, that’s all. The way I see it, the later I tell them, the shorter their shame. James and I will be married as soon as we’re on the mainland and I’m hopeful that any scandal will be quickly forgotten once I’m Mrs James Callaghan.’
Effie didn’t look convinced.
‘Things are difficult now but we won’t be stuck in this exile forever. We will all move on,’ Flora said determinedly. ‘Even Mhairi – at the very least she’s going to be spared the shame I’ll face.’
It was the wrong thing to have said and Effie recoiled, a small sound escaping her. ‘You make it sound a mercy – giving up her baby to escape a scandal! You think she should be grateful she loses her child because then no one will know? None will talk?’ She shook her head, eyes hard. ‘What do you really care what the village has to say about this baby when you’ll just move to somewhere people don’t know you? You’ll be five minutes off the isle and it’ll be like it never happened! The world might burn down around the rest of us, but Flora MacQueen will step into her happy ever after, is that it?’
Flora was taken aback by her words. ‘No, I didn’t mean—’
‘Aye, you did. You’ve got luck on your side, Floss. You always do.’
Flora watched as Effie angrily turned away from her, picking up a milk pail and heading for the nearest sheep fank, beginning the first of the day’s chores. She felt unsettled by her friend’s words, not because of the bitterness they contained, but the truth – because if there was one lesson Mad Annie had instilled in all of them over the years, it was that luck never gives.
It only lends.