Chapter Eighteen
There was no back-up plan.
From the moment they had left Paris, they had never once envisaged a future in which their child was not with them. Failure hadn’t been an option. Chase, hunt, pursue, capture...that was how it was supposed to have been. They had thought justice was on their side. Truth and fact. But it was all for nothing without evidence.
The burden of proof.
James had taken it badly. He was used to doing business, where money was king, but that held little sway over a woman from a barter economy; and appealing to her better nature was pointless when, in all the years Flora had known her, Mary had never once been reasonable nor compassionate. Too late, he saw he should have offered a bribe for Landon to take the baby: snatch him back under a lie, as he’d been taken from them. Instead, they had lost their only advantage of stealth, and Mary would be on full alert now. She knew they were here and why. She wouldn’t let the baby out of her sight for a second, and the patrolling guards and fences that were designed to keep her in were also now the protective measures keeping them out.
The if-onlys haunted them both. All the way across the Atlantic, James had bolstered Flora as she’d struggled with the slow passing of days. The idea of his son had still been notional to him: he had never seen his face or looked into his eyes, never felt his warm, drowsy weight in his arms. But standing on that roof garden and seeing the tiny length of him, the sheen of his dark hair in the moonlight – the scale of their loss, everything Flora had gone through back then and every day since, had finally washed over him too.
Finally, they were united in their grief. They couldn’t sleep for more than twenty minutes at a time, barely ate. James had given Flora a brandy when they’d got back to take the edge off, but it had taken a lot more than one, and the bottle was soon half-empty as she cried and he lay in silence in ironed sheets.
Emotional and physical exhaustion overwhelmed them. James made one final visit to Landon, offering a small fortune to get him into the medical centre, but the Irishman was adamant it couldn’t be done. They had nowhere to go, no other routes to follow.
Flora sat at the window now, feeling nothing and seeing nothing. The city was lost to fog, the noise of the buses and trams muffled like lovers’ confessions under a blanket. She slumped against the glass, feeling the cool chill of the condensation against her skin. She didn’t know how long she’d been sitting there...
Distantly, she heard a knock at the hotel door, but she ignored it. James was dozing; housekeeping could come back another time. They didn’t care about clean sheets and fresh flowers right now.
But the knock came again.
And then a voice. ‘Mr Callaghan?’
James stirred at the sound of his name, but Flora jolted at the accent.
‘...What?’ He was disoriented but alert, off the bed within a moment and staggering to the door.
Flora twisted from her position on the window sill to get a better look.
‘...Landon?’ James’s voice was deep with tiredness. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘May I come in?’
James stepped back.
‘Mrs Callaghan,’ Landon nodded, a small frown crossing his face as he took in their general state of disarray. Flora realized James was in only his trousers; she was wearing just her slip...Clearly they hadn’t been expecting visitors. James had been at the door before either of them could collect themselves.
‘You’ll have to forgive appearances,’ James muttered. ‘We’ve been feeling...under the weather.’
Landon made a noncommittal sound. Flora noticed he was carrying a large brown paper bag.
‘What can we do for you?’ James asked.
‘I’ve found a way into the quarantine unit.’
Flora gave a small gasp, but James’s eyes narrowed. ‘...But you said it was impossible. The biohazard security...?’
‘Let’s just say I’ve befriended a nurse there. We’ve had a couple of dates these past few days...I persuaded her to give me this.’ He held up the bag, looking over at Flora as James took it from him and looked inside.
‘It’s a nurse’s uniform.’
Landon nodded. ‘Only Mrs Callaghan can go in. My...friend has given me her rota: shift changeover times, tea breaks...Plus the patient list. If we time it accurately, your wife can get in there and into the woman’s room before the next shift starts their rounds.’
James looked at Flora with wide eyes, disbelief slowly marbling with joy. Could this really be happening? They’d been granted a second chance?
She pulled the uniform out of the bag: a white, mid-calf-length dress, white soft-soled shoes, a white cloth hair cap and a mask that looped over the ears, covering her mouth and nose.
‘When can we go?’ she asked, her voice little more than a breath. It hurt so much to hope. To become solid again.
‘Can you be changed and downstairs in twenty minutes?’
James nodded on Flora’s behalf.
‘Then I’ll take you over there. You can follow in your car.’
He left the room quickly, and they stared at each other. Was this really happening? Flora began to dress, her heart racing, fingers fumbling on buttons as James began to pace and plot.
‘We need to go about this the right way,’ he murmured. They had never planned on Flora being the negotiator. James was better placed, not just as a businessman, but for being more emotionally removed. He had no history with these women. But Flora...she had once seen Lorna as a friend, had trusted her with her health and her baby’s life, only to be betrayed in the most heinous of ways.
‘You said that Lorna’s not like Mary? That at heart, she’s a good person?’
‘She is...She was . But I don’t know any more. I never would have thought Lorna could do what she did to me.’
‘Love can make people do crazy things,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘But she’s been locked up in quarantine for over a month now, with no contact with Mary beyond letters. That will have given her time to reflect while she’s been all alone. She might well have been having regrets. Second thoughts.’
Flora shook her head. ‘I doubt it. She’s come this far.’
‘But if it wasn’t her idea in the first place...she might have gone along with it because Mary so badly wanted a baby. We saw how determined she was about keeping him, especially if she can’t bear a child herself...But that might mean this was never Lorna’s personal crusade. If she wasn’t the driving force behind it – that’s our way in. At heart, she’s a nurse. She helps people. She has a conscience.’ He jabbed a finger at Flora, finding conviction in the plan. ‘You never know – seeing you here and giving up the baby might be a relief for her. She might want to do the right thing but just not know how.’
Flora thought about what he had said, trying to contain her hopes. Even if all this was true and Flora could appeal to Lorna’s better nature, could Lorna hold any sway over Mary? Last night, Mary had showed them her determination to be a mother: the child was lying in her arms, the paperwork in her name. She held all the cards.
But the lion was known by the scratch of his claws. And as Flora set the nurse’s hat upon her head, she reminded herself Mary wasn’t the only one with a sharp swipe.
Landon pulled up on the opposite side of the street to one of the wooden grain stores, James just a couple of feet behind him. Flora looked around at the empty docks as her husband cut the ignition. Small icy banks of dirty snow were heaped alongside the road, the sky hanging so low it almost bumped their heads. A bleak, depressive mood was hanging over the whole city, not just her.
They waited as Landon got out of his car and walked back to them. James wound down the window.
‘That’s it,’ he said, nodding towards the grain store, a cigarette dangling from his lower lip.
James looked first at the building, then at him. ‘It’s a storage facility.’
‘Was. It was converted a few years back. Clearly, we couldn’t keep the sick in the same building as the healthy detainees.’
‘No, I suppose not.’ Typhus, typhoid, diphtheria, TB, cholera...all were highly infectious.
‘Stay here. Don’t leave your car,’ Landon said to James. ‘Your wife can follow me.’
James reached over and clasped her hand for a moment. ‘You can do this,’ he whispered.
Landon flicked the cigarette away and sauntered across the street as Flora shrugged off her overcoat – walking through the hotel lobby dressed as a nurse would have drawn far too much attention.
She hurried after Landon, who now stood by a door at the back corner of the building.
‘Take this.’ He pulled a patient file from his overcoat and handed it to her.
‘What’s it for?’
‘Appearances.’
She opened it – empty.
He glanced up and down the deserted street to check no one was around. ‘Right, this is what we’re going to do. I’m going to let you in, and you’ll find yourself in a long corridor. You walk along that—’
‘Wait – aren’t you coming in with me?’
He sighed, shaking his head at her. ‘How would we explain me, a civilian, being in a restricted medical zone? You’re the one in the disguise.’
Flora blinked, feeling her nerves peak.
‘Just walk along the corridor until you see a staircase on the right. Go up two floors...’
She listened intently, but her heart had gone into a gallop. Somehow, walking into an empty corridor felt more daunting than stepping out on stage in Paris to face eight hundred people.
‘Take a left at the top. The room’s halfway down on the right. Room 237. You got that?’
‘Up the stairs. Two floors. Turn left. Room 237, on the right.’
He nodded. ‘Very good.’
‘What should I do if I see someone?’
‘Keep your head down and hold the file against your chest. Remember, you look the part. There’s no reason for them to suspect you.’
‘But if they say something to me—’
‘Nod in greeting if you have to, but don’t speak. If they hear you’re foreign...’ He drew a line across his neck, which she understood to be a bad thing.
‘...And you’re sure it’s...safe to see her?’
‘She’s three days off being medically cleared. No symptoms for eighteen days now.’ He put a key in the lock and opened the door, handing the key over to her. ‘Lock up again when you leave and put the key in the bag with the uniform. Leave it at your hotel reception for me to collect this evening. You’ve got ten minutes before they start making the rounds...Now go.’
Flora stepped inside. As he had told her, she was indeed at the end of a long corridor. If any of the doors running along either side were to open, she would be in plain sight with nowhere to hide. Quickly, she covered her lower face with the mask and hurried forward, clutching the file to her chest, her rubber-soled shoes squeaking on the floor. There was a strong smell of disinfectant and a pervasive silence. Quarantine meant isolation, but it was almost as if there was no one else here. Glass windows should have provided a view into the rooms, but most were obscured by curtains that had been drawn over.
She could hear voices up ahead and felt a rush of panic as she looked for the stairs. Where...? She saw them and climbed the two flights, running up the steps two at a time. At the top, she took a left and scurried down the passage, scanning the room numbers.
Room 237. There it was, a card on the wall beside the door: Lorna MacDonald, 31 , Scotland. Dis. Empress of Scotland, 23/11/1930. Typhus.
Flora stared at the words, seeing how they gave a summary of a woman she knew now from all angles. A woman with whom she had once laughed, talked, danced, gossiped in the burn as they washed clothes...A woman who was intelligent, educated and principled, but also overbearing, bossy and domineering; who had saved her fair share of lives, and been capable of extraordinary cruelty...A self-proclaimed old maid with no interest in marrying – because she was already, secretly, in love.
Flora held her breath as she looked at the doorknob. One turn and she would see again the woman who had tended her throughout her pregnancy and shown her the greatest kindness, before delivering her of a baby she would take.
It made her a monster, didn’t it? James wanted to believe Lorna had goodness in her, but what woman could do that to another? For all of Mary’s desperation to have a child, it was Lorna who had brought the plot to life: smiling as she lied to Flora’s face, day after day after day. It was Lorna who had told her James was dead and held her as she cried. It was Lorna who had given her the herbs that induced her labour two weeks early.
She opened the door and peered in, feeling a jolt nonetheless as she saw the oh-so-familiar figure of Lorna sitting in a chair. She was quietly reading a book, a model of composure and self-improvement. No one could guess, just from looking at her, what evil she had done.
Flora slipped into the room, feeling her anger harden. ‘Hello, Lorna.’
Lorna looked up, a frown already crumpling her brow as her ears caught the accent that told her one story, her eyes telling her another.
‘Nurse Nanc—?’ She stopped short as she caught a better sight of the nurse approaching her.
A silence exploded in the room as, slowly, Flora removed the mask to reveal her startling, astonishing face.
‘This is a turnaround, is it not, Lorna?’ she said. ‘Me the nurse and you the patient.’
Lorna’s eyes travelled over her in disbelief – that she was here, that she was dressed like this.
‘You’re only dressed as a nurse,’ she corrected – she had always been so correct, so officious – but her voice still betrayed her great shock.
‘Aye, but you’re very much a patient, from what I’ve heard.’ Flora perched on the end of the bed, setting down the dummy file as she took a better look at Lorna. ‘Typhus is serious. You’ve had a hard time of it lately.’
She regarded her foe through narrowed eyes, taking in the changes since their last meeting. To all intents and purposes, it had been the night of the birth, for she had scarcely seen Lorna on the boat over to Lochaline the next day. Flora had been on all fours as she laboured, crying, wailing, moaning like an animal as Lorna had mopped her brow and shushed her. Lorna had been the one in control back then. She had held all the power.
How the tables had turned.
Lorna was thinner, her face pale and haggard, dark moons cradling beneath her eyes. Unlike the healthy detainees with their roof garden, she looked like she hadn’t been outside for weeks. Her auburn hair had lost its rich colour, as if she was bleeding pigment, and there was an overall impression of lack . This crossing had come at a high cost to her, that was evident; she certainly hadn’t set eyes on a swimming pool or a billiards table, or slept on silk sheets in a suite. She had suffered.
She sank back into her seat, seeing Flora’s reading of her: pitiable and pathetic, she was diminished, no longer the woman who had quietly gathered a revolution on a small Scottish isle. Lorna looked away, but there was nothing to look at; the windows were set high in the walls, providing light but no view. ‘...You hate me.’
‘Only appropriate under the circumstances, don’t you think?’ Flora replied. ‘I had thought us friends once. I trusted you with my life, the life of my baby.’
‘I would never have hurt or endangered either one of you.’
‘How can you say that?’ Flora asked coldly. ‘You told me James was dead to trick me into giving him up. You forced me into a birth that my body wasn’t yet ready for. And then you brought my baby on a transatlantic crossing, exposing him to dangerous diseases you yourself have been unable to fight off.’
There was a long pause. ‘...We had no choice.’
‘Another lie. You just wanted to be sure I would never find you. You knew at some point James would come back and your lies would be revealed. You knew I’d come after you.’
Lorna nodded, admitting it. ‘...Of course. What mother wouldn’t?’
The two women’s eyes met then. Was she a mother? Did love alone make her so, or biological fact?
A silence bloomed between them.
‘Was it worth it?’ Flora asked, feeling a vague pity she hadn’t anticipated.
‘...Aye. For a few weeks, we were a family. Just us, together, as we’d always dreamt.’
Flora watched her, wondering how she had been so blind to a truth that had been right in front of her all those years. Innocuous events were cast in a new light now – like the time she had seen Lorna and Mary holding hands around the back of the cottage as she had been talking to Effie at the bull house. Donald had just returned from Boreray after his fight with Mathieson, and she had taken the gesture as one of sympathy, a nurse’s friendly care.
She wanted to hate Lorna, but the woman before her looked broken, nothing like the warrior she had known. Love had come at a high price.
‘When did it begin between you?’
Lorna’s brown 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 washing burn – 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 was always behind! 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 them all to 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. I was 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 was not the 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 we never could 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.’
‘So I was 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?’
‘You heard me. Put it right. Give back my baby.’ Flora held her nerve as she got down to the bones of the confrontation. Lorna surely had no idea of Mary’s win over them the other night: the burden of proof over morality was always going to have been Mary’s play. But James had been right – the nurse did have a shred of conscience. ‘James is here with me, in Quebec. He wanted to go straight to the police, but I’ve held him off. I asked him to let me speak to you first and give you a chance,’ she lied. ‘I know you’re decent at heart, Lorna. And I...I can understand your motives, even if I can’t forgive them. But if you give me back my child, I’m prepared to part ways without further recrimination. I’m sure you can see it’s better to bend than to break. I don’t want to see you and Mary jailed for this.’ She saw the fear come into Lorna’s eyes. ‘You’ve made it all the way here – you can still build a life together. No one needs to know about any of it. I won’t tell them. I give you my word.’
Lorna was breathing heavily as the words rebounded in her head: police , jail , build a life ...‘But Mary,’ she breathed, her head beginning to shake side to side. ‘She won’t—’
‘I know. Which is why you won’t tell her. Not till after it’s done,’ Flora said calmly. ‘You and I know things were...chaotic in those final weeks back home. You weren’t thinking straight, you were panicking...But you’ve had time to think in here and you know now that what you did was wrong. You can’t outrun justice and y’ know what will happen to you if we go to the authorities. You’ve a clear choice: lose the baby or lose everything. The two of you would never see each other again, they’d make sure of that. They’d make examples of you both. I know you understand it. But Mary? She’s...Well, we both know it’s hard to hold a conger by the tail.’
Flora saw the tears streaming down Lorna’s face and held her tongue. She forced herself to hold back and wait, knowing her arrows had hit their mark. Her heart was pounding. Lorna was due to be released from here in three days.
Finally, Lorna nodded. ‘I’ll do it.’
‘You won’t tell her?’
‘...No.’
‘Because it’s no secret if three know it,’ Flora warned.
‘I won’t tell her,’ Lorna murmured.
Flora felt her breath catch at the sweet, private victory. ‘Then I’ll tell James to hold off from his visit to the police. We’ll be waiting for you three days from now, when you’re all released from the Immigration Hall. There’s a door to the trains beside the money exchange. Meet me outside there.’
‘Right there?’ Lorna looked panicked. ‘Can’t y’ at least—?’
‘No.’ Flora cut her off. ‘It has to be there. I won’t risk you disappearing on us again. Your word is no good any more. You have to find a way to bring the baby out to me there, without Mary seeing, or we’ll bring in the police.’
Lorna swallowed, then nodded. ‘...Aye.’
‘Good,’ Flora said, getting up. ‘Then we’re agreed.’
She stared down at the woman who had taken everything from her, wondering why it was she couldn’t feel contempt, only pity. ‘Three more days, Lorna, and then this nightmare will be over. For all of us.’