I settle myself on the sofa and pick it up. There’s a black and white picture of Mairi and Roy on their wedding day as they come out of the kirk. Lined up on either side of the path is a guard of honour of Wrens, standing to attention in their neat uniforms. Mairi’s veil blows in the breeze and she is laughing up at Roy, whose white-blond hair gleams in the sunshine as he smiles back at his pretty bride.
Mairi comes to sit beside me and Daisy clambers on to her lap, where she’s as much at home as she’d be on mine. ‘Look.’ Mairi points to another photo on the next page. ‘That’s your granny.’
Daisy contemplates the picture seriously and then points a stubby finger of her own. ‘Gan,’ she says.
‘And Bridie, too – they were your bridesmaids,’ I exclaim.
I’ve never seen these photos before. Mum and Bridie stand on either side of Mairi and each of the three holds a posy of flowers. I swallow hard as I realise they are forget-me-nots, tied with lengths of pale ribbon, just like the bouquet Bridie handed Mairi to leave on the beach at Black Bay. She should have been marrying Hal in this photo. She should have embarked on the biggest adventure of her life alongside her friend, heading off to make a new life on the other side of the Atlantic. Instead, the life that she should have had died on a storm-blackened beach on a February night in 1944. My heart aches for her and I think of what Mairi said in the car about grief.
I’m glad Bridie and Mum had each other as they walked along that hard and stony path together, side by side.
Flora, 1944
With the arrival of spring, Alec was reassigned to the patrols on the Western Approaches and, with a promotion to commander, he joined a new crew aboard the Kite. While it was hard being parted again, ever since she’d witnessed the shipwreck and the oil-blackened bodies washed up on the beach, an image of his bloodied hands on the axe had begun to haunt Flora’s dreams and she couldn’t help but feel a guilty sense of relief.
Mairi, who knew her so well, was astute enough to notice the change in Flora’s mood and commented on it one day when they were waiting outside the hospital in the ambulance. ‘How are things between you and Alec?’
‘Fine,’ replied Flora, but she could hear the defensive lift in her own voice. She tried for a little more nonchalance. ‘Why do you ask?’ She was loath to confide her doubts to her friend. After all, Bridie had lost Hal and Mairi had almost lost Roy. She ought to have felt she was the lucky one.
‘Because it’s strange. You almost seem happier these days with him off at sea. It never used to be that way. Are things tough with his parents again?’
Flora nodded miserably, then turned to face Mairi. ‘It’s that, yes. But there’s more,’ she admitted. ‘I feel I’m losing him. It’s as if everything is stacked against us, not just his father and his position in life, but the war, this latest promotion . . . Sometimes it feels as though everything is conspiring to push us apart. I don’t know if I can keep fighting against it all for much longer. More to the point, I don’t know that he can, either.’
‘I know it’s hard, being parted. The war’s taking a huge toll on us all. But anyone can see how much he loves you.’
‘Do you think so? Because I’m really not certain of that any more. He’s struggling, Mairi. And I’m not sure being with me isn’t making it harder for him.’
‘Och, that’s just Sir Charles’s interference getting to you. Don’t you dare let him win, Flora Gordon! Don’t give him the satisfaction of destroying something so good.’
Their passenger appeared then, cutting short the chance to say anything more. As they drove back to the base, Flora tried to feel reassured by Mairi’s words. But in her heart of hearts, the doubts remained.
Alec was to have been away until the autumn. But, as the white heads of ox-eye daisies nodded at the roadside and the dog roses bloomed pink against the grey stones of the dykes, word came, via Ruaridh, that there was a plan to risk another summer convoy, which would muster in the loch and set sail for Archangel in mid-August. And so, with a mixture of feelings, she