as Jane stoked the sputtering fire. Beside her, Tom shivered in a faded tweed armchair, hugging himself and grumbling.
‘What's wrong now? You haven't stopped moaning since we left Glasgow.’ She threw on a handful of kindling. ‘Don't you like it here? This was my granny's cottage.’
He snorted. ‘You're telling me your granny was a crofter?’
She noted that he didn't say ‘farmer’, but used the Scottish expression. He was amazing. His English. Was amazing. Not him. He was annoying. ‘She worked on the line at Templeton's Carpets,’ she explained.
‘So, she bought this place?’ He sounded incredulous at the idea anyone would put down hard-earned money for such a dump.
‘She won it. Back in the ‘80s. One of those dodgy timeshare offers came through the door.’ He gave her a blank expression. ‘Y'know the sort of thing: You have already won one of these great prizes: a wicker basket of dried flowers, a canoe, or a Highland hideaway. All you had to do to claim your prize—and it was always the dried flowers—was sit in a conference room in an Aviemore hotel and listen to some guy's sales pitch. But my granny hit the jackpot.’ She motioned, quiz-hostess style. ‘The Highland hideaway.’
‘And to think she could have walked away with a canoe.’ He cast a disgruntled eye around the dim room. ‘If you'd wanted a change of scene there are perfectly good cafés on Byres Road,’ he grumbled. ‘With Wi-Fi.’ He flicked the switch on a standard lamp sporting a fetching floral shade. The room remained dim. ‘And electricity!’ he barked. ‘This is not natural.’
‘What are you talking about? Outside that door is actual nature.’
‘Nature is for German hikers in yellow cagoules.’ He scraped the chair across the floor, closer to the fire. ‘Can't you turn this thing up?’
Jane tossed on another log and retreated to the kitchen to make coffee. It was a while since she'd been up to the cottage. When she'd begun the novel she imagined retreating to its splendid isolation. In her head it would go like this: during the day she would alternate writing by the window (that would be the one window with glass in the frame) with long walks in the countryside where she would be inspired by clouds and daffodils. At night she would curl up by the fire and continue scratching out her masterpiece. She had decamped to the cottage to live the dream, only to find the power out, as usual. Four hours later her laptop battery died and she lost half of the chapter she'd been working on. That was the end of the romance. She returned to Glasgow the following morning and hadn't been back since.
The cupboard contained a single jar of Nescafé, a tin of powdered milk and a suspicious trail of what she hoped were only mouse droppings. She warmed the drink on an old Primus stove. It pained her to admit it, but Tom was right; the place was little more than a ruin. But it was her ruin. Her gran had left it to her, not her mum. Gran hadn't approved of mum's choice of husband—she was an astute judge of character—and though there was no grand title or country estate to disinherit her from, there was the cottage.
Tom called from the other room, imploring her through chattering teeth to hurry up with the coffee. She put up with his hectoring, thankful he wasn't asking where to find the toilet. She was delaying the inevitable moment when she had to explain the purpose of the spade by the front door.
He had moved from the armchair onto the hearth, and as she approached she saw he was holding her manuscript. She sighed. It was straight to business then.
‘Sit down.’
‘You're incredibly bossy, anyone ever told you that?’ she complained, sitting nonetheless.
‘Yes. Now be quiet and listen. This is the chapter where Janet goes to her favourite sweetshop—’
‘Glickman's,’ she interrupted. It was on the London Road. A Glasgow institution, the oldest amongst dozens in that sweet tooth of a city. Her dad used to take her on a Saturday morning to spend her pocket money: a bag of Snowies for her—moreish drops of sweet white chocolate covered in rainbow-coloured sprinkles; and a quarter of tangy Soor Plooms for him that made her mouth tingle. He always let her pay for his—a warning sign of things to come.
Jane folded her arms, bracing herself for his critique. ‘OK, so what's wrong with it? Wait, don't tell me. It's the Soor Plooms—too specific—they won't understand the reference in Croydon.’
He said nothing and instead reached into his bag for a small, white paper bag. It rustled with unbearable familiarity.
‘Are those from Glickman's?’ she asked, already knowing the answer.
He chuted the contents into his hand. Out tumbled white chocolate Snowies.
She felt sick.
He held out a single sweet with the quiet unblinking confidence of a man who knows that when he wants to kiss a girl it is inevitable; at some point she will kiss him back. He offered the sweet to her, both of them understanding that she would succumb.
‘Your dad—’ He shrugged. ‘Forgive me, Janet's dad—was an alky and a total bamstick, but you took that pain and turned it into a novel which, for the most part, isn't awful.’
‘I'm not Janet.’
He made a face as if to say, oh really? ‘A less scrupulous publisher would insist on calling this a memoir,’ he said with a nod towards the manuscript. ‘He would conveniently skip over the few sections that are fiction and sell a hundred thousand more copies. Readers love pain, particularly if they know someone really suffered.’
‘I'm not Janet.’
‘Now, for the sake of editorial distance, you need to let her go.’
‘Editorial distance?’ She felt the sag of disappointment. So this was just about the edit.
‘Yes. What else?’ Tom leant forward. ‘Janet is about to have a new life on the page. Soon, your character will belong to thousands of readers—’ he grimaced ‘—well, hundreds. You two need to go your separate ways.’ He paused. ‘So we are going to make a new memory. One that belongs to you, not her. Here, in this picturesque shit-hole.’
He pushed the Snowie towards her. ‘You are not Janet.’
‘I can't. I haven't had once since Dad …’
‘I know.’
Slowly, she parted her lips. He popped the sweetie on her tongue and her mouth filled with warm chocolate and the crunch of hundreds and thousands.
In the morning she found him asleep in the armchair, arms wrapped around her manuscript. Was it possible to feel jealous of your own novel? Nothing had happened after Snowie-gate; he had behaved like a gentleman, keeping the conversation professional, the mood workmanlike. Which was absolutely fine with her. A-OK. Hunky-flipping-dory. After all, it was perfectly natural for a modern young woman to invite an attractive man she barely knew to a cottage in the middle of nowhere. A cottage with one bedroom. There was no pretext; this weekend was all about the sex. Text. The fire had burned itself out overnight. No, that wasn't a metaphor. She gathered a handful of kindling from the basket next to the grate and built a new one.
At his suggestion after breakfast they spent the day walking the length of the glen. Around lunchtime it opened out to a dark, glassy loch. The sun was
