was to retrieve the manuscript, but to her surprise he produced a couple of gourmet sandwiches from Berits & Brown and a portable espresso maker, from which he proceeded to make the most delicious cup of coffee she'd ever tasted.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked as they ate. The clouds had cleared and now the sun hung awkwardly overhead, lost in an empty sky like a walker who's realised he's been holding his Ordnance Survey map upside down for the last four and a half hours.
‘It's a nice day, I thought we should get out.’
‘No, I don't mean here. I mean here here. In Scotland. At the risk of sounding small-town, can I ask what a Frenchman from the Côte d'Azur is doing running a publishing company in Glasgow?’
He lowered his espresso cup. ‘You know, Saint-Tropez is a lot like Glasgow.’
‘It is?’
‘No. Not one little bit.’
‘So, you fancied a change of scene?’
‘I had to get out. I was living in a pop song. A French pop song. Do you know how many hours of sunshine the Côte d'Azur receives annually?’
‘How many?’
‘A fucking lot.’
‘Wait, you're saying you came to Scotland … for the rain?’
He shrugged and rooted around the ground before picking up a smooth, circular stone.
‘Why Glasgow?’ Jane continued. ‘You do know it's Edinburgh that has the book festival, right? And if you want to be a publisher isn't Paris a more obvious choice? Or London, or New York?’
Gripping the stone in the curve of his index finger and thumb he sent it skimming across the flat loch. It sank on the second bounce. ‘Merde!’ He turned to Jane. ‘The world has been overrun by ersatz writers, musicians and artists. All we have are writers who write about writing, singers who purposely break up with their lovers so that they may sing about heartache. I came because Glasgow is still somewhere real. And I came to find someone real.’
His eyes definitely did not bore into her soul. Real eyes didn't do that. So why did she feel so utterly naked?
‘Jane, I think I came to find y—’
‘Guten Tag!’
Above them on the edge of the loch stood a party of walkers with bare knees, ruddy cheeks—and yellow cagoules. Their round smiles deepened into Teutonic puzzlement when Jane and Tom's laughter shattered the stillness.
They returned to the cottage. The weather closed in shortly before they reached shelter and they were both soaked through. When she entered the room, towelling her hair dry, she found him occupying his usual place in the armchair by the fire.
‘We need to talk about the sex,’ he announced.
The sex. Le Sex. Finally, she thought.
There were, however, cultural proprieties to be observed. A nice girl simply didn't acquiesce to such an indecent proposal. ‘I don't think we do,’ she said, folding her arms across her chest. ‘I am not talking about “the sex” with you. You've got some cheek, you know that? Just because I asked you up here doesn't mean I'm ready to jump into bed.’
‘The sex,’ he said evenly, ‘in chapter seventeen.’ He opened her novel to the relevant page.
‘Oh,’ she said, unfolding her arms. ‘Yes. That sex.’
Tom stabbed a finger at a section halfway down the page. ‘I'm confused. What is going on here?’
‘What are you talking about? It's …’ She circled behind him, craning her neck for a sight of the offending paragraph. ‘Perfectly clear.’
‘Are they having sex? Because if they are, you should know that it's improbable.’
‘Ah, well,’ she wagged a finger, ‘that's because I'm writing it from the woman's perspective—something you clearly don't understand.’
‘Right.’ He held the page at arm's length, rotating it first one way and then the other, as if looking at it from another angle would make the scene clearer. ‘So where exactly is her leg meant to be?’
Oh, the man was maddening! Jane swatted him with her towel and made a grab for the manuscript. ‘Give that back!’
He was too fast for her. He led her around the room, dangling the novel at arm's length, just out of her grasp. At first she requested him curtly but politely to desist in his childish behaviour, but when he ignored her she resorted to a tirade of foul language. He doubled up with laughter at hearing her swear. Which meant that he failed to notice the trailing cord of the standard lamp as he swept around the room once more.
‘Ow!’ He slammed into the floor, his knee taking the brunt. ‘I hate this place!’
She stood over him to gloat. ‘Serves you right. It's a good scene. It's full-blooded, lusty—’
Tom rubbed his knee mournfully. ‘—physically impossible.’
With one final cry of irritation she lunged for the manuscript. He teased it out of reach and with his other hand swept her legs from under her. She crumpled, sinking down beside him. So near to him now she saw that he had kept his promise—no lover had ever looked at her this way.
‘It's not impossible,’ she said, swallowing. ‘You just have to be … bendy.’
That raised an eyebrow. ‘This is drawn from personal experience?’
They were close enough to breathe each other's air.
‘Well, that's not something you're ever going to find out.’ She let the words hang there. Just the two of them in the overwhelming silence of the cottage. Not a milk frother to disturb the stillness.
A small part of her couldn't help but observe the situation from a distance: an unfairly attractive Frenchman, a hearthrug in front of a crackling log fire, a Highland cottage. If she'd written it, he would have struck it out. Infuriating, exasperating man.
She waited. In all the romances she'd read people kissed adverbially. Hungrily, madly, passionately. She wondered what it would be like to kiss him. Wondered about the hardness of his bristles and the softness of his lips. Wondered if she should make the first move.
And then she didn't have to wonder any longer.
‘Why Does It Always Rain on Me?’, Travis, 1999, Independiente
‘YOU STILL UP?’ Bleary-eyed, Roddy surveyed the wreckage of the evening: a card table strewn with the last hand, a drained bottle of something in equal parts cheap and noxious, and Tom. He sat in the quiet darkness of his office with a supermarket brand cognac, swirling the dregs around the fat-bottomed glass. The pale liquid caught the light of a streetlamp.
‘I'm
