Chapter 8
8
Harper woke to the sound of a piercing, mechanical, constant whir. She groaned into her pillow and tussled with the thick duvet, unaccustomed to the new weight and strange smell. It took her a moment to remember where she was. A cabin in the middle of nowhere.
And her alarm was one hell of a racket.
“ No !” she shouted at nobody in particular. She checked the time on her phone, which was charging on the nightstand. “No, no, no !” she repeated when she saw the time. Seven-forty. So early that the sun was barely up, the cabin shrouded in dusky shadows.
Angrily, she rose from the bed and stumbled her way to the door. Her brain was still foggy from sleep, but she could guess where the noise was coming from. She opened the door and bellowed: “ NO !”
The whirring stopped. At the workbench, Fraser lifted his head from his power saw, his eyes filling with mirth behind a pair of goggles. “Aren’t you a ray of sunshine in the morning?”
She wanted to take that saw and use it on him. They’d agreed that Harper would not disrupt Fraser’s work schedule, but that was when Harper had assumed he would give her ample time to leave the cabin before he began hacking away at his wood. “It’s not even eight!”
Bernard dashed towards her, sniffing around her feet before jumping up for cuddles she was too tired to give.
Meanwhile, Fraser’s gaze scraped over her from head to toe, and back up to her head again, and only then did she realise what a mess she was. She looked down, finding her pyjama shirt rumpled at her waist, which gave him an excellent view of her shortest pair of shorts and her bare legs. She let out a disgruntled sound and yanked the shirt down to at least cover the most immodest parts.
“Don’t look at me like that!”
He flashed a set of white teeth as he grinned. The front ones overlapped just slightly, only adding to his rugged charm, but Harper was not focusing on that today. She was focusing first on the ungodly hour he had intruded upon, and then, after she had stewed in her own consciousness for a while, the book she planned to write.
“Like what?” he asked innocently.
“Like… that !” She flapped her hands, flustered and annoyed. “Why are you here so early?”
“Well, someone kept me busy all day yesterday, so I’ve got work to catch up on.”
She glowered. Admittedly, she had kept him busy. He’d dropped her off at the cabin, and then gone out to buy her a heater and order Wi-Fi installation. Still, that didn’t warrant such an early, raucous alarm.
A cold breeze bit into her bare arms, and she tucked them around her midriff quickly. “You’re a terrible host.”
“You’re a terrible guest.” He powered up his saw before she could reply. Lucky for him, because it drowned out her expletives as she stormed back into the house, slamming the door behind her.
She was certain she heard him laughing the next time he turned it off.
Harper was still muttering irritably to herself as she pulled on her corduroy pinafore dress. Bernard watched from the bed, eyes slowly falling closed before popping back open again defiantly. At least she had some company here.
Once she’d peeled on her tights, she huffed and plopped down on the corner of the thin mattress, playing with the ring on her finger. Today would be the first real day of writing, and she didn’t feel ready. It was daft, really. All she had to do was open her laptop.
What if she found herself staring at a blank Word document all day? What if she found out she was no good at writing, and all of this had been a silly idea?
“Pull yourself together, Harper,” she whispered to herself. Bernard’s ears pricked, the point of one slumping crookedly.
Then, she gritted her teeth. After a short intermission, the power saw was back to polluting the peace. Scared or not, she had to get out of here before the noise drove her mad.
She packed up everything she’d need for the day, including the books she’d purchased yesterday and the grey leather-bound notebook with gold, celestial etchings. She even had a pink fluffy glitter pen and an array of pastel sticky notes. Maybe if she bought enough stationery, the universe would be fooled into believing she was a real author and all would turn out okay.
With a deep breath, she drained the last of her morning tea and shrugged on her long camel coat before stepping into her chunky black boots. She commemorated both the moment and her chic autumnal look with a selfie to post once she reached the café, then gathered her satchel and umbrella and ventured out into the damp morning.
It took Fraser a moment to notice her, protected by goggles and ear defenders. He removed both, balancing them around his neck and over his beanie while tugging up the waistband of his jeans. Rain dusted his shoulders and droplets fell from the curling ends of his hair; it was difficult not to follow their uneven path down towards his collarbones.
“You look nice,” he said, breaking her out of her reverie. “Is there a party I don’t know about?”
“I’m just heading to the café.” She brushed some invisible lint from the front of her dress. “What time is the Wi-Fi being installed?”
He checked his watch. “In about forty-eight hours.”
“Ugh.” She’d hoped it would be today. Evenings without Netflix here were interminable. “This must be how Bear Grylls lives.”
“It’s terrible, the trauma you’re facing,” he quipped. “You should start a blog about it. Inspire people in similar situations.”
“That’s not a bad idea, actually.” Blogs were booming in popularity these days. “Or a podcast. But then, you need Wi-Fi to actually post those things. It’s a vicious cycle.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose as though at a loss, which she couldn’t help but enjoy. Leaving him speechless was fast becoming a favourite hobby of hers. “I’ll stop by the café around noon if you want,” he said. “Give you a lift into town. The tearoom has free Wi-Fi, although I’m sure Alice won’t mind sharing her password with you, either.”
“You think?” She perked up at that. Her measly phone data plan wouldn’t survive for over a month on its own. She could do with some alternative options. Luckily, writing didn’t require a connection, but procrastinating probably would, and she had a feeling she’d be doing an awful lot of that. TED Talks on YouTube and cute TikTok videos of domesticated racoons would likely be needed to boost morale at some point.
He nodded. “At least I’ll always know where to find you. I’ll just follow the Wi-Fi signal.”
Her chest fluttered. “Be careful. I might start thinking you like having me around.”
His lips twisted with amusement. “Aye, well we wouldn’t want that, sunshine .”
“Is that nickname really going to stick?”
“It suits you,” he teased, then slipped his goggles and ear defenders back on before he returned to sawing.
She grimaced. She really did hate that noise, although the nickname she could live with. The sight wasn’t so bad, either: Fraser hunched over his workbench, jaw clenched with focus, biceps rippling beneath his shirtsleeves. His top clung to the muscles around his shoulders as the rain picked up.
Just like that, she was ogling him again. Opening her flimsy black umbrella, she stumbled down the steps and towards the gate, shooing Bernard away – and any impure thoughts about his owner, too.
Harper was glad to be out of the drizzle. She shook out her umbrella before stepping into the Raindrop Café, surprised to find a woman much younger than Alice standing behind the counter today. Her dark auburn hair was tucked back into a floral headband, a choppy fringe swept out of her bright eyes, and tattoos ran along her arms and crept over her collarbones. She must have been just slightly younger than Harper, but far prettier. She was intimidating and queer-presenting enough to give her bisexual panic, but then, it didn’t take much.
“Hello, there!” the woman greeted kindly between wiping down the counters, her voice gravelly with the Scottish brogue Harper loved. “You’re a new face.”
“As are you,” Harper joked, making her way up to the counter. “No Alice today?”
“She’s off sick today, so you’ve got me instead. Just visiting, I take it? You don’t sound local.”
Harper nodded. “I’m taking a sort of ‘sabbatical’.”
“Oh, aye? To do what?”
“Write. Rest. Make a fool of myself somewhere else for a change.” She dipped her head with a self-deprecating smile, glad when the woman laughed. The name badge pinned to her navy T-shirt flashed with the movement, reading Cam .
“Well, you won’t have much of an audience for that here,” Cam said. “The village is fairly quiet this time of year, and the hikers keep to themselves.”
“I’ve noticed.” Harper tucked her hair behind her ear and scanned the menu written on the chalkboard behind Cam, her stomach growling at the options. “Can I get a full English—” She paused, realising she wasn’t actually in England anymore. The menu only had the option for a Scottish breakfast. Harper hoped there wouldn’t be much difference – it wasn’t as though she was in a completely foreign country, was it? “Sorry. Habit. I’ll get a full Scottish breakfast, please. And a pot of tea. I think I’ll be here for a while.”
“Well, I could do with the company. It’s my first day back from my maternity leave, and I’m already falling asleep.” Cam yawned as she input the prices into the till. “But god, I miss my wee baba already.”
“Oh, congratulations!” Harper chirped and clapped her hands. She loved babies, even the screaming, pooping ones. One of her ex-colleagues, Michael, had brought his newborn into the office once and she’d cried more than the infant.
“Cheers!” Cam turned around to grab a fresh teapot. It was a pretty sky-blue colour painted with bright daisies, adding to the breezy décor of the café. “Feel free to take a seat.”
Harper went to the same table as yesterday, offering the best window view of Loch Teàrlag. She couldn’t see much with the thick spray of rain coating the woods, but she could make out a single boat cutting through the gloom on the water. She opened her laptop and snapped a photograph of her empty Word document with the atmospheric landscape behind, uploading it straight to her Instagram stories while she had a few bars of signal.
And then she waited, watching anxiously as the views came in. Her mum was the first to reply, writing Living the dream! with ten heart emojis and a thumbs-up. Harper responded with an update about her day, already missing their chats over tea and biscuits.
But you’re living the dream, Harper , she scolded herself. She was tired of her brain plucking out all the negatives to focus on.
Cam set the tray of tea down on the table. “There you go.”
Harper startled. She hadn’t even noticed her approach, too busy dwelling on her existential problems. “Thank you!”
Cam nodded and disappeared behind the counter again.
After pouring her tea into a delicate, daffodil-patterned cup and adding a generous splash of milk, Harper took a picture of her new setup. She viewed her stats again, just to see if perhaps Kenzie had seen her posts yet, but… nothing.
She sighed, unable to suppress the instinct to look at Kenzie’s profile. Her last post was a simple shot of the Manchester skyline at golden hour, taken from one of the rooftop bars she used to drag Harper to as soon as a little bit of sun came out. Underneath was the caption: Life’s not half bad when you’re with the right person. She’d posted it only yesterday.
Ouch . Harper’s skin prickled all over, and she quickly locked her phone to prevent stumbling across anything else she might find painful.
The right person. Who wasn’t her, apparently. Because Harper had never, not once, been the right person for anybody. Not Kenzie. Not Will, either, her ex-boyfriend she’d dated through university, who had been texting other women to keep his options open after graduation. From her very first “relationship” in primary school at the age of eleven, with her once best friend Sophie, she’d always been dumped for somebody better. In Sophie’s case, because another tween had proposed with a blade of grass shaped like a ring in the playground.
She laid her phone face down and set to writing.
Or not. After five minutes of staring some more, she used the hotspot on her phone to Google “ How to write a bestselling book .”
She thanked the internet gods when she found that somebody had laid out a five-step plan.
Step one: Meet your characters.
That was what she needed: characters! She hadn’t even thought about who her book might be about.
Pinterest was swiftly opened but loaded slowly. She scrolled through hundreds of images and boards, searching for an aesthetic that called out to her.
She had no luck. All of the Pinterest models were slim and pretty, flawless. Harper was bored of seeing perfect characters, both in books and in film. She wanted to see more women like her, chubby and awkward and a little bit lost but beautiful in their own right.
“Writing is harder than it looks.” She blew her hair out of her eyes and leaned back in her chair.
“I bet.” Cam smirked as she approached with a laden plate in hand. She set it down in front of Harper with a knife and fork. “Enjoy!”
Harper wanted to, but one look at it suggested she might not. Something that resembled grey mince sat next to her scrambled eggs.
“Erm, what’s that there?” She sniffed it curiously. It smelled like seasoned meat, but not any she was used to.
“Haggis!” Cam said cheerfully. “It’s not a traditional Scottish brekkie without it!”
“Oh…” Harper swallowed the bile rising in her throat. She might have liked the sound of it if she didn’t know what, exactly, haggis was. She’d always thought the dish was a cliché that most Scots didn’t truly enjoy. Clearly here, she would get the full Highland experience. “Thank you,” she forced out, taking her cutlery.
“Not a problem. Let me know if I can help with anything else.”
As soon as Cam disappeared into the back room behind the counter, Harper nudged the rest of the food away from the haggis, wishing Bernard was here to eat it for her. She didn’t want to seem rude or… anti-Scottish. If somebody came to Manchester and didn’t eat gravy or curry on their cheesy chips, she would find it very offensive, but there was a difference between chip shop sauces and sheep’s organs.
Thankfully, the rest of the meal was delicious, from the creamy scrambled eggs sprinkled with ground pepper to toast with lashings of butter. She continued scrolling through Pinterest as she chewed her crispy bacon.
How was she going to do this?
She must have been staring at the document for a while, because Cam eventually returned to hover over her. “Struggling?”
Harper grimaced. “I’ve come to realise that I don’t actually know what to write about.”
“Maybe you just need some inspiration. You’ll find plenty round these parts. Here.” She plucked a pamphlet from the otherwise bare cork board by the door and stuck it in front of her. It was titled Things to Do in Belbarrow and Beyond and displayed the forest in all of its autumnal glory. After her nightmarish trek through it, Harper was no longer fooled by the aesthetic. “Angus offers boat trips around the loch, so you could start there. There’s some gorgeous scenery, and I know there are a few hiking groups around the village. Also, some castle ruins are not far from here, but you’d have to go by car.”
Boats. Hiking. Castle ruins. All things that were decidedly outdoors.
But she wasn’t getting any inspiration from sitting inside, eating foods she’d tasted before and avoiding anything unknown.
“Write what you know” was advice she’d heard often. Harper knew nothing at the moment, not about the big wide world. She knew how to design a website for a client. How to hook customers in with a social media campaign.
She did not know how to be an author. Not yet.
Harper stabbed her fork into her haggis and decided that it was time for change.