WHAT AM I EVEN DOING HERE?!
First Chapter of "All's Fair in Love and Truth"
“Get down from there, Elvis!”
Kristy’s barked command snapped Annabel Campbell out of her thoughts.
The latter was waiting patiently in the queue at Kristy’s Old Bakery to pick up some breakfast, just as she did every morning.
Startled, she looked up, and immediately saw her huge, grey Maine Coon cat lounging in the most casual of poses on top of the glass display case.
From above the pastries, he graced the gaggle of upset humans with a bored glance.
“Elvis, get down! Right now!” she ordered sternly, but her cat’s amber eyes simply stared right past her.
To call him stubborn would be a major understatement.
She had been sharing her life with the handsome tabby for three years now, and Elvis had trained her too well.
The customer in front of her done, Anna stepped up to the counter.
“I don’t suppose you have a stepladder? I can climb up there and fetch him,” she suggested wearily.
Most days, her cat would take a seat on the windowsill or a chair in the coffeeshop attached to the bakery.
Today, however, he apparently required more attention.
Probably her fault, Anna thought, because she hadn’t properly catered to his needs this morning.
“Dinnae you worry,” Betty Murray intervened as she stepped out of the bakery, gently tugging the cheeky cat’s bushy tail to attract his attention.
“Come on, handsome. I’ve got something for you!
” She rustled a bag of his favourite treats temptingly, and Elvis promptly took a mighty leap down to the counter and from there to the floor, where he deigned to follow his benefactress.
“Sorry about that,” mumbled Anna, rather embarrassed.
“There’s no telling a cat what to do,” Kristy comforted her with a wide smile. “It’s just one of those mornings. What really matters is that things go well this afternoon.”
“Very true! Let’s just hope that my imp of a cat’s behaviour isn’t some kind of bad omen of things to come.” Anna flickered her eyes shut for a moment to banish this scary thought from her mind. She would approach her new project with confidence and positivity not self-sabotage!
“It’ll be great,” Kristy assured her. “You’re far too well prepared for things to go sideways. Just a pity I can’t join you.”
“It really is! I would have loved to have a friend there to support me.” She sighed.
This workshop had been a crap idea, and she should never have seen it through.
Why had she let herself be talked into doing it?
There was a good reason people always advised ‘stick to what you know best’.
In her case, that would be a stethoscope, not yoga mats!
She had been the GP in Kirkby for nine months now and her patient roster kept her more than well occupied.
Compared to her previous job at a hospital in Edinburgh, it felt like working part-time, but still: couldn’t she have left it at the two yoga classes she had been offering at the Old School community centre since the summer?
“What am I even doing here?!” she said quietly.
“I’ve never seen you like this. Are the nerves that bad?” Kristy interrupted her thoughts.
“They’re getting that way,” Anna admitted and forced a smile onto her face. There was no turning back now.
“You’ve got no reason to be nervous,” the pretty baker insisted. “Now, what would you like for breakfast? Your regular croissant? Or something a little sweeter?”
“Definitely something sweeter! I’ll have a large cappuccino with an extra shot of espresso and two chocolate croissants, please,” Anna ordered. She needed all the energy she could muster this morning. “Oh, and are the biscuits ready yet?”
“Of course. I’ll bring them over to your table.” Kristy placed two beautifully flaky croissants on a plate and slid it across the counter.
Anna paid and took her loot to her favourite spot in the corner which gave her a view of both the cute coffeeshop and the street with its usual morning hustle and bustle.
At this early hour, the October day had not yet decided on the weather to be had, and the sky featured only some indecisive-looking grey clouds.
Students of all years in colourful raincoats, prepared for whatever the day might throw at them, huddled together at the main bus stop, waiting for their school buses.
A number of cars drove past: Kirkby residents commuting to work in Inverness or even further.
Isla Fraser had just stepped out of the village pub, The Wise Pelican, to take her Newfoundland Polly for her morning walk before heading to her restaurant.
Anna waved to her friend, but Isla seemed just as absent-minded as she had been earlier.
No wonder as the Michelin Guide would award its new UK stars on Friday, and Anna knew that Isla was quietly pining for a second.
Now that really was a big deal and justified far more anxiety than Anna’s own little workshop.
If her project tanked, there would be zero consequences, except a slightly bruised ego, of course. But she could live with that.
“One large cappuccino,” Kristy said as she put the cup down in front of Anna. She had stencilled a four-leaf clover in cocoa powder on the picture-perfect foam.
“Aww, that’s so sweet of you,” Anna said with feeling and beamed at Kristy.
“Wait until you’ve had a peek in here.” Kristy placed a white cookie jar on the table and stared expectantly at her friend.
“Oh wow! These are incredible!” exclaimed Anna, gazing reverently at the shortbread she had pre-ordered. Kristy had made the biscuits in the shape of perfect shamrocks.
“I thought they would match the theme of your workshop.”
“You’re the best!” Anna got up and hugged Kristy. “Even if everything else is crap, I’m sure these will make my group happy. Thank you so much.”
“You’re welcome. But I’m sure the shortbread will only be the icing on the cake. There are going to be some very mindful people in Kirkby these next few days!” Kristy smiled encouragingly and went back to work.
Anna leant back in her seat, took a sip of coffee and dug into her first croissant. It was pure perfection: crispy, fluffy, chocolaty. And for some irrational reason it made her feel like everything was going to be okay. As if failure was not an option in the presence of such a delight.
“Meow,” came from Elvis who had apparently finished his treats and returned to his human. He briefly rubbed his mighty head against Anna’s leg as a sign that he had forgiven her and jumped onto the windowsill.
She really didn’t know why she was so nervous.
After all, she had nothing to lose. The idea for the ‘Manifest Your Happiness’ yoga retreat had come to her a while back when two listeners of her podcast had emailed her independently of one other and asked if she offered yoga classes in the Highlands.
The fact that her podcast had an audience beyond her friends in Edinburgh, for whom she had initially started it, still astonished Anna.
That fans were now contacting her was downright sensational.
“Highland Happiness”, as her weekly show was called, seemed to have hit a nerve.
A good one. Two of her friends who were avid podcasters had shared their enthusiasm for the audio format with her, and now she too was hooked, and had been for a few months.
Her podcast provided the perfect opportunity to talk about her experiences in the Scottish Highlands, a place that appeared downright ‘exotic’ to her former colleagues and pals in Edinburgh.
Before moving to Kirkby earlier this year, Anna had never lived outside of Edinburgh either.
She still loved her bustling hometown, but she certainly didn’t miss her exhausting hospital duties and shift schedules one bit.
Since she had relocated to Kirkby, she had felt more balanced and at home with herself than ever before.
Her best friend Linda constantly worried what all the unfamiliar free time, fresh air and inevitable boredom would do to Anna’s mental health down the line, but she could not have been any further off the mark.
Plus, she had yet to be bored for even a second!
While some backwater stereotypes might hold true for Kirkby, too few goings-on did not make the list. Only Linda couldn’t know that because she had stubbornly refused these past few months to leave her urban comfort zone and visit her friend out in the sticks.
She was, however, a loyal listener of the podcast – as were a number of complete strangers, apparently – and had encouraged Anna in her initially vague idea of offering ‘some kind of happiness yoga retreat’.
Colleen, the town’s event coordinator, and her boss Mayor Collum McDonald immediately jumped on the idea, which they thought could attract new guests to Kirkby in the off-season.
Before Anna knew it, the two had put together a package deal: all workshop sessions plus accommodation in either the pub or the local boutique hotel, The Cosy Thistle, run by Colleen’s fiancé Alexander Fraser.
All that was left for Anna to do was to develop her workshop content, a mix of yoga with breathing and mindfulness exercises, plus a short hike to the energy centres in the area.