Chapter 1
July
Isla
Isla: Hey Cameron, confirming playdate with Teddy on Saturday.
Isla: Let me know when you can, I need to arrange my shifts at Brown’s.
Isla: Can you let me know today?
“Wait, wait . . . my brother did what?”
“He put in a complaint to the landlord. Again,” I hissed, almost dropping the pie as I slid it from the oven. I frowned at the latticework. Crisp enough. A bit too brown . . . Maybe I should try rolling the dough a little thicker.
“What for this time?”
“Apparently I dry my hair too loudly.”
Heather Macabe’s loud laugh escaped through the phone I’d propped up on the kitchen counter with a chopping board. Her pretty features distorted by the three-inch crack in the screen I couldn’t afford to replace in this lifetime.
“It’s not funny. Every time I remember his last complaint, I reconsider burning these damn cottages to ground.”
Through the small screen, I watched her flit around her own kitchen, prepping lunch for her twin daughters Ava and Emily.
Before this March, Heather and I had been little more than passing acquaintances. Her daughters were in the same class as Teddy so we’d shared polite smiles at the school gate, a brief conversation at parents’ evening.
Then the first morning I’d dropped Teddy at school after Cameron ended things, I’d felt the stares from other parents.
The whispered, Did you hear what happened?
Apparently Cameron came home from work last week and completely blindsided her .
. . They’ve been sleeping together for months .
. . Gave her a week to find somewhere else to live .
. . I always knew Cameron and Annabelle weren’t done, did you see the way they were flirting at the Christmas Eve carol concert?
I don’t know how she didn’t see it. Makes you wonder if that’s why he was so keen to move home in the first place.
I’d kept my head high, willed my abused eyeballs not to fill with tears. Then Heather had been there. Her hand slipping into mine.
Turned out she’d been through a similar experience with her former husband, Mike. Not another woman, but a new job on the other side of the world.
From there we’d bonded quickly. Late-night video calls recounting the woes of selfish ex-partners and solo parenting. And my occasional complaints about her grizzly older brother.
“Oh, you mean the time he requested you stop putting out your bins in your underwear? Hardly worth the ten years you’d serve for arson.”
“It wasn’t my underwear.” I cringed, squeezing my eyes shut as I pictured the thigh-grazing T-shirts I wore to bed. “And how was I supposed to know the view from his window extended that far?”
“You remember he’s a doctor, right? He could get up and personal with your anal fissures and not blink an eye.”
“Then why the complaint? He hates me.”
“He doesn’t hate you – I don’t think Alistair has the ability to truly hate anyone.
He’s . . .” She searched for the word. “Reserved. Always has been. And I think he’s stressed, not that he wants to talk to his family about it.
Ever since he took over Dad’s surgery, he’s been snarling like a bear at anyone who looks his way. ”
Right. Because it had barely been four months since their dad died.
I might have felt sorry for him. Might have. Okay, I did feel sorry for him. But the weekly complaints were starting to get out of hand. “I swear, all I have to do is breathe and he thumps on the wall. You’d think I was throwing raves over here, not watching reruns of Bluey with a seven-year-old.”
“Want me to talk to him?” she offered. “And by that, I mean kick him in the balls and tell him to be nice to my friend.”
I grinned. It still felt strange on my face. “And that will help my living situation?”
“Well, no, but it would make both of us feel good. Speaking of feeling good, do you think anyone has died from lack of orgasms?”
“What?” I coughed out at the subject change, sliding the apple pie onto a wire rack, along with the strawberry cheesecake croissants I’d dragged myself out of bed at four a.m. to put in the oven.
Jessica Brown, the owner of Brown’s Coffee & Cakes on Kinleith’s high street, had taken a risk in hiring me, with zero actual work experience besides an incomplete pastry chef apprenticeship eight years out of date.
Falling pregnant at twenty had put a sudden halt on any long-term goals until they were so far in the rearview mirror I hadn’t even considered picking them back up. I was determined to not give her a reason to regret it.
“All I’m saying is, you’re starting to look a little . . . tightly wound.”
“I’m not tightly wound, I’m exhausted.” I felt like I’d aged thirty years in the past four months.
“Been there and bought the T-shirt, sweetie.” She tossed the chopped carrot sticks into a lunch box a little harder than necessary. “Being a single parent can be soul-
destroying—”
“I’m not a single parent. Cameron lives fifteen minutes away.”
“And the last time he took care of Teddy for more than an hour was?”
I bit my lip. We both knew the answer. Never. “You’re basically a single parent, and do you want to know what helped me?”
“What?” I waved my spatula at her. “Don’t say orgasms—”
“It’s unfortunately orgasms.”
“Did Mr Summers finally pluck up the courage to ask you out?” I asked, picturing the kids’ perpetually kind school teacher who — for reasons that were glaringly obvious to some — adopted the personality of a garden gnome every time he called Heather into his office.
Which was often. Her girls were adorable little hellraisers.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She sniffed.
“Oh please, you’re so hot for teacher.” I couldn’t say I blamed her. It was pretty hard to resist a perfect ten who ran a guitar club for children and somehow made seasonal sweatshirts look hot.
The tattoos didn’t help.
“No, I’m not!” Her cheeks flushed. “Not even a little bit. I’m sure it’s like . . . illegal to date your kids’ teacher. And even if it wasn’t, he acts like the girls are delinquents, pushing unsuspecting old ladies down staircases.”
“Didn’t Emily cut another student’s hair last week?”
“It’ll grow back!” she burst out, and I laughed.
“Thank god it’s the first week of the summer holidays.
Six weeks free from Mr Summers’ judgemental I think it’s better we discuss this in my office tone.
” She paused chopping to point the knife at me.
“And I’m not talking about my orgasms, I meant yours.
It’s been months since Cameron. Maybe it’s time you got back in the saddle. ”
“I wasn’t ever in the saddle, so to speak. Cameron always said he felt emasculated when I was on top.”
Her mouth gaped. “Please tell me you’re joking.”
“Nope.”
“God he’s an arse.” She huffed. “Now I’m feeling better about the present I got you.”
I paused. “My birthday was in April.”
“Then consider it my official contribution to a friend going through the sads. It’s coming in the post, should be there any day now.” She gave me what I’d quickly learned was her I did something bad smile.
“Please don’t tell me it’s another curse from an Etsy witch, the first was emotionally scarring enough.
” A few weeks ago, Heather’s friend, Juniper Ross, told me she knew of a witch who sold curses online.
For only twenty pounds and a lock of his hair, Cameron would become the unfortunate victim of premature greying.
Not a bad deal.
If I were vengeful enough, I might have gone for it. But silver temples would only make Cameron more attractive.
“No.” Heather laughed. “Trust me, you’ll know it when you see it.
That reminds me, I saw Cameron and Annabelle the other day.
They came into the tasting room at the distillery.
I would have thrown them out, told him what a shrivel-dicked piece of shit I think he is, but I didn’t want to cause a scene. ”
Heather worked at Kinleith Whisky Distillery, owned by her brother Mal and his wife, April.
It was the biggest whisky supplier on the entire island.
They even had a cute bar attached people called ‘the tasting room’, which I’d begged Cameron for weeks to take me to.
He always said he was too slammed at work.
Guess his schedule freed up.
“You don’t need to do that.” I felt my cheeks burn. “I don’t care about Cameron and Annabelle.” A lie. “The only thing I care about now is Teddy. And pie.” I twisted the camera so she could see. “What’s your opinion on apple versus cherry?”
She gave it more thought than I’d expected. “Cherry is the flashier option, I guess, but apple pie triggers universal fondness responses. It’s basically peer-reviewed.” She shrugged. “Is that your gran’s recipe?”
I nodded. “I’m going to serve it at Brown’s today, taste-test it with the customers. If I don’t come first place in the Cairn & Crust contest with her recipe, she’ll haunt me for the rest of my life.”
Heather snorted. “I can confidently say you’re going to make the Cairn & Crust your bitch.”
“You think so?” Baking contests were held several times a year in Kinleith, but the Cairn & Crust was the big one. Held annually, in the middle of August, the best pie won a lofty two-thousand-pounds prize money.
“I know so. I’m already cringing on other contestants’ behalf.”
Last year I’d placed second. This time I was determined to win.
Two thousand pounds was pocket change to some people.
For me . . . it wouldn’t solve all my problems, but it would give me some breathing room.
I could get Daisy’s engine issues fixed.
Or pay off the stack of overdue bills mounting up on the kitchen table.
“Oh, I meant to ask,” she continued. “Is Teddy going on the school trip at the start of term?”
I paused, halfway through loading the dirty bowls into the sink. “What trip?”
“In September. Three nights in Inverness, a stop at Urquhart Castle and a boat trip on Loch Ness. Seems a little pricey, but the girls are excited.”
My blood pulsing slowly in my veins. Already mentally moving around the few pounds in my bank account. What did pricey mean exactly? “Teddy must have forgotten.”
On screen, Heather had her back to me, pouring hot water into a mug. I was thankful she couldn’t see my face.
A fist thump, thump, thumped on the wall. Alistair. I’d never been so pleased for the rude interruption. Or for Teddy’s “Mummy, the grumpy neighbour is complaining again.”
“Shit! Heather, I gotta go.”
“Okay, well, let me know about the trip. If we sign them up quickly, we’ll be able to request the girls share a room.”
“Yep,” I wheezed, my windpipe feeling too narrow as I hit the end-call button. “Teddy, time to have breakfast!”
Her feet were slow down the hallway, but she appeared moments later, still in her pyjamas. “I think I was playing Disney too loudly.”
“He’ll survive.” The man complained like it was his full-time job.
I quickly set a bowl of cereal before her. She stared at it with a sigh, like someone had literally pissed in her
Cheerios. “What’s wrong? I thought you liked chocolate hoops.”
“Not anymore.”
“Okay.” I used my gentlest voice. “We’ll have to wait until the end of the week. When I get paid, we can go to the shop and you can pick out anything you want.”
She sighed again, picking at her breakfast. I felt like the worst mother in the world.
My fault.
Everything was always my fault when Cameron wasn’t here for her to be angry at.
It’s teething problems, I reminded myself, swallowing down my frustration.
It’s normal for her to be angry. I’d been angry too.
Those first few weeks, abandonment had turned my brain into a gremlin’s playhouse, the unwanted creature chewing and twisting every good memory I had with Cameron until I didn’t recognise the bitter woman staring back at me in the mirror.
Now I just felt tired. Ready to climb into my bed and sleep until the metamorphosis stage of my life was over and I re-emerged, transformed into a woman who was ready to handle her shit. Steer her own boat, or however the saying went.
At this point, I’d settle for making it to work on time.
“Am I seeing Daddy today?” she asked, picking at the hoops, one at a time.
“No, sunshine. You see Daddy every Saturday, remember?” Teddy knew she only saw her dad on Saturdays. Still, she asked the same question every morning.
Her nod was small, detached. I scrambled for a way to make it better, to put a smile on her face, no matter how fleeting. “Why didn’t you tell me about the school trip?”
She didn’t look up from her bowl. “Because we can’t afford it.”
The crack of my heart echoed in my ears.
I sank into the chair opposite, my legs giving out. No matter how thoroughly I fell apart, this shit was never supposed to touch her. Had I become so bad at hiding it?
“Hey, we can absolutely afford it,” I lied. “If you want to go, we’ll find a way.” Even if I had to sell a kidney on the black market, my kid was going on that trip. “Okay?” I urged, until she nodded.
“Ava and Emily are going, and we get to go on a boat and hunt for the Loch Ness monster.”
“For real? Then it’s a done deal. You’re definitely going.” I rounded the table, burying my face into her blonde mess of curls. Breathing her in. Letting my worry melt, if only for a moment. “Now, go get dressed for summer camp.”
“Do I have time to play Lego?”
“Get dressed first, we can’t be late on the first day,” I said, right as a blender whirred to life on the other side of the wall.
The second Teddy disappeared, I flipped my middle finger, imagining Alistair Macabe could see me. “You’re not so quiet yourself, Mr Perfect.”