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, readingCam.
“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, writingLiving 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.
