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relationship would achieve new levels of equality and harmony. She needed to pluck him from his comfort zone and repot him. She smiled to herself—she knew just the place.

CHAPTER 4
    ‘Laughter in the Rain’, Neil Sedaka, 1974, Polydor Records
    ‘Y OU SAID IT WAS a Highland cottage.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I heard you distinctly. An old crofthouse nestling at the end of a glen, you said.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘But …’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘You made it sound …’ he hunted for the right word ‘… picturesque.’
    Ignoring his accusing tone, she motioned towards the small stone dwelling with a gesture of ‘ta-da!’
    His eye roved suspiciously across the outside. A chimney stack balanced like a drunken man on the roof; weeds sprouted from slate tiles that had been discarded rather than laid; of the two windows cut roughly into the facing wall, one was bricked up and the other colonised by a family of squabbling, drab-feathered birds. The wholestructure tilted at a twenty-degree angle, leaning into a relentless, biting wind that howled down the most desolate glen he had ever seen.
    ‘Does it leak?’
    Her mouth gaped, offended. ‘Of course it doesn't leak.’ She turned away, fished out a great iron key from her weekend bag, slid it into the stiff lock and shouldered her way inside. ‘So long as it doesn't rain,’ she mumbled.
    There was a sucking squelch from behind her.
    ‘Of course. What else should I expect? Just wonderful.’
    He stood up to his ankles in a sloppy brown puddle. Jane wasn't sure which looked more soggy—his trousers or his face. When she had suggested the trip up north to work on the manuscript—to finish it once and for all—she told him to bring suitable outdoor wear. So, when he'd picked her up in his car that morning, she couldn't help but notice with some surprise that he was wearing orange trainers. She declined to comment at the time; he'd obviously picked them as a reminder that he didn't have to listen to her—he was the one who gave the notes in this relationship. Well, look where it got you, she thought smugly. I say potato, you say
pomme de terre
.
    The muddied orange trainers steamed gently in front of the fireplace as Jane stoked the sputtering fire. Beside her, Tom shivered in a faded tweed armchair, hugging himself and grumbling.
    ‘What's wrong now? You haven't stopped moaning since we left Glasgow.’ She threw on a handful of kindling. ‘Don't you like it here? This was my granny's cottage.’
    He snorted. ‘You're telling me your granny was a crofter?’
    She noted that he didn't say ‘farmer’, but used the Scottish expression. He was amazing. His English. Was amazing. Not him. He was annoying. ‘She worked on the line at Templeton's Carpets,’ she explained.
    ‘So, she
bought
this place?’ He sounded incredulous at the idea anyone would put down hard-earned money for such a dump.
    ‘She won it. Back in the ‘80s. One of those dodgy timeshare offers came through the door.’ He gave her a blank expression. ‘Y'know the sort of thing:
You have already won one of these great prizes: a wicker basket of dried flowers, a canoe, or a Highland hideaway
. All you had to do to claim your prize—and it was always the dried flowers—was sit in a conference room in an Aviemore hotel and listen to some guy's sales pitch. But my granny hit the jackpot.’ She motioned, quiz-hostess style. ‘The Highland hideaway.’
    ‘And to think she could have walked away with a canoe.’ He cast a disgruntled eye around the dim room. ‘If you'd wanted a change of scene there are perfectly good cafés on Byres Road,’ he grumbled. ‘With Wi-Fi.’ He flicked the switch on a standard lamp sporting a fetchingfloral shade. The room remained dim. ‘And electricity!’ he barked. ‘This is not natural.’
    ‘What are you talking about? Outside that door is
actual
nature.’
    ‘Nature is for German hikers in yellow cagoules.’ He scraped the chair across the floor, closer to the fire.