Chapter 1

Chapter One

‘ T his shit can’t be real,’ Kirsty mumbled to herself, ignoring the puzzled look of the woman sitting across from her. It was early afternoon, and the tube was as packed as always in London. The stench of body odour wafted through the wagon. Summer in the city.

One of her colleagues had just sent Kirsty a text with the link to a live stream. Their boss, PulseJournal’s editor-in-chief Charlotte Montgomery, was about to give birth.

On air.

Good grief. A live caesarean section, meant to empower pregnant women to make their own choices. Very feminist, very zeitgeist-y. And, in Charlotte’s case, very performative. But not at all surprising. She had made a stellar career for herself and hooked, as she called him, a ‘baby daddy’ less than a year ago. Charlotte was three years younger than Kirsty and got things done. Always on brand, always an agenda.

That was one determined woman.

Something that could not be said about Kirsty, who had neither a career nor a partner or even her shit together, generally speaking. The closest she’d ever got to the relationship-baby-daddy-thing was Victor, and even that had been light years away. They couldn’t bring themselves to live together for the entirety of their three-year relationship. That said a lot in a place like London, where skyrocketing rents were a much stronger incentive to move in with someone than love. Their break-up two years ago had been a long time coming until he was the one who said it out loud.

An invisible fist squeezed Kirsty’s insides as she dragged the nail of her middle finger underneath her nails. Everybody her age had either an accomplished career, a picture-book family, or both. Handmade pasta, diverse property portfolio, well-earned promotions. She, however, had miraculously and consistently avoided both. Love and success. And property, of course.

You’re thirty-three and what do you have to show for it? Nothing but a new bristle sprouting on your chin each year. Bristle sprouts, ha ha.

Gripped by the need for distraction and compelling cringe-lust, she clicked on the link. Listening to the doctor’s voice in the live stream through her in-ears—

‘…I’m looking at nice muscles now, pushing them aside to make room for the baby to get out…’

—Kirsty was on her way to interview a couple in Chelsea who had physical relations with balloons. Full-blown inflatables-shagging. Kirsty’s job was to capture their story, the human behind the sensational. Or rather, that should have been her job. Like it used to be after she’d come to London from Aberdeenshire – eighteen and bushy-tailed – with that writing scholarship. Two and a half years later, she’d landed the life-changing internship with this flashy new online magazine: PulseJournal.

But now, a good fourteen years after setting foot in London, Kirsty was contractually obligated to ‘create content bits for various platforms’. Whatever that was supposed to mean.

‘…I can already feel the baby’s head…’

Stay inside, little one. Cling to that uterus with all your might.

She shook her head and blew a raspberry. The commuter on the opposite bench looked up from her thriller again. Kirsty slanted her eyes at her, the visual equivalent of a hiss.

With over ten years as a full-time writer at PulseJournal, Kirsty should be deputy editor or head of a department. But it had never worked out. Always overlooked or outflanked. Lacking ambition, connections, and elbows, she’d watched younger, hungrier, more cunning writers pass her by. Those who liked to play the game. Like Charlotte.

The truth was, Kirsty had never aspired to be ‘Top Thirty Under Thirty’. She wanted to tell stories. That wasn’t how journalism worked, though. Bit by bit, she was drifting towards the ‘leftover dungeon’ in the open-plan office. The ostracised tribe of those unwilling or incapable of embracing change or working themselves to the bone in the process of producing crap. Empty shells with dead eyes. Some of them just a bit older than her; others a few painful years away from retirement. The capital’s media circus reeked not only of nepotism, sexism, racism, and classism; it stank of ageism, too.

The indignant cry of a baby in her headphones disrupted Kirsty’s thoughts.

‘Oh God… Oh my God. A human just came out of my body. Somebody lifted a new human out of me. That’s…insane.’ Charlotte sounded equally happy and terrified. The first time Kirsty heard something akin to fear in her voice.

It made her smile.

Two and a half hours later, Kirsty navigated through the crowd, dodging selfie-taking sightseers and joggers. Chelsea’s streets were a frenzy of tourists and London’s haute-volée on their daily parade. The city could be so full-on sometimes.

‘Do you mind,’ she muttered as she sidestepped a man with a groomed pug that probably had a pedigree longer than her CV. Which, to be fair, wasn’t that big an achievement.

She had finished her interview with the ‘looners’, as they called themselves. It was a sweet story about acceptance and love, about intimacy and playful desire. But Kirsty already knew that Grigori – Charlotte’s deputy until she was back at work – wanted the sensational hook. Probably something like ‘Sex with the (bal)loonies’. That was what the eroding business model of journalism and the attention economy of social media dictated. Clicks and conversion rates ruling the world. Even after ages on the job, it still broke a bit of Kirsty’s shrivelled heart. Every time.

Her phone chimed. When she fingered it out of the pocket of her trench coat, a semi-ironic nod to the reporter she once aspired to be, the display said ‘Maw’.

Strange. It wasn’t their weekly phone date. It was Friday, not Sunday.

‘Maw?’ she answered, immediately falling back a bit into the rolling Scottish accent she had worked so hard to anglicise, ‘is everything okay?’

‘Naw, Kirsty. You have to come home. We need you here.’

Home .

She hadn’t been back to Scotland since she’d left on the first of January fourteen years and seven months ago.

After that fateful, terrible night.

Well, not for long anyway. Her last time in Aberdeenshire? Only a brief Christmas in-and-out after her insufferable auntie Angela had kicked the bucket, and Kirsty’s mum had needed some comfort. And her parents’ fortieth wedding anniversary, of course.

It wasn’t her fault they disapproved of her career choice.

Career. Hilarious.

Her mum and dad had both been heartbroken and angry when Kirsty had decided to leave Cairnhaven for a creative writing scholarship in London. Good that they didn’t know what she was writing these days. They’d visited her in London during the first few years, for her birthdays and such. But over time, their visits had got rarer. Until they’d stopped.

Sometimes, more often than she would ever admit, Kirsty missed Scotland. The briny wind and pelting rain, the directness and rough kindness of the people, their wicked sense of humour, the moody North Sea. The hills and the cliffs and the beaches. The whitewashed houses and the crashing waves. The vast, wide skies. But the concept of home was a rocky crevice in her heart she’d plastered over with the relentless pace of London, its endless noise and distractions.

‘You have to come, Kirsty.’ This wasn’t a request. It was a plea, edged with a desperation that sliced through any pretence.

‘What’s happened? Why do you suddenly need me there of all people?’

‘It’s your da, lass. He had a fall yesterday.’ Her mother’s voice wavered, the strong timbre a bit brittle.

‘What?’ A wave of guilt, acrid and dense, settled in her stomach. ‘Oh no. No. Is he okay?’

‘He is, aye. For now.’

Kirsty had been so busy with despising her job and life in general, fiddling around with silly ideas for a novel, bingeing Netflix, and being a self-absorbed bitch, that the reality of her parents ageing, living through their twilight years without her, had been reduced to nothing more than an occasional thought. Quickly suppressed, much as any other memory of Cairnhaven. Of her childhood and youth.

And…well, of him .

Nope. She wouldn’t spend one minute thinking about him . Even more ancient history than all of Scotland’s standing stones combined and equally irrelevant to her.

Completely, utterly irrelevant.

‘See? You’ll need to come up here and help with the café. You know I’m getting my hip next week. And we can’t do it on our own.’ Her mum sighed. ‘It’s only for a few weeks, love. But you have to come home.’

‘Can’t you hire someone? A temp?’

‘Are you joking? Get yer arse up here noo, Kirsty Munro.’

As the weight of her mother’s words sank in, the streets blurred into a dizzying swirl around her. ‘This can’t be happening,’ she whispered to herself as she hung up. It was as if the universe had conspired to pull the ground from beneath her feet, propelling her into an unknown future and all too well-known past.

Another buzz and an image popped up on her phone’s lock screen. Charlotte in full make-up, including her signature red lipstick, awkwardly holding a crumpled and disgruntled mini-Churchill.

BOSS BITCH (5:44 PM) Say hi to Gigi Amadeus, the cutest baby in the world. Soon to be influencer and my number two at Pulse .

Part of Kirsty wouldn’t be too surprised if that tiny human would be telling her to snapstagramchatbook content bites for a new native advertisement scheme in a few years.

Chrissake . Barf.

It couldn’t go on like this. She needed a break.

Honestly, what was holding her here?

And was whatever kept her away still that important?

Either way, bailing out was not an option. Her parents had never asked for her help. Looked like shit was about to get a lot more real than she was comfortable with.

Back to Cairnhaven then. Now was as bad a time as any. And she could survive it for two or three weeks, take a break, regroup, and then start over in London. She was a tough, big-city girl, she could handle a quick trip down memory lane.

Why, then, were her knees wobbly and her hands clammy at the mere thought of returning to the place where it had all begun?