Chapter One

Hanna, in the Car, with the Map

Friday, late evening

They were lost.

“We’re lost.”

“We’re not lost.“

Liza sighed instead of screaming and stared helplessly at what her phone was telling her was a map of their current location, but which looked to her like a tiny blue dot in the middle of a large green nothing. “We’re lost. According to Google we are currently somewhere in Scotland. That’s lost.”

With a growl that on a different night and in a different mood Liza would have found sexy, her wife Hanna pulled over to the side of the road, reached over to the glove compartment, and retrieved a paper map. “Use that.”

Liza wasn’t sure she could. She wasn’t sure she could even work out how to unfold it without putting a tear right through the middle of the M6. “Right, just let me get my compass and my sextant.”

“You’re a grown woman, Liza. You went to university. Surely you can read a map.”

Trying very, very hard to stay calm at the end of a very, very long drive at the start of what in theory was supposed to be a lovely weekend break, Liza let her head flop back against the headrest and stared pointedly upwards. “I can read a map. When it’s a normal map on a screen with a little trail telling me where I’m meant to be going. Not when it’s a sheet of dead tree the size of a tablecloth.”

“I told you there wouldn’t be any reception out here.” Hanna drummed her hands on the steering wheel, and her voice got that I-am-trying-to-be-reasonable tone that Liza particularly resented. “The whole point is that there isn’t any reception out here. We’re going to have a long weekend with just the two of us, and no work, and no social media, and nothing to get in the way. That’s what we agreed to.”

The whole not-screaming thing was getting increasingly difficult. “No, Hanna, it’s what you agreed to. By the time I’d even found out about this plan, you’d already booked the tickets.”

“Well, I’m sorry for trying to surprise you.” Adjusting her severe, half-rimmed glasses, Hanna did her best to look composed and mostly succeeded. “If you hated the idea this much, we could easily have got a refund. Or just stayed at home. Because we don’t actually need to worry about money, because in case you’ve forgotten, the job you so resent my spending a lot of time on pays really fucking well.”

Liza had already opened the car door and stepped out into the night.

“Where are you going?” Hanna called after her.

“Getting some fresh air.”

“On a mountain in the Scottish Highlands after dark? Do you have a literal death wish?”