Then there’s always the option of going home, but not to Scotland. To London, where Charlie is now working for a publishing house. She’s had some interest in my first two books, wants to know if there’s a third in the making (easier said than done with a curious toddler to contend with!). But I know she just wants me to go back so she can play at being mother, at keeping house, at having something in her life other than her work. She also told me I could do some freelance work, as an editor, help pay the bills while I write. It sounds so very tempting, but also a little bit like the easy way out.

One day I know I will have to put down roots. One day Margot will have to go to school, make friends, follow the same path that everyone else does. I wish it could be different. I wish we could simply see where fate sends us. Travel the globe with nothing more than a notebook and our dreams. But that’s just it, it’s my dream, not hers. And she still isn’t even close to being of an age where she can try to figure out who she wants to be, what she wants to do. I suppose neither have I, but that doesn’t mean I can’t stop trying.

And men make you stop. Men make you question everything. Make your heart sing then weep in the blink of an eye. Make you forget all rational, sensible thought and think only of the way he makes you feel when he kisses you slowly and whispers again about love.

Noah is my undoing, as I knew from the very first moment we met, in that cramped, dusty, incredible bookstore in Paris. He is my soulmate, but that doesn’t mean I should stay. It doesn’t mean I should sacrifice my own wants and desires, my own ambitions, just to fit in with his. Because this is his forever. It is beautiful, it would be the perfect place to raise a child, but it does not come from me, from who I am, who I want to try and become.

I haven’t yet found my forever place in this world. Haven’t yet discovered where it is that I fit. Although there is an image that follows me wherever I go. Of a house in a village by the sea. With apple trees in the back garden and a desk by the window so that I might watch all the comings and goings of nature as I write.

Maybe that’s what I’ve been looking for. Somewhere hidden away from the world, just for Margot and me. We don’t need anything more.

CMR

21

NIGHTINGALE

Luscinia megarhynchos

Everything happens for a reason. Everything will be okay in the end. He’s not going to kill you; stop panicking.

All of these thoughts and more raced around Emily’s mind as she gripped her battered yellow suitcase in her lap. Every bump in the road could be felt through the thin metal casing of the motorbike sidecar in which she sat, a pair of old-fashioned goggles strapped to her head and obscuring the view.