Page 2 of The Breakup Bookshop

I’d been so close. It’s like I’ve been playing a game of snakes and ladders, triumphantly climbing to the highest point, just a few spaces from the finish line, before a roll of the dice brought me crashing all the way back down to square one. To a box full of my things and a bottle of lukewarm wine, which, oops, is almost finished.

I pick up my phone, my mind whirring, as I gulp down the last of it. Everyone always talks about the ridiculous London prices, don’t they? How much better off you could be elsewhere? You’d think that my parents, as accountants and self-proclaimed money gurus, would suggest widening my search area to achieve better value for money outside the city. But they’ve been tied to their high-flying careers in Leeds for years now, while I was encouraged to go for gold in London. They thought I’d be raking it in in no time. It was true for a while, maybe, but like all good things, it didn’t last.

Closing the Indeed ‘Jobs in London’ tab, I minimise the SpareRoom results and open another window on my phone.

Instinct takes over. A whim. Let’s just see. In Rightmove, I type ‘Ullapool’.

The first time my parents shipped me to the Scottish Highlands was when I was nine years old. I’d thought it was a punishment. Six whole weeks at my granny’s house in the middle of nowhere just so they could continue working endless hours without me as a distraction during the school summer break; I thought I’d done something wrong. I was hardly old enough to appreciate the idyllic scenery: the perfect pastel village nestled in the mountains, the small pier where boats bobbed on the loch, the quiet streets where other kids raced on their bikes. I huffed as Granny tried to cheer me up, luring me to the kitchen with the smell of her freshly baked scones and bramble jam. She leapt on my love of books, creating a reading nook for me in the garden, and she let me stay up way past my bedtime as we huddled underneath a blanket on the bench at the front of her tiny cottage, counting the stars in the sky.

By the end of that first summer, I didn’t want to leave. I begged her to let me stay. Instead, she promised I could come back the following summer. And the summer after that. My parents were delighted to be rid of me, although they didn’t understand what I saw in the place. Dad couldn’t hide his disdain for his Highlands hometown, where Granny worked in the local primary school as a dinner lady. She said it was the perfect job when you were raising a young child as a single parent. He’d grown up mortified by her lack of ambition. Leaving home as soon as he could, he’d adopted an English twang to his accent over the years. When I would call him and accidentally end up speaking like Granny – saying ‘aye’ and ‘naw’ – he would sigh and ask me to speakproperly.

My parents were both glad to get me out of their hair for the summer breaks that they always said were too bloody long.

Granny said the summer holidays weren’t long enough.

I vowed that I’d move there and live with her permanently one day, but she would shake her head and say I should spread my wings, stay in the city with my friends and live the exciting life that asmart-cookie-likemewas destined for.

Well, the cookie has well and truly crumbled, and here I am dreaming about Ullapool all over again. Granny passed away very suddenly when I was sixteen. It was the deepest pain I’d ever experienced. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, Dad insisted that her final resting place would be some burial plot near our home in Leeds. I argued with him until I was blue in the face. He was an only child and Granny never married, so I was the only one left to speak up for her. She would have hated to be so far away from her much-loved hometown, from the mountains and the water, but Dad insisted.

I’d longed to return for years, but life always seemed to get in the way. Moving to London with Macy, meeting Seb and climbing the career ladder had taken time. I’d promised Seb and Macy I’d bring them to visit one day, but they always had somewhere else they wanted to see more: Marrakech, Vegas, Milan. Still, I wanted them to explore the village that I held so close to my heart. The heart they’d both broken.

Suddenly, the pull to go back feels stronger than ever.

I scroll through the results. The first property that appears is a real-life castle. A historical B-listed estate, situated in a wooded area next to a small river a few miles from the village. Featuring eight reception rooms, ten bedrooms, nine bathrooms, a basement bar and a cinema room, the property has breathtaking views towards Loch Broom over its own private nine-hole golf course.

Okay, so I can’t affordthat.

But I see promise in each of the properties on offer, from a detached bungalow bathed in sunlight, surrounded by acres of greenery, to a small semi-detached property on the seafront, with uninterrupted views of the water and the majestic mountains in the distance.

My heart pounds with longing. Now,thisis the dream. The fresh air, the space, the slower pace – it’s a million miles away from what I have now.

As I scroll to the second page, searching for the cheapest property on offer, I squint at my phone and sit up. The listing on display is a retail space with a one-bedroom apartment above it. The mortgage rate listed beside it is the exact same as the monthly rent for the five-person flat share in Woolwich, where I’d have to queue in the narrow kitchen to make a Pot Noodle, stroke the reptile they all love and bring my own electric heater. Lol.

My redundancy payout isn’t much, but it will help towards a deposit for somewhere like this in Ullapool. If I stay in London, I’ll need to sell a kidney to get on the property ladder by myself.

My heart beats faster. I could have a place to live on my own, with a retail space below it that I can use to… do something, sell something, create a space that somehow makes money. I’m not sure what, obviously, but I can decide that later. I’ve invested so much time mapping out marketing strategies to turn other people’s business dreams into reality over the years; surely I can do it for myself?

Underneath the picture are four words: ‘For sale by auction’.

I blink. Is it a sign? Have I had too much wine? Without thinking, I click ‘enquire about this property’. It can’t do any harm to ask. Not to brag, but I’m kind of a pro at bagging bargains on Vinted and I’m rarely outbid on eBay. Maybe auctions are my forte.

I turn up the ‘independent women’ playlist Spotify recommends and leap up to dance around the living room. Wiggling my hips with my eyes closed, I throw my head back, enjoying the beat of the music and this new sense of possibility that has opened up. Maybe this series of very unfortunate events isn’tonlytaking me downwards. It could lead to the fresh start I didn’t even know I needed. Perhaps I don’t need everything mapped out, like I always have. Screw the six-point plan!

Or yes, maybe I’ve had too much wine, but whatever. My newly hatched, five-minute-ago plan feels much more promising than my prospects here.

Maybe it is time for me to take the Highland coo by the horns and break up with London.

1

Three months later

Please don’t let me die before I’ve had the chance to prove everyone wrong.

The knot tightens in my stomach as I grip the steering wheel, the windscreen wipers working in overdrive to clear the rain that bounces off my small car, as I finally approach Ullapool’s main street.

I dreamt of the rolling hills and stunning greenery, but all I’ve seen on the almost eight-hour drive from my parents’ house is biblical rain battering my front window. The ominous grey clouds warn that it isn’t about to get better any time soon.

Welcome to summer in the Scottish Highlands.