Page 8 of The Breakup Bookshop

As I walk around in a dust-covered daze, I ignore his attempts to make me unwelcome.

My head buzzes with grand plans featuring bright and bold colours, luxury wallpaper and beautifully upholstered furniture. I post an appeal for a local artist on the bookshop’s newly launched Facebook page, hoping to find someone to paint the mural that I can already picture vividly. Having all the vision but none of the skill is incredibly frustrating. I wish someone could just hand me a paint-by-numbers template for the wall, but I know this isn’t some step-by-step craft project. It should look bespoke, specific to the community, not some stereotype of Highland coos and rolling hills. The Facebook post has had plenty of interaction, with some people recommending local painters and interior decorators, but there are no artists among them. In my wistful imagination, a beautiful place like Ullapool would be a retreat for reclusive creatives, where artists, writers and great minds hang around sipping whisky and discussing ideas, but apparently that’s not the case.

While I want to do everything quickly, I keep reminding myself Rome wasn’t built in a day. My tiny apartment and all associated Pinterest boards will have to wait. The shop space is my priority, especially if I ever want to see an increase in my stagnant bank balance. Even though the garish green tiles will be ever-present in my nightmares, they have to remain for now. At least in three months I can watch Rory remove them, one by one, from the wall, as I nurse a glass of celebratory fizz. That will be my moment of triumph.

The thick, padded wallpaper is easier than expected to scrape from the shop walls and, before I know it, I can barely move in the shop for the black bags that are filled to the brim. Pete calls in with a wave, makes a remark about protecting his kneecaps this time, and leaves yet another box of books I’ve ordered at the door, beside the three Amazon packages he left yesterday that I haven’t had the chance to open yet.

I pick up some of the black bags and lug them outside to make some more room.

The auction website described the space at the back of my shop as an ‘enclosed courtyard’, but there were no pictures. I didn’t have high hopes, and I assumed it would just be a small, concrete eyesore. I was surprised to find that the area was really quite big, enclosed by a brick wall with a gate leading out onto the back lane. There was a washing line, along with an old mop and bucket, and the trusty green, blue and brown recycling bins.

It’s not like I’m planning a picnic out here any time soon, but, like everything else here, it has potential.

The ad also failed to mention that the courtyard is shared with the shop next door: The Toolbox. Luckily, Rory rarely seems to grace the courtyard with his presence. Pete told me that, thankfully, Rory doesn’t live above his shop, like I do. Margaret, his favourite customer and whisky supplier, does. A single, narrow staircase outside the courtyard’s black door leads to Margaret’s flat above, so she’s in spitting distance of the bookshop and The Toolbox.

As I catch glimpses of Rory arriving at work, I suspect that he’s avoiding me. In the week since our scuffle, literal and metaphorical, he hasn’t crossed my shop’s threshold once to see how I’m getting on or to ask if I need any sugar, or whatever it is that nice neighbours are supposed to do.

He is clearly annoyed at me, the city girl who has come to gentrify the village with a bougie bookshop and the occasional threat of grievous bodily harm. However, two can play at this game of cat-and-mouse. I have more than enough things to occupy myself, thank you very much.

Since the move to Ullapool, I’ve been up at the crack of dawn and working till late every evening. So much for the work-life balance, but I’m hoping that will come once I’m more settled. The bonus is that the work is so physically demanding that I haven’t had the energy to panic about all the things that kept me awake while I was in London. Instead of lying awake at 2 a.m. thinking about client presentations and regretting that dinner-time coffee, I retire to my bed above the shop and immediately slump into a dreamless sleep.

Rory clearly has the laidback Ullapool lifestyle down to a fine art.

The low hum of his car engine signals his arrival at 8:56 a.m. sharp every single morning and he leaves at 5 p.m. on the dot every single day. Not one minute before or one minute after. There’s no casual eye-flick towards my shop, even when I’m hanging out of the window contemplating the great blinds versus curtains debate.

Instead, he keeps his eye trained on his phone as he walks by. I bet he’s replying to a series of different girls from villages the Highlands and Islands over whose names he can barely remember but who hang on his every word, just because he looks all dreamy and brooding.

The prat.

His efforts not to meet my eye are becoming absurd. When I left the borrowed cleaning products on his doorstep, he was so intent on ignoring me that he tripped over them on his way into the shop. I was sanding some furniture outside and, even after he stumbled and I checked if he was okay, he still didn’t acknowledge me. All I heard was a clatter and an expletive as he bundled his way into the shop. Ava 1, Rory 0.

While I agree wholeheartedly with his ‘shop local’ imperative, I can’t bring myself to venture back into his store. That would lose me a point in the game he doesn’t know, or care, we’re playing. I’d tried to build a bridge between us on that first day, but it felt like every time I opened my mouth, I pissed him off even more. And vice versa.

Reflecting on it, there was something charged in that first meeting. I saw how he spoke to Margaret, how warm and friendly he was. But with me, it’s like there was this instant, chemical dislike.

I also don’t want to face any more insensitive comments. In that brief conversation, he slated me at every turn: about moving here, opening a bookshop that according to him no one wanted or needed, and accusing me of being flighty, ready to take off from Ullapool when I bored of it. In his dreams. Until he apologizes or at least acknowledges my existence, I will not venture back over the threshold of his shop, even if I really need something. No chance. So, Amazon it is, unfortunately.

And while Rory isn’t interested in my bookshop, plenty of others are. I keep the door wide open for the steady stream of visitors who love a good nosy around. Several tourists stop to ask for directions each day, while locals say they look forward to seeing the bookshop in all its glory when it’s finished. I reply to all of them in my loudest voice, repeating their compliments, so Rory gets an earful of how much everyonelovesthe idea of my bookshop.

Once I remove all the bags, I make my way along the street, past The Toolbox without a glance inside, and round the corner. Fiona, the local cafe owner, greets me with a wave. She’s become my coffee dealer (and therefore my friend for life) since I moved in. She’s a good-looking woman in her fifties with full, rosy cheeks and a boisterous demeanour. Between steaming milk and pouring espressos, she keeps me updated on how much better she feels since the menopause, with better skin and ‘nobloodyperiods’. She takes delight in her male patrons’ blushes. I pop into Fiona’s cafe every morning for my caffeine fix. See, I do shop locally,Rory MacGregor.

Now I’ve been in Ullapool a full week, if Fiona hasn’t seen me before midday, she nips around to the bookshop with a latte, knowing that I am likely knee-deep in some DIY disaster. She keeps it on a tab, like she does for other locals.A tab! One of the locals!I love that for me.

With her easy humour and her warm nature, Fiona has been fast-tracked straight into best-friend territory, especially while I wait for Donna to return from her holiday.

Rory obviously isn’t on that same trajectory.

My life here isn’t all about the shop, though. Moving to Ullapool from London has been about so much more than that for me. Every evening after I down tools, I set off for a walk, usually drenched in sweat and covered from head to toe in paint and dust. Pounding the pavements of the local area before disappearing up the grassy hills while listening to upbeat music has become the best part of my day. Those Gen Zs in the office were onto something with their daily walks. But they didn’t have these views. Whenever I take a pause, I see something new: how the evening light sparkles on the loch, the quaint rooftops with the villagers going about their days, the green hills that stretch to the horizon. Even though I’m working all the hours under the sun for now, the summer days are long in the Highlands, and I’m determined to make the most of the extra daylight hours.

Today, I stroll along the seafront and I skim stones down on the rocky shore like I’m ten years old again. Sitting with the tourists and their fish suppers, I gaze at the fishing boats that drift out towards the sea beyond. I have to pinch myself, particularly on days like today, where the sun peeks out from behind the clouds, illuminating what has to be the most glorious place on earth. I pat my younger self on the back for the vivid memories of this place that I’d carefully stored away, but always kept close to my heart, until I needed them again.

My morning commute, which used to involve cowering in a crowded Tube carriage trying to breathe through the stench of someone else’s underarm sweat, has been replaced with a short hop, skip and jump down the small spiral staircase to my new shop. The constant city noise – cars beeping at one another in traffic, trains screeching along the tracks and people barking loudly at one another on every corner – has been replaced with the blissful sounds of the sea rolling in and out on the shore and birds tweeting. Children run up and down on the road, as though I’ve been transported to some magical time and place where traffic and pollution don’t exist. Watching them, I remember my own carefree summers here.

Those are the memories I want to hold on to, not my London life. But still, I feel a heavy tug in my stomach any time I see a couple holding hands while strolling side by side or, even worse, two female friends. It serves up the gut-wrenching reminder of what I’ve left behind andwhy. Seb, my boyfriend, the man I thought I’d marry. Macy, my best friend, my confidante. Seb and Macy in bed, together.

My chats with Fiona across the counter, while she busily offers up soya milk and cappuccino sprinkles, are lovely, but they are nothing compared to what I had with Macy. My ghost of friendship past is a firm fixture in my mind.

Macy and I always said we were soul sisters. We met at secondary school. I defended her against a group of lads who were calling her Racy Macy in the canteen and we became thick as thieves.