As I walked the city streets, I had a sudden sense that I never really belonged here. Australia had been my home, but I wasn’t a part of it. My dad had been my anchor to this place. Now that he was gone, I was adrift.
There had to be something else…this couldn’t be it.
That’s when I saw it.
Standing outside the travel agency, Flight Centre, I stared at the poster in the window, my eyes drinking in the rolling hills of the Scottish Highlands like they were an oasis in the middle of a charred forest.
The world fell away, and I imagined myself walking through the wild landscape, the cool wind on my cheeks, the drizzling rain misting through the greyish sky, and the trickling of a creek feeding into a vast loch. The absence of people and the pull of the Earth.
The blood in my veins hummed and I pressed my palm against the window. An unfamiliar longing was rising, charging my body with an almost electric excitement.
The sound of a car horn blaring broke me out of my daze and I blinked, snatching my hand away from the window. I rubbed my palms up and down my arms, chilled as if the heat of the summer day hadn’t reached me at all.
I glanced at the people walking past, my cheeks heating with embarrassment, but they didn’t seem to notice me at all.
A daydream, I thought. Just a daydream.
I glanced at the poster of the Scottish Highlands again and my heart skipped a beat. Hardly understanding what I was doing, I opened the door to speak with the travel agent.
2
The first thing I noticed about Scotland was the cold. Then how green and lush everything was compared to the dry, dead brown of the drought-ravaged Australian countryside.
I stood outside the large grey building on the Royal Mile, in Edinburgh’s Old Town, looking up at the stone façade. The sign above the door read, Campbell’s Serviced Apartments. At least I was in the right spot.
Rolling my suitcase behind me, and following the directions on my printed booking confirmation, I went into the foyer. The lines were all wobbly, the last of the ink made the picture of the building look like an old-fashioned sepia portrait. That’s what I got for making last-minute travel arrangements based on a hallucination.
The instructions said to knock on the door of the ground-floor apartment, so that’s what I did.
The door opened, revealing a robust older lady. Her short grey hair was a wild mop and her brown, cable-knit jumper looked handmade, but her eyes were warm and friendly.
“Mrs. Campbell?” I asked. “I’m Elspeth Quarrie. I—”
“Ah, there you are,” she declared, her accent almost musical to my ears. “You’re a pretty lass. Let me look at you.”
“Uh…okay?”
She’d obviously set the bar low, considering I wasn’t anything special to look at. My hair was mousey blonde with touches of auburn—the flecks of red brought out the green in my eyes. I was on the taller side, but neither overweight nor slim. I was simply a normal woman. Average, unremarkable, but passable if looks was what it came down to.
“I thought the fairies had taken you,” she went on, completing her assessment without comment. “I was expecting you hours ago.”
“Uh, no fairies, just a long line at customs.”
“The fools,” Mrs. Campbell scoffed and gestured for me to follow her up the stairs. “I gather their computers were broken again or some such. They usually are. There’ll be a scathing write up about it in the newspaper tomorrow.”
“Yes, they were.” I gathered she wasn’t a fan of technology. “Everyone had to wait to get an old-fashioned stamp.”
The stairs creaked as we began to climb.
“There are three other apartments in the house,” Mrs. Campbell said, leading me up the narrow flight. “You’re here for a month, but if you want to stay longer, let me know as soon as you can. It’s winter and past Hogmanay, but people still want to stay on the Mile. You seem like a sweet lass, and a sight quieter than the regular louts that rent the place, so I’d rather give it to you. But as I said, you’ll have to let me know.”
“Oh no, I won’t be any trouble, Mrs. Campbell,” I told her, dragging my suitcase up the stairs behind me.
“So, what are you? Writer? Artist? Please don’t tell me you’re one of those digital nomads.”
“What do you have against digital nomads?”
Mrs. Campbell turned and gave me the evil eye. “They’re the worst, lass. They pretend to ‘work’ on their computers, eat up all the WiFi with their streaming, and come in at all hours pissed up past the eyeballs! And all of it captured with a camera on a long stick pointing at their own faces.”
I bit my bottom lip to stop myself from laughing and shrugged. “I’m just looking to find some information about my family and maybe a little sightseeing.”
“Oh!” she declared. “You’re a historian, then? How lovely!”
“Sure.” I didn’t know what I was, but I didn’t want to burst her bubble. I’d graduated with one of those useless Arts degrees in the hopes of one day doing something creative like work in an art gallery or a museum, but that day seemed like it belonged in another life.
We reached the landing and I leaned against the wall, catching my breath. This city was making me feel severely inadequate in the fitness department and I’d only been here an hour.
“Here we are.” Mrs. Campbell unlocked the door and handed me the key. “Now, everything you need is inside, but if you have any questions, read the book.”
I gathered that was my cue that she was releasing me into the wild, so I thanked her and pushed open the door, my suitcase wheels bumping over the threshold.
The apartment was a one-bedroom with a little bathroom. A living area made up the rest of the space with a kitchenette, couch, TV,
