When a booking error forces bitter literary rivals Meera and Callum to share a cabin for a two-week writing retreat, the only thing they agree on is that this will be a disaster.
The email said Cabin 4 — private retreat — perfect solitude. The man standing in the doorway of Cabin 4 holding a French press said otherwise.
"No," said Meera.
"Good evening to you too," said Callum Reid, who had once described her debut novel in the Times as "ambitious in the way a toddler is ambitious near a staircase."
"There's been a mistake."
"There has. The mistake is that they gave me the room with the bad desk."
They called the retreat office. The retreat office was a woman named Bev who was, according to her voicemail, "off-grid until the fourteenth, bless."
So they made rules. Meera got the mornings at the big table by the window. Callum got the afternoons. Evenings were neutral territory, conducted in silence. Coffee was communal, because Callum had brought the only grinder within thirty miles and Meera was not too proud to be caffeinated.
The rules lasted four days.
On the fifth day the power went out, and they sat by the woodstove with two candles and nothing to do, and Callum said, without looking at her, "Chapter nine of your book. The scene on the train. I've read it eleven times."
Meera stared at him.
"I was jealous," he said. "It's the best thing anyone our age has written. So I was cruel instead. I've been sorry about it for three years."
The fire popped. Somewhere outside, snow slid off a branch.
"Your review," Meera said slowly, "is framed in my bathroom."
"Why on earth—"
"Motivation," she said. And then, because it was dark and the candles were low and she was tired of being angry, she laughed. He laughed too.
On the fourteenth, when Bev came back on-grid, she found them at the same table, two laptops open, sharing one very large pot of coffee.
Comments