She'd always liked high places so she'd left and gone to Scotland without telling anyone. Losing her lectureship after all those years had left her heart feeling clamped and her mouth pulled down at the corners. The agent had said no-one's going to live all the way out here, but she loved it. It was a place where she could rest and listen to the wind blow. When she was lonely she listened to the noise of whales calling in the Hebridean sea. She dreamt of burning books and children's voices and drew an image of herself on the crumbling white wall. On her horse she would follow ancient tracks for miles. She'd started writing a novel about a lady of the city who was now the woman of the hills, like Catherine in Wuthering Heights. Waiting for a husband, someone to listen with, to the sound of whales and the wind blowing.
Completely inspired by PJ Harvey's 'The Wind', with a nod to an English lit teacher I knew at uni, who ran away to write a book in a croft and was never heard of again.
