"Different category of worst."
Arty was quiet for a moment, his smile fading into something more thoughtful. "Look, I know you came here to be left alone.I get it. I really do. But Bankton doesn't work like that. People here care about their neighbors. They check in. They bring round casseroles when you're ill and biscuits when you're new. It's suffocating if you're not used to it, but it comes from a good place."
"I didn't come here for good places. I came here to work."
"On an album?"
She nodded curtly.
"How's that going?"
"None of your business."
"That well, huh?" He finished his drink. "Bit of advice, from one ex-Londoner to another. Don't fight it too hard. You'll only make yourself miserable. The village grows on you, if you let it."
"I'm not here to make friends, Arty."
"No," he agreed, standing up. "You're here to hide. But maybe that's not what you need."
SHE STAYED AT the pub until she was done with her beers, steadfastly ignoring the curious glances from other patrons. By the time she walked back to the cottage, it was past nine and the village was dark except for streetlamps and the occasional lit window.
Her own cottage was exactly as she'd left it, guitar on the sofa, notebook on the floor, general atmosphere of creative failure. She picked up the guitar automatically, settled into the corner of the sofa, and started playing.
No particular song. Just chords, progressions, the muscle memory of two decades of practice. It usually helped her think, cleared her head, sometimes led to something usable.
Tonight it led nowhere. She was too wound up, too aware of the silence pressing in around her. In London, there was always noise, traffic, sirens, neighbors shouting, music from other flats.Here, there was nothing. Just her and the guitar and the weight of everything she couldn't write.
Fuck it.
She turned up her amp and played louder.
It felt good. Felt like herself again, like the Raven who'd sold out the O2, who'd had three albums go platinum, who didn't care what anyone thought because she had the talent and the attitude to back it up.
She played an old Krimson Kisses song, one of the early ones, before everything got complicated. Before Alissa became more than a bandmate. Before the on-again-off-again bullshit that had defined the last five years of her life.
The song sounded different without Alissa's vocals weaving through it. Empty. But maybe that was the point. Maybe she needed to figure out what her music sounded like on its own.
She played another song. Then another. Lost herself in the familiar rhythms, the way her fingers knew exactly where to go even when her brain didn't.
It was only when she finally stopped, fingers aching, throat dry from singing, that she checked her phone.
2:17 AM.
"Shit."
She looked out the window and saw a light on in the cottage next door. Annabelle's cottage.
A small, petty satisfaction curled in Raven's chest.
Good. Now the teacher would know what it felt like to be interrupted. Maybe next time she'd think twice before barging into someone else's space with her welcome baskets and her cheerful bloody smile.
That woman next door won't be interfering again, she thought.
Chapter Five
Annabelle had been awake for much of the night.
Not by choice, obviously. It was just rather difficult to sleep through what sounded like a full rock concert happening in the cottage next door. Electric guitar, drums, or possibly furniture being rearranged with extreme prejudice, and the occasional crash that made her wince into her pillow.
