Chapter 1: The Quiet One in the Storm
The flat was a roar of bodies and bass, the air sticky with spilled lager and the greasy, heavenly scent of a dozen pizza boxes. Ally leaned against the kitchen counter, the laminate cool through his thin shirt, and let the laughter of his teammates wash over him. A story was being told, arms flailing in reenactment of a botched try from last weekend’s match. He chuckled on cue, his smile easy and automatic.
His eyes, though, kept drifting.
Through the shifting forest of shoulders and raised bottles, she was a still point. Curled in the corner of Cameron’s battered sofa, a sketchpad open on her knees like a shield. She wasn’t looking at the room. She was studying the light falling through the window, the way it glinted off a forgotten bottle on the sill, her gaze intense and private. She was small, almost lost in the cushion, with a fall of dark hair half-hiding her face.
“You even listening, MacLeod?” Cam nudged him, following his line of sight. “Ah. That’s my sister’s lot. Art school. Quiet.”
“Quiet’s nice,” Ally said, the words out before he could filter them.
Cam raised an eyebrow, a slow grin spreading. “Is it? Since when?”
Since now, Ally thought. There was a magnetism to her stillness. It wasn’t aloofness. It was a deep, consuming focus, and it made the boisterous camaraderie around him feel suddenly performative. He took a long pull from his bottle, the beer tasting flat.
“Go on, then,” Cam said, giving him a shove. “Just be… you, but less you. They scare easy.”
Ally pushed off the counter. The journey across the room felt longer than it was, navigating the minefield of conversations and dancing. He stopped by the sofa’s arm.
“Hiding spot or observation post?”
She started, her head snapping up. Her eyes were a clear, startling grey, like the sea under winter sky. They widened for a second, taking him in—his height, the broad line of his shoulders under his shirt, probably the confident stance he’d carried since he was eighteen. A faint pink touched her cheeks.
“Both,” she said. Her voice was softer than he’d expected, with a low, melodic quality. She didn’t smile.
“Ally.” He jerked a thumb vaguely toward the kitchen. “Cam’s teammate.”
“Isla.” She didn’t offer a hand. One finger tapped nervously on the edge of her sketchpad. “Happy birthday to him.”
“He’s had six pints, he’s happy enough.” Ally nodded at the pad. “Documenting the carnage?”
She hesitated, then turned it slightly. It wasn’t the room. It was a detailed, delicate study of someone’s hand resting on a knee, the tendons and knuckles rendered with a tenderness that caught in his chest. The caption, in tiny, precise script, read: George, waiting for a text that isn’t coming.
“Jesus,” Ally breathed, sinking onto the arm of the sofa beside her. “That’s… that’s better than a photo.”
She looked at him, really looked, as if searching for mockery. Finding none, the tension in her shoulders eased a fraction. “Photos are facts. This is… a feeling.”
“A sad one.”
“Most interesting ones are, a bit.”
The noise of the party seemed to recede, muffled by the simple gravity of her statement. He was used to banter, to flirty exchanges that followed a well-worn path. This was a different language.
“So you’re an artist,” he said, stating the obvious to buy time.
“Final year. Edinburgh College.”
“Sports science. Grad. Play rugby.”
“I gathered.” A ghost of a smile touched her lips. “The shoulders. And Cam talks.”
“Nothing good, I hope.”
“Mostly about tackles and trys. And your legendary charm.” She said it flatly, a simple reporting of facts.
He laughed, a real one this time, surprised. “And you thought you’d test its limits from a safe distance?”
“Something like that.”
A teammate bellowed his name from across the room. Ally waved them off without looking. “Is it working?”
“What?”
“My charm.”
She considered him again, that analytical, artist’s gaze sweeping over his face. It was unnerving. He felt seen, not just looked at. “It’s very… loud,” she said finally. “Like the rest of this. It probably works on people who like the noise.”
The direct hit was so clean, so utterly without malice, it left him disarmed. He had no slick reply. He just looked at her, at the sincere curiosity in her eyes, and the restless feeling that had dogged him all night, all month, crystallized into a sharp, clear want. Not to conquer, but to understand.
“What if,” he said, leaning closer so he didn’t have to shout, his voice dropping into the space between them, “the noise is just habit? What if I’m… tired of my own voice?”
The words hung there, vulnerable and stupid. He braced for her to shut him down, to close the sketchpad and retreat.
Isla blinked. She glanced down at her drawing, then back at him. The party swelled around them, a pulsing beat and a burst of raucous laughter. She carefully closed the pad.
“Prove it,” she said.
“How?”
“Get me a water. And then… tell me one true thing. Not a rugby thing. A quiet thing.”
He stood, his movements deliberate. He fetched a cold bottle of water from the fridge, ignoring the lads’ questioning looks. When he returned, she had shifted over, making a small space for him on the sofa itself. He sat, the springs groaning under his weight. He handed her the water. Their fingers brushed. Hers were cool, stained with a smudge of charcoal.
He took a breath. The true thing rose up, unexpected and unvarnished. “I think I’ve forgotten how to be bored,” he said, staring at his own hands. “Everything’s banter, or training, or a night out. It’s all pace. No space. And I think… maybe I miss space.”
He couldn’t believe he’d said it. It sounded pathetic.
Isla was quiet for a long moment. She unscrewed the cap of her water and took a sip. Then she opened her sketchpad again, to a fresh page. She didn’t draw. She just looked at him.
“That,” she said, “is a better start.”
The noise of the party slammed back into focus—a shout, a bass drop, the shriek of laughter—but it felt layered now, like a veil over the quiet space they’d carved out. Ally let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. It was shaky.
“A better start than what?” he asked, reaching for his bottle on the floor, just to have something to do with his hands.
“Than ‘What’s your sign?’ or ‘Come here often?’” She traced the edge of her sketchpad with that smudged finger. “Those are questions for copies of people. Not originals.”
He snorted. “You’ve heard that line here? In Cam’s flat? The carpet probably has its own strain of bacteria.”
That got a real smile from her. Small, but it changed her whole face, lighting up those grey eyes from within. “The carpet is a crime scene. But yes. Mostly from your mates.”
“They’re heathens.” He leaned back, the sofa swallowing him a little. From here, the room was a panorama of moving parts. He saw it through her eyes now, not as a playground but as a series of isolated moments. George, now checking his phone, his shoulders slumped. Two girls hugging by the balcony door, one crying mascara tears onto the other’s shoulder. “It’s all a bit much, isn’t it?”
“It’s people,” she said simply. “They’re just… louder in packs. Like birds.”
“What kind of bird am I?” The question was out, ridiculous. He wanted to kick himself.
Isla tilted her head, studying him with a seriousness that made his neck grow warm. “A seagull.”
He burst out laughing. “A seagull? Ruthless. Scavenging chips on the beach?”
“No.” She shook her head, her expression still earnest. “Confident in your space. Loud. Good at riding thermals—momentum. But always looking for something. Never quite settled.”
The accuracy was a soft, blunt punch to the gut. He stared at her, the laughter dying in his throat. “Christ. Do you do that to everyone?”
“Only the ones who ask for water and tell me true things.” She took another sip, watching him over the bottle. “It’s just observation. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“It means you see people.” He corrected himself. “You watch people.”
“It’s my job. Or it will be. To see the quiet parts everyone else is too busy to notice.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. A silver ring, a tiny twisted knot, glinted on her thumb. “Your friend Cam, for instance. The birthday boy. He’s checking on his sister every eight minutes. She’s by the speakers with the pink hair.”
Ally looked. Sure enough, Cam was weaving through the crowd, not toward the beer pong table, but to ruffle the pink-haired girl’s head affectionately before drifting back. Ally had never noticed the pattern.
“You’ve been here an hour,” he calculated.
“I like patterns.”
“Do I fit a pattern?”
Her gaze met his, held. “You’re trying very hard not to right now.”
Cameron chose that moment to crash-land beside Ally, slinging a heavy, beer-scented arm around his shoulders. “MacLeod! Abandoning your post! We’re setting up a memorial match on the console for the ’22 championship. You’re required.” His eyes, bright and unfocused, slid to Isla. “Alright, Isla? Not boring you to death with rugby talk, is he?”
“We were talking about seagulls,” Ally said, his voice tight. The spell was broken. The quiet space was invaded.
“Seagulls?” Cam blinked, then laughed. “Right. Art school. Brilliant.” He hauled Ally up by the arm. “Come on. Ten minutes. For the team.”
Ally resisted for a second, looking down at Isla. She was already reopening her sketchpad, her retreat smooth and immediate. The walls were back up. She gave a small, almost imperceptible shrug, as if to say, This is your habitat. Go.
“Duty calls,” he said, the phrase tasting like ash.
“Enjoy your match,” she replied, her focus already dropping to the blank page.
He let Cam pull him away, back into the thick of it. The next twenty minutes were a blur of pixelated rugby, shouted commentary, and jostling. He played poorly, his mind elsewhere. He kept glancing over at the sofa. She was drawing again, utterly absorbed, a fortress of one.
Finally, he excused himself, claiming he needed air. He bypassed the balcony, crowded with smokers, and headed for the sofa. It was empty. Just an indent in the cushion and a lone, forgotten hair tie on the seat.
A sharp, irrational sense of loss cut through him. He scanned the room. No grey eyes, no dark hair.
He found Cam’s sister, Molly, by the pizza boxes. “Your friend,” he said, trying to sound casual. “Isla. She leave?”
Molly, her pink hair vibrant under the kitchen lights, grinned. “Yeah, maybe twenty minutes ago. Said she had a project. You made an impression, though.”
“Did I?”
“She asked me what your name was again. After you left. Said she’d forgotten to properly listen.” Molly popped a piece of crust into her mouth. “Isla never forgets to listen. She was checking if you’d given her a fake one.”
The thrill that shot through him was entirely new. It wasn’t victory. It was a spark, fanned by a night breeze. “What did you tell her?”
“Alistair MacLeod. Number eight. Heartbreaker.” Molly winked.
“Cheers, Mol. You’re a menace.”
He walked to the window, pushing it open against the stiff latch. The cool Edinburgh night air hit his face. The street below was quiet, just a distant taxi and the orange glow of streetlights. He pulled out his phone, his thumb hovering.
He didn’t have her number. He didn’t know her last name. He had a sketch of a sad hand and a metaphor about seagulls that felt more like a mirror.
And for the first time in a long, long time, the silence around him didn’t feel empty. It felt full of possibility. It felt like a blank page.
He turned back to the party, the noise now just a dull hum. He had a name. Alistair MacLeod. And for the first time, it felt like a real thing to offer, not just a line. He just needed to find the artist who’d made him feel like an original.
He just needed to find the artist who’d made him feel like an original.
The party’s energy was draining, the laughter starting to sound tinny and forced. Ally leaned against the doorframe of Cam’s bedroom, watching his friend rifle through a pile of laundry for a lost phone charger. The relative quiet was a relief.
“Cam,” he called.
“Hmm?”
“Listen. The girl. Isla.”
Cam straightened up, a sock dangling from his hand. His expression shifted from confusion to a slow, knowing grin. “Oh, yeah. The beautiful one you were chatting up. Properly, for once. No cheesy lines. I was almost proud.”
Ally ignored the jab. “D’you think your sister would give me her number?”
The grin faded. Cam tossed the sock onto the bed. He looked at Ally, really looked at him, the easy-going teammate replaced by a protective older-brother figure. “I dunno, man,” he said, his voice losing its party edge. “Isla… she’s a sweet girl, you know? Quiet. Not like… not like the usual.”
The usual. The word hung there, an accurate label for a parade of faces Ally could barely distinguish now. It stung.
“Right,” said Ally, looking down at his trainers. The scuffs from last week’s match were ground into the leather. He felt oddly exposed, as if he’d asked for something he didn’t deserve.
Cam sighed, the sound heavy in the small room. He walked over and clapped a hand on Ally’s shoulder. “Tell you what. I’ll give Molly your number. Then she can pass it on. Yeah? That way, the ball’s in her court. No pressure from you. If she’s interested, she’ll text. If not…” He shrugged. “You leave it be.”
It was a fair compromise. A dignified retreat route. It felt terrifying.
“Okay,” said Ally, the word tight in his throat.
“Okay,” Cam echoed, giving his shoulder a final shake before heading back to the chaos. “Now help me find this bloody charger. My girlfriend’s going to kill me if my phone dies.”
The search was a mechanical distraction. Ally’s mind was a loop of grey eyes and a soft voice saying, Prove it. He recited his number to Molly ten minutes later by the sink, her fingers sticky with pizza grease as she typed it into her phone.
“Isla, huh?” Molly said, a mischievous glint in her eye. “She’ll either text you in five minutes or five years. No in-between with her. She’s… particular.”
“Particular,” Ally repeated, clinging to the word like a clue.
He left not long after. The night air was a sharp, clean slap after the flat’s bottled heat. The city sounds—distant sirens, the rumble of a night bus—were crisp and separate, not the blended roar of the party. He pulled his jacket tighter and started the walk home.
Every few steps, his hand would drift to his pocket, fingertips brushing the silent phone. The anticipation was a physical buzz, different from the adrenaline of a game. This was slower, deeper, a low-grade hum in his veins.
He thought of her sketchpad, the profound empathy in those lines. He thought of being called a seagull. He replayed the moment his own, polished charm had failed spectacularly, how her quiet rejection had somehow opened a door instead of slamming one shut.
His phone vibrated.
His heart did something acrobatic against his ribs. He fumbled it out, the screen blinding in the dark.
A spam message. Claim your free prize now!
He laughed, a short, sharp exhale that fogged in the cold air. Idiot. He shoved the phone back into his pocket, burying his hands deep. The walk home felt longer now, the silence filled with a new kind of noise—the static of possibility, the quiet terror of hope.
He just had to wait. And for a man used to charging forward, to making the play, it was the most unfamiliar game of all.
And for a man used to charging forward, to making the play, it was the most unfamiliar game of all.
The wait lasted three days.
Three days of checking his phone with a frequency that bordered on pathetic. Three days of replaying that brief conversation on a loop, each time finding a new nuance in her words, a different angle to her smile. Training felt like a distraction, the brutal physicality of it unable to scrub his mind clean. He’d be in the middle of a scrum, the world reduced to sweat and pressure and grunting effort, and a random, clear thought would slice through: She said I was loud.
On the afternoon of the third day, his phone finally buzzed with an unknown number. Not a call. A text. Simple. Direct.
This is Isla. Molly gave me your number. I’m at my studio in the college until 7. If you want to see a seagull’s natural habitat. No pressure. –I.
He stared at it. The studio. Not a bar, not a cafe. Her territory. A test, maybe. Or an offering. He typed three different replies before settling on one that felt right.
Address? I finish training at 5.
The reply came ten minutes later, a location pin and a single line: Door code is 7783. I’m in the back, bay 14.
The Edinburgh College of Art building was a grand, sandstone beast, all turrets and tradition from the outside. Inside, it smelled of turpentine, clay dust, and stale coffee. The corridors were a labyrinth of echoing footsteps and doors with cryptic labels. He found bay 14 at the end of a hall lined with lockers spray-painted with cryptic quotes.
The door was heavy. He punched in the code, the latch clunking open.
The space was larger than he’d imagined, a high-ceilinged industrial room flooded with the last of the afternoon light from massive north-facing windows. Canvases leaned against every wall, some shrouded in sheets, others boldly displaying chaotic splashes of colour or painstakingly detailed scenes. The floor was a Jackson Pollock of paint drips. In the centre of it all, on a worn stool, sat Isla.
She was focused on a large canvas, her back to him. She wore paint-stained dungarees over a grey sweatshirt, her hair tied up in a messy knot. Music played softly from a speaker—something instrumental, full of cello and melancholy. She didn’t hear him enter.
He watched her work. Her movements were economical, decisive. A dab of paint on the palette, a thoughtful tilt of her head, then a swift, sure stroke on the canvas. This was her, unmasked. No party, no shield of a sketchpad. Just pure, concentrated creation.
He cleared his throat softly.
She started, the paintbrush halting mid-air. She turned, and for a second, he saw raw, unfiltered surprise—and something else, a vulnerability she quickly schooled into a neutral expression. “You came.”
“You invited me.” He took a few steps in, hands in his pockets, suddenly aware of his own bulk in this space of delicate, dangerous things. “This is… incredible.”
“It’s a mess.” She set her brush down, wiping her hands on a rag. “But thank you. For coming.”
An awkward silence stretched, filled only by the mournful cello. He gestured to the canvas. It was abstract, layers of deep blue and charcoal grey, with a single, thin streak of gold cutting through the centre like a fault line. “What’s this one?”
She looked at it, her head tilting again. “I don’t know yet. It’s just a feeling. Something… under pressure.”
“It’s beautiful.” He meant it. It felt like looking into a storm.
She gave a small, self-deprecating shrug. “We’ll see if it survives the night. I might paint over it tomorrow.” She hopped off the stool, grabbing two mugs from a cluttered side table. “Tea? It’s terrible. The kettle’s ancient.”
“Sure.” He wandered as she filled the kettle at a deep sink. He stopped before a series of smaller drawings pinned to a corkboard. They were studies of hands, just like the one at the party, but also feet, ears, the nape of a neck. Each was rendered with such forensic tenderness it felt intimate, almost invasive to look at. One was a study of a rugby player’s knee, scarred and swollen, the caption reading: Map of Saturdays.
“That’s Cam,” she said from behind him, handing him a chipped mug. “From last season. He said it was fine. It wasn’t fine.”
“You see that, huh?”
“It’s my job to see what people try to hide.” She blew on her tea. “Sometimes the body tells a truer story.”
He turned from the drawing, facing her directly. The golden light from the window caught the fine dusting of freckles across her nose. “And what’s my body telling you right now?”
She met his gaze, unflinching. “That you’re not entirely comfortable. That you’re used to being the largest, loudest thing in any room, and here, you’re not. And that you’re… curious. It’s in the way you’re standing. Slightly off-balance.”
A laugh escaped him, short and surprised. “Brutal.”
“Honest.” She took a sip. “You asked for one true thing at the party. Consider that a bonus.”
He leaned against a drafting table, its surface gritty with charcoal dust. “So this is it. The quiet.”
“Some of it,” she said. “It’s not always peaceful. Sometimes it’s just… focused. All the noise gets funneled into one point.” She pointed her mug at the chaotic canvas. “That’s where that comes from.”
They talked. He told her about the mindless rhythm of training, the strange emptiness of a victory celebration when the high of the game fades. She spoke about the terror of a blank canvas, the hours that disappear when a line feels right, the crushing doubt that follows. He was a specialist in physical momentum; she was an expert in the momentum of feeling. They were, he realized, both hunters of a sort. He just chased a ball. She chased ghosts.
The light faded from the windows, the room sinking into a soft, blue gloom. She switched on a single, angled lamp, which cast long, dramatic shadows.
“I should let you work,” he said, not moving.
“Probably.” She didn’t move either.
“Do you…” He hesitated, the familiar script of ‘can I take you to dinner’ dying on his tongue. It felt wrong here, in this world of paint and truth. “Do you need to eat? I’m starving. And I promise not to talk about rugby. Much.”
She studied him in the lamplight, her grey eyes pools of dark and light. “There’s a place down the road. A Pakistani place. They do a killer daal and don’t care if you have paint on your clothes.”
“Perfect.”
She pulled on a battered leather jacket over her dungarees. As they left the studio, she didn’t bother to clean her brushes, just left them in a jar of murky water. “They’ll keep,” she said, catching his glance.
The restaurant was a tiny, steamy haven with checked plastic tablecloths. They ate with their hands, tearing naan, the spices warm and complex. He made her laugh, a proper, unexpected sound that made her cover her mouth with her hand. He told her about growing up with four older sisters, the only defence being to be louder and more stubborn than all of them combined. She described the quiet isolation of being an only child, of building entire worlds in her head because the real one was too overwhelming.
It was easy. It was terrifyingly easy.
Walking back toward the art college, the night was cold and clear. Their shoulders brushed occasionally on the narrow pavement. The comfortable silence from the studio returned, but it was charged now, alive with everything they’d said and hadn’t said.
Outside the heavy door, she keyed in the code. She turned to him, her face half in shadow. “Thanks for the daal.”
“Thanks for the studio.”
Another pause. The streetlight hummed overhead.
“I’d like to do this again,” he said, the words simple, stripped of all technique.
“I would too.” She nodded, then looked down at her paint-stained boots. “But Ally… I’m not a game. I’m not a conquest. I get messy. I disappear for days. I forget to text. And I say what I think. If you’re looking for something easy…”
“I’m not.” The certainty in his own voice surprised him. “I’m really not.”
She searched his face, and for the first time, he felt truly seen, not just observed. She seemed to find what she was looking for. A slow, real smile touched her lips. “Okay.”
“Okay.” He felt a grin spreading across his own face, a ridiculous, unbidden response.
“Goodnight, seagull.” She pushed the door open, slipping inside.
The heavy door clicked shut, leaving him on the quiet street. He shoved his hands in his pockets, the ghost of spices and turpentine lingering in the air. He turned and started walking, his stride long and purposeful. The city lights blurred around him.
For the first time in years, the noise in his head had finally, completely, stopped. And in its place was a single, focused, electric silence. He didn’t know where this was going. He didn’t have a plan. All he had was a feeling, deep and resonant as a cello’s note, that he was finally, properly, playing for real.