My phone pinged: “I think I can see you at the pier, Elle,” said Kathi - she’s one of my best friends and was the maid of honour at my wedding. She couldn’t, in fact, see me at the pier. I was still ten minutes round the corner, marching with an 8kg baby strapped to my chest, cursing the fast skipper who was reversing the ferry into Rum pier much too early for my short legs.

“We are definitely early,” Ema texted, as if she could hear my harsh breathing across the water. I haven’t seen my two friends properly since before I moved here. There was a time where we were inseparable, studying the same course at university, living a few minutes door-to-door in the heart of Glasgow. But as happens with life, we moved - Kathi back to Germany, Ema down to England and us to the Isle of Rum. And now, they’re here, stepping off the boat onto the wee island I now call home.

There’s something bizarre about people from your ‘before life’ appearing in your present day. As though the world I left behind on the mainland represented a different character entirely. They asked if the local shop sold coffee (yes) and if they could feasibly do a decent-sized run using running shoes on Rum roads........

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