After a week of deflating radio silence, Arin's invitation to return to the cabin filled Elise to the brim with electric glee. It was difficult work, but it was a long-term gig that fit around her university studies and came with healthy, reliable pay. Beyond all practical factors, the prospect of working with a published author's own manuscripts was too exciting for Elise to turn down just because that author happened to dislike her. She and Florence were both adults – they could keep things professional between them.

    "I am keeping things professional," Florence said as Elise lay her bag beside her seat. "I professionally can't stand mouthy critics that haven't written a word of fiction in their sad little lives."

    Arin hovered in the doorway and tapped away on his phone. "That got a little personal towards the end there, I think," he said, half-raising his finger in Florence's direction. "Remember, Elise is here to give your ideas a little push, that's all. She's here to help you."

    Ignoring Elise's reassuring wave, Florence buried her face back in the book on her lap. "Get lost, Arin. I don't need help."

    "The faster you hammer this draft out, the sooner you can get rid of her," Arin said as he slipped his phone away. "Look, just hear her out before you shut her out, alright? You're paying for her to be here right now whether you listen to her or not, so you might as well make her work for the money."

    A creak of the study floorboards punctuated Florence's silent bristling. Elise dragged her armchair closer to the window, dust specks leaping from the plush red fabric onto the rain-flecked glass. From across the room, Florence's chair rocked as she shifted her weight over its frame. "I'm paying, am I?" she growled, turning her face to catch Elise in her bitter stream. "Thanks for telling me."

    Tension sweltered around them, and Arin pinned the door further open with the stone doorstop. "We agreed this yesterday, Florence. I'd never arrange payments without running them by you first, and you know that." With a furrowed brow, he checked his watch as he leaned into the corridor. "I've got to run now, but it'll be time for your meds in a bit, so you won't be alone for too long. Play nice, you two!"

    The door trembled against its doorstop, every puff of humid breeze quaking through its wooden frame and sending aftershocks through Elise's bones. Catching the author's eye only pushed Florence's face further into the pages, and Elise abandoned her seat before it carried her away on a wave of dark listlessness. "Have you written anything since I was last here?" she asked, grasping at the top of the author's head for a lifeline.

    "I don't need babysitting," Florence uttered into the pages of her book. It was a hardback, yet the sleeve had been removed to leave a blank black cover. "I'll write when I feel up to it."

    "Why romance?" Elise asked suddenly, the question surprising her as it fired into her mind. She made her way to one of the study's bookshelves and scanned the spines on show, yet the rebuke from Florence for her curiosity never came. Instead, the writer peered through the curtain of her black curls, her lips still. "I mean, you don't read it from what I can see, and you don't seem like the...sensitive type. But you've been writing these kinds of books for decades. Why?"

    Rain tapped against the windowpane. Florence lowered her book, not bothering to stop the covers folding shut. "I don't write because I like it," she said, her eyes flaring with a light Elise had not seen before. "If I only liked writing, I'd have given up before I started. No, what got me going as a young one wasn't enjoyment or passion. It was anger."

    Clutching her arm, Elise took a tentative step forwards. "What do you mean anger? At what?"

    "I was the only daughter in a house full of men. What do you think I was angry about?" Florence swapped her book for the tumbler of cranberry juice on the table beside her, sucking her teeth as she swallowed the ruby-red liquid down. "My father never let my mother have a paying job, and he and my brothers tried to do the same with me. I spent my teenage years reading their books after school and thinking of ways to shove their controlling nonsense back in their big whinging faces."

    "And you decided to write a romance novel from that," Elise said, her heart quickening at the cries of rebellion echoing in Florence's face.

    Florence stirred in her seat, yet stopped short of standing up. "Of course not. I scribbled a short crime story first, one with a properly grisly murder at the heart of it, just like all the magazines loved. I thought it was brilliantly clever."

    "Did it get published?" At some point, Elise had reached the side of Florence's desk, her knuckles brushing over the fine decorations along its side.

    "Did it heck – it was bloody tripe! It didn't make a lick of sense, and every editor I sent it to told me so in black and white." A cackling laugh left Florence's lips, followed by a hacking cough that stirred Elise from her awestruck posture. "I never read romance novels, but back when I started writing, women couldn't get a word printed in most genres. I didn't fancy learning how to knit or garden, and I had a depressing amount of experience with disastrous relationships, so romance it was."

    As Florence took another sip of juice, a knock sounded from over Elise's shoulders. She jolted around to see Cadence rolling through the doorway, a blister pack of pills in one hand and a small bottle in the other. "Wow, Flo. I'm impressed. It's been five whole minutes and you haven't torn her head off yet," Cadence said, tossing the blister pack on the end of the side table. She gave Elise a nod on her way past, then focused her gaze on her mother. "Ready to get dosed up?"

    Any energy flowing through Florence's eyes shirked at her daughter's arrival. "What are you doing messing with my pills? I can get them myself."

    "No way, grump. The last time we let you take your meds yourself, you took the evening pills instead of the afternoon ones, ignored the supplements, and topped it off with a triple dose of paracetamol." Cadence bore her mother's scowl without flinching as she rolled up the sleeves of her jacket, exposing just enough of her tattoo's brightness to cut through the gloomy lighting. "I don't know about you, but I don't want a repeat of hauling your unconscious, barely breathing body up to A&E."

    "Don't be ridiculous, child. I haven't touched painkillers in years." Glaring at the medication from the corner of her eye, Florence took the bottle in hand and frowned at its sterile white exterior. "What the devil is this, then?"

    A gust of wind drowned out the force of Cadence's sigh, yet the way the girl's shoulders plummeted made her exhaustion clear. "It's the new supplement the docs put you on a month ago. You won't get this one mixed up with painkillers, we hope." She produced a small plastic cup from her jacket pocket and held it up to the grey daylight, picking out one of the marked lines. "Need some water to get this all down your throat?"

    "I've swallowed worse," Florence said with a sour note twisting her words. She popped all the pills into her mouth in one go and gulped them down, shuddering as she turned to the liquid supplement. "I've had to swallow your disrespectful attitude every day for years, for one. Even Melody says you're a horror."

    "Here we go again with the whole 'attitude problem' thing. Do you recycle lines this much in your books?" Cadence removed the medical supplies from the table and made to leave, ignoring Elise on her way to the door. A step away from leaving the room, she paused and waved a hand back at her mother. "I've got some things to do, so I'll be heading out for a bit."

    "Out? Out where?"

    "Chill, Flo. I'll be back long before it's time for your evening meds."

    Reaching for her glass, Florence's hand quaked with a sudden tremor, and her knuckles rapped against the glass' straight edges. The impact shunted the glass off the table's edges, its crystalline mass thudding to the floor before the crimson contents splashed across the wooden boards. "Tell me where you're going, Cadence," Florence spat through a flurry of curses. "I'm your mother - your real mother, not some fake foster mother that just dumps a kid when they get bored of it."

    The rattle of the blister pack in Cadence's hand betrayed the inner shock that her flat expression concealed. "At least Faith tried," she uttered with an unfamiliar bite to her tone.

    "You wouldn't think so to see you. I trusted her to raise you, and look at the state of you now." Spilled juice trickled towards Florence's feet without drawing a reaction from the writer. Elise edged towards the kitchen, yet Florence spoke again, her voice stronger than before. "You're an embarrassment, Cadence, and it's all her fault. Can't you be more like Melody?"

    "Shut the hell up, already!" Cadence's shriek scorched past Elise's ears, leaving her defenceless against the crash of the door. As Elise collected herself in the silence that followed, a muffled sob slipped through the cracks in the doorway. The minor touches of Cadence's voice in the slight gasp only made it cut deeper into Elise's heart.

    Florence cast her eyes down to the spillage. "What a blasted mess," she said, gesturing to the dots of dried juice that tarnished her blanket. Her neck clicked as she turned her gaze upwards, the dull cores of her eyes chilling Elise's coursing blood. "What are you standing around for? Get this cleaned up!"

    Muttering a quiet apology, Elise hurried out of the study and shut the door behind her. Her phone buzzed through the walls of her bag, and a string of messages from her father lit up its screen in blinding neon. "Not now," she groaned to herself, sliding the phone away before reading any of the notifications. Florence provided more than enough trouble for one day without Leon's help.

    The pale-panelled kitchen caught the most light of any of the cabin's rooms, and every particle seemed to congregate around Cadence's bloodshot eyes as Elise entered. "I'm fine," Cadence said, hiding her tear-stained face from the kitchen's entrance.

    "I'm not. Florence just screamed at me like I'm her cleaning lady," Elise answered as she walked to the counter, keeping the sink between herself and Cadence. "I thought I was getting to know her a little better just now, and that maybe we could actually work together. I don't know what I was thinking – I'm so..."

    Cadence raised her eyebrow. "You're so...?"

    "I'm so pissed off!"

    Elise beat her fist against the countertop and let herself sit on the cool floorboards. As she buried her face in her hands, the flooring shifted and snapped, and a weight landed by her side. "Join the club. Flo pisses pretty much everybody she meets off," Cadence said, her arm brushing against Elise's shoulder as she shuffled next to her. "I'm guessing Arin hasn't told you why he ended up calling you of all people in."

    Wiping the moisture from her eyes, Elise shook her head to clear her thoughts. "He just said I was the only person he tried that was available. This Melody person she keeps talking about isn't answering him anymore."

    "Correction – you're the only person that stayed available after the first meeting with Storm Florence in there." As she rocked her head between her shoulders, the mist in Cadence's eyes dissipated to leave twin polished gemstones that twinkled in the dim light. "Everybody else took one look at this mess and ran. Even Melody saved herself from this dumpster fire. Honestly, I thought you would too."

    "Maybe I should've done," Elise said, choking down the sob that surged up her throat. "I'm not getting anywhere. I'm running into the same problem over and over. I should just phone Arin and tell him I'm giving up."

    Cadence flicked her hair and glanced at the wooden wall clock over the kitchen table. "You know what? If the grump wants a break, she can have it. Meet me by the car in five."

    "But I'm meant to spend the next hour with Florence."

    A snort flared through Cadence's nostrils, and she leaned close to Elise's side. "Knock yourself out. But if you'd prefer to not slam your head against a brick wall, I'll be waiting outside."

    As Cadence left, the brightness that bounded between the walls fled with her, leaving the kitchen a static, barren shell. Elise rubbed her eyes and looked out of the kitchen window, Cadence's relaxed stance by the boathouse confirming that she had meant what she had just said. From nowhere, the opportunity to hang out with Cadence had fluttered into Elise's reach, and her heart tugged at its cords to seize it.

    "Oi!" Florence cried from the study. "How long does it take to bring a blasted cloth in here? I swear, some people are good for nought..."

    Elise took a deep breath and picked up the dishcloth from the side of the sink. "I'm coming," she answered, yet her mind was already waiting by Cadence's side, where her body would soon catch up.