Distance

They fall in love by accident in a week in New York City.Tom must return to Scotland, to his ex-wife, his estranged son, his sometimes girlfriend and the PR job he despises. And Meg after seven days with Tom has turned against her ten years as an anonymous Hollywood script-doctor and finally found the inspiration to try to speak with her own voice.

A passionate farewell at Newark Airport and a promise that they will meet in eight weeks, in Edinburgh.

But home, Tom's city, son and job are alien to him. He waits every day for Meg to call long-distance. Her day is his night. They learn how to love with text messages and hour-long phone calls and phone-sex. He takes again to drinking in those hours of waiting. And drink destroyed his marriage. They talk of futures. She will move to Scotland, he to New York. She will be second mother to his child. He has to hide his drinking from her as she's so passionate to record every detail of their time together.

Six weeks, five. Traumas occur, a phone is lost and a day without contact almost ends it for them. They will be together in three weeks, in two, five days, three. But does Tom only love Meg because she is an imagined escape? And for Meg, is Tom really the one love she has sought or an excuse to once and for all turn love into a fiction?

As he showed in his highly-praised first novel, Swung, Ewan Morrison writes about relationships between men and women with extraordinary sympathy, insight and daring.