DAWN sits uncomfortably at her kitchen table, nervously trying to write a note to her husband Mike.
She has no idea where he is, what he is thinking or what he is doing as she repeatedly scores out her many attempts.
After all, it's hard when you've only got eight words in which to break someone's heart.
The scene is fictional – from the sc
ript of a short film, Eight Words, penned by Edinburgh writer Alistair Rutherford – whose latest play Homecoming will be performed at next month's Leith Festival. But the eight-word challenge, he explains, is very real.
"I have a friend who works on submarines," explains Rutherford from his home in Corstorphine. "He used to tell me how, owing to security, his wife could only send him an eight-word message every six months when he was away and that he could not reply. The film's based on this idea."
Eight Words is both funny and painfully sad, reaching its end when Dawn finally finds to the words to tell her husband they have lost their unborn baby.
"We try again. All is well. Love you," she writes.
Rutherford plans to take Eight Words to the Edinburgh Festival in the hope that it might be spotted by the film industry bigwigs in town during August.
The five-minute production is one of two he has been working on this year, with a group of filmmakers from across the world.
The second is Lift Off, a comedy about being stuck in a lift with a life-long idol, which he filmed at Napier University.
Unfortunately for his central character, she spends many minutes passionately blurting out her thoughts and feelings before discovering she has embarrassingly mistaken the identity of her fellow lift passenger.
Tapping into real-life emotions and making a connection with his audience seems to come easily to the 50-year-old – yet he reveals he had never even been to the theatre until his 30s and only began writing ten years ago.
That was at the Traverse, while he was still holding down a full-time day job in IT. Now a full-time writer, with a screenwriting MA in the bag, he's penned plays for stage and screen, as well as BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio Scotland, including comedy sketches for all four series of the Why Front on BBC Radio Scotland.
Rutherford has also been asked to write a 30-minute play for BBC Radio Scotland to be aired on Hogmanay.
But it is his childhood home of Leith which features in Homecoming, a play about a family reunited when a son returns after 15 years to a port he barely recognises. Commissioned by the organisers of the Leith Festival, it will be performed at the South Leith Parish Church Halls as part of the festival, which begins next Friday and culminates in the gala parade on 13 June.
"The audience will gradually find out why the son has returned – I'm not going to spoil that," he laughs. "He's lost something and it's very appropriate that it's set on Hogmanay.
"Families always used to come together at that time, doing the traditional first footing, but increasingly they are not.
"The son comes back to a Leith that has lost some of its community feel. However, I do still feel that it exists more in Leith than anywhere else – people do still say hello in the street."
Rutherford was born to a Leith father and a Newhaven mother, growing up "on the border" on Lindsay Road.
His wife Anne – whom he met when they both worked for British Gas – is a Fifer and they were married at South Leith Parish Church.
"My wife has been a great support, agreeing to me focusing on writing full-time," he says. "It is very hard to make it in this business, especially if you really want to do it as a career.
"You're up against it if you want to make any sort of living.
"I have built up such a head of steam about this now though and I really want to make it."
Homecoming is staged by the Big Village Theatre Company and runs from 10 to 13 June. E-mail
alirutherford@aol.com.
