This article is a fictional response to paintings, sketches and notebooks left behind by the painter Lil Neilson (1938–98) in her studio, The Watchie, after her death. The writing takes as its starting point the work that Neilson made in the last ten years of her life, when she returned to the coastal village of Catterline, Aberdeenshire. The title of the article is taken from a painting Neilson made in 1993–4. An extended, recomposed and adapted version of this text was published as an artists’ book, The Bitter Cup, in September 2019, commissioned by Book Works and Hospitalfield.