Highland Fling

by Emma Baird

  “Gaby!” Melissa nods, as I juggle the laptop so I can give her a clumsy hug.

  She steps back quickly. “Country life appears to suit you. Leave the talking to me, okay? You just show him the stuff and promise him you’ve followed every directive in the Blissful Beauty brand bible, okay?”

  Phew. My role is to appear hard-working and serious. Say nothing, Gaby, I repeat to myself.

  “Hi!” a voice behind me makes me jump and then start once more. Am I fated to meet only men who remind me of my favourite TV programmes? The guy behind me is the spitting image of Tobias Menzies, aka ‘Black Jack’ Randall in Outlander. A younger version of him, I decide as I inspect him as discreetly as I can. He’s all dark hair, pointy chin and serious eyes that fix on a person. ‘Black Jack’ Randall was not a nice chap, but Katya and I often had the snog-marry-avoid conversation about all the male characters in Outlander, and he always turned up on the snog list, despite being one hundred percent bad.

  “We’re meeting someone,” I say, and curse as my voice comes out helium style. Already I’ve broken the say nothing edict, and Melissa sighs, introducing herself and me.

  “I’m Dexter Carlton, Blissful Beauty’s UK marketing manager? We’re meeting to discuss the website and what we need for the launch, right?” he asks, the accent taking me by surprise as it isn’t English, a lilting American one I pin down to the south of the US. It’s another reminder that the guy in front of me is not Jack Randall and I’m not in an episode of Outlander. He shakes hands with Melissa then sticks his hand out for me.

  I stick my hand and drop my laptop. “Nooooooo,” I scream. The next bit takes place in slow motion, the three of us watching in powerless horror as it bounces on the kerb, flies into the air, lands on the road and is driven over by a double-decker bus and the two black cabs following it.

  Melissa has closed her eyes, mouth blowing out deep breaths while Dexter tips his head and looks at the remains of the laptop the manufacturers had advertised as the lightest, flattest one money could buy. Not as flat as this, though.

  “Wow, that’s...” Dexter starts, then shakes his head.

  Gabrielle Richardson, professionalism personified. If blushing turns you red, I match the nearby traffic lights for shiny brightness.

  Melissa opens her eyes. “Gaby here,” she says through gritted teeth, “is much better at design than she is at life. Luckily, I’ve always taken out the best public liability insurance I can afford, which includes damage to leased equipment.”

  As the traffic has halted, I pick up the laptop. I don’t want to be landed with a littering charge too. It’s paper thin, thanks to seven and a half tonnes of double-decker rolling over it. I thank the universe and all the stars that I’d backed up everything on that laptop on the iMac back at Jack’s. Melissa tells me I can find some way of disposing of it. I put it in my bag and try to rearrange my features, so I look professional and capable of mind-blowing design work once more.

  “Um, shall we?” he points at the door, and I offer prayers begging any deity who will listen that it is true everyone exaggerates when they talk about the importance of first impressions.

  Tobias stroke Dexter grins broadly, the upturned mouth spreading so wide it threatens to split his face in two. It’s nice, I decide, a man smiling at me so much when I’ve grown used to Jack and his taciturn ways.

  “Come in,” he says, sweeping an arm before him. “Do you think you’ll manage the journey to the office with no more accidents?”

  Melissa smiles. “Just keep her miles away from any electronic equipment in your office, and we’ll be fine,” and he grins at me once more. I return the gesture sheepishly. At least I’ll be able to entertain Katya later when I tell her what happened.

  Dexter doesn’t seem to have taken against me for being an idiot. I like his accent, I decide. Scottish accents have hard consonants in the main, and his are silky smooth. The best way to describe it is, speech like melted dark chocolate.

  Inside, the Blissful Beauty branding is everywhere—silver stars and blown-up pictures of the reality TV star who founded the company wearing what looks like every one of their products at once. The reception features an enormous cut out of her doing her best duck pout and blowing a kiss to the camera. The tag line underneath reads, Make-Up and Skincare so Good You Won’t Need to Cover Up. Dexter sees me gawping at her, and he nudges me. “Maybe you’ll get to meet Caitlin at some point. She’s awesome. It’s hard to believe she’s created this multi-billion-dollar company, and she’s only twenty-one years old.”

  “Mmm,” I mutter, while the voice in my head argues that it doesn’t hurt when your family are already millionaires anyway, and you can employ all the experts you need to launch a successful business and brand. She spends all her time on Instagram promoting her products. “You guys!!!!!!!! I’m super-excited for this new eyeshadow you’re gonna LOVE!!!!!” Does that leave much time for doing business type stuff?

  Dexter’s office is at the top of the building, and the bay window looks out over rooftops. To my right, I see the big shopping mall I plan to spend too much time in later and to the left are spires, the golden dome of a Mosque and high-rise offices. He invites us to sit down at a table in front of the window and asks if we want coffees. After this morning’s little incident, I’m too nervous to add caffeine to the mix, and Melissa’s nod tells me I’ve made the right decision in her eyes. Dexter pushes a button on his phone and orders two espressos. Coffees delivered, Melissa takes out her laptop, finds the pages I’ve created and turns it so Dexter can see them.

  “I used—”

  “As you can see, Gaby followed the brand bible religiously,” Melissa cuts in.

  “I’ll print them out,” he says, pointing at the top of the range laser-jet printer in the corner of his office. He studies every idea I’ve come up with, rotating the papers and bending his head to look at them closely. I’m just running through my speech for Melissa, “Sorry. I tried so hard, and I’m sorry he hates everything, and I accidentally ruined more than £1,000 worth of kit,” when he sits up straight once more and pushes the papers away.

  “These are amazing. You’ve done just what we wanted.”

  The glow starts in my belly and spreads its warmth through my body...

  “Seriously. These are amazing. Blissful Beauty will take the UK by storm, and you will be part of our exciting journey... That’s fantastic, isn’t it? Like a dream come true.”

  I’m still nodding along, enjoying the glow. I might qualify the dream come true bit. I don’t enjoy working as a designer that much. But at least I’ve got one satisfied customer. Again, I take a few seconds to realise he’s still talking.

  “What you want to do now,” he says, pointing at the print-outs one by one, “is go back to our brand bible and then you’ll be able to adjust the colour palette on this one, this one and this one to ensure it meets our standards. Then, if you take the website template, move the menus here and arrange for the pictures to appear in this sidebar. Here, I’ll show you.”

  He takes a pen out and scribbles all over my designs. When he hands them back, they are unrecognisable. ‘You did just what we wanted’ and ‘these are amazing’ must mean different things in US English. My designs lie buried under a mass of red ink, and yet that super-watt smile is still in place and the words coming out of his mouth continue to wax lyrical about my design genius.

  The main point is, however, that Blissful Beauty still wants Bespoke Design to carry out the work for them. Melissa’s expression is no longer tense. My odds of hanging onto my job are once more fifty-fifty.

  I leave the office in a daze, Dexter calling out after me he’d like to see more of the Scottish countryside, and why not arrange our follow-up meeting nearer to where I live? It’s hard to imagine the ultra-urban Dexter in an ultra-rural setting, but I plaster my best ‘great idea’ look in place and wander out.

  Out on the street, I turn to Melissa.

  “I’m so sorry,” I squawk. “I’ll
pay for the laptop if the insurance doesn’t cover it.” No idea how. “And I followed the brand bible instructions exactly.”

  “Yes, the insurance will cover it, though please never, ever do that again. And as for the designs, welcome to the corporate world, Gaby. Go off and re-do everything as he specified. Then, he’ll ask you to re-do it again right back to what you presented him with originally. After that, we’ll change it back to his first request. Other people will see your designs. They prefer you to give them your first ideas. You change it and after that, we go back to Dexter’s requests. Multiply this by ten, and eventually, we get to the end.”

  “What is the end?” I ask.

  “Your original designs,” she says. “Let’s talk tomorrow when you’ve re-done them the first time. Send me the originals just in case and I’ll make sure they’re backed up in our office too.”

  My stomach, unfilled since last night’s dinner, rumbles so loudly it is audible above the traffic. Melissa raises her eyebrows. This is my day for mortification.

  “Um, do you want to go for lunch?” I say. “My treat.” It’s the least I can do.

  Melissa shakes her head. “No, if I go now I can get the earlier flight to Stansted.”

  She sticks her hand out, stopping one of the black cabs passing us. “Goodbye, Gaby. Treat the rest of the equipment I’ve sent up to Scotland with you as if it is your newborn child.”

  I’ve five hours ‘til the pickup point. Time for some food and a little retail therapy.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Jack raises an eyebrow when he picks me up at the front of Glasgow Central Station loaded down with bags. “Retail therapy,” I say. Fortune had smiled on me, and it was the start of summer sales. I picked up some serious bargains. The shops were selling off their winter stuff, and as the Lochalshie summer is yet to prove warm enough for tee shirts and short skirts, I loaded up on sweaters, scarves and gloves.

  “Where’s Stewart?” I ask, fingers crossed behind my back.

  “He decided to stay in Glasgow. He met someone on the course who’s just as... keen on coding, and the guy offered him a bed for the night so they could continue their chat.”

  Oh, one hundred thank you’s, the Gods of Entertainment for stepping in to save me from death by boredom. The mini-bus’s inhabitants, those Jack picked up from the airport earlier in the day, stare at me from the windows of the mini-bus, and I wave. It’s not ideal—having Jack to myself would have been the perfect situation—but chatting to a group of Americans will be fun.

  “Hey everyone!” I say as I get in.

  “Gaby! Darcy here! I thought I recognised you. How awesome to see you again.”

  The woman at the front of the bus leans forward so she can grasp my hand. I bumped into her when I stopped at Glencoe on my way up to Lochalshie all those weeks ago. Hadn’t she been doing a Scottish tour at the time and didn’t she see everything she wanted to then?

  Something must show in my face as she grins at me. “I love Scotland,” she says. “And now I’m retired me, and John Junior here can spend our time just as we like. This is our third tour this year.” She lowers her voice. “And what do you think of our tour guide? Ain’t he the spit of Jamie Fraser? When he picked us up, I couldn’t believe it. I said to John Junior, will you lookie here! We’ve got our own private Outlander experience. You must have been over the moon when you met him, what with you being such a super fan too.”

  Darcy’s idea of lowering her voice means that only everyone in the mini-bus and surrounding 100 metres can hear her, instead of just people within the entire city of Glasgow. Perhaps this is what comes of living in a huge country where you have far more space around you.

  The smile I wear is decidedly fixed as I turn from her and take my place beside a smirking Jack. “Super-fan, eh,” he says out of the corner of his mouth. “Not that much,” I say, breezily, hoping Darcy can’t hear. When we last met, she and I quoted bits of the book to each other and confessed to having read most of the books three times each.

  We drop the mini-bus tourers at a hotel half an hour from Lochalshie. It is fairytale-like, and all the guests sigh and coo behind me as we drive up. It sits on the edge of a loch and had been built centuries ago, according to Jack who delivers a thrillingly knowledgeable running commentary as we head back, the ancient seat of the McGilmours of Lochalshie. When they went out of favour for picking the wrong side in the Jacobite uprising, the castle fell into disrepair but was bought many years later by a wealthy banker who eventually sold it to a property trust that turned it into a luxury hotel.

  The sight of the turreted towers, the sweeping driveway and the stairs to the main entrance hushes even Darcy who’d kept us all up to date on her tours of Scotland and thorough knowledge of everything Outlander. By the time we drop her off, I am back to bargaining with the Gods of Entertainment. Come back Stewart. All is forgiven.

  She winks at me as she leaves the mini-bus. “Now, you kids have fun this evening! Someone told me what proper Scotsmen wear under their kilts, and I’ll want to know if it’s true when I see you tomorrow.”

  John Junior, a hefty, silent bear of a man rolls his eyes at us as he lumbers behind her out of the bus. It must be my day for blushing, I decide. What with the laptop accident and encounters with women who don’t know the word shame, my skin has taken on every shade of pink, from a delicate flush to the full-blown scarlet face. Thankfully, the sun is setting, lending the cover of subdued lighting to the mini-bus’s interior. I get back into my seat and pull on my seatbelt. My heart races as the door opens beside me and Jack gets back in. He grips the steering wheel in both hands and tips his head forward so it rests there. The seconds tick by, and I am just about to prod him when he pushes himself back again. To my astonishment, the dimples have returned to Jack’s face. I suspected he is trying not to burst into hysterical laughter.

  “What a day,” he says, and I nod fervently. If only he knew the extent of mine.

  He puts the bus into reverse, performs yet another textbook manoeuvre and drives away, adding a jaunty honk of the horn aimed at the American visitors who still stand outside admiring the loch.

  As my heart continues its yammering, I decide silence is the best policy. Katya, a fan of police dramas, once told me the best way to get people to talk was to say nothing and wait for them to become uncomfortable enough to want to fill the silence. Excellent mode of attack is silence. You just sit there and wait and...

  “I’m really not that big a fan of Outlander,” I burst out. It turns out only being able to hear engine noise was more than I could bear. “And you don’t look that much like Jamie Fras—I mean, the actor Sam Heughan.”

  “Don’t I?” he says. “I am his cousin.”

  “Gosh, are you? That explains it then. You’re the spitting image of the—”

  I stop, aware that I’ve contradicted myself in three sentences. “Well, your skin’s different, and your knees don’t look the same, and your hair isn’t the exact shade—”

  Katya’s face swims in front of me, appearing on the windscreen, her head in her hands. “Shut up, Gaby! Stop now before he decides you are a total fool.” And works out that I’ve paid a lot of attention to what he looks like.

  “I’m not,” Jack says. “But ever since that programme came out, I keep getting mistaken for him. Or his far better looking younger brother, anyway.”

  And at that, he winks at me. Earlier that day, I’ve seen ghosts of winks but nothing I could claim as definite. This is a bold sweep of an eyelid and lashes that makes his nose and mouth move at the same time. It is so heady I gulp and then have to hide it with a bout of fake coughing.

  “You could capitalise on it,” I volunteer, determined to seem semi-intelligent in front of him for once. “Um, run Outlander tours dressed as Jamie Fraser and take people to the places in the books and on the TV.”

  “There are a few of them already,” he says, his tone regretful. “Don’t want to over-crowd the market. And if people like Darcy tu
rn up to a tour like mine and discover the guide looks a tiny bit like Jamie Fraser and she does her word-of-mouth thing that might make me popular, anyway.”

  He flicks his gaze to the mirror, and I catch his eye. He is back to being nice again. Heck.

  “I’m sure Darcy’s mouth can do all sorts of things,” I add and cringe as soon as I’ve finished the sentence. What is it about me that I can’t help saying stupid things in front of this man? I’d been tempted to share my laptop story, but silence on that subject seems wise else he thinks I’m a total klutz. “Er, you’re right. Word of mouth. Best way. Darcy. Lots of friends.” Short sentences, I decide, are the way forward. They allow less room for mistakes and stupidity.

  The sign for Lochalshie appears all too quickly. I have three minutes left to say something so mind-bogglingly brilliant, it blasts away all previous impressions Jack might have had of me.

  “Kirsty’s house is so pretty, isn’t it?”

  “Genius, Gaby.” Katya is back and unimpressed.

  The mini-bus has come to a halt, and Jack stares at the place. “If you say so. I prefer places that don’t look as if they’ve been decorated by interior designers. Goodnight, Gaby.”

  He drives off so quickly my thanks for the lift are shouted at the wind.

  Back in the house, I update Katya, which means a phone call outside in the right-hand corner of the front garden—the only place I can get a signal.