by Wendy Holden
The weather changed constantly; in a matter of seconds, brilliant sunshine became brooding cloud and back again. Laura peered with interest at the famous Scotch mist. She had expected to dislike it; instead, she found it intensely poetic. She rather loved the way it robed the hills in ethereal gloom and hovered mysteriously above the waters. It made her think of strange stories. Of arms clothed in white samite extending from lakes, holding legendary swords. Laura’s eyes widened, then she shook herself. Perhaps she had been watching too much Game of Thrones.
Scotland was built on a spectacular scale and seemed to demand a spectacular emotional response. It was, Laura felt, the perfect place to fall head over heels in love. This led her thoughts, inevitably, to Harry. Where was he now? Would he ever come back? The possibility that he wouldn’t made her burn inside, as if her heart was going up in flames.
They were passing yet another broad stretch of silver water. As the gulls cried bleakly and whirled low over the waves, Laura found herself wondering about Caspar. Up here, in this remote spot, the crazy world of Tinseltown seemed like another universe. She wondered if the #creepycaspar Twitterstorm had died down yet. Being rich and famous was all very well, but there was no doubt it had its downsides. Laura hoped her old flame had now got things back on track. Found another butler, at least. He hadn’t replied to any of her concerned messages anyway, which seemed to suggest he was coping.
Laura fought back a tide of self-pity. Neither Caspar nor Harry appeared to need her now. And yet they had both, not so long ago, pledged undying love and assured her she was the centre of their universe. Laura felt the tears prick and gave herself up to an exquisite melancholy triggered by her powerful response to the scenery. Couldn’t she hang on to anything? To anyone?
Once Laura had had her fill of enjoyable despair she got a firm grip of herself. She reminded herself sternly that she could not, and would not, depend on a man. She had to set her own terms, as a woman. That is what her Parisian grandmother had brought her up to believe. And Mimi undoubtedly knew the meaning of standing firm. Her courage had won her the Croix de Guerre for her heroic work in the French Resistance during World War Two. To this day she wore pyjamas patterned with the Croix de Lorraine, symbol of the Free French.
What would Mimi say now, Laura wondered. She squeezed up her eyes into creases. If she concentrated hard enough, she could almost hear her grandmother’s French-accented voice. ‘No man is an island, ma chérie. But sometimes a woman must be one.’
Laura wasn’t entirely sure what she meant, but it sounded as deep as the loch itself. The thought stiffened her sinews as she contemplated her forthcoming arrival at Glenravish.
Hopefully the castle would be as sumptuous and inviting as it looked on Roddy Ruane’s website. And hopefully its mysterious and reclusive Highland laird would be a dashing Caledonian straight out of Walter Scott, not that Laura had ever read any Walter Scott. Had anyone? Perhaps Fifty Shades of Tartan was more the sort of thing. Sandy McRavish would be handsome, ripped and high-cheekboned as he made his Hebridean Overture to her Fingal’s Cave. She could taste the peaty tang of his skin now, the rough grind of his Harris tweed and the bristling jab of gorse, thistle and heather as they made love in the open Highland air…
There was more to the visit than sex, of course. But it was certainly about love, Laura reflected. Her love for her profession, for her magazine. For her staff, even, whose jobs she had to save along with her own. She had to get the ads and stop Bev casting Society, in which she believed so passionately and had put so much of herself, to the outer darkness of online-only publishing.
Could she do it? Advertorials were a whole new world to her; she had, in the past, involved herself only with the magazine’s articles and ensuring they were the most interesting, original and news-breaking that could humanly be achieved.
Now she must bend her will and ingenuity to writing a gushing feature about Glenravish; it would no doubt be the first of many. She might well end up writing free puffs for every property on Roddy’s list, including the strange modernist box Lulu had gone to look at.
Nor did it stop with the properties, Laura knew. Harriet had gleefully listed all the other things she could write free editorials about in order to encourage advertisers. Stalking weekends, shooting, fishing, sailing and gardening experiences. Whisky-tasting, haggis-tasting, Mars Bar-frying, dressing up like Rod Stewart – there was no element of the Caledonian experience that could not, it seemed, be monetised and make some dollar for Bev Sweet and the shareholders.
‘Oh!’ Laura gasped, suddenly looking up from the floor at which she had been staring glumly and noticing that the sky outside had changed to molten gold. A spectacular sunset straight off a stately home ceiling was spread over the western sky. It was, she realised, impossible to be depressed in Scotland for long. The place was just too beautiful.
All the same, she wouldn’t mind a cup of tea. They’d drunk a huge amount of champagne at Roddy’s. Vlad had shot the cork off bottle after bottle; it had been like a gunfight at a particularly luxe OK Corral.
The Cristal, Laura recalled with awe, had been delivered in a vast articulated lorry. Her conviction that Harriet was wasting her time fell away at the sight of it; Roddy’s business was evidently booming and he obviously had money to burn. He could probably buy the ads she needed all by himself.
Even so, Laura’s head now felt tight with dehydration. There was an at-seat trolley service on the train; Fraser had shuffled past some time ago and offered her something called the Cardiac Meal Deal – ‘That’s a caramel wafer, a full-sugar Irn-Bru and a cold stovie for £11.99.’ Laura had no idea what a stovie was and had passed on the offer, a rash act that she now regretted. However, she couldn’t be bothered to go and look for Fraser now. He was doubtless at the other end of the train and they’d be at Glenravish soon. Hopefully.
Laura yawned again, slumped against the window and gazed spellbound at the coral pinks and Tiffany blues now taking the place of the gold. Her eyes felt heavy; her eyelids drooped. Soon she was asleep.
In her dream, Caspar rose up from a broad lochside, kilted and glisteningly bare-chested. A large broadsword hung suggestively about his waist. Laura lay back on the downy grass of the shoreline, nipples standing to attention through her clinging medieval robe and arranging one leg suggestively over another.
Caspar approached, sucking his cheeks in and pushing his lips out. She pushed her hair back in response and narrowed her eyes. Hers and Caspar’s sexual relationship was admittedly rather on-off, but in this scenario it was definitely the former. He was a very good lover and always had something new to show her. Laura wondered, in this macho Caledonian setting, what it would be this time. She was certainly ready to toss his caber.
But then came the clang of metal on metal. Laura sat up in the grass, her heart racing, and saw the vengeful figure of Harry appear over a nearby hillock. He was wearing full chain mail and a surcoat bearing the red-and-white cross of St George. He looked as if about to set off on the seventh crusade against the distant Infidel. But as he ran, clanking somewhat, towards Caspar it was obvious that his target was rather closer to home.
The two of them squared up: Caspar with his broadsword, plus a dirk just pulled from his socks; Harry with any number of weapons including a halberd, a pike and a spiked mace swinging threateningly from a thick iron chain. Laura gasped. They were fighting for her love!
‘Whosoe’er vanquishes the opposant suitor is rightwise entitled to the hand of Dame Laura!’ Harry boomed with uncharacteristic cod medievalness.
As they set about each other, Laura had a particularly good view of Caspar’s kilt – and possibly up it. She wondered whether the newly enacted ‘upskirting’ laws applied to men in traditional Highland dress. They were, after all, ‘clearly asking for it’ with their widely advertised commando policy.
A sudden upward swish of plaid revealed to Laura’s horror and disappointment that Caspar was wearing the most disgusting pair of nylon orange P
aisley Y-fronts, with white piping adding insult to injury.
A sudden jerk of the train woke her up. Laura felt thirstier than ever, but her longing was for more than just water. Remembering she had been dreaming about Harry, she felt a great rip tide of longing course through her. She ached physically with the pain of missing him and realised that entertaining lustful thoughts about Sandy McRavish was nothing more than bravado.
She wished desperately that Lulu was with her to cheer her up with her very own brand of bonkers billionheiress good sense. But Lulu, of course, would be at Bangers by now. How was she doing, Laura wondered.
Chapter Fifteen
Any guest taking the air that evening at the McBang Estate’s groundbreaking modernist hotel would have spotted a bright pink helicopter whizzing towards them. They might then have rubbed their eyes and vowed to go easy on the whisky. On the other hand, a full ‘wardrobe’ of whisky miniatures from local distilleries was supplied as standard in every Bangers room. So why go easy? Pink helicopters, in addition, were what the landing pad had been built for – helicopters of every and any colour.
But there was no guest taking the air to see Lulu arrive, and the whisky ‘wardrobes’ remained untouched in most of the rooms for there were no guests at Bangers at all and hadn’t been for many months. This was just one of the reasons that Torquil McBang, new head of Clan McBang, wanted to sell the place.
Torquil, a tall, handsome individual of some forty years and with a full head of still-dark hair, stood before one of the vast smoked-glass windows on the hotel front. His long hands were thrust deep into the pockets of his Dress McBang trews. In the case of most clans, their ‘hunting’ tartan was a more subdued version of their ‘dress’ tartan, but in the case of the McBangs it was the other way round. A Victorian McBang, convinced that Scottish wildlife were all colour-blind, had elected to go stalking in acid-yellow and scarlet. The Dress, by contrast, was a merely assertive green and orange.
Watching the pink chopper banking before landing, Torquil hoped that this woman was the answer to his prayers and would take the whole of the wretched estate left to him by his recently deceased father off his hands.
In the opinion of his son, Ruarhi McBang’s dream of a cutting-edge contemporary hotel set amid the wild majesty of the Cairngorms had been, not to mince words, a disaster. The only cutting edge round here people were interested in was the knife with which they slit the throats of shot stags. The wild majesty, on the other hand, was real enough. Balmoral was not far away and the Queen had not been best pleased at the destruction of old Castle McBang and its replacement by a trendy hotel.
Torquil conceded that possibly the old Castle McBang, with its romantic turrets and central tower so ancient it seemed part of the rocky landscape, would have made a better hotel. Certainly, it would have better looked the Caledonian baronial part. But the cost of refitting it was astronomical; there had been only one loo and one fireplace in the whole fortress. Temperatures had been sub-zero despite miles of heating pipes that groaned and clanked all night long.
It was to these that the pipes now covering the outside of the new building wittily referred. But they made the place look hideous. As did the flashing main entrance which looked like the set of a TV game show and in fact was. McBang senior, who had the Scotsman’s eye for a bargain, had put his hotel together at minimal cost via sales at Dunelm and Next Home, an architectural salvage company located near the BBC Glasgow studios and prefabricated concrete units delivered to nearby Loch Wetty by tanker from Eastern Europe and lowered into place with cranes. Even the expanse of AstroTurf in the clan tartan (Hunting) colours had been a happy accident – an offcut from the private football pitch of an African potentate that McBang senior had found in the depths of eBay.
Lulu, in the helicopter, was looking down in delight. ‘Huge pipes!’
‘Very big, madam,’ Vlad agreed, expertly deploying the Vivienne Westwood joystick.
‘Nice and hot inside, hmm? Is what all that on lawn? They have spilt something?’
Vlad answered non-committally. She was not a fan of the countryside, even the smiling, rolling Suffolk sort where Lulu’s country house was. And this wild and rocky terrain was anything but rolling and smiling; on the contrary, it was hard and extreme. It had, Vlad allowed, a certain savage grandeur, but she’d had her fill of savage and grand in the Estonian military. She found it hard to believe that Lulu would take to it, either; this place was galaxies from the nearest decent hairdresser’s, and as for brow threading, forget it.
Vlad hoped it would not be long before South’n Fried’s career was up and running once more and she could return to London. Her mistress’s husband was a royal pain in the ass and she felt, as Laura did, that Lulu could have done considerably better for a life partner.
‘Ready to land, madam?’ the butler asked. There came an answering rattle from the rear. Lulu had given considerable thought to her outfit for the viewing and had decided that understating her charms was not an option. Should other, more attractively dressed potential purchasers suddenly materialise, she might lose out in a beauty contest. Roddy Ruane had given no indication that such purchasers were in the offing – he had made a strange exploding noise when she had asked, in fact, but one never knew.
Accordingly, Lulu was wearing what she felt was the perfect compromise between discreet sexiness and a nod to the historical nature of the estate, if not its main building. Her dress, what there was of it, was fashioned entirely of thin chains gathered in with a spike belt. The chains rattled and clinked gently in the wind as, now, she prepared to descend the Chanel steps on to Bangers’ front lawn.
Torquil, watching from behind the window, gasped as a never-ending tanned leg extended itself from the side of the helicopter. The leg ended in four-inch snakeskin and diamante wedge mules, which had struck Lulu as a better bet than heels that just sank in the bog.
Torquil had just been hoping for someone stupid with money. Never in his wildest dreams had he expected someone stupid with money who was beautiful.
In actual fact, Lulu came from a long and successful line of international businessmen into which Florentine bankers, Turkish merchants, Russian traders and American robber barons were all cheerfully and lucratively twisted. The very last thing she was, was stupid – although, of course, it was useful if people thought that.
Torquil was unaware of any of this. Money was all he could think of. The pound signs were fairly blazing from his eyes as he burst through the game-show set and hurried over the zinging AstroTurf to greet his exciting guest.
*
The tannoy now crackled into action. ‘The next station will be Glenravish. Glenravish will be your next station stop. Please take the time to ensure you have all your belongings with you and if you spot something unusual on the train please either report it to a member of the on-train team or text the British Transport Police. Remember, See it. Say it. S—’
‘Shut up,’ muttered Laura, who had heard this announcement about a million times now.
A few minutes later she was alone on the pitch-dark platform, her modest tan holdall by her side, watching the illuminated snake that was the train disappearing into the night. It was extremely quiet and she suddenly felt she would give anything to hear Fraser telling her to See it. Say it. Sorted.
But as she got used to the darkness, she realised that the evening was beautiful; pinprick stars scattered about an inky sky and a lemon-peel sliver of a moon reflected in the loch on the other side of the tracks. Laura admired the rippling effect of the light on the water, the gently lapping waves as they reached the pebbled shore. Gradually, she felt a sense of calm.
The air felt fresh and had an agreeable peaty tang, possibly with hints of seaweed. She breathed it in, trying to identify the different elements. Once, researching a feature, she had interviewed a man who made perfumes for a famous couture house. He was known as The Nose, although his actual nose was quite small. The Nose had sat at a desk surrounded by curving shelves of
test tubes, all containing different perfume essences. He had looked rather like someone playing an organ, and organ was, in fact, what the desk was called. It had all been fascinating.
You could make a wonderful perfume called ‘Scotland’, Laura thought. She could detect a honeyed whiff of heather now, and a fresh breath of grass. If she could patent it and direct all the profits to Society, her troubles would be over.
As it was, of course, her troubles were anything but, which was why she was here. With the help of the torch on her smartphone, she made her way along the platform in what she hoped was the direction of the Glenravish Estate.
Outside the station was a small, lonely road down which no cars had passed since she had arrived. The absolute lack of traffic noise was almost eerie. All was thick silence apart from the distant hoot of a lonely owl and the occasional scrabble of some small, invisible animal.
Laura was beginning to feel a little uneasy. There was absolutely no sign of life whatsoever. The World Tonight with Jamie Coomarasamy could scarcely have ended on Radio 4, yet the area seemed to be in lockdown.
To cheer herself up. Laura thought of the pictures of a magnificent castle reflected in a brilliant-blue loch against a thrilling backdrop of spiky purple mountains in Roddy’s brochure. She thought of its chiselled and handsome laird, Sandy McRavish. Her heart began to race and her pace quickened.
She decided that the long wall running alongside the road must be that of the Glenravish Estate. It had an estate-y look about it, with lots of dark trees behind. No doubt they screened from (what passed round here for) the gawking public what would be, in daylight, an enchanting garden.
Laura felt triumphant when, as expected, the wall rose suddenly and became a main entrance. But between the two imposing pillars the pair of scrolled iron gates were shut. She stared at the intricate metalwork, fashioned into the curling shapes of leaves and flowers. The workmanship was astonishing; even so, Laura wondered if she could climb up them, using the metal foliage as steps. But one look at the sharp points ranged across the top made her change her mind. Laura had no wish, as yet, for children, but nor did she want to risk an unscheduled hysterectomy.