by Wendy Holden
It was Lulu’s turn to look horrified. The Peckecco shook agitatedly in the cups ‘No, no, no! This much nicer estate. Full of good people, hmm? House very nice, countryside very nice, laird we bought from very nice, although he is not man, he is woman.’
The cup in Laura’s hand fell to the ground. ‘Glenravish!’
‘Yes, belong your nice friend Sandy, hmm? Why you drop cup? Clumsy Laura!’
Laura hardly heard her. So many things had become clear in an instant. If Sandy knew Lulu was Laura’s friend, no wonder she had not admitted she was the buyer. Laura knew how desperate Sandy had been to leave. She also knew about the lack of Wi-Fi, the intermittent electricity, and the hideous presence of Mordor. The members of staff with murder in their hearts. And how much had Sandy told Lulu about the ghosts?
‘Ghosts?’ The sunglasses gave an amazed flash. ‘Glenravish have no ghosts. But great Flora MacDoughnut location!’
Laura had thought she had no shock left in her. She now realised she was wrong. This really was too bad of Sandy. Glossing over the hauntings was one thing, but brazenly lying about its historical connections was entirely another. Flora MacDonald had never been near Glenravish – Sandy had said so herself.
‘Flora MacDonald, she meet Bonnie Prince Charlie at Glenravish,’ Lulu declared.
Hot anger blazed through Laura. ‘That’s not true.’
On Lulu’s pale-pink leather trousers, the rhinestones glittered defiantly. ‘Is true!’ she insisted. ‘Glenravish location, hmmm? For Prince Charlie and Flora MacDoughnut dance, hmm?’
Laura sighed deeply. Sandy had obviously let her imagination get the better of her, or perhaps her wine cellar. And now Lulu was mistress of a haunted castle with a homicidal stalker on her staff.
‘Oh Lulu!’ she groaned. ‘What have you done?’
Chapter Twenty-eight
That night, Laura could not sleep. She lay awake, worrying about Lulu. She imagined her at Glenravish, maybe in the same little chamber Laura had occupied. Or perhaps Sandy’s newly vacated one. Laura pictured some huge eighties bedroom, swagged with toile de Jouy. There would be slipper chairs, wastepaper bins printed with hunting scenes and cushions that said ‘When The Going Gets Tough The Tough Go Shopping’. Admittedly, even the toughest would find that a struggle around Glenravish.
Was South’n Fried with her? Even if he was, he would be no help. The biggest, baddest, boldest rapper – Lulu’s husband’s professional persona in a nutshell – could not protect her against forces of which he knew nothing.
Laura had failed to warn her friend at the concert – there was no opportunity anyway, as the whistled highlights of ‘Mamma Mia’ had started up almost immediately after the Glenravish revelations and Lulu had been borne away on a wave of bling at the end. When she had tried to call her afterwards Lulu had not picked up. But of course not. There was no signal at Glenravish, and the landline wasn’t working either.
But was that the only reason? What if the crazed stalker had attacked her as well? Laura’s thoughts ping-ponged in her head as the early hours drew on. Two contradictory ideas dominated all the rest.
She was imagining it all, Lulu was in no danger.
She should go up there, Lulu was definitely in danger.
But she had a job to try and keep. Unlike Lulu, Laura had no multi-billion-pound fortune to support her if she lost it. Without work she would lose her flat and then she would have to leave London. Much as she loved her grandmother, she didn’t want to go back to that cramped little Parisian apartment. There was barely room for Mimi and her Croix de Lorraine pyjamas, let alone anyone else. Besides, Mimi had done enough for her.
What would Mimi do now, though? Laura tried her grandmother’s number several times. There was no answer, however, and the ringtone sounded different. She was obviously globetrotting with the Fat Four.
She had been trying not to think about Harry. But tiredness and despair had worn away her defences and he rushed unstoppably to the front of her mind. She felt a longing so strong it might have knocked her over if she had not been already lying down.
If only Harry were here. He would know what to do. But he had gone no one knew where, or if they did they weren’t telling. Laura had stopped bothering to call Autumn on Harry’s foreign desk now. It was pointless; she was more discreet than a clam welded with Araldite. What she was doing on a newspaper was a mystery.
Unable to sleep, distracted and worried, Laura lay and listened to the night sounds of Cod’s Head Row. While other landlords simply called ‘Time’, or rang a bell, Bill and Ben always signalled the closing of Gorblimey Trousers with a rendition of – what else – ‘My Old Man’s A Dustman’.
Laura could hear them seeing off some of their regulars. ‘Ta-ra, Hector. Love the new Hampsteads.’ She smiled. Hector, a well-known film director, had recently had his teeth capped.
Edgar was not yet back; no doubt out celebrating with the rest of his ensemble. Laura wasn’t sure she would want to be near a euphoric garbage collective, not really.
Bill and Ben were moving the tables indoors now. ‘Careful, you nearly got me in the bleedin’ orchestras,’ Bill exclaimed at his partner. Orchestra stalls, balls, Laura translated. That they still spoke rhyming slang when alone seemed rather endearing.
Lying in the orange slant of street light that poked through the crack in her shutters, she sighed heavily. She had thought and thought but all her worries still seemed to boil down to two main questions. Was Lulu all right? Was she about to be sacked by Clemency? When, finally, she drifted into sleep, Laura didn’t know the answer to either.
*
‘Meeting, everyone,’ called a subdued-sounding Demelza next morning from her desk outside Clemency’s office.
Beneath the bowed heads sitting silently at their computers, apprehensive glances were exchanged. The daily brainstorms, which Laura as editor had enjoyed so much, were now widely regarded as torture. Everyone in them could not wait to get out of them; everyone who was allowed in them, that was.
Clemency had returned to the heads-of-department-only approach, reversing what had been Laura’s open-door policy. She had invited everyone right down to the lowest intern, especially the lowest intern. Once upon a time Laura had been that lowest intern herself. She felt that anyone could have ideas and the best ones came from the most unexpected places.
The Society staff filed apprehensively in and sat down on the lips-shaped sofa as gingerly as if expecting it to explode beneath them. From the other side of her wide glass desk, Clemency regarded them with glittering eyes. Laura was the last to enter – she had just been finishing a phone call. By the time she walked up to it, brisk but not hurried, the glass door to the editorial sanctum was closed.
‘Laura! So good of you to join us!’ said Clemency, sarkily. She was wearing a tight, short-sleeved dress whose unnerving acid yellow colour seemed somehow to increase the tension in the room. ‘We were just talking about fashion,’ she added, looking meaningfully at Laura’s unchanging uniform of dark fitted shirt, tight jeans and boots.
Laura smiled calmly, tossed her shiny dark hair over her shoulders and leant against the shelves that had lately held her awards. Demelza had rescued them from the bin and they were now safely stowed in her bottom drawer. They would have been in Laura’s own bottom drawer, but Clemency had introduced ‘hot desking’ by which no staff member except Demelza had their own space but was constantly obliged to find a new one.
This was apparently meant to introduce dynamism and efficiency to the workplace but in practice just meant that people in departments with lots of equipment – food, for instance, or beauty – were constantly roaming about the room with armfuls of mushrooms in white chocolate or facial sand from the Mojave desert.
Clemency finally stopped glaring at Laura and started glaring at the fashion editor instead. ‘Carry on, Rosie.’
Laura blinked. She had never heard Rosie called by her proper name before. To everyone, Rosie was Raisy because she pronounced
her name to rhyme with Daisy, her twin sister and fellow fashion editor.
Former fellow fashion editor, that was; Daisy was no longer employed on Society. One of Clemency’s most cruel innovations was to split up the duo, making them draw lots before the entire office to decide which one would be sacked. The spectacle, which had reminded Laura of something horrible from Ancient Rome, had been intended to strike fear into the hearts of the staff. All it had actually stoked was hatred.
Raisy, certainly, was miserable. She seemed to the sympathetic Laura a shadow of the ebullient girl who had rocked up to meetings in trousers whose legs were two different colours, topped off with an archbishop’s mitre. Today’s outfit, a frilled-collar shirt worn with pageboy trousers and side-parted glossy hair with a slight flick about it, looked positively muted. As well as strangely familiar.
‘This issue,’ Raisy said, making an obvious effort to summon the requisite enthusiasm, ‘is all about eighties dressing. Shoulder pads are back. Big buttons.’
Laura thought immediately of Sandy.
‘White lipstick, tons of hairspray, pixie boots, needlecord knickerbockers. New Romantic frills.’
Sandy was a fashion icon!
But Clemency’s expression was as bitter as a particularly disappointed lemon. ‘Bollocks,’ she said rudely. ‘Even allowing for the moronitude of the fashion industry, no one will ever wear clothes like that again.’
Raisy looked about to object, then thought better of it. Laura stepped in. ‘I know someone who does.’
Her reward was a glance of glittering green contempt. ‘You would.’ Then Clemency trained the emerald searchlights back on Raisy. ‘We need something gender-fluid, gender pay gap, consciousness-raising, hashtag MeToo, national-conversation-starting and woke.’
Laura rolled her eyes. As if Clemency, arch-backstabber, cared about any of this. She cared about herself, first and foremost.
A sad, sinking feeling succeeded the scorn. Such hope as there had been, Laura sensed, had conclusively gone. Society and the jobs of her staff could no longer be saved – by her, at any rate. The forces of Bev Sweet and Clemency Makepeace were ranged against her. It was impossible, now, that she could prevail. The wisest thing to do would be to give up the effort, walk out and return to Scotland where at least she would be able to help Lulu battle the forces of of Struan, Mordor and the various phantasmic foes ranged against her.
At the same time, every fibre of Laura’s being resisted the idea that she should accept defeat. Throwing in the towel after so much effort was unbearable. She had tried so hard and put so much of herself into the magazine and its staff that leaving it would be like deserting her family. She just couldn’t. And Lulu was a grown woman, with not only South’n Fried to support her, but also Vlad. She could more than look after herself.
As Laura fought this agonising inner battle, the features meeting went on around her.
La Makepeace was still skewering Raisy with her pitiless gaze. ‘I want a shoot on white shirts, black skirts and black stilettos. Okay?’
Raisy shrugged her drooping shoulders.
‘Good.’ Clemency swung her red hair back towards the rest of the staff.
It was Tatty the luxury editor’s turn next. She had written a piece about Bev Sweet’s Belgravia gym, a place where ‘spa butlers’ valeted your kit once Kate Moss’s trainer had taken you through the Meghan Markle workout. Clemency beamed. ‘I’m always so excited about pieces that encapsulate everything we stand for here at Society.’
The green blowlamps now swung suddenly to Laura. ‘This piece on Lilibet Sweet,’ Clemency said, raising a printout in the air with a skeletal white hand.
Laura felt a mixture of dread and unquenchable hope. Much as she hated Clemency, she was still a journalist and as such she wanted her work to be admired.
‘It’s crap,’ said Clemency.
Laura raised her chin. ‘Why crap? I did my best. Lilibet wasn’t exactly what I’d been led to believe. She’s not an up-and-coming actress, for a start.’
Bev’s daughter had not been up-and-coming in any way at all, she hadn’t even been out of bed. A cowed Filipina maid, finger to her lips, had tiptoed Laura to the kitchen of a vast Mayfair penthouse that the British Magazine Company was almost certainly paying for. When Lilibet had eventually appeared, greasy-haired and yawning, in a bathrobe embroidered with the logo of the Paris Ritz, she ordered the Filipina to fetch an Egg McMuffin and revealed that acting wasn’t her thing – you had to learn lines, for a start.
Clemency was frowning at the sheets of paper, where Laura had pulled no punches.
The green blowlamps were blazing furiously. ‘Lilibet’s ultimate ambition is to win an Oscar and marry into the royal family. That’s what Bev told me.’ Clemency took the printout between her skinny, corpse-like fingers and ripped it violently down the middle. ‘That’s what I think of your article, Laura Lake. And what I think of you, too. You’re fired.’
Laura cleared her latest hot desk speedily. After all her earlier agonising, it seemed as if the decision was being made for her. As soon as she cleared her desk she would head up to Scotland.
She just hoped she would not be too late.
Chapter Twenty-nine
‘Ladiesngenlmen, this is the late-running 09.42 from Inverness to Glenravish, calling Achenbuchat, Loch Slog, Dampie Castle…’
In the intervening week and a bit since last she heard him, Laura had decided the ghoulish guard/driver/trolley dolly had been some Scottish-Gothic nightmare. She was wrong, she now realised.
‘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—’
‘Speed it up,’ muttered Laura. Finally the train was about to depart. Thanks to an endless list of problems with the train, all announced incomprehensibly over a crackling tannoy, it was six hours since she got off the sleeper from London. As Fraser came stumbling and cursing down the gangway, Laura took her courage in both hands and tackled him.
‘How long to get to Glenravish?’ According to the ScotRail website, the journey from Inverness was two and a half hours.
Fraser, who looked even more desiccated than last time, regarded her with the one rheumy eye that showed beneath his lopsided greasy cap. There hung around him a strong smell of spirits. He wiped flecks of spittle from his mouth. ‘Nine hours, aye.’
‘But why?’ Laura felt desperate. She had travelled overnight on purpose so as to have a whole day to talk to Lulu. At this rate she would be arriving close to bedtime, when conversation would be cut short, especially if South’n Fried was around. He was an attentive husband, in that department at least.
‘We’re behind a late-running train, lassie,’ Fraser announced in a shower of whisky-flavoured spittle.
‘But we can’t be. We’ve only just set off.’
‘And there’s leaves on the line, the wrong sort o’ snow, points failure and children playing on the railway.’
Laura stared. ‘What, already?’
‘Noo, but there will be.’ Fraser reeled off down the carriage. ‘Any more tickets? ‘
He disappeared and the train now shuddered forward, stopped with a violent screech and then moved again. They were off. Laura stared gloomily out of the window as the reddish spires and towers of Inverness slid past the window. Nine hours! Nine depressing, endless hours, to contemplate the smoking ruins of her career. To muse on how, yet again, Clemency Makepeace had got the better of her.
At least, Laura reflected, the hours spent perusing the Inverness Station branch of Boots meant she had enough bags of crisps, chicken tikka wraps and bottles of water to see her through the journey. She would have no need of the lard bars and Irn-Bru from the refreshment trolley from hell.
On the seat across from her a strange young man mouthed manically along to the music playing in his headphones. Was it South’n Fried, Laura won
dered, before the heat of the carriage and the monotonous rattle of the tracks sent her finally over the edge into much-needed oblivion.
She must have slept for a long time. When she awoke, her neck aching and with a stream of dribble down the front of her trenchcoat, everything outside was pitch black. Night had fallen. Fallen so hard it looked unlikely ever to get up again.
Laura looked around. The carriage was empty. Fraser did not seem to be on board either. Panic seized her, especially as the train was moving faster. Faster and faster all the time, in fact. Like a runaway train, about to crash. Had Fraser baled out and left her to face the consequences?
CRASH! BANG!
The carriage screeched to a halt. Laura, who had crouched in the brace position with her arms over her head, now opened her eyes again. She was still here. In one piece. Alive.
The door into the carriage now opened, revealing a black rectangle of night sky accompanied by a freezing blast of air. Into the rectangle now came Fraser, grunting as he remounted into the train. He had clearly been outside on the track and was dragging something on board, something small that was bleeding profusely. With a cold stab of horror, Laura remembered the warnings about children playing on the railway. Was this one of them?
Before her appalled sight Fraser released his burden abruptly. It hit the floor with a bang, sprawling in its blood in the gangway.
Now Laura realised what it was. A deer. That explained the sudden speed; Fraser must have spotted it in the train headlights and put his foot down to hit it.
As the red rivulets made their way over the regulation grey floor, Laura lifted her boots out of harm’s way. She wondered if Fraser did this on every journey. Mrs Fraser – always supposing such an unfortunate creature existed – must be a dab hand with venison.
This reminded her that it was some time since she had eaten her last Boots chicken tikka sandwich. She was starving. How much longer, she wondered, was it to Glenravish?
Later, much later, Laura watched Fraser’s train rattle off into the night. Silence folded around her, and an intense darkness. She was on Glenravish station again, and this time there was no friendly moon to light her way. She could hear, the other side of the railway, the lapping waters of the loch. Go back, go back, they seemed to whisper.