Runaway Actress (11 page)

Looking in the mirror now and catching sight of the tumbling mass of curls, she couldn’t really blame him for never getting much beyond that greeting. He always asked after her but that was the beginning and the end of it.

‘I look like a sheep. A wild woolly Highland sheep,’ she said to herself. ‘And he’s a panther. A beautiful, sleek, muscular panther.’

She stared at her reflection. There was no way that a woman like her could ever hope of getting a man like Mikey. She’d seen the type of girl he hung out with. Like Miranda from her year at high school. Beautiful, svelte Miranda, with the shoulder-length blonde hair that hung straight and shiny. Or that woman she’d once seen him with at the Strathcorrie shoe shop. She’d been trying on a pair of impractical red stilettos and Mikey had been helping her to balance as she placed her perfect petite feet into them.

Maggie just wasn’t made the same. Her hair would never be straight and shiny and her feet were made for walking boots rather than anything with heels.

Unless …

Maggie opened the wardrobe door and her eyes fell upon a row of shoes that lay hidden from the world. They’d belonged to her mother and she had always been far more fashion-conscious than Maggie. There were three pairs of strappy sandals: one in cream, one in tan and one in black with a sweet diamanté clasp. Maggie’s hands reached out to the black pair. She was the same shoe size as her mum had been and hadn’t been able to bear to part with the shoes when her mum had died. She’d been much too young when she’d died from cancer but had always lived life to the full and the shoes seemed to hold the whole of her mother’s personality in them – her frivolity, her joy, her laughter and her passion for living. She might have only ever been a shopkeeper’s wife but life had never been dull for Cora Hamill. She’d bagged carrots whilst wearing cashmere, and stacked cans whilst wearing satin. So why shouldn’t Maggie – just for one evening?

The next twenty minutes were a whirlwind of activity as Maggie blow-dried and spritzed her hair, sprayed herself with perfume and tried on everything in her wardrobe that was deemed half-decent.

Finally, she placed stockinged feet into the beautiful shoes and took a look at the results in the mirror. The simple black dress with the long sleeves and plunging neckline had the most startling effect on her figure. Normally a jeans and jumper girl, Maggie sometimes forgot that she was a woman in her efforts to keep warm in the Arctic conditions of the shop.

She took a deep breath. She didn’t look half-bad, she thought, but then she did something that was pure Maggie. Reaching across to the bed, she pulled a jumper off the duvet and stuck her head into its cosy warmth. There, she thought, that was better. She’d never been one to flash her cleavage around and she couldn’t be expected to freeze to death, could she?

Clacking her way back down to the kitchen in her heels, she saw Hamish. He was still reading the paper and was on his second cup of tea.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you give Mikey a ring – invite him to the pub?’

Hamish looked up at her. ‘Why?’

‘Why not?’

Hamish frowned at her and then his eyes roamed up and down the length of his sister, noticing the peep of dress from below the jumper, and the shoes. ‘What’re you up to? You don’t fancy our Mikey, do you, Mags?’

Maggie could feel herself blushing. ‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘But there’s a special guest tonight. He might want to meet her.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. Give him a call.’

‘Okay,’ Hamish said.

For one marvellous moment, Maggie felt elated; she was going to see Mikey – but then she remembered that the special guest was Connie. She’d been delighted when Alastair had called her with the news that Connie would be at the pub that evening but it was hard enough getting Mikey’s attention when she was the only girl in the room and Maggie knew that she didn’t stand a chance when competing with Connie Gordon.

The Capercaillie was probably the noisiest pub in the Highlands. Small and imperfectly formed with its low, brow-bashing beams and sloping floor that were the bane of every Friday-night drinker, it was always packed to full capacity.

Connie could hear the noise almost as soon as she left the bed and breakfast, and wondered if it was too late to change her mind.

Don’t be silly, she told herself. You’ve stood in front of vast audiences. You’ve had your image beamed all around the world and been interviewed by some of the toughest journalists in the business. What’s so scary about a little pub?

But she knew what was scary – people. Not just any people either. These were her mother’s people and she’d heard stories about them for years.

‘They’re your true family, Connie,’ her mother had once told her. ‘They’re there for you. They might seem a million miles away but they’re there all the same.’

Connie had always been intrigued by that. The family she never knew.

Family
. She thought about that word. Her mother might have been born and bred in Lochnabrae but, as far as Connie knew, she didn’t have any family there now. Connie’s grandparents were long dead and there weren’t any uncle or aunty Gordons that she knew of. Her mother had been an only child and yet she’d always thought of the whole of Lochnabrae as her family.

‘They’re the kind of people who treat you as one of their own,’ she’d once explained. ‘They look out for you. They care about you.’

‘Why did you leave?’ Connie once asked her. ‘If they all cared about you?’

Connie’s mother had looked uneasy at her daughter’s question. ‘I wanted a change,’ she’d said.

Well, Hollywood was certainly a change from the Highlands, Connie thought, as she walked along the edge of the loch by the shores that met the main street. How on earth had she done it, Connie wondered? How could she have left such beauty and tranquillity? But Connie knew why. Vanessa Gordon had been ambitious beyond belief. She’d wanted to be a movie star. The trouble was, she’d left it a bit late. The Lochnabrae Amateur Dramatics Society hadn’t been enough to prepare her for the demands of auditions, and six months of door pounding had soon put paid to her dreams. Then she’d become pregnant and never regained the figure that the industry demanded from its young actresses.

‘So, I wasn’t young any more. I wasn’t skinny and I couldn’t afford childcare,’ she’d once told Connie. That’s when she’d started to focus on her daughter, piling all her dreams onto the shoulders of her little girl.

Connie sighed. It hadn’t been an easy childhood although she’d loved the acting, singing and dancing classes. They’d been a joy but her mother had always been pushing her. ‘Shouldn’t she be doing the next grade?’ she’d ask her dance teacher or, ‘Why doesn’t she have more lines in the play?’ Push, push, push,
push!

But, if she hadn’t pushed, would Connie have the fame and fortune that she had now? She doubted it. It was the toughest business to get into and you had to have talent oozing out of every pore as well as an enormous amount of luck. Connie doubted she would have got anywhere near her level of fame today if it hadn’t been for her mother but the question was, did she want it any more?

She gazed out across the water to the mountains on the other side and thought about her mother. They hadn’t spoken for years. After her mother had given what Connie had seen as an inappropriate interview, revealing details about her private life, Connie had erupted and had refused to take her mother’s calls. It was just the final insult and, after years of unleashed resentment, Connie had had enough. Her mother had sent letter after letter but Connie had returned them all. It was still a source of constant pain and perhaps it was one of the reasons that had brought her to Lochnabrae. Perhaps this place could help her work out what was important in her life and give her a chance to sort out her problems and make things work.

The light was fading now and the mountains seemed to be cradling Lochnabrae as it prepared for night.

‘What is it I think I’ll find here?’ she asked. There were so many questions to ask and so many answers to find, only there wasn’t time just now.

Running her hands through her hair, she wondered if she should have tied it back. Did it look too glamorous loose? She’d washed it and run a comb through it, letting it dry naturally, and it was swinging about her shoulders in the red curtain she was famous for. She’d put the minimum of make-up on too – just enough to stop her frightening the fan club members.

It had taken her an age to choose an outfit. What exactly did one wear to a pub? Connie had never been to a pub before. There were award ceremonies, film premieres and charity lunches, which always demanded dresses and diamonds, but she’d never gone out to something as low-key as this. She looked down at her jeans and pumps. They were all right, weren’t they? And her simple white shirt was surely acceptable? There was only one way to find out.

Taking a deep breath, she turned her eyes away from the darkening mountains and strode down the road to The Capercaillie.

Maggie was beside herself with worry. Would Mikey really show up? Hamish had called him and, apparently, he’d said that he was going to join them later so there was no going back now. She tried to remember the last time she’d seen him. It’d been that night in The Capercaillie before Mikey had gone off on his travels over a year ago. The whole of Lochnabrae had turned out that night, all free with the drinks and the advice – even those who’d never travelled further than Strathcorrie High Street.

‘Don’t go carrying anyone’s bag through security. We don’t want to see you on one of those
Arrested Abroad
programmes, do we?’ Isla told him.

‘Don’t go wandering off the beaten track,’ Old Sandy McDonald had warned him.

‘But the whole trip is off the beaten track,’ Mikey had said. ‘That’s the whole point of it.’

‘Well, keep your wits about you,’ Sandy continued and then he waved Mikey’s wallet in the air.

‘Hey!’ Mikey yelled. ‘How’d you get that?’

‘I told you – keep your wits about you!’ The whole pub had roared with laughter.

He’d barely noticed her that night, Maggie thought, but she’d been there, waving him off and wishing him well, and thinking about him when he’d gone, wondering where he was and worrying about his safety.

‘It’s no good!’ she told herself as Hamish hollered from the shop for her to get a move on. ‘He doesn’t even know I’m alive.’

She took one last look at herself in the mirror, flicked back her hair and took a deep breath. Mikey was really the least of her worries tonight. What she should really be worrying about was Connie. Alastair had told her that he’d spoken with Connie and that she’d calmed down and promised to come but that didn’t mean she was going to be friendly, did it?

Maggie felt just awful about what had happened at the Connie HQ and she so longed to make things right again. Hadn’t they been getting on so well before the fan mail incident? And the website incident? And the teddy bear incident?

Maggie shook her head. It was certainly going to be an interesting night.

Alastair had been standing at the bar when almost the entire population of Lochnabrae descended. This was fatal because he was then obliged to get the drinks in.

‘You’re a rich writer, aren’t you?’ Angry Angus had said.

Alastair had spluttered into his pint. It was one of the commonest misconceptions about his job. It always sounded glamorous to say one was a writer. It created an image of style, sophistication and wealth. The truth of the matter was he had threadbare socks and a peephole in his jacket through which his elbow protruded. But he had just received the second part of an advance for a non-fiction title about the theatre and he thought he’d treat himself and his friends before he had to spend it on something sensible like tax.

Fraser behind the bar was just getting the orders in when the door opened and Connie walked inside.

At first, she went unnoticed. Angus was the first to spot her. ‘Jaysus Christ Almighty!’

‘What?’ Alastair turned around and saw Connie standing there in a crisp white shirt and blue jeans, her hair as glossy as a sunlit fox. He swallowed. Hard. She looked beautiful. She wasn’t mud-splattered like the first time he’d seen her or red-eyed like the second time. She was beautiful. Unequivocally, unmistakably beautiful.

‘Connie?’ he said softly, approaching her and leading her into the suffocating warmth of the pub.

‘Hi,’ she said, her mouth widening into a relieved smile. ‘I’m not late, am I?’

‘No, no,’ Alastair said. ‘Can I get you a drink? I think you’ll need it.’

She nodded. ‘Gin and tonic, thank you,’ she said.

It was then that – quite suddenly – silence descended on The Capercaillie.

Alastair saw that everybody was looking at them. Angus had spread the word and they were all now staring at Connie.

‘It’s Connie!’ someone shouted from the back of the pub.

‘Connie Gordon!’ somebody else shouted.

‘She’s come home. I always said she would!’

And then a heap of bodies engulfed her. Alastair was pushed out of the way and Connie was completely surrounded.

‘I can’t believe you’re here!’ someone said.

‘How long’re you staying?’

‘Are you filming here? Can I be an extra?’

Alastair stood on tiptoe and tried to push his way through the circle of bodies. He could just see Connie. She was beginning to look flustered.

Alastair thought he’d better come to her rescue so he put his fingers in his mouth and whistled.

‘Give the little lady some space, guys!’ he yelled.

Nobody seemed to take any notice so he whistled again, louder and longer this time.

Everyone turned to face Alastair and Connie grabbed her chance to break free.

‘Connie’s come to visit us,’ Alastair said, ‘and she’d love to meet everybody but not all at once!’

There was some laughter.

‘Now, I’m just getting her a drink and we’ll find ourselves a seat and then I can introduce everyone, okay?’

‘Aye, Alastair.’

‘Good idea.’

‘We’ll give you a bit of space.’