Journey to the Scottish Highlands (Scottish Escapes #10)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

I blinked down in disbelief at the critic’s stinging words.

My agent, Octavia, always told me to ignore the bad reviews and focus on the good ones, but it was very difficult to do when the six part, glossy TV series I’d just appeared in was being compared to the Titanic.

It was a modern-day drama called Sinister, about a journalist and a former conman who teamed up together to try to bring down the corrupt political elite.

I’d been thrilled, after attending a number of auditions, to secure the role of Tammy Conroy, the sister of said former conman.

I’d been sure that this would be the big break I’d been working so hard to achieve over the years.

As if.

I let out a cross between a gasp and a choke as I read the scathing newspaper review.

My flatmate, Jade, spun round to look at me as she rinsed out our teapot at the sink. ‘What’s up, Daisy?’

I continued to make a series of furious noises. ‘This prick who writes for The London Gazette. This so-called TV and film critic?’

Jade peered over at the open newspaper which I’d spread across the kitchen table, trying to see what had put me in such a rage.

I snatched up the offending page and flapped it around as though it were alight. The column had its recognisable silhouette of a fox’s head, with ‘Fox – the critic everyone respects and fears’, running along the top of it. How pretentious!

I was so infuriated; I was struggling to make coherent sentences. I gave the newspaper another angry waggle. ‘He’s just butchered Sinister. I mean, really pulled it apart.’

Jade set the teapot down on the draining board and moved over to where I was seething at the kitchen table.

Jade (real name Lady Jacintha Woodstone, only daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Woodstone) owned our gorgeous apartment in Notting Hill.

I’d got talking to Jade eighteen months ago after appearing in a play in a nearby theatre and deciding to join the rest of the cast for a swift drink at a local bar.

Jade, with her pink hair and silver-ringed hands, had been performing her poetry to a group of fascinated art students, and before I knew it, we were chatting at the bar, and she was offering me a room at her place for a reasonable amount of rent.

I got the impression, although Jade never admitted it, that she was rather lonely and craved some companionship.

I almost bit her hand off, and I couldn’t get my few belongings packed up fast enough to vacate my dreary one-bedroom bedsit in East London.

Moving into the ice blue and white fronted building with its frilly balcony had been the stuff of dreams after my previous accommodation.

Now, Jade pointed a ringed finger at the newspaper article. ‘Is that the critic everyone talks about? Oh, what’s his name again? The one who remains anonymous?’ She pushed a frustrated hand through her long hair, which reminded me of candy floss.

My jaw clenched. ‘Yes, it’s him. The twat that calls himself Fox. He’s obviously such an idiot; he doesn’t want anyone to know who he really is.’ I made a growling noise. ‘I wish I could land one on him. I really do.’

Jade’s mouth twitched. ‘Well, good luck with that. Nobody even knows his name, let alone what he looks like.’ She sank into the high-backed kitchen chair opposite me and propped her freckled chin on her hand.

The stream of silver charm bracelets on her arm jangled.

‘Go on then. Put me out of my misery. Read it to me.’

‘Ok.’ I braced myself. ‘“The latest offering of a new, six-part TV drama, Sinister, promised so much but failed to deliver.”’

The blood sizzled in my veins. I snapped my head up from reading. ‘Can you believe this? We all acted our arses off! There was a stellar cast, and the number of hours the production team put in was crazy.’

‘Take a breath,’ advised Jade, ‘or you’re going to have an aneurysm.’ She flicked her hair back. ‘Keep reading.’

I gritted my teeth and resumed. ‘“The cast showed promise, but the script was clunky in parts, absurd in others and so predictable at times, it was embarrassing.”’ I paused again. ‘Poor Lando. He’s going to be so disheartened.’ Lando Greene was the head script writer and a lovely guy.

I cleared my throat and turned my attention back to the slaughtering review. ‘“The main protagonist, Cassie Newman, played by Hallie Flint, seemed to spend all her time mooning after former jailbird Eddie Carter (James Millan).

‘“Some kudos, however, to Daisy Madden, who satisfactorily portrayed Eddie’s troubled sister Tammy, but even she failed to rescue this car crash masquerading as a gritty, modern drama.”’

I slapped the paper on the table with the palm of my hand. Shit! That hurt. And I wasn’t just talking about my palm. ‘Satisfactorily?!’ I winced.

‘From someone like Fox, that’s a compliment,’ assured Jade. ‘Practically an Oscar nomination.’

My eyes bored into the page. ‘There’s more, but I can’t face reading it; he has a go at the director for trying to be too arty with his shots, and he even compares the soundtrack to a Friday night karaoke session in Islington.’

Jade bit her lip and suppressed a laugh.

‘Oh, I’m so glad you’re finding this funny.’ I shook my mink-coloured wavy hair in disgust. ‘I bet he’s never had to trudge to some freezing cold theatre at ridiculous o’clock and queue up for bloody hours for an audition.’

Jade arched one pierced brow. ‘No, in all likelihood he probably hasn’t. He’ll be some posh, upper-class idiot from the Home Counties.’

Now it was my turn to bury an ironic smile.

Jade caught it. ‘I know. I know. I’m the pot calling the kettle black.’ She turned her head to me. ‘Try to forget about it, sweetheart. Move on. Focus on the next acting job.’

I pulled a face. ‘I bet there isn’t one. Octavia would’ve been in touch if there had been.’ I eyed my silent mobile at my elbow.

Jade offered me an encouraging smile. ‘Ok. So, Sinister looks like it’s not going to set the world alight. Who’s to say your next acting gig won’t?’

That was one of the many things I admired about Jade. She was always a glass-half-full kind of girl.

I reached across a hand and patted hers. My phone then decided to ping into life with a series of explosive texts from my fellow cast members and some of the production team.

I groaned as it proceeded to ring. It was Lando, the script writer of Sinister. He was a sweet guy, but he was prone to theatrical outbursts, and I could only begin to imagine what he was going to say about this scathing review.

With guilt rippling through me, I picked up my phone and declined the call. ‘The series scriptwriter,’ I explained to a questioning look from Jade across the table. ‘I know it must sound mean, but I feel awful enough as it is without mulling over this bloody review again and again.’

Jade stood up, her jewellery clinking and clattering. She nodded over at my phone, which I’d plonked back down on the kitchen table. ‘Why don’t you give your agent a call? See if there’s anything else on the horizon?’

I let out a bark of laughter. ‘I doubt that very much.’

‘Well, you don’t know until you ask.’

Her ringing mobile interrupted our conversation. She plucked it out of her fringed skirt pocket. ‘It’s mother and father.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Won’t be a sec.’

I watched her swinging hips vanish out of the kitchen.

I stared down at the dark screen of my mobile. There was more chance of me winning the Nobel Peace Prize than securing more acting work at the moment, but I knew what would happen if I didn’t call Octavia. Jade would just nag me until I did. So, what harm would it do to give her a call?

I plucked up my phone and nibbled my bottom lip.

Here I was, twenty-eight years old, born and bred in the Scottish Highland town of Strath Ross, with a BA in acting from Glasgow’s Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, living in London and struggling to get the acting break I’d dreamt about since I was a precocious kid.

I’d paid my dues on the stage before I’d finally broken into TV, but I wanted to secure more prominent roles in film and television.

I loved the ripple of the theatre curtains and the creak of the seats, but my ambition was to get to the next level.

I had to. Acting had been all I’d ever wanted to do. It had always felt like part of me.

I’d even taken an online script writing course last year, just to get more of a feel for and understanding of the process, such was my desire to succeed in the industry.

I’d had my darling grandpa, George, and my late grandma, Bea, as a captive audience when I was a kid, making them sit through endless plays I’d written or watch me pretend to be a swan.

Failure for me was not an option. I couldn’t ever contemplate the prospect of ending up like my mother, Dee.

She’d been a frustrated singer, got pregnant with me at the tender age of eighteen and decided when I was three months old that she wasn’t mother material.

She thought Strath Ross had cheated her out of so much, and after I came along, she viewed me in the same way.

That was when my wonderful grandparents stepped in and brought me up.

Grandma Bea passed away suddenly when I was thirteen, so it had just been me and Grandpa George for the last fifteen years.

I very occasionally saw my mother – she ended up living in Clachan Hill, a town about half an hour away from Strath Ross – but to me, she was just like some odd apparition who would drift in and out of my life when she felt like it, even though I’d made it clear I had nothing to say to her.

At least she’d got married two years ago, so that seemed to be preoccupying her more these days.

Her new husband was a farmer ten years younger than her called Innes. He was her priority.

As for my erstwhile father, Ritchie Baird, he’d been a twenty-one-year-old barman in Strath Ross’s local pub, The Bat and Cavern.