A Scottish Island Summer (Scottish Escapes #8)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

C riminal thoughts about Justine, my agent, whirled through my head as I glowered out of the coach window.

There was an eerie mist swallowing everything up; rickety fences, fields and craggy mountains. It was supposed to be Easter in a few weeks. Maybe the weather memo hadn’t got this far yet, I thought with a stab of sarcasm.

Where the hell were we? I couldn’t feel my arse. It had gone to sleep.

The coach driver had let out a bellow of laughter when I’d asked if we’d arrive in Skye in a couple of hours. He’d hoisted my Louis Vuitton wheelie case into the luggage compartment at Glasgow’s Buchanan Street bus station alongside the other passengers’ belongings and shook his shiny head at me. ‘Och no, lass. Takes about six and a half hours, more or less.’

Six and a half hours?! Where in God’s name was this place? New Guinea?!

The coach trundled on. This Monday morning at the beginning of March, saw landscape which was shrouded in twists of vanilla and lavender cloud, with only the occasional peak of a hillside visible. I peered out at the dancing mist, swirling over everything. Any moment now, I expected Dracula or a werewolf to emerge – or both.

Actually, come to think of it, being bitten by a vampire or savaged by a werewolf might be preferable to what I was about to put myself through.

I ground my teeth. Bloody Justine Carew!

Here I was, Darcie Freeman, luxury travel influencer—someone who’d built up an impressive following on social media, due to my varied and exotic jaunts around the world—rattling along in a coach to the Highlands of Scotland!

My lip curled in horror as I took in my travel surroundings.

The coach consisted of bottle green and navy-blue tartan seats, with matching curtains tied back at the windows.

One of my hands reached up to stroke my long, conker-brown hair. Thank goodness I’d brought my rose-gold GHD straighteners. If the weather continued like this, I ran the risk of ending up like Curly Sue in no time.

I pushed out my feet, encased in my wedged, claret suede boots and fired an icy look around myself at the other half a dozen or so passengers. Thankfully, the seat beside me was empty.

The other people I was travelling with appeared to be lost in books and newspapers.

I let out a grunt. I should’ve been flying out to Paphos now, not on my way to some remote Scottish island to freeze my knickers off for three weeks. I gave an inward shudder. Three sodding weeks!

I folded my arms and huddled deeper into my belted, checked coat. This was all bloody River Banks’s fault. Like me, River (real name Emma Jones from Caerphilly) was a luxury travel influencer. However, where my number of followers had stagnated, she was hoovering up social media fans faster than a supersonic Dyson. That was why River had been awarded the partnership with Techno, the hot new mobile phone brand, instead of me. Its USP was its global plan that made it easier for travellers to stay in contact with those back home, and it would have been perfect for my audience.

So here I was, travelling to Skye instead.

The good news was that Justine had secured me a book deal with Caldwell Publishing, and they were huge. I had been commissioned to compile a Spring into Skye travel guide, the first in a series of seasonal travel books set around parts of the UK. Summer in Sutherland , Autumn in Alnwick and Winter in Windermere were the other three titles that were to follow and would be written by a well-known breakfast TV presenter, a famous character actor, and an assertive, blonde radio journalist who all the politicians were terrified of, respectively.

The bad news was that yours truly had been commissioned to write the spring edition, about Skye. Now, don’t get me wrong, I was very flattered to be included amongst such esteemed company, but I had very quickly grown used to staying in sumptuous accommodation, surrounded by fluttering palm trees and sharing my blog posts and pictures from sun-drenched locations with solid gold taps.

Normally, I would’ve been able to sweet-talk Justine into suggesting one of her other clients for this, by buying her a few cocktails and telling her how amazing she was, but not this time. Over lunch in Strattan’s sumptuous restaurant in South Kensington just last month, she’d informed me that I had to branch out into the ‘unexpectedly exotic’, which she felt would open up new opportunities for me. ‘We’re talking UK-based tourism boards and agencies, darling. You’ll appeal to all those new followers who want to live the same wanderlust life as you, but on a more realistic budget.’

She gave me one of her gimlet glints. ‘Caldwell Publishing are very keen to have you on board with this, Darcie, especially with your photographic credentials. It makes things simpler for them, not having to recruit a professional photographer to accompany you.’ She offered a winning smile. ‘And you’ve always said you wanted to produce a beautiful photography book, anyway.’

‘Yes, that’s true. But I imagined it’d feature my work from somewhere like Casablanca or Mexico.’

She’d twinkled across the dining table at me, all coiffed, bouncy dark hair and ringed hands. ‘But think of your carbon footprint.’

Her persuasion gathered momentum. ‘You’ve got to be seen to be more in touch with the masses. Writing a book like this will go a long way in doing that. You’ll be producing your own guide about a place here in the UK, that’s accessible to more people, rather than another unattainable five-star, sun-soaked country.’ She eyed me. ‘You’re coming across as too high maintenance.’

‘That’s because I am! And anyway, that’s no bad thing,’ I’d insisted with a swish of my hair.

‘It can be.’ Justine had propped her pointed chin on one hand. ‘River’s follower numbers are rapidly going up. I don’t have to tell you that. That’s why she’s currently a more attractive prospect to brands that you’ve worked with before.’ She’d picked up her wine glass and waggled it in her manicured fingers. ‘You need to up your game; get out there and show there’s more to you than designer sunglasses and heels. Show the public you’re far more approachable than you appear.’

‘I am approachable.’

Justin’s eyebrows had threatened to take off. ‘You can be. When you let your guard down.’

I’d bristled. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, when you allow yourself to trust people.’

I knew what Justine was talking about. She was referring to my previous relationship with good-looking acting bad boy, Nile Munroe. I fell for him big-time, thought he felt the same about me, but then he decided to publicly cheat on me with his sexy, red-headed soap producer.

Since then, I’d closed myself down to men. I didn’t want the hassle or the risk of putting myself through hurt again. My career came first.

I deliberately changed the subject. ‘I just don’t see how catching the flu in the middle of nowhere is going to help my career.’

I’d chewed my lip as I listened to her over the hum of the other diners.

‘I’ve been in this game a long, long time, Darcie. Take my advice: you need to diversify your offering if you want to reach a wider demographic.’

And so here I was, having my senses tortured by ceilidh music blasting from the coach driver’s digital radio.

More Scottish towns slid past my passenger side window, together with toffee-coloured Highland cattle, blobs of sheep and soaring hills studded in heather; Inverbeg, Crianlarich, Tyndrum… They weren’t real place names, surely? They sounded more like the noise you made when you cleared your throat.

Desperation clutched at my insides. I was going to die on this coach. I’d be discovered in a year’s time, frozen to death in my seat and with the waviest explosion of hair sprouting from my tragic head.

My Aunt Sandra had been no better than Justine, when I’d told her about this trip. Four years ago, my parents had passed away within a matter of months of one another, and Aunt Sandra and Uncle Vernon had been the only family I had left.

‘Oooh Skye!’ she’d sighed down the phone into my ear earlier in the week. ‘Beautiful.’

‘Have you ever been to Scotland, Auntie?’

‘No.’

‘At all?’

‘No.’

‘Then how do you know it’s beautiful?’

‘It sounds it in all my historical romances.’

Pictures of her bedtime book covers, with swooning damsels and topless Highland warriors, danced in front of my unimpressed eyes.

Uncle Vernon had been positive too. ‘Never driven the lorry as far as Scotland,’ he’d admitted to me during the same phone call. ‘But some of the other lads have and they said it’s a stunning country, even in awful weather.’

I could hear him smiling down the line, trying to inject me with some enthusiasm. ‘Old Marky’s wife comes from Scotland and he said when the weather up there’s good, there’s no finer place to visit.’

‘Yes, there is,’ I ground out to myself as the coach glided past a crumbling castle ruin. ‘The poor woman’s obviously been brain-washed.’

I tried to dismiss images of River Banks’s freckled, smug face and reached into my bag in the vacant, tartan seat beside me, to root for my mobile. I decided to have a scroll through social media to keep an eye on what the competition was doing. Plus, there was nothing else to do on this tartan biscuit tin with wheels, except be assaulted by the sound of bagpipes.

Then I would make notes on my phone about my ideas for my travel guide.

My plan was to write a funky, informative but visually artistic travel guide, instead of the usual, run-of-the-mill versions out there, and the publishers were all for it. There could be a mix of selfies and landscape shots, together with close-ups of flowers and fauna.

And I’d decided to list the information in an easy to read, A-Z format, so readers could dip in and out at their leisure and find what they were looking for more easily.

Even though being sent to the Scottish wilds was not top of my agenda, I was determined to produce a travel guide that was glossy, modern, snazzy and comprehensive.

For my birthday last year, my beloved aunt and uncle had insisted on buying me the latest, top of the range Nikon and my treasured camera was with me, ready to take photographs for the book. I’d tried to dissuade them from making such an expensive purchase, but they were adamant that after what I’d done for them financially (I’d made a significant amount of money from my partnerships and ad revenue streams) it was the least they could do.

I thought of them and my mouth broke into an involuntary smile. Thank goodness I had both of them in my life.

Focusing back on my phone, I tried to access my social media channels and attempted to pull up my Instagram account first. Nothing. I then tried TikTok.

I jabbed at my phone again and again with increasing frustration. Why couldn’t I get on the internet? What was going on with the Wi-Fi?

‘Excuse me?’

I snapped my head up to see the middle-aged man who was sitting across from me trying to catch my attention. He’d set down his thick brick of a paperback in his lap. ‘You’ll not have much luck using that on here. It’s the atmospherics.’

His voice was warm and sing-song Scottish.

‘Of course not,’ I ground out through a rictus smile. ‘Thanks for letting me know. Foolish of me to think otherwise.’

I folded my arms and scowled out at the rain. Sod it! I’d do some work instead.

So, I pulled up my notes app on my phone and rattled down some brainstorming ideas for my travel guide, which included teasers I could post on my social media, to give followers a flavour of what would be in the book. I also needed a co-ordinated, complimentary series of posts to promote it. Pics of me on a beach, clutching unusual shells; close-ups of thistles and heather maybe… My heart deflated as I looked out of the coach window at the raindrops whizzing down the pane.

I let out a grumpy harumph noise.

I thumped my phone back into my bag and thudded my head against my seat.

The days when I worked in public relations for a radio station in North London seemed like a world away now. I’d been there for about three years when I started posting articles and interviews on the radio station website.

My ‘Ten Random Questions With…’ slot with various guests soon gained momentum when a couple of well-known singers re-tweeted my posts, and I found I was beginning to get a big increase in followers on my personal social media accounts. That was when I decided to launch my own website.

I began blogging on it, talking about news stories and people I was meeting at the station, and companies began sending me their products to review: everything from hairbrushes and nail polish to notebooks and mascara.

I would write up short, snappy reviews under the moniker Darcie’s Delights and it went down a storm.

Soon after, I found myself approached by news programmes to talk about and give my opinion on topics such as the influence of social media on people in the twenty-first century and can modern women really have it all?

Then came the offers from travel companies to review their hotels and accommodation abroad. I couldn’t believe what was happening. I was caught up in this sudden whirlwind of opportunity and things snowballed from there, the travel review requests coming in harder and faster. And then Justine contacted me, to offer representation, and I ended up resigning from the radio station to do my blogging and travel social influencer role full-time.

Sometimes, it felt like the whirlwind had happened to someone else. There I was, an ordinary girl from Clerkenwell, with two hard-working, amazing parents, thrust into this world that was completely at odds with what I’d grown up with. I still experienced tidal waves of imposter syndrome from time to time.

I guess in a weird way, though, it had come at a good time as it helped me focus on something else, when I lost Mum and Dad in quick succession. It even spurred me to enrol on a home study diploma course in photography with the British Academy of Photography, which helped to keep me occupied and focused on something other than my grief. It also improved the quality of my content, which led to more opportunities with brands. On the course, I learnt everything from lighting and perspective to using multiple angles for the most creative shots and not being afraid of monochrome. I realised that with my photography, I could use my initiative—follow my creative gut, which I loved. I also liked that photography allowed me to use my imagination and create memories that lasted. Pictures remained forever. Unlike people and relationships.

I also threw myself even deeper into my social media and blogging, determined to make a success of what I was doing and raise my profile. I knew it was the only way I could try and deal with the shock and pain of my parents no longer being there.

We passed a sign for a place called ‘Kyle of Lochalsh’ and it pulled me out of my meandering thoughts.

More fields, rock faces and swooping mountain ranges emerged. They began to melt together in front of my eyes.

Was there just sheep and Highland cattle around here? What about actual people?

I could feel my eyelids drooping and before I knew it, I was slipping into a disgruntled sleep.