Chapter 16
I urge Bramble forward until we’re level with Zara, who’s riding a grey pony, and trying to take a photo of the beach through its ears.
‘Hey, what happened with the bus earlier?’ I ask, deciding I might as well get straight to the point. ‘You all drove off without me.’
Zara looks over at me, her curly hair cascading over her shoulders, and still somehow looking good, even when trapped under the unflattering safety helmet .
‘Oh. Yeah,’ she says uncomfortably. ‘Sorry about that. It wasn’t deliberate. It was—’ she lowers her voice and I have to lean forward to hear her ‘—it was Bex.’
‘Bex? I might have guessed,’ I reply grimly. ‘She really has it in for me, doesn’t she?’
‘No, it wasn’t anything to do with you,’ Zara replies in a whisper.
‘I don’t know what happened, but she came back to the bus in tears, and Daniel insisted he had to get her back to the hotel right away.
He was really pushy about it. And, of course, Sabrina’ll do anything to keep the two of them happy, so she told the driver we had to leave.
We were almost back at the hotel before we realised you were missing. ’
‘Right. Well, that figures too, I suppose. The invisible woman strikes again.’ I lean forward and ruffle Bramble’s mane in an attempt to hide my hurt at this additional proof of how little impact I make on people.
‘The what?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ I reply, trying to shake off the melancholy that’s descended on me like a blanket. ‘That’s . . . that’s strange about Bex. I wonder what’s going on with her?’
‘It’s probably to do with her birthday,’ says Zara, as if stating the obvious.
‘Her birthday? What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘Well, it’s next week, isn’t it? And Bex hates her birthday. She gets really moody in the run-up to it.’
‘No, she doesn’t,’ I reply, confused. ‘She always makes a massive fuss about it. Remember last year when she had that big party to celebrate her twenty-fifth? Bex didn’t stop posting about it for at least a month.’
Zara’s shoulders shake, and after a second, I realise she’s trying not to laugh.
‘You didn’t really think Bex turned twenty-five last year, did you?’ she says, finally getting herself under control. ‘Rosie, Bex is at least thirty-six. At least.’
‘Seriously?’
I stand up in my stirrups, trying to get a better look at Bex, but all I can see is that long braid, which, now I come to think of it, is at least twice as long as her hair was this morning.
‘Did she somehow get extensions in the village?’ I ask incredulously.
‘It’s a clip-in,’ replies Millie from behind me. ‘She brought it with her. She has a few of them. And I think she’s thirty-seven now, Zara. What’s this about an invisible woman, though? Is the castle haunted?’
‘Only by me,’ I reply, distractedly. ‘I can’t believe Bex has been lying about her age. I had no idea. And thirty-seven isn’t even old.’
‘It is if you’re trying to get collaborations with brands that mainly cater to women in their twenties,’ says Zara, shrugging as if this is a well-established fact that everyone should know.
‘A lot of them won’t even consider you if you have to scroll too far to get to your birthday when you’re filling in their online forms. So she lies.
We all do; just not all about the same things. ’
I’m about to ask what it is she lies about to land brand collaborations when Yasmin’s pony comes to a halt in front of me, and I have to grab the reins to stop Bramble before he barges right into it.
‘OK, everyone,’ says Hunter, jumping down from his horse. ‘This is where we stop.’
We all scramble off our ponies and onto the sand, where a small group of picnic baskets have been laid out on rugs, not too far from the shore.
The rain starts falling again halfway through the picnic, however, which, once again, appears to be of interest to the influencers only as a photo prop, rather than as actual sustenance.
‘You’re not going to take any photos, then?
’ asks Hunter, looking at me through the drizzle as we sit together on one of the blankets, my stomach rumbling loudly at the sight of the miniature pork pies and selection of cakes which I don’t dare touch for fear of disturbing the careful way they’ve been arranged to look good on social media. ‘I thought that was why you were here?’
‘I’m not exactly dressed for a photo shoot,’ I reply, not wanting to tell him the real reason I’m not moving from the blanket is that I can’t stand up without flashing everyone through the hole in my jeans. ‘I don’t think I’m going to be influencing anyone to “shop my style” somehow.’
‘There you go again, worrying about what you’re wearing,’ Hunter replies. ‘Do you ever just relax and enjoy yourself, Rosie?’
‘I’m enjoying myself now,’ I point out. ‘How could I possibly fail to enjoy being in a place like this?’
I hold out my arms in an expansive gesture that takes in the beach itself, plus the castle standing proudly behind it, looking particularly Gothic this afternoon against the slate-grey sky. It really is a magnificent building; and the beach is picture perfect, even in the rain.
I’m not surprised he wants to stay here; I’ve never been to Edinburgh, but I can’t imagine any city competing with the wild beauty of the Highlands, somehow.
‘We’ll have to think about getting back to the hotel soon,’ says Hunter, frowning as he looks up at the rapidly gathering clouds. ‘This weather isn’t going to get any better, and the woman from the stables we borrowed the ponies from will be coming to pick them up soon.’
‘I think you might have some trouble persuading this lot to leave,’ I reply, looking down the beach to where Zara and Millie have removed their shoes and socks to take photos of each other paddling in the shallow water.
The temperature has dropped sharply since we left the castle, and they both look like they’re about to pass out from the cold; and Bex, who’s now riding along the beach, hard hat conspicuously missing, is slowly turning blue from it.
I’m just wondering if I should try to persuade Hunter to take some photos of me sitting on the blanket – which is the best I can really hope to do, given the jeans situation – when the sound of raised voices comes drifting across the sand, and I look up to see Sabrina and Dante storming towards us through the drizzle; or what passes for storming when you’re walking across sand in stilettos, like Sabrina is.
So, a kind of slow-motion angry plod, then.
It’s the ‘angry’ bit that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
Because I may not know Sabrina very well – I don’t think she’s said more than maybe six sentences to me in total since I got here, and almost all of them have been accusing me of something – but I have a horrible feeling that if she’s angry about something, it’s probably me.
‘Oh, my God,’ whispers Luna, lowering the camera she’s using to take photos of all of us as she catches sight of her boss battling with the sand.
Or it could be Luna.
Please let it be Luna.
‘What the hell is this supposed to be?’ Sabrina demands as she reaches us, holding up an iPad to show what is unmistakably my Instagram grid.
Nope, it’s definitely me.
Thought so.
‘Well?’
Everyone edges closer, trying to see what’s got Sabrina so worked up that she’s risked her designer heels in this weather. Zara and Millie come padding over in their bare feet, and even Bramble the pony pauses in the act of chomping on a sandwich from the picnic basket to listen in.
Once we’re all within earshot, Sabrina taps quickly on the screen, and a video starts playing; one I recognise immediately as the piece of footage I was in the middle of editing when I was distracted by the rain outside earlier.
Oh no.
Please don’t tell me I somehow managed to hit ‘publish’ rather than saving it to drafts?
The video starts off innocently enough, with some arty shots of the colourful fruit and veg piled high on Ian’s stall, before cutting to Izzie, who’s holding up some of her hand creams, and speaking earnestly about how the ingredients are all gathered locally, by the light of the full moon.
(I meant to edit that bit out, actually.) Then there’s a short, blurry clip of my face in the reverse camera, before we go back to the market square, which looks vibrant and bustling.
‘This is really boring,’ says Bex, her teeth chattering as she sits on her pony at the back of the group. ‘Why are we watching this, Sabrina?’
‘Wait,’ says Sabrina, her tone grim. ‘Just wait.’
The camera reaches the last stall, then swoops forward in a move I recognise, with a sinking heart, as being what happens when I forget to hit the ‘stop’ button on the video, and put the phone back in my pocket while it’s still filming.
This time, though, the phone doesn’t simply end up filming the lint in the corner of my pocket. No, it remains in my hand, now pointing at my feet as I walk back across the square, towards Izzie and Ian.
‘I’ll take one of those turnips,’ I can be heard saying, although the shot is still of the ground. ‘And maybe some leeks, too.’
‘That’ll be much better for you than the muck they serve up at the Chrysalis,’ says Ian from off-camera. ‘They brought in some fancy chef from London, so I heard.’
‘Aye. I bet it’s just those tiny wee portions o’ fancy stuff they give you,’ chimes in Izzie’s voice. ‘Is that right, Rosie?’
‘I’m not sure,’ replies a voice that’s unmistakably mine. ‘I haven’t had a proper dinner at the Chrysalis yet. I got locked in the sauna on the first night and missed it. I could have died, according to the handyman.’
‘You never did!’ says Izzie, scandalised.
The audio is interrupted at this point by a loud rustling sound as Ian puts the leeks into a paper bag, but it comes back just in time for me to be heard saying, ‘And I was almost naked, too!’