Chapter 16 #2
The screen goes blurry again as I raise my hand to take the bag of leeks, the camera swooping dizzyingly around until the video finally ends on a shot of Ian holding up a particularly phallic-looking cucumber.
‘This is what we think of the new laird,’ he says with a devilish grin, the scene cutting out just before we can find out what he means by that – although, judging by the looks on everyone’s faces, the message is pretty clear as it is.
There’s a long, horrified silence as everyone on the beach tries to figure out the appropriate response to what they’ve just seen. Even Millie seems lost for words for once, and just stands there looking from face to face, desperate for a cue.
‘Well?’ says Sabrina again, wiping raindrops off the screen of her iPad with her sleeve, before fixing me with a gaze that makes my blood run cold. ‘I assume there’s some explanation for your decision to post this absolute travesty of a video?’
‘It . . . wasn’t actually a decision,’ I reply shakily, wishing I was still sitting on the blanket, because my legs have gone all wobbly again.
‘It was a mistake. Surely you can see it’s been posted by mistake?
I was in the middle of editing it . . . I was just going to post the bit with the scenery in it, and nothing else .
. . but . . . I guess I got distracted. And I, er, somehow must have uploaded the entire thing. ’
‘For God’s sake,’ mutters Dante, reaching up to push his dark hair out of his eyes. ‘I knew we shouldn’t have let her stay. She doesn’t have a clue what she’s doing.’
‘Well, I know that,’ replies Sabrina shrilly. ‘It wasn’t my decision, Dante.’
‘Well, I didn’t know she was going to pull a stunt like this, did I?’ the hotel manager snarls back at her.
‘I just wanted to help,’ I say in a quiet voice as they square up to each other. ‘Some of the villagers told me the hotel might close if the launch doesn’t go well, and I was trying to save it by . . . by showing some of the local colour.’
‘Aye, because that’s all we needed,’ says Dante. ‘For a tourist from London, who’s never been to the Highlands in her life, to spend five minutes here and decide she alone knows how to “save” us.’
He holds his fingers up and makes scare quotes. It would be quite amusing, if only he didn’t look quite so much like an angry Ken doll.
Oh, and if the anger in question wasn’t directed at me, obviously.
‘I’m really, really sorry,’ I say pleadingly, looking from him to Sabrina and back again.
‘I honestly didn’t intend to post it. But look, I’ll delete it right away,’ I add, brightening as the obvious solution to all of this hits me.
‘And the good thing is that it was just me who posted it, and no one ever sees what I post, anyway. I only have 2,012 followers, and most of them don’t even use . . . Oh.’
I stop speaking as Sabrina thrusts the iPad in my face and I see the number of hearts at the bottom of the video.
‘Twenty thousand likes,’ says Sabrina. ‘And it’s already been shared multiple times.’
‘Really?’ says Millie, finding her voice at last. ‘Oh, well done, Rosie. That’s amazing.’
‘It’s not amazing,’ spits Dante, doing the waggly-finger thing again. ‘It’s a disaster. She made the food sound terrible with the “tiny wee” portions we apparently serve, then said she almost died in the sauna. Who’s going to want to stay here after hearing that?’
‘Maybe . . . people who are on a diet?’ suggests Millie brightly. ‘That could work.’
By way of response, Dante lets out a groan so hollow that it startles the ponies. Bex’s steed whisks its tail in alarm, and takes a step backward, making Bex grab onto its thick mane in fright.
‘I hope you realise what you’ve done,’ Dante says, his voice rising as he turns to face me through the drizzle. ‘This kind of bad publicity could make the hotel fail before it’s even open. We could all lose our jobs.’
I open and close my mouth uselessly, feeling like I’m in one of those nightmares where you’re trying to scream but nothing comes out.
‘Do you have nothing to say for yourself?’ shrieks Sabrina, so shrilly that Bex’s horse takes another step back from us all, whickering nervously.
‘Stop shouting,’ screams Bex, shouting louder than anyone. ‘You’re scaring this thing. It’s going to throw me off.’
She jerks the reins roughly, and the little pony’s eyes widen, showing the whites.
‘Be quiet, Bex,’ yells Daniel, just as loudly as his wife. ‘And stop pulling its hair. You’ll scare it.’
He takes a step towards the animal, his hand raised.
It looks to me as if he’s planning to grab hold of the bridle to stop it moving any further away, but the pony obviously thinks differently, and when it sees Daniel’s hand looming towards it, it whinnies again in fright, then turns tail and goes galloping off down the beach, Bex clinging helplessly to its neck, her white dress billowing around her like a ghost in a wind tunnel.
For a second, no one moves, and then Hunter and I both spring forward, running for our ponies. I reach Bramble first, and scramble up into the saddle, accompanied by another loud tearing sound as the seat of my jeans rips even further.
There’s no time to think about that now, though.
Bex’s pony is bolting along the shoreline, headed for the cliffs at the end.
I know it’ll keep going now until something stops it, and, for Bex’s sake, it would be much better for that thing to be me than either a very jagged landing on the rocks, or an extremely wet one in the sea; especially given that she’s not wearing her safety helmet.
So I turn Bramble’s head towards the shore and urge him forwards, praying I haven’t forgotten everything I ever learned during that pony-mad summer I spent hanging out at the local stables when I was twelve.
Surely it’s just like riding a bike, though?
Isn’t it?