Tall, Dark and Kilted Read online

  ‘The Urquharts owe you, no mistake.’ Becky leaned against the kitchen table grim-faced and folded her arms across her chest. Fliss knew that Becky would love nothing better than to go to Elgin Crescent and give them a piece of her mind. She loved her for it, but knew that this was something she had to do on her own. ‘I told you, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yes, you did.’

  ‘Silly tarts. Time they deserve a good slapping from that … that wolfy brother of theirs.’

  ‘Don’t think that’s going to happen, Bex, the upper classes don’t smack their children. They leave it to the nanny to discipline them. But I hope he’s got some suitable punishment lined up for when they fly home on …’

  ‘… their broomsticks?’

  ‘Nimbus 2000’s,’ Fliss managed a feeble joke before moving the conversation along. ‘I’m going to get showered and dressed.’ Leaving Becky in the kitchen, she walked through to the bathroom and closed the door behind her. She needed time on her own to sort out the sorry mess that was her life.

  She stood under the running shower for several minutes, her forehead pressed against the cracked white wall tiles, hoping her problems would disappear down the drain along with the suds. But when she raised her head and opened her eyes nothing had changed; if anything her worries had grown in magnification. She stepped out of the shower and wrapped herself in a large bath sheet.

  How was she going to pay the bills?

  The thought of her hard-earned savings haemorrhaging away until she got another job made her feel sick. She knew that she could give up her flat and move back in with Becky’s family until her prospects improved. But, much as she loved the Castertons, returning to live with them would be a backward step. She’d had the flat for less than a year and it represented her first, tentative steps towards independence. Now it looked as if she was back to square one.

  She glanced around her precious, if shabby, bedroom. Old salon copies of Vogue, Tatler and Harpers were stacked neatly by her bed. The folding screen had cuttings of dresses and shoes and some of her sketches pinned to it. The vintage clothes she’d sourced in the charity shops in Notting Hill, Chelsea and Fulham hung on wire hangers from the chipped picture rail. The room was a testament to the career in fashion she would have pursued, given the choice. But, feeling that she couldn’t ask the Castertons to support her through a four year degree at St Martins she’d turned to beauty therapy instead.

  Her three-year course had come with a small bursary which had made it feasible for her to qualify as a holistic beauty therapist. She’d come top of the class in almost every subject. That didn’t make her feel any happier; it simply helped to underline that she was capable of more, so much more.

  ‘You all right, Flissy?’ Becky called as she entered the room and placed a mug of tea and two slices of toast on the dressing table. ‘Eat - You’ll need all your strength if you’re going round to the Urquharts. Laters?’

  ‘Sure. Laters. I might also check out if my new shoes are still in the middle of Rosmead Road. They were Ferragamos, I practically had to arm wrestle a woman for them at a second-hand stall in Camden Market.’ She tried to make light of the loss and last night’s debacle.

  ‘Sure, babe.’ Becky gave her a hug before squirting herself with Fliss’s perfume and taking her leave.

  Once she’d gone, Fliss’s shoulders slumped. She picked up a framed photograph of her parents and cradled it in her palm. She raked her fingers through her tangled auburn hair, so like her mother’s, and tried to remember happier times. But her memories, like the old photograph, were blurred round the edges and starting to fade.

  It was at times like this when she realised how alone she was. The thought brought with it a fresh pang of loss although it was now several years since her parents had died. It’d had been a tough time but she’d got through it, just as she was going to survive this setback and come out smiling on the other side.

  She gazed at her reflection in the mirror and read the determination in her grey-green eyes. This was her problem and she’d find a solution. Placing the photograph back on the scratched dressing table she drank her tea and chewed at the congealing toast as a plan began to take shape in her mind.

  She knew exactly what she had to do.

  She’d find work - in bars, restaurants, shops - wherever, and get enough money together to buy a cheap car or van. She’d phone round her friends, call in favours - starting with Cat and Isla. She’d build up her client base … carry out treatments in her clients’ homes and undercut the salons. It’d take time and it wouldn’t be the business she dreamed of owning. But at least she’d be doing what she loved, the job she’d trained for.

  That would keep the wolf from her door.

  This was her flat. Her life. And she wasn’t giving up either without a fight.

  Chapter Seven

  An hour later Fliss was outside the Urquhart’s house, pressing the doorbell in short, sharp bursts. When it remained unanswered, she peered through the drawing room window where the fallout from last night’s party was clearly visible. Ripped cushions, empty bottles, overturned tables and a large red wine stain on a Chinese rug were all going to take some explaining to Ruairi Urquhart, given his regard for his mother’s house and its contents.

  She wondered where Cat and Isla were and what were they up to. Being busted and then released from the local police station with a caution wouldn’t have dampened their enthusiasm for life. In fact, she’d lay even money on it having whetted their appetite for more mischief. The thought made her give the bell one last defiant jab. She had drugs to return and a blistering lecture to deliver on the etiquette of abandoning friends in a police station. Friends who had stood by them and had lost their job as a consequence.

  Just as she was leaving, Cat and Isla rounded the corner, sashaying down the street without a care in the world - looking as if they’d just attended a clan gathering in some parallel universe.

  Isla was wearing a kilt that plainly belonged to some male relative over six feet tall, while Cat had squeezed into a kilt that was ‘good morning your honour’ obscenely short. Both wore long sleeved white blouses with ruffled jabots and had matching plaids in the Urquhart tartan over their shoulder. Cat’s balmoral - the archetypal highlander’s hat - was set at a jaunty angle, while Isla clumped along beside her in hiking boots just visible below her outsized kilt.

  Now what? She was in no mood for their infantile antics this morning.

  ‘Fliss! What are you doing here?’ Cat asked as if they hadn’t abandoned her in Ladbroke Grove police station hours earlier. ‘Have you come to visit us?’

  ‘You could say that,’ Fliss managed through clenched teeth, her blood pressure reaching way above her normal 100/80.

  ‘Hoots mon. Och aye the noo, bonnie lassie - an’ all that jazz.’ Oblivious to Fliss’s curt greeting, Isla handed her a portable CD player to hold while she rooted in a large badger pelt sporran for the front door key.

  ‘Hey Fliss. Wait’ll you see this.’ Cat held up a tiny camcorder, watching the playback on its flipped-out screen.

  ‘Not here,’ hissed Isla and gestured towards Shipstone’s house. ‘You never know; he could have MI5 watching us. By satellite … courtesy of GCHQ. Scanning the airwaves for chatter.’

  ‘In Gaelic,’ Cat put in. ‘More hoots, than Spooks - you could say.’ That set off another fit of the giggles. Isla tripped over the long hem of her kilt, fell across the threshold and two brass fire pokers dropped out of her rucksack and landed at Fliss’s feet.

  So far - so predictable she thought as annoyance fizzed through her. It took all of her effort to remain outwardly calm and smiling, knowing that while she’d spent the morning stressing over her future they’d been up to some lark involving kilts, a camcorder and two brass pokers. It was as if in their world, yesterday’s brush with the law had never happened.

  ‘Coffee?’ Cat asked as they stepped over the pokers and squeezed past Isla to enter the house. She led the way to the kitchen, un
aware of the murderous thoughts running through Fliss’s mind.

  ‘Sure. Why not?’ Fliss shrugged, picking her moment to deliver the scorching dressing down she’d rehearsed on her way over from the Tube. She glanced round the kitchen at the detritus from last night, if they thought for a nanosecond that she’d be helping them clear up they would be sorely disappointed. She was on a mission for survival and everything else was peripheral.

  Isla removed her rucksack and placed the pokers on the draining board. With a surprising show of domesticity she switched on the cappuccino machine, fed bread into the toaster and then rooted in the fridge for butter and marmalade. Congealing party food was pushed to one side as she set three places for breakfast and gestured for Fliss to sit down. Fliss watched, irked but fascinated, as the undomesticated goddess whipped up three cappuccinos, sprinkled them with chocolate and tended to the Dualit toaster.

  Cat walked over to the dresser and pressed the button on the winking answer machine.

  ‘Cat. Isla - Ruairi. Ring the estate office to book tickets for your flight home. Check your email for the flight number. Print off the details. Take some form of identification. Passports preferably. Murdo will meet you at the airport. Make sure the house doesn’t look like a squat before you leave, remember to set the burglar alarm and to shut the bloody windows. And think up some original excuses to explain your behaviour - you really have outdone yourselves this time.’

  The machine gave a long loud bleep as the message ended.

  ‘I wish he’d get off our case and stop phoning us every five minutes,’ Isla said with an injured air. ‘New excuses! Oh, we’ll give him new excuses alright!’ she plonked herself down onto the pine chair and started curling her dark hair round her finger. ‘Trust him to leave a message - he’ll have made a note of what time he called and want to know where we were, what we were doing. And who we were doing it with!’

  ‘He’ll find out soon enough.’ Cat pressed the delete button on the answer machine and then gestured towards the camcorder and shot Isla a conspiratorial look.

  Isla then turned towards Fliss. ‘Anyhoo, bring us up to date. What happened after we left the station?’ She spread her toast with butter and Frank Cooper’s finest and crunched into it with straight, white teeth.

  ‘I was bailed by my boss. Then sacked.’ Fliss waited for their reaction.

  ‘Cool. Now you can enjoy the summer. Catch some rays; maybe go abroad.’ Clearly, the concept of paying the rent and utilities on Job Seekers’ Allowance was alien to Isla Urquhart.

  ‘Not cool, as it turns out.’ Outwardly, Fliss appeared calm and unruffled, but she was gearing herself up for her big speech and preparing to slam the wrap of cocaine on the table next to the marmalade.

  ‘I know - I simply meant that you could take some time out. Have a change of direction, maybe?’ She raised her eyebrow in a gesture Roger Moore would have been proud of and exchanged another look with Cat. Fliss found their sisterly telepathy quite unnerving, but had little time to ponder the significance of the look as she continued. ‘Here’s an idea. Why don’t you come up to Scotland with us? If you’re at a loose end?’

  ‘Loose end?’ She was just about to explain how she needed a job and what life was like in the real world when she was stopped mid speech.

  ‘Here’s the thing. Mumma owns a therapy centre in Kinloch Mara. She’s having trouble recruiting someone to manage it for her. You could help out until she finds someone suitable.’

  Fliss did a double take. Was this some kind of job interview?

  ‘That’s what I wanted to discuss with you last night. But every time I turned round, you’d gone.’ Isla tutted at Fliss’s lack of consideration.

  ‘Selfish and inconsiderate of me, I know. Sorreee,’ Fliss responded with heavy irony.

  ‘Then the shit hit the fan? Remember?’ Cat added, giggling.

  ‘I think I do; vaguely.’ Last night was hardly something she’d forget in a hurry. ‘Of course, I was a little distracted at the time … taking care of you,’ she said pointedly. But she could tell that her words sailed right over their heads.

  ‘She’s advertised in The Lady and all the usual places,’ Isla continued. ‘Kinloch Mara’s quite remote and apparently no one wants to work there. Or, they’ve got boyfriends and the hassle of travelling backwards and forwards from London puts them off. But I noticed, you don’t have a boyfriend, do you?’

  Thanks for that, Fliss thought, but held her peace. There were more important issues at stake here than Isla’s monumental lack of tact. Could Mitzi Urquhart be the answer to her prayers? A way out of her quandary?

  ‘Is your mother into holistic therapy?’ she hardly dared frame the question.

  ‘Mumma’s had every therapy known to man,’ Cat laughed and rolled her eyes, ‘and then some. It’s not that she, personally, wants to give massages and such. The point is she feels out of the loop because her girlfriends run …’

  ‘… exclusive bed and breakfasts, cashmere companies, boutique hotels. Dinner with the laird in an ancient house - complete with chain rattling ghost - set in sub-tropical gardens. Or they open their house up for visitors for the summer,’ Isla elaborated.

  ‘Mumma wants something to boast about when they meet up for girly lunches to discuss their business empires,’ Cat said.

  ‘She spends hours watching The Apprentice - dreaming of the day when Lord Sugar presents her with Businesswoman of the Year Award and congratulates her on the success of the Kinloch Mara Holistic Therapy Centre.’

  ‘Ruairi refers to it as her playing shop,’ Cat butted in. ‘The therapy centre was our idea, initially. Honestly, there’s nowhere to get a decent pedicure or a Brazilian in our corner of Wester Ross. Sometimes I feel hairier than this sporran. Not,’ she pulled a face, ‘that there are any men up there worth going to the trouble of making yourself look beautiful for…’

  Unbidden, the fanciful image Fliss had of a highlander - tall, dark, and kilted - silhouetted against the full moon, romantically striding along some remote mountain ridge flashed into her mind. Now she knew the highlander in question was Ruairi Urquhart the picture didn’t seem quite so appealing. She shook her head free of the image and concentrated instead on what Cat was saying.

  ‘Of course she’ll get bored with the project; she always does.’

  ‘Since Papa died, she’s had nothing to occupy her. Ruairi’s hatchet man, Murdo bloody Gordon runs the estate. Ruairi’s fond of Mumma but he thinks she’s a total airhead, incapable of organising the weekly shop and drop let alone help with the running of Kinloch Mara.’

  Fliss saw a flash of pain cross Isla’s face at the mention of their father. Bereavement had left a gaping hole in her life and she didn’t need a psychology degree to figure out that the sisters’ behaviour, Lady Urquhart’s lack of direction and Ruairi’s need for control were manifestations of their bereavement. Symptoms of loss and grief that hadn’t yet been confronted and dealt with. But it wasn’t long before the moment had passed and their usual irreverent banter continued.

  ‘Isla’s right, Ruairi’s been a pain about Mumma opening the house to visitors. He said he’d rather eat supper with the dogs in the kennels than be dressed up and paraded in front of paying guests like a tartan clad toy poodle. That’s why she hit upon the idea of setting up the therapy centre in the Dower House. That’s where the Laird’s widow is supposed to live after his death, but Mumma doesn’t at the moment … Anyway, Ruairi has less control over what goes on down there.’

  Fliss was in a flat spin and only took in a fraction of what they were saying. She wasn’t given time for further questions, however, because Isla reached out across the table and grabbed her by the arm.

  ‘You’d be helping us out, and doing yourself a favour into the bargain. If Mumma’s busy, she’ll save a fortune in cognitive therapists’ bills. That’ll please Ruairi - which in turn will make our lives easier. And, in any case, it would only be until late autumn; or, until you can recruit a permanent mana
geress. I mean, you don’t strike me as the kind of girl who’d want to bury herself in Argyllshire, not when you’re a Londoner, born and bred.’ She got up to make another cappuccino.

  ‘Summer and autumn are the very best time to be in the Highlands,’ Cat added, conveniently forgetting all that’d been said previously about tartan overload and shortbread tin scenery. ‘Apart from the midges,’ she pointed out, seemingly in an effort to be scrupulously honest.

  ‘Apart from the midges,’ Isla agreed.

  ‘It sounds intriguing,’ Fliss responded coolly. She didn’t want to appear too enthusiastic in case they changed their mind. She was holding all the cards and intended to play this hand poker-faced and to her advantage.

  ‘Shall I ring Mumma?’ Isla persisted. ‘She’s at the ashram in India, but always leaves her mobile switched on. It really pisses off the other guests who are meditating.’ I bet, Fliss thought as Isla left to make the call from another room, returning several minutes later. ‘Mumma’s ecstatic at the thought of the therapy centre finally taking off and can’t wait to meet you. I haven’t heard her sound so upbeat in months. She mentioned the salary.’ She handed a piece of paper to Fliss who did a double take when she read the amount scribbled there.

  It was almost double what Mrs Morris had paid her. Her innate sense of honesty wouldn’t allow her to take advantage of the family - no matter how desperate she was, nor how generous Mitzi Urquhart appeared to be.

  ‘I couldn’t possibly,’ she began, full of regret at the thought of this perfect opportunity slipping through her fingers. Although she felt she was owed some recompense for losing her job.

  ‘Isn’t it enough?’ Isla frowned, apparently sensing her hesitation. ‘She has no idea what to pay you. I just guessed at a ballpark figure and said you’d let her know if she should pay you more.’