by Carmen Reid
An elderly uncle of Fern’s had walked Annie down the aisle towards Roddy, not her dad. And when she had buried Roddy, she should have had a great, strong dad standing right beside her, someone whom she could have leaned against in her terrible grief.
Instead this stupid, bloody man had never had the courage to stand by them or learn anything about fathering.
‘Mum isn’t well,’ Annie blurted out, ‘you really can’t stay.’ She took the glass from his hand. ‘I think we’d all prefer it if you just went away. If you want to talk to us again, we’ll give you the number and you can … make an appointment.’
She bent her head to scribble a phone number on to a piece of paper, biting her lip hard to stop the scalding tears from spilling out. There was no way she was going to let this stranger see her cry.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Roadtrip Lana:
Skinny black top (Dorothy Perkins)
Skinny black jeans (Diesel)
Dark green tunic top (Auntie Dinah)
Black lace-up baseball boots (Converse)
Total est. cost: £90
‘I will have to KILL you!’
‘ “We’re all going on a summer holiday, no more working for a week or two …”’ Owen sang loudly for about the fifty-seventh time from his seat in the back of the Sharan.
Lana was staring out of the window. She didn’t think she could take it any more, not one more verse, not one more time, not one more bloody note. ‘OWEN!’ she shrieked. ‘If you don’t stop singing, I will have to KILL you!’
‘But if I don’t keep singing, the babies will cry again,’ Owen pointed out.
No one could take any more of that: two babies bawling in unison as the Sharan lumbered up the road mile after mile.
This was their ninth hour of Sharan travel and tempers were fraying. No, make that tempers had frayed, snapped, been repaired and were fraying and snapping all over again.
‘ “We’re all going on a summer holiday …”’ Owen started up again. Lana jammed her fingers furiously into her ears.
She’d not asked to come on some stupid trip to stupid Scotland anyway. No one had asked her. She’d just been told: pack your bag, pack your books, there’s a three-day trip to Scotland coming up … it’s a treat! It’s a holiday, oh and Mum – what a surprise! – has got to do some filming while we’re there.
Wasn’t it bad enough that everyone in her class had had to read the interview with her mother’s long-lost sailor dad in Pssst! magazine last week? Now Lana was being dragged up to Scotland along with all her revision. Fingers pushed hard into her ears, she looked out of the window at the damp green scenery passing by the window. Trees, hills, trees, hills, more trees, more hills … some bloody exciting place this was.
Annie’s phone burst into life. ‘Stop singing for a minute,’ she instructed Owen as she picked it up.
‘Dinah!’ she exclaimed on answering. ‘No, I’m not driving, Ed’s driving, so we might die any moment now. Have you just come back from Mum’s?’
‘Yeah, everything’s going really well,’ Dinah assured her.
‘How is she?’
‘She’s fine, she’s really fine. Normal, Annie, with just the odd little senior moment, and I’m really liking Stefano. And apparently Mick is taking her out to lunch tomorrow.’
The noise Annie made on hearing this could only be called a harrumph.
‘They’re talking about having a sort of family get-together. He wants to meet you again, me and my family and Nic, of course.’
Their older sister Nic had been kept fully up to speed about the return of Mick and, just like Annie, she had many reservations.
Dinah and Fern were the tender-hearted family members who seemed a little too ready to give Mick the benefit of the doubt.
‘He’s getting on,’ Dinah reminded Annie, ‘I think he just wants to make some reconnection with us before … it’s too late.’
‘Ha! Just like he said in the magazine. It is too late,’ Annie said sternly, ‘he should just have stayed away.’
‘Where are you?’ Dinah asked.
‘On the west coast of Scotland with just another thirty minutes to go, Ed promises.’ She looked over to the driver’s seat where Ed nodded at her more in hope than with firm conviction. ‘If he’s not right, there’s probably going to be a mutiny,’ Annie added, casting a glance towards the back of the car, where the babies looked grumpy, Lana looked furious and even Owen’s usual cheeriness seemed to be wearing thin.
‘And what are you doing up there?’ Dinah asked, struggling to remember.
‘A bit of filming and lots of lovely family time,’ Annie answered, hoping she would get away with this.
‘This hasn’t got anything to do with the jokes you made on TV about hillwalking in heels, has it?’ Dinah asked suspiciously. When there was no immediate reply from Annie, she went on: ‘You’re not actually going to do it, are you?’
‘Don’t worry about me, girl, we’re going to have a proper guide with us and we’re only going for a short, glorified walk …’ Annie tried to reassure her sister. ‘It’s really about having a bit of family time.’
She didn’t like the way Ed looked as if he was trying to suppress a laugh.
‘We?’ Dinah asked. ‘Who else is doing the walk with you? Not the crazy Russian lady? Things always seem to go completely haywire whenever she’s around.’
‘Yeah, Svetlana, and she’s Ukrainian,’ Annie countered. ‘It’ll be fine,’ she said down a line which was beginning to break up.
‘I’m losing you,’ Annie called.
‘Welcome to the wilderness,’ Ed announced, ‘your mobile cannot help you now.’
Set well back from the narrow road, in front of a dense green forest, the cabin rose in an elegant triangle from the luscious lawn before it. Built of dark wooden planks, with an enormous triangular glass window at the front, it looked surprisingly sleek and stylish.
‘Good old Tamsin,’ Annie said as the Sharan turned down the grassy driveway towards the cabin. ‘She wouldn’t let us slum it.’
It took almost forty-five minutes to fully unpack the Sharan. There were clothes, there were shoes, there were hiking things, then baby beds, baby seats, baby plates, baby cups, baby bottles, followed by Lana’s book bags, then all of Owen’s hiking and generally-mucking-about-outdoors equipment.
Also, of course, there were the Everest things which the mountaineer was going to wear and sing the praises of: a special pair of hiking boots, an anorak, longjohns and waterpoof trousers.
As Ed, Owen and Lana humped things back and forth from the car to the house, Annie sat outside on the lawn watching her twins crawl joyfully about the grass, delighted to finally be free.
Minnie crawled a good 10 feet or so away from Annie; then she stopped and carefully raised herself up on her knees and looked back, just checking, to make sure she was still within range of Mummy.
‘Hello, Min!’ Annie cooed and gave a wave. Minnie lifted her hand into the air and turned it several times with a bubbling giggle.
Micky stopped crawling and sat down with a thud on his big, padded nappy-bottom. After several attempts, he managed to get hold of the buttercup he was aiming for, plucked it and, after a moment of examination, stuffed it into his mouth.
Annie leaped up from the bench and went over to extract the buttercup. Then Minnie nosedived into a deep clump of grass and began to wail for rescue.
Now Annie had a baby under each arm and she decided she would sit down on the grass with them to guard against further disasters. No sooner had she sat down and released the babies than she felt a tiny prick on her face, quickly followed by another, then one on her hand and one on her neck.
‘Ouch!’ she exclaimed, smacking against the pain on her hand. The high-pitched whine in her ear told her that she and probably the babies were being eaten alive.
‘How’s it going?’ Ed shouted from the cabin door.
‘Mosquitoes!’ she shouted back.
�
�You’ll have to come in anyway,’ he called. ‘The twins need food and you have to get Owen to explain to you how your camera works!’
Annie groaned to herself. She was a TV personality who needed her thirteen-year-old son to talk her through the basics of making a video diary. It was embarrassing. Totally embarrassing.
‘So here I am in the Scottish Highlands, miles from civilization, watching you have an outfit crisis,’ Ed teased as Annie fussed in front of the dressing-table mirror in their bedroom the following morning. ‘This is surreal. The only things it’s safe to wear out there are hiking boots, an anorak and—’
‘A mosquito net!’ Annie snarled. ‘Look at those’ – she had two enormous zit-like eruptions on her face – ‘some turbo-charged, burly, porridge-eating mosquito gave me those. No amount of concealer is going to hide them. They’re so itchy!’
‘They’re called midges,’ Ed said helpfully as he saved Micky from diving head-first off the bed. ‘Scottish mosquitoes are called midges. And you look lovely,’ he approved.
‘You always say that!’ she huffed.
‘Because you always look lovely,’ Ed soothed.
Annie, in her full ‘ladies who lunch’ hiking outfit, tried to look herself over in the tiny mirror. From the selection of high-end outfits she’d crammed into the back of the Sharan, she’d chosen a beautiful silk dress, ivory-coloured with big red poppies strewn across it. Then came a snappy trenchcoat worn with the sleeves pushed up and the collar turned high. On her feet were an ever-so-slightly cheating pair of red high heels. They were just under three inches, very comfortable, well worn and, most importantly of all, they had a chunky rubber sole. When she stepped into the shoes, her sense of confidence returned. These were old favourites. She felt totally at home in them and suddenly the possibility of managing a hillwalk in high heels didn’t seem so remote.
She picked up the soft red bag she’d selected and slung it over her shoulder.
‘Ah, a shoulder bag,’ came Ed’s comment. ‘Good idea.’
‘Why?’
‘You’ll need your hands free.’
‘Why?’ she asked again.
‘To break your fall,’ he replied with a wink.
‘Ed?’ Annie walked over to the bed and sat down. ‘You would tell me, wouldn’t you, if this was going to be totally stupid, or dangerous? I mean … I know accidents can happen.’
Ed, one hand on Micky, put his other arm around her.
‘It’s up to you,’ he said finally. ‘Only bite off what you can chew out there. Even if you only manage ten minutes, that’s probably all the footage they’ll use anyway.’
‘Ten minutes!’ Annie protested. ‘I’m being sponsored by the mile. Anything less than two miles is going to be total and utter humiliation.’
‘Don’t do anything silly,’ Ed warned. ‘If you feel it’s too high or too steep or too difficult, give up!’ Putting his forehead against hers, he added: ‘It’s about time you got it into your stubborn little head that not everything can just somehow be willed into the way Annie wants it.’
‘I don’t think that. Ed …’ She let out a long sigh before breaking the news: ‘I might not get signed up to do the next series.’
‘Of course you will!’ he replied. ‘The show’s doing great … isn’t it?’
‘Yes, but they think it might do even better with a celebrity in my place.’
‘What?’ Ed said, astonished. ‘But you make that show. You are the celebrity.’
‘No, a real celebrity. A big name,’ Annie explained. ‘Tamsin wants me to stay on, so the last episode of the series has to be unforgettable.’
‘Good grief … so, no pressure then,’ Ed said. He hugged her tightly with his free arm and kissed the top of her head. ‘Try not to worry. Whatever happens, we’ll deal with it, we’ll be OK.’
A loud honk outside the window alerted Annie to the arrival of a taxi.
She ran over and spotted the blond sweep of hair in the back seat that let her know Svetlana had arrived.
‘Isn’t she early?’ Annie asked Ed.
‘It’s eleven forty-five,’ he replied. ‘Aren’t you supposed to meet your guide at twelve? He’ll be hoping he’ll be back at base in time for lunch,’ Ed teased.
‘Oh, very funny. Is that seriously the time?’ Annie looked at her watch.
With a quick kiss for Ed and each of her babies and an instruction to ‘Please get the other two out of bed, OK?’ she snatched up her video camera and hurried down to greet Svetlana.
When Svetlana stepped out of the taxi, Annie felt a fresh burst of hope at the genius of this idea.
Svetlana looked so dazzling that she almost lifted the gloom of the grey and drizzly day.
She’d managed to make it from Mayfair to the Highlands in a single morning, in high heels and a blow dry that still looked perfect. No doubt it had been chauffeurs and first class all the way, which could only have helped. Still, a hairdresser must have been summoned before dawn to lacquer the Svetlana locks.
Annie looked at her friend in wordless admiration: immaculate blond hairdo – check. Perfect Dress with maximum cleavage – check. Towering heels which made Annie’s look wimpy – check. Raincoat in defiance of the drizzle – check. Unbelievably stunning crocodile Zagliani bag – check.
Annie stared at the bag. Only Svetlana could risk taking a seven-thousand-pound piece of real croc up a mountain.
‘Annah!’ Svetlana thrust a wad of twenty-pound notes at the driver and then moved in to give Annie a hug.
‘Hello, babes, you look beyond beautiful. How is business?’ she wondered.
‘Business is fantastic. More orders in Britain, a new order from Holland and an amazing order from New York. It is so exciting. I never thought making money could be as much fun as spending money. But it is! Where we meet our mountain guide?’ she asked as she brought her phone out of her handbag.
‘Forget it,’ Annie warned her, ‘the last signal I got was on the road. Since then, dead as a doornail. The guide’s coming here any minute to pick us up.’
Svetlana stared at her phone in disbelief. ‘No phone?’ she said sounding horrified. ‘Nothing? No email? How I stay in touch with Elena? How I get my urgent calls for today? If I knew this, Annah, I would not have come.’
‘Of course you would have come,’ Annie reminded her. ‘This is fantastic publicity for the dress. Show me today’s number.’
Svetlana unbuckled her YSL raincoat. Underneath was a bright violet dress with a net petticoat underneath to make it as girlie and frilly as possible.
‘Stunning,’ Annie had to agree. ‘I think I need to invest more money with you. This is going to be huge.’
‘Ya,’ Svetlana confirmed with a nod.
As the taxi reversed down the narrow driveway, it met a dark blue Land-Rover trying to turn in. There was a moment of cars backing up and giving way. Then the blue Land-Rover began to rumble up the driveway towards them.
There was a young woman behind the wheel. When she parked up and stepped down from the car, Annie and Svetlana were left in no doubt that this was their guide.
‘Hello there, I’m Morven,’ she began and tried to clear the look of astonishment from her face.
Annie and Svetlana tried to do the same.
It was as if two different species of female were meeting. On the one hand: Annie and Svetlana, fully made up, glossy, soignées, dressed with the greatest care and attention to the smallest detail. On the other: Morven, a twenty-something dressed for the hills and for total practicality. Clumpy hiking boots poked out from underneath baggy cord trousers. On top, a great thick fleece top swamped a frame that may actually have been quite dainty – it was impossible to tell. She could have been pretty, but her brown hair was scraped back in a ponytail / bun / scrunchie situation and there wasn’t the slightest trace of anything, not even lip balm, on her rosy-with-weather face.
‘Nice to meet you,’ she said and held out her unadorned, slightly rough hand for them to shake.
/> Annie had kept her hands simple with just a French manicure, whereas Svetlana was sporting long pink talons and two astonishingly large diamond rings.
‘You must be Annie, I recognize you from the TV.’
‘Oh, have you seen the show?’ Annie asked.
‘Yes,’ Morven replied.
Annie waited for the compliment to follow: ‘I love your show’, or ‘It’s great’, even just a little ‘It’s fun’. But none came.
Obviously Morven had watched for research purposes only and was far too serious to have actually enjoyed it.
Annie and Svetlana exchanged a glance.
It occurred to Annie that Morven may have been one of the many women who had taken personal offence at her declaration of war against the clumpy shoe and anorak.
‘Well, I can see you’re a girl who dresses for action,’ Annie said, trying to make it sound nice, although really she would love to take Morven aside and make a few significant tweaks to her work uniform. If her fleece was just a bit tighter and brighter … if she had a nice haircut instead of the scrunchie … at least some lip gloss and a touch of concealer as well as the midge repellent.
‘So,’ Morven said, ‘I hope you’re covered in Jungle Juice. The cloud’s low and the weather’s mild, so the beasties will be out in force. But then’ – she gave a questioning look at their outfits – ‘we’ll not be going far today, will we? That’s why I’ve been given the job,’ she added. ‘The two other guides are looking after a Scout troop.’
‘I don’t know,’ Annie countered. ‘We’re being sponsored by the mile. I thought we could do at least five miles or so.’
‘Ten!’ Svetlana laid down the challenge.
Morven looked dubious. ‘Have you got the stuff you need me to wear?’
Annie held up a bag full of the Everest camping clothes.
‘Well, get into the car,’ Morven instructed. ‘I’ve been told it’s got to look like proper hill-climbing; there can’t be a path or anything too easy.’
