Page 2 of Journey to the Scottish Highlands

My eyes bored into the page. ‘There’s more, but I can’t face reading it; he has a go at the director for trying to be too arty with his shots, and he even compares the soundtrack to a Friday night karaoke session in Islington.’

Jade bit her lip and suppressed a laugh.

‘Oh, I’m so glad you’re finding this funny.’ I shook my mink-coloured wavy hair in disgust. ‘I bet he’s never had to trudge to some freezing cold theatre at ridiculous o’clock and queue up for bloody hours for an audition.’

Jade arched one pierced brow. ‘No, in all likelihood he probably hasn’t. He’ll be some posh, upper-class idiot from the Home Counties.’

Now it was my turn to bury an ironic smile.

Jade caught it. ‘I know. I know. I’m the pot calling the kettle black.’ She turned her head to me. ‘Try to forget about it, sweetheart. Move on. Focus on the next acting job.’

I pulled a face. ‘I bet there isn’t one. Octavia would’ve been in touch if there had been.’ I eyed my silent mobile at my elbow.

Jade offered me an encouraging smile. ‘Ok. So, Sinister looks like it’s not going to set the world alight. Who’s to say your next acting gig won’t?’

That was one of the many things I admired about Jade. She was always a glass-half-full kind of girl.

I reached across a hand and patted hers. My phone then decided to ping into life with a series of explosive texts from my fellow cast members and some of the production team.

I groaned as it proceeded to ring. It was Lando, the script writer of Sinister. He was a sweet guy, but he was prone to theatrical outbursts, and I could only begin to imagine what he was going to say about this scathing review.

With guilt rippling through me, I picked up my phone and declined the call. ‘The series scriptwriter,’ I explained to a questioning look from Jade across the table. ‘I know it must sound mean, but I feel awful enough as it is without mulling over this bloody review again and again.’

Jade stood up, her jewellery clinking and clattering. She nodded over at my phone, which I’d plonked back down on the kitchen table. ‘Why don’t you give your agent a call? See if there’s anything else on the horizon?’

I let out a bark of laughter. ‘I doubt that very much.’

‘Well, you don’t know until you ask.’

Her ringing mobile interrupted our conversation. She plucked it out of her fringed skirt pocket. ‘It’s mother and father.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Won’t be a sec.’

I watched her swinging hips vanish out of the kitchen.

I stared down at the dark screen of my mobile. There was more chance of me winning the Nobel Peace Prize than securing more acting work at the moment, but I knew what would happen if I didn’t call Octavia. Jade would just nag me until I did. So, what harm would it do to give her a call?

I plucked up my phone and nibbled my bottom lip.

Here I was, twenty-eight years old, born and bred in the Scottish Highland town of Strath Ross, with a BA in acting from Glasgow’s Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, living in London and struggling to get the acting break I’d dreamt about since I was a precocious kid. I’d paid my dues on the stage before I’d finally broken into TV, but I wanted to secure more prominent roles in film and television. I loved the ripple of the theatre curtains and the creak of the seats, but my ambition was to get to the next level. I had to. Acting had been all I’d ever wanted to do. It had always felt like part of me.

I’d even taken an online script writing course last year, just to get more of a feel for and understanding of the process, such was my desire to succeed in the industry.

I’d had my darling grandpa, George, and my late grandma, Bea, as a captive audience when I was a kid, making them sit through endless plays I’d written or watch me pretend to be a swan.

Failure for me was not an option. I couldn’t ever contemplate the prospect of ending up like my mother, Dee.

She’d been a frustrated singer, got pregnant with me at the tender age of eighteen and decided when I was three months old that she wasn’t mother material. She thought Strath Ross had cheated her out of so much, and after I came along, she viewed me in the same way. That was when my wonderful grandparents stepped in and brought me up.

Grandma Bea passed away suddenly when I was thirteen, so it had just been me and Grandpa George for the last fifteen years. I very occasionally saw my mother – she ended up living in Clachan Hill, a town about half an hour away from Strath Ross – but to me, she was just like some odd apparition who would drift in and out of my life when she felt like it, even though I’d made it clear I had nothing to say to her. At least she’d got married two years ago, so that seemed to be preoccupying her more these days. Her new husband was a farmer ten years younger than her called Innes. He was her priority.

As for my erstwhile father, Ritchie Baird, he’d been a twenty-one-year-old barman in Strath Ross’s local pub, The Bat and Cavern.

My grandparents told me my mother had fallen for his twinkly eyes and easy charm. He’d made her laugh. He’d wanted to become an actor and had appeared in a few TV adverts, but he was searching for his big break.

Ha! That was where I got my love of acting.

From what I’d heard the locals say about him, that seemed like the only thing I had in common with him, and that suited me just fine. My mum had been warned by her friends about my dad’s restless reputation, but she was too smitten to listen and believed she was the one who could change him.

She fell pregnant with me five months after they started dating. She told him she was expecting, and then he handed his notice in at the pub and took off to London like Dick Whittington, in search of his fortune.