Page 19 of The Golden Girls’ Road Trip

‘Lex, darling,’ he says, handing a glass to her. ‘The Hislops want to see you. I think they’re on the brink of buying something. Come and give them a nudge.’ Alex takes the glass from him and knocks half of it back. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ he continues, turning his attention to me. ‘Please do introduce me.’ He doesn’t have the lilting Scottish voice that Alex has, but a surprising New York accent. Instead of rolling his Rs he’s dropping them. I turn to Alex, waiting for an introduction that never comes.

‘There’s no need, Hank; she’s no one,’ she says, and with an expression that cuts to the bone, she walks away leaving me open-mouthed in her wake.

*

I rinse cold water on my wrists in the bathroom, swallowing down the sob that wants to erupt. What did I really expect? That Alex would run into my arms and declare that she’d spent the last fifty-two years missing me every single day? Yes, that’s exactly what I’d been expecting because I’m a fool, an old fool. I dry my hands and reach into my bag for my hairbrush and lipstick, then – feeling ready to face the room again – I take a grounding breath and walk back out. I can’t see Alex and that’s fine because I don’t want to see her. I skim the edges of the room, back round to the portraits and to the one of me. I glance again in the brochure at the price, think about my small savings account that holds only just over double that amount in it. But my need for that painting is acute. I can’t explain why that should be; I just want it. I want badly to take something away from here. I move over to the desk in the entrance hall where the business side of things is occurring.

‘I’d like to buy this,’ I tell the woman at the desk, pointing to myself in the brochure. There isn’t a flicker of recognition, but why should there be – I’ve changed.

‘Great choice, such a beautiful face,’ she says and then looks a bit closer at me. ‘Could almost be you a few years ago.’

I smile. ‘That’s what I thought too,’ I agree. ‘Lady Constance Fitzgerald,’ I say when the woman asks for my details, and she pauses with her pen on the page.

‘Oh, aye, a lady no less.’

‘So it would seem.’

Leaving the rest of my details, I walk out of the building a few thousand pounds lighter, but with a heaviness to my heart that is hard to quantify.

10

The van is packed up and everything secure. I drive out of the space and stop at the reception hut to let them know I’m leaving early. Then I continue out of the site and up the lane until I find myself on the road to the Lochside Hotel. I just want to have a quick look before I leave.

My aunt, long dead now, obviously won’t be there, and I have no idea who owns it, but I have such a yearning to visit one last time before I head back down south, to talk to Leo, to make some decisions about us, and start building a relationship with my daughter-in-law ready for when my grandchild comes. Because that is what I should be doing, not chasing this half-baked dream. Perhaps a box needed ticking and I’ve ticked it now. I didn’t think I’d ever see Alex again and I have. Tick! I won’t pretend I don’t feel the humiliation and rejection though; that will accompany me all the way home.

I wind the window down as the air con seems to have packed up on me. I’m not surprised, I had it fitted by a hooky friend of Vic’s and it’s never run right. I lean my elbow on the opening, the burn of the sun instant.

The driveway still winds up to the hotel just as it always did and for a moment I’m back in 1970 in William’s gardener’s truck, driving up it for the first time, during that summer that changed my entire life.

He’d turned up at the station to pick me up and I’d liked him immediately – his gentle ribbing about my posh London accent and my stiff appearance. He’d been the friend I’d needed for those first painful days at the hotel, when it was made clear I wasn’t going to be a guest, but was there to work. It turned out my aunt wasn’t the kindly woman who appeared in the photograph my mother had of her. She was hard and cold, very much my mother’s sister. And then there’d been Alexandra, Alex, Lex now perhaps, working on reception; the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen with her porcelain skin and flame-red hair, her cheekbones cut high, like those of a catwalk model. I longed for her to notice me, to befriend me, to offer me that smile I’d seen her give to others.

The hotel itself has grown in size considerably. Extended in every direction and now under the banner of a well-known chain, but still with the charm that it always had. I pull into a parking space away from the front of the hotel, then I get out and make my way to the front door. The woman on reception has her back to me, but her hair is red and falling around her shoulders and my stomach turns over as if I’m on a ride at a funfair. But she’s not Alex, of course she’s not.

‘Good morning and welcome to the Lochside Hotel. How may I be of assistance?’ She has an Australian accent and I calm myself, smile and step forward.

‘Hello, I used to work here many years ago and thought I’d pop my head in while I was passing. Is it okay if I have a look around, maybe have some breakfast if the restaurant is open?’

‘Of course,’ she says handing me a menu and suggesting I might like to sit on their terrace in the sun. She is professional, polite, efficient and I want to laugh as I remember how Alex was on reception. Her attitude was that guests were an inconvenience, that she’d always much rather be painting. If she hadn’t been so beautiful I doubt my aunt would have put her in front of house.

I walk outside into the garden and find a table with a parasol. There’s a huge decked area that wasn’t there all those years ago. Aunt Agnes wouldn’t have considered anything as continental as al fresco dining, and to be fair to her, the weather wasn’t usually compliant. The summer I spent at the hotel had been unexpectedly warm, though. I remember everyone remarking on how unusual it was. Perhaps climate change has had an effect, but I do notice the covered patio heaters tucked down at the side of the decking.

The hedges are as beautifully clipped as they ever were and the borders are stocked with all manner of colourful delights. I think about William, wonder if he’s still in Scotland, if he’s still alive. I close my eyes for a moment and remember him with a spade or a rake, how he’d sometimes take his shirt off to weed around the back of the hotel where he thought no one could see him, his broad bare shoulders enjoying the rays of the sun. I could see him. I remember very clearly with my nose pressed against the glass for a good view. What a conflicting summer that was. He was only a couple of years older than me and Alex, so he could well be both here, and alive.

When the waiter comes I choose Lorne sausage, tattie scones, haggis and black pudding in what the hotel calls its ultimate Scottish fry-up, then I take my phone out to search for William Boyce in Inverness. I’ve missed a call and there’s a voice message.

‘Hello, this is a message for Lady Constance Fitzgerald. I’m so sorry to have to tell you that a mistake has been made and the painting you were interested in is not for sale. No money has been taken at this stage. Our mistake entirely and I’m so sorry for any inconvenience. Good day to you.’

I delete the message with a shake of my head. Alexandra Mackenzie, really sticking the boot in.

Funnily enough I find William in three easy clicks and cannot believe my luck. He owns a farm out near the airport. A family business the website tells me. Pig farmers, now turned to arable. As soon as I’ve devoured my breakfast and paid, I’m in the van and on my way. Surely one friend from my past will be pleased to see me.

*

I knock on the door of the farmhouse, wondering what on earth I’m going to say to whoever answers it. Coming back here to Scotland has not proved fruitful so far, and William probably won’t even remember me after all this time. I prepare myself for another embarrassing encounter.

It’s a man who answers, a William of about thirty, which throws me for a minute. He has the same dark eyes, but is a little shorter than the twenty-year-old man I remember and I assume he must be his son. He runs a hand through his wet hair.

‘Hello?’ he says. ‘What can I do you for?’