Page 81 of Scotlander

The slew of messages ran something like this:

Willa, where’s the [fill in the blank with whatever thing they couldn’t find that was exactly where it always was]?

Willa, do you know if/when the interview’s going to start/end/happen/be cancelled?

Willa, could you resend all of the information you’ve already sent because trawling through the emails to find it would be hard?

PR dogsbodies, PR VPs, marketing managers, freelance promotions teams, studios, streaming channels, Indies, YouTubers, TikTok glitterati and, of course, actual celebrities. Countless fame-seekers pleading for a bite of precious airtime, sweet-talking you while it mattered, blanking you when it didn’t.

That was Hollywood.

She picked some straw out of her corset.

And this was Scotland.

Was this the moment she bailed and went back to LA?

When she weighed up what Finn and his family were going through versus what the highly paid TiTs production team had decided was their best course of action (turn to the one person who was legitimately on vacation), she knew where she wanted to put her skills to use.

When she finally came out of her hayloft, all eyes rose to her. She forced on a smile.

‘Everything alright?’ Jennifer asked, knitting needles clacking away. The rest of the group was still hanging around the firepit, the acrimony from lunchtime still simmering. Everyone was quietly nursing mugs of tea or darning a hem or readjusting their kilt straps (Jeff had both grown and shrunk over the course of the week). Gabe and Lachlan were stacking Finn’s pile of abandoned firewood into something that deserved to be admired for its beauty, but all she could manage was a paltry thumbs-up.

Normally by this time of day, they would’ve been heading back out for their afternoon chores. But the Scots – Errol, Trevor, Kirk, Alastair and now Blair – were nowhere to be seen. They’d been called to the house to hear the news, no doubt. Or, more worryingly, gone off to find work elsewhere.

Nerves churned round Willa’s stomach like the contents of a cement mixer as she relived the moment when she’d found Finn and his family. With no ability to bring in the harvest, there was no point in carrying on this mad charade any longer. Orla wasn’t up to it, physically or emotionally. They couldn’t afford it. And soon the bank would come calling. Not to mention the fact the rosy hue of ‘immersive Jacobean style labour’ had lost its rosy hue.

But somewhere between the house, her barrage of messages from TiTs and rejoining this strangely beautiful collection of mismatched superfans – a group of strangers all seeking the same thing: a moment of purity in their complicated lives – she’d come up with an idea.

This was your classic make-or-break movie moment. The risk Michael J. Fox took when he pressed his foot on the gas pedal and raced, head on, towards the town hall. Dorothy’s decision to follow the yellow brick road. Bambi’s mother’s decision to go into the clearing. Life-altering decisions that could elevate or destroy.

‘Willa?’ Jennifer asked again, putting her knitting down in her lap. ‘Is everything okay?’

Her normal, go-to work answer was Absolutely! Then she’d shove whatever it was that had been bothering her down to the bottom of her things-that-mattered pile and get on with improving someone else’s life. The only time when she hadn’t felt the need to lie was with Valentina.

And that’s when it hit her. This was why she was here. She didn’t need to read Val’s letter to know what was in it. The one person who had always believed in Willa, even – no, especially – when she hadn’t believed in herself, had been Valentina Ortiz: dental hygienist to the stars.

Val would have loved her plan.

More than that, she would’ve championed it and thrown herself in feet first. Now it was Willa’s turn to wear the mantle so ably worn by her best friend, a woman who had taught her all the very best things there were to know about loyalty, love and sacrifice.

So when Jennifer asked her for a third time if everything was alright, she turned to her and said, ‘No.’

A dam’s worth of pent-up regrets broke through her taped-up heart and poured through her. This was her make-or-break moment. It wasn’t fiction. There was no guaranteed happily ever after. It was all terrifyingly real. But she wanted to do it anyway. She looked Jennifer in the eye and said, ‘It’s the opposite, actually. Everything’s awful.’

She waited until the entire group gathered round before she explained. And when she did, she told them everything. About the farm’s precarious financial position. About the castle’s history (both old and new). About how Orla and her family had been doing their best to caretake Balcraigie Farm while Finn decided what he wanted to do about his inheritance.

She knew it was a risk, this level of honesty. It exposed Orla and her duplicity. It shone a light on Finn and his lack of decision making. Herself for not saying anything earlier.

She didn’t paint the picture in terms of deceit. Life wasn’t that black and white. This was family. It was complicated. There were feelings involved. History. And, if, according to Lachlan’s Guide to the Scottish Emotional Spectrum, the Gaelic people had only been offered the world’s tiniest emotional toolbox to work with, it was little wonder it had taken an actual, life-changing crisis to bring them to this point. One where, if they were agreed, they could bring all their energies together and put some good into the world.

Though it was yet another beautiful, sunny, crisp autumnal day, Willa’s skin felt clammy. Her nerves grew as the group’s collective silence deepened while she spoke.

They were within their rights to turn on Orla and Finn, demand their money back, report them to whoever you reported fraudulent immersive Jacobean experiences in the Highlands.

The simple truth was that Orla had charged them a lot of money for the privilege of doing farm chores.

Their anger, if that’s what they were feeling – it was hard to tell because they were all staring at her gape-mouthed – would be justified. And, as such, there were a number of ways this could go.