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A View to a Kilt – Wendy Holden
About the book
Forget about Cool Britannia and Gallic Chic. Scotland is having a fashion moment...
London's most glamorous glossy magazine is in trouble. Advertising revenues are non existent, and if editor Laura Lake can't pick them up, she's out of a job.
According to those in the know, Scotland is having a fashion moment. Haggis tempura is on Michelin-starred menus, smart spas are offering porridge facials, and a chain of eco-hotels is offering celebrity bagpipe lessons. So Laura's off to a baronial estate in the Scottish Highlands to get a slice of this ultra-high-end market.
It's supposed to be gorgeous, glitzy and glamorous. But intrigue follows Laura like night follows day. And at Glenravish Castle – a shooting lodge fit for a billionaire – Laura finds herself hunting for a scoop that won't just save her job, it could save her life...
EXTRACT
Famous for break-up songs like ‘You Fat-Shamed Me On Facebook’, Hudson was a pop star of such magnitude she could bring governments down with a single tweet. Not that she ever troubled to; Hudson Grater’s focus was, first and always, Hudson Grater.
‘Ah yes,’ Laura said, when Lorne, apparently realising he was revealing more than he was supposed to, abruptly shut up. ‘I know Hudson well.’
Lorne’s small, sharp eyes widened. ‘You know her?’ The eyes swept swiftly over Laura who did not, admittedly, look like the bosom friend of a megastar. Now, as always, she was wearing black jeans, a tight blue shirt, heeled Chelsea boots and a long beige trench. Her long black hair had not been brushed since lunchtime and her sole nod to make-up was red lipstick and a flick of eyeliner.
This had been Laura’s unvarying look since she’d first come to London some years ago. She had been surprised and relieved to find that her personal style, arrived at in Paris entirely through lack of money, was considered in the British capital the height of Gallic chic. People even thought her hair, whose fringe she cut with kitchen scissors, was the work of a top stylist.
‘She used to go out with a friend of mine,’ Laura told Lorne. It was nothing less than the truth. Laura had met Hudson Grater during the ‘Three Weddings’ story. At the time, the singer had been dating Laura’s friend Caspar, a resting actor who, following an unexpected sequence of events, had become the latest James Bond. His predecessor as Bond, who Hudson had also dated, was an actor called Orlando Chease. Together they had been known as CheaseGrater.
Lorne gasped. ‘Not Dominic Clutterbox?’
Hudson had a weakness for posh English actors and Clutterbox was the latest. The relationship had, as they always did, ended acrimoniously. Her latest break-up hit, ‘Didn’t Realise You Wore A Wig,’ was currently topping the charts.
‘No,’ said Laura, ‘but who knew he wore a wig, anyway? His hair always looked so natural.’
They were happily discussing this when Lorne’s phone rang. He stepped away to answer it and Laura was left wondering where, exactly, Harry had got to. It still felt odd even expecting him to turn up – for so many years his whereabouts had been a complete mystery. Their relationship had involved long periods apart, during which Harry would suddenly appear and make passionate love to her before shrugging on his leather jacket and disappearing into the dawn.
Recalling this, Laura felt a faint pang of regret. Living like that had been frustrating, but also exciting. Now Harry had, at a vastly inflated salary, been persuaded by his newspaper to run the foreign desk, rather than merely be one of its reporters, things were… What was the word?
Cosier? Boring?
Certainly they were less thrilling. Sometimes they were even annoying. A classical music fan, Harry was obsessed with Radio 3. He played it all the time in the kitchen and it got into Laura’s brain; she would wake in the night with violins screeching in her head. She wasn’t sure about Harry’s slippers, either. A heatless flat during an early posting to Moscow had rendered him ultra-susceptible to cold. But while the cause was dashing, the effect – a pair of moth-eaten moccasins with the backs trodden down – was middle-aged. And Harry turned up Laura’s radiators to such an extent she sometimes stood outside the door to cool down.
‘In what sense is this a riverside development?’ Laura asked Lorne when he had finished his call. He was looking sharp and impatient again; their brief moment of connection over Dominic Clutterbox’s hair was evidently over.
‘I can’t see the river at all. We must be about five streets back from it.’
Lorne assured her that you got a fine view of it from the upper floors. ‘But we’re looking at one on the second floor,’ Laura pointed out.
The Corkscrew’s glass doors now sprang back to reveal a tall broad-shouldered figure in a long dark coat. It took a second or two to register this was Harry; his smart new office look had taken some getting used to. The never-washed jeans and the eternal leather jacket, in which he’d once practically slept, had become smart suits worn with shirts, if not ties. Harry loped towards them, newspaper tucked under his arm, his dark, handsome face creased with irritation.
About the author
Number-one bestselling author Wendy Holdenwas a journalist on Tatler, The Sunday Times, and the Mail on Sunday before becoming an author. She has since written ten consecutive Sunday TimesTop Ten bestsellers. She lives in Derbyshire. Vist her website at www.wendyholden.net
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