Free For Faughie's Sake by Laura Marney Page B

me, the weekend had been an unqualified disaster. He was never going to come back.

Chapter 17
    When Global Imperial’s Accommodation Manager asked me this time for my bank details I gave her my new Inverfaughie Credit Union account. This might be the ideal way to sneak it past the tax man.
    ‘Right,’ she said, sweeping her index finger across her iPad, ‘I’ve pinged a 30 per cent deposit across for you now. We settle in full on completion of the contract.’
    I laughed at how surreal this seemed. She had just contracted to pay me enough money for a deposit on a flat in Glasgow. All I had to do now was cook full Scottish breakfasts for a few weeks. That and start looking online at properties for sale in Glasgow. I could be back in the West End by October. I’d better get stocked up on full Scottish breakfast gubbins: tottie scones and the like.
    *
    They were beautiful, in the way that all young girls are beautiful, their faces blameless and rosy with expectation. Hardly a moment ago they had played with skipping ropes and dollies. Disenchantment hadn’t had time to weary them, yet, and so, in period costume, jeans or mini-skirts, they waited. Tall thin ones,small fat ones, and every other female body shape checked their appearance in compact mirrors, applied more make-up, fixed each other’s hair. The longer they waited the more their chatter and laughter increased. From the kitchen the sound made me think of a flock of seagulls that had lost its bearings and swooped down the chimney into the village hall. The girls were here to audition for a part in
Freedom Come All of You
. Jenny was a key holder for the village hall. She’d asked me to help her serve coffee and cake and wash up afterwards. It wouldn’t normally have been a very enticing proposition but when she told me it was for the movie I’ll admit I was nosey. When she showed me the net curtain she had draped over the serving hatch, I was in.
    ‘Obviously we won’t be in the hall when the auditions are actually taking place but – and here is where the net curtain reigns supreme –’ she said, ‘it’s as good as a two-way mirror. If we keep the hatch open and stay quiet we’ll see the whole show. Ringside seats.’
    ‘I always had you down as a Curtain Twitcher.’
    ‘This audition is what’s known in the biz as an open casting call – anybody can try; like the “X-Factor”. Global Imperial say they want to fully engage with the community, so they’re seeing local girls. It’s only four lines but it’s an important part: the wife of the hero, Tony Ramos. There’s to be a long lingering kiss between them. If he was ten years older I’d break him in for them myself,’ Jenny tittered, ‘although there’s no sign of Tony yet,’ she said, peering through the curtain.
    I took a turn at the old ladyish white lace net curtain. I had to admit, it was a pretty effective camouflage. The film director, Hollywood wunderkind Raymondo Land, sat with four Global Imperial staff at a long table at one end of the hall with the hopefuls at the other, corralled behind a plastic tape barrier. After we served the movie people their coffee – the girls were to be offered no such hospitality – Jenny and I returned to the kitchen. There we organised our own coffee and cake, made ourselves comfortable behind the net curtain and watched the drama unfold.
    The girls were called forward one at a time and asked to read just one line. It was dialogue between the hero and his wife, Raymondo Land explained. The wife was to beg the hero not to go into battle as he would surely die. The American man standing in for the Tony Ramos part, a tall thin bald man, mumbled his way through the lines, never looking at the nervous, faltering girls.
    ‘I must go not for self but for country for Scotland,’ he mumbled.
    ‘Please don’t go, they’ll kill you,’ the girls replied, with varying degrees of credibility.
    I wasn’t impressed with the script so far. If this was