The Runaway Actress

She threw him a heated glare as he stepped back, thrusting the award at him and moving to one side as he gave his acceptance speech. She was not going to make it easy for the press to get a photo of the two of them together.

Once it was over, the two of them left the stage together and, as soon as they were away from the cameras, Connie felt Forrest’s hand on her bottom again.

‘HEY!’ she yelled. What was it with men and her ass? She couldn’t remember putting out an advert in the newspapers saying, Men – please grab my ass whenever you pass.

Forrest’s hands leapt in the air. ‘Only appreciating what was once mine.’

‘You gave up all rights to that when I caught you with that sleaze in your trailer,’ Connie said.

‘That was a misunderstanding,’ he said. ‘I told you at the time. My zip was stuck. She was helping me fix it. I swear we weren’t a couple until after you broke up with me! I swear, Connie!’

‘God!’ Connie said. ‘Can you hear yourself ? You might’ve fooled the judges on the panel tonight but you’re the worst actor I’ve ever met.’

Connie didn’t bother returning to her seat. She’d had more than enough for one evening. She found a nice member of staff who called a cab for her and showed her out of a quiet exit where she could make an escape without the clamour of fans and photographers.

Once home, Connie struggled with the dress fastenings. It was more difficult than she’d imagined and it took several minutes of yoga-like twists before she was free and could wriggle out of the skintight fabric. She shook her head upside down, ruffling her hair as she often did when she was stressed.

What a night, she thought. It was the end of a long and taxing week but next week would be just as bad and the week after that wouldn’t prove any less demanding with parties, ceremonies, press junkets and rehearsals. She hadn’t had a break for months – years. Her agent just kept on putting her up for role after role. It was what she’d asked for in the beginning but she’d made ten films in the last four years and she was exhausted.

Kicking off her impossibly high heels, she sighed and pulled on a cool linen dressing gown before making her way to the kitchen. She needed wine: a nice big glass of something very expensive to take the edge off the evening.

Opening her fridge, she was greeted by a positive jungle. Everything was green. It was the usual problem: a fridge full of food but absolutely nothing to eat. Connie groaned at the sight of it. It was all part of the latest LA diet but, however healthy it was, Connie couldn’t help wishing she could just sit down with a hamburger and fries like a regular person. But hadn’t her agent told her to watch her weight?

‘You’re piling it on again, Connie,’ he’d told her last week. ‘This industry doesn’t tolerate fat.’

Fat! FAT? Connie had never been more than nine stone in her whole life and, at five foot eight, that was positively skeletal. Sometimes she wondered what it would be like to live a normal life. To get up and not have to worry about what the papers were saying about you, to choose your food because it was what you wanted to eat, and not to be constantly told what you were going to be doing for the next year – the next decade.

Grabbing the bottle of wine, Connie padded through to her living room, her feet sinking into the luxurious white carpet she’d chosen for the whole house. It was an enormous room that overlooked the vast swimming pool and gardens, and Connie had filled it with beautiful antiques, from the Regency mahogany sideboard to the satinwood table. A nineteenth-century chandelier hung from the centre of the room. It would have looked more at home in an English Georgian manor house rather than in her very modern Hollywood home but Connie had fallen in love with its sparkling teardrop crystals and insisted on having it.

Her bedroom was the same. Reached by a Gone with the Wind staircase, the room was stuffed with the very finest money could buy because what else did she have to spend it on? There was a vast French rococo bed in antique gold, an enormous gilt mirror that bounced the light back from the balcony doors and an exquisite brass-inlaid secretaire in that she locked away all her personal documents.

Finishing her wine and heading upstairs to her bedroom, she removed her dressing gown and realised that she was still wearing her diamond choker. She unfastened it and returned it to its blue velvet box. She’d bought it as a special gift to herself after she’d heard she’d been nominated for an Oscar. Most actresses hired their jewellery for Oscar night but Connie had wanted to wear something that was hers – something that she could keep. She remembered the gentlemen from the jewellers who had turned up at her house with a selection of necklaces for her to choose from. There had been an amazing egg-sized sapphire pendant, which had reminded Connie of the colour of the ocean. There was a square-cut emerald necklace, which had looked dazzlingly bright when she’d tried it on against her pale skin. Then there’d been the rubies – twelve blood-red stones nestling in a lace of sparkling diamonds. But, in the end, Connie had chosen the diamond choker. It was breathtaking in its simplicity and could be worn with so many of her gowns.

Brushing her fingers over the stones, she closed the box and took it to the vault in the corner of the room. There, it joined a family of jewels from Connie’s favourite garnet earrings to platinum watches and rings set with every stone imaginable. There was even a diamond tiara in there. Connie had worn it just once.

Taking a quick shower and smearing her face with the latest skin-tightening cream that promised to keep her looking like a nineteen-year-old, Connie slipped between the silky sheets of her bed, her head crashing onto the pale pillows. She felt as if she could sleep for a fortnight. Or for ever.

Closing her eyes, she thought about her beautiful home filled with beautiful things. She had more than any young woman had a right to and she knew how lucky she was, she really did.

‘So why am I not happy?’ she whispered into the dark night.

Chapter Three

Connie woke up with a start. There was somebody in her house and that somebody was shouting. Really, really loudly. She groaned and turned over, hiding her head under her duvet. Why oh why had she given her personal trainer a key to her house?

‘Up, up, up!’ he cried as he took the stairs two at a time. ‘Sleepyheads don’t get fit!’

‘I don’t want to get fit. Not this morning,’ she said to herself. ‘I want to sleeeeeeep!’

‘WAKE UP!’ he shouted as he entered the room – all six foot five of him.

‘I’m awake!’ Connie said.

‘I want twenty stomach crunches right now!’

Connie muttered something under her breath.

‘What was that, sweetie? You want to do fifty?’ he said with a naughty grin.

‘Go away, Danny!’ Connie said, sitting up in bed, her red hair tousled and tangled.

‘You don’t pay me to go away. You pay me to get your ass moving! Come on,’ he said, clapping a pair of enormous hands together.

Connie sighed. She loved Danny dearly. He was loyal and sweet and always made her laugh, but there were certain mornings when she wished he didn’t exist.

Ten minutes later and they were in the basement gymnasium and Connie was being put through her paces. It was a rude awakening and she really should have been used to it by now because Danny had been turning up three times a week for the past four years.

‘Your body is your business,’ she would silently chant to herself whilst pounding on the running machine. ‘You have to keep in shape,’ she’d repeat with each stretch on the rowing machine.

But if only her body was her business. The trouble was, everyone seemed to have something to say about her body. Her trainer, her agent, her publicist – to say nothing of the press who regularly snapped her from all angles and then ran headlines such as ‘Podgy Connie Piles on the Pounds’. The unhappy truth was that acting was about more than her ability to inhabit a role and convince an audience that her emotions were real. It was about how she looked both on screen and off and that pressure could sometimes be unbearable.

After ten minutes on the exercise bike, Connie hung her head.

‘Can we go running, Danny? I want to get some fresh air.’ She looked up and caught Danny’s eye. He didn’t look happy with the suggestion.

‘You know what happened last time.’

‘I know.’

‘We weren’t so much running as running away!’

Connie nodded, remembering the hoard of paps that had torn after them with their intrusively long lenses.

‘I wish I could run away,’ Connie said.

‘Aw, don’t say that!’ Danny said, his face wrinkling in dismay.

‘But I do. I want to go somewhere where I can just be me for a while without a telephoto lens poking at me or some journalist tearing me apart.’

‘I don’t think such a place exists,’ Danny said.

‘No,’ Connie said. ‘You’re probably right. But can’t we at least try to pretend?’

‘You want to go to the park?’

Connie nodded.

‘We’ll have to go in my car, then. Everybody knows yours.’

Connie grinned and grabbed her towel.

Danny’s black RV was parked in the driveway. ‘Get in the back and duck down,’ he said.

Connie climbed in the back of his car, buckled up and then laid her head down on the seat. She’d given Danny her remote control to open the wrought iron gates and, as usual, there was a group of paparazzi camping outside.

‘Don’t they have homes to go to?’ Danny asked as he hit the gas.

‘Apparently not,’ Connie said. ‘I thought about inviting them in for dinner one evening. I’d just come back from a charity gala and felt a bit lonely. It’s always odd to be surrounded by hundreds of people one minute and then to come back here and be totally alone.’

‘But you didn’t invite them in, did you?’ Danny asked, eyebrows raised.

‘No, of course not!’

Danny breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Okay, it’s safe to surface.’

Connie got up from the back seat and it was then that she noticed the newspaper on the seat beside her. She picked it up.

‘Oh, don’t bother reading that,’ Danny said a little too quickly. ‘There’s nothing in it.’

‘Danny, you’re a terrible liar,’ she said, opening the paper and staring in horror at the headline that greeted her on page three.

Connie Alone!

Stunning actress, Connie Gordon, one of the world’s most famous movie stars, attended last night’s ‘Cream of the Screen’ awards ceremony on her own. The 29-year-old actress recently broke up with fellow actor, Forrest Greaves, and it would seem that she’s not been lucky in love since …

Accompanying the story was a photograph of Connie from the red carpet but, instead of printing one of the hundreds of pictures they must have taken of Connie’s famous megawatt smile, they’d published one of her frowning. It must have been the millisecond that she’d caught her heels on her dress. There was also a photograph of the heavily-pregnant Candy with the caption: ‘Expecting great things – the woman Forrest Greaves left Connie for’.

‘Goddamn it!’ she cursed and then her eye caught something else. It was a quote from her mother.

‘“Connie is devastated,” Vanessa Gordon told us. “She’d already started planning the wedding with Forrest”.’

‘They’ve interviewed my mother!’ she shouted.

‘I told you not to read it!’ Danny said from the front seat.

‘Why do they do that? Why?’

‘To sell more papers, that’s all.’

Connie sighed. ‘Take me home,’ she said.

‘What? You don’t want to go running?’

She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. I just don’t feel like it any more.’

‘But it might do you some good. You know, pound it out of your system.’ He looked at her through the rear-view mirror and noticed the tears sparkling in her eyes. ‘I’ll take you home,’ he said.

Once Danny had dropped her off, Connie kicked off her trainers and wandered through to her office. Her personal assistant had left her diary open on the desk and there was a planner pinned to the wall too. Connie glanced at it. She was meant to be starting rehearsals next week for her next film – and the thought of it made her groan.

‘It’ll do your career no end of good,’ Bob Braskett, her agent, had told her. ‘This is a real up-and-coming director. Teenagers really go for him. You’ll gain a whole new audience here.’

There was also a magazine interview penned in, and two charity events. She sighed. If only she could get away from it all. If only she could escape!

The telephone rang and made Connie jump. She didn’t normally answer the phone but, as her PA wasn’t in until later, she picked it up herself.

‘Connie!’ a voice drawled. It was Forrest Greaves.

‘What do you want?’ she snapped.

‘Aw, don’t be like that, sweetheart. You didn’t give me a chance to talk to you last night.’

‘Yeah? Well, I said all I wanted to say,’ Connie said.

‘Yeah, but I didn’t.’

She sighed. ‘What do you want, Forrest?’

‘I want to say that I miss you,’ he said, ‘and I think we should give it another go.’

‘What?’ Connie couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

‘I miss you so much, honey.’

‘Don’t honey me! You’re about to have a child with that Candy woman, for heaven’s sake.’

‘That could be anybody’s child,’ he said. ‘Anyway, she means nothing to me. It’s you I want to be with.’

Connie felt a shiver of disgust creep up her spine. ‘Forrest—’

‘Listen,’ he interrupted. ‘I know I messed up but I swear that won’t happen again. You’re my one and only, Connie. You know we’re right for each other. I know you do.’

‘But I don’t want anything to do with you, Forrest. I—’

‘I mean – come on – I’m an award-winning actor now. I’m right up there with you, baby. Just think about it – what a couple we’ll make. We’ll send Hollywood dizzy. They won’t be able to get enough of us! “Forrest and Connie”, “Greaves and Gordon”! Just imagine the headlines!’

Connie slammed the phone down and let out a scream. How dare he propose getting back together with her when he’d treated her so badly and when he was about to become a father. Why couldn’t he just leave her alone? He really was the limit.

She closed her eyes and took some deep breaths. She needed to calm down before she began hyperventilating.

‘Count to ten,’ she told herself as she breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth for a few steadying moments. ‘That’s better,’ she said. ‘Don’t let him get to you.’

It was then that something caught her eye. Sitting in a neat stack on the desk was the latest fan mail left by her personal assistant. On the top was a curious pink and yellow checked envelope. Connie picked it up and looked at it. It was from overseas. Scotland!

‘It’s tartan!’ Connie laughed, slipping the letter out and unfolding it.

Dear Ms Gordon

It seems rather a long time since I last wrote to you and I’m so sorry! We’ve been very busy here in Lochnabrae. As you know, the fan club is going from strength to strength. We get lots of hits on the website and we even had a Connie Gordon season last month showing a film of yours each night at our village hall. We then voted on our favourite film – it was Milly in the Morning, by the way – and then Isla Stuart, who runs the bed and breakfast here, made a ‘Milly’ cake with pink and yellow icing. You’ll notice we’ve got pink and yellow stationery now too – my brother, Hamish, designed a Connie tartan based on Milly’s gorgeous dress in the film. I hope you like it.

Connie took another look at the envelope and laughed. It really was very pretty.

So, as you can see, we’ve been keeping busy. But that doesn’t excuse me forgetting to write to you and I just wanted to extend our invitation to you once again. You know you’ll always be made welcome here in Lochnabrae. It’s a beautiful part of the Highlands with mountains and rivers and our very own loch in which you can swim. (Well, about twice a year if it gets really hot!) We have a small bed and breakfast and Isla says you’d be made very welcome if you wanted to stay. She has radiators in all the rooms and hot water bottles aplenty if you come in winter. Or summer. And I’ve got a spare room too. That’s to say, most of the time – unless Hamish has too many at the pub and can’t make it home which isn’t often, thank goodness.

I know you’re probably very busy in Hollywood with your films and stuff and we must seem like another planet to you but we’re a very friendly planet and we’d love to see you.

All best wishes from

Maggie Hamill

(Administrator of the Connie Gordon Fan Club) xx

Connie read the letter through once more. Lochnabrae. She hadn’t thought about that place for years. It had been the birthplace of her mother and she remembered being fascinated by stories of it when she was young. Stories about icy swims in the loch, thick mists that clouded the houses and snowdrifts that would cut the village off for weeks. It was a magical, almost mystical place on the other side of the world – so far away from the dirt and dazzle of Hollywood.

Connie’s eyes widened as she thought about it. Hadn’t she just been praying for an escape? For peace? For a place where she could lose herself and leave all her troubles behind her including lying, cheating ex-boyfriends and mothers that couldn’t keep their mouths shut? And here was a letter from her fan club promising her all those things. It was fate. It was destiny. It was plain common sense.

Without losing a single moment, she picked up the phone and called her PA.

‘Samantha? It’s Connie. I’m sorry to ring you so early but I thought you should know that I’ll be leaving town today. I’m going away. No, Bob doesn’t know. Tell him it’s family business. I don’t know how long it’ll be for. Yes, he’ll have to deal with those film people himself, and the charity events too. Tell him I need a vacation. A really good vacation.’

Chapter Four

Maggie had got up extra early to search the web for photos of Connie at the ‘Cream of the Screen’ awards ceremony. It didn’t take long to find some.

‘Oh!’ she cried, her eyes feasting on the sparkling silver dress she was wearing. ‘That’s the most beautiful dress in the world!’ Maggie right-clicked on the image and saved it to her computer for use on the fan site. Copyright? Smopyright! This was fan business and fans needed up-to-date, drop-dead gorgeous photos of their idol.

She searched around some more and found two different angles, instantly recognising the diamond necklace Connie was wearing. Maggie could list the other three events her idol had worn it to and which dresses she’d been wearing it with. She prided herself on her knowledge; she was the keeper of all things Connie.

One of the photos she was now saving showed Connie in profile with her perfect nose. Maggie automatically wrinkled her own huge tuber of a nose, wondering if a lowly shopkeeper could justify plastic surgery. And then she found a photo of Connie handing the award to the actor, Forrest Greaves.

Maggie whistled. ‘Now that must’ve been interesting,’ she said to herself, knowing how he’d double-crossed Connie on the set of one of her films. Still, he was devilishly handsome. Perhaps it had been worth having her heart broken. She saved the picture with a quick click and then got to work updating the website blog.

There was always so much to do. Connie was always in the news and Maggie loved unearthing the stories on the internet although she didn’t publish everything because a lot of the stories were clearly fabricated. Like the time it had been reported that Connie had been abducted by aliens and given birth to ET’s lovechild. Maggie shook her head as she remembered. Poor Connie. It must be so frustrating to have such rubbish printed about you. The UK press was bad enough but the US really did take some beating.

Maggie had often dreamed about visiting America and going to see the homes of the stars in the Hollywood Hills but she didn’t suppose it was ever going to happen. People like her just didn’t travel. She’d once been to Edinburgh on a school trip. They’d seen the castle and heard the canon fire, and had visited the dark narrow streets of the Old Town and the wide Georgian splendour of the New Town but all Maggie could remember about the trip was how sick she’d felt on the coach. It had taken hours to reach their capital city and hours back to the Highlands and Maggie had been completely done in by it all. So how on earth would she fare on a trip to America? She’d never survive the ordeal, would she?

‘I’ll never leave Lochnabrae,’ she said to herself. But it wasn’t so bad as fates went. She really did love the little Highland community with its tiny white houses and stunning views, and most of its residents were happy with their lot too. She couldn’t think of anyone from the older gener-ation who’d ever been over the border into England let alone left the UK. Mrs Wallace and her husband holidayed in Mull every single year and Isla had once had a trip to Oban but hadn’t liked it. Sandy Macdonald had ventured further afield in his youth but he was a hearth and slippers type these days. He didn’t even like going into Strathcorrie on market days any more.

‘Too many damned people!’ he’d say. ‘You can’t walk in a straight line without bumping into somebody or other.’

What would Connie Gordon think of them all, Maggie wondered? She’d travelled the whole world, hadn’t she? The people of Lochnabrae would seem so very dull and unadventurous to her.

Maggie looked away from the computer screen, her eyes drifting to the view outside. What would Connie think of their little corner of the world, she wondered?

‘I don’t suppose we’ll ever know,’ she said to herself before returning her gaze to the computer in search of more images of her idol.

Chapter Five

Like most women, Connie had never been very good at travelling light and, as she waited for her luggage on the carousel along with everyone else at Glasgow Airport, she was beginning to wonder how she’d manage on her own. Of course, she could have travelled VIP and had everything done for her but she’d been determined that this trip would be different. She’d booked her own taxi to the airport and had even booked her own tickets, which was a new experience as she usually left such mundane jobs to her PA, but it had felt good doing something for herself for once in her life – even if she had got a bit lost walking into the airport and had nearly missed her flight when she couldn’t find her passport.

To avoid the press and the fuss that usually went hand in hand with luxury travel, Connie had decided to fly to Scotland incognito. She’d scraped her trademark red hair into a ponytail and flattened a baseball cap onto her head. A face free from make-up and the obligatory enormous sunglasses completed the disguise. It was rather like playing a part, she thought – the part of an ordinary girl going on holiday – and she’d been enjoying the experience until it came to hauling her own luggage off the carousel and struggling with it.

‘Can I help you?’ a gentleman’s voice suddenly asked with a soft Scottish accent.

Connie turned around. A tall athletic man in a nice suit stood looking at her. ‘Oh, thank you,’ she said and watched as he found a trolley for her and placed her three suitcases onto it.

‘Are you wanting a taxi?’ he asked.

‘Yes, I am.’

‘Allow me,’ he said, leading the way to the taxi rank outside the airport.

‘I can’t thank you enough,’ Connie said, removing her sunglasses and smiling. As soon as she did, she knew she’d made a mistake.