busily to herself as she pours out imaginary pots of tea for me, I gaze out from our hillside perch beside the lochan to where the wider waters of the sea loch spread out below us. The light skims across its surface like a skipping stone, splintering into fragments that dazzle eyes more used to the grey of the winter sky.
It must be a trick of that same light because, for a moment, I imagine I see the hulks of great ships anchored there. Perhaps they are ghosts, shadows left behind from those years when the loch was a secret gathering place. I blink and they disappear, leaving only the water and the island with the open sea beyond.
A cloud passes across the face of the sun and, as the light shifts, suddenly I become aware of the deep, dark waters of the lochan, hidden beneath their drift of lilies. On the crest of the hill above us, a red deer hind watches silently, slipping away when I lift my head to meet her gaze. And then the shadows pass and the sunlight is back. From the slopes above us, I can hear the lark’s song again. I wish it had words so that she could tell me all she knows.
For this spot, too – hidden above the sea in the arms of the hills – is a place of secrets. This is a place where lives began and lives ended. A place where the only witnesses were the skylarks and the deer.
Lexie, 1977
As I hurry along the street, weaving in and out through the crowds, the clock at Piccadilly Circus tells me what I already know: I’m late. And this audition is my big chance, a shot at a major female lead in a West End production. In my haste, I catch the platform toe of my boot on an uneven paving stone and trip, gasping with the sudden pain of it, stumbling against a passer-by.
‘Sorry,’ I mutter, but he doesn’t even raise his head to acknowledge either the contact or the apology and we both hurry onwards, caught up in the rush of our busy lives.
I’m used to it now, the impersonality of the city, although at first, all those years ago, I found the move to London pretty tough. I missed Keeper’s Cottage so much it hurt. And I missed my mother even more. She was my friend, my confidante, my greatest supporter and I thought of her often, alone in the little whitewashed house beside the loch. The city was full of people and lights and the sounds of the traffic. Even a cup of tea didn’t taste the same as it did back home in the Scottish Highlands because the kettle in the galley kitchen in my digs was encrusted with phlegm-coloured limescale that tainted the water as it boiled.
But, at the same time, a part of me was relieved to have left Ardtuath. The anonymity of the city was welcome after the claustrophobia of living in a tiny community where everybody made it their business to know your business and no one was ever backward in coming forward with their considered opinion on it. My new life gave me a freedom that I’d never had at home and I was determined to move forward into my bright future without so much as a glance back over my shoulder.
I’d soon made friends at the stage school I was attending as a scholarship student and begun to adapt. The long hours of gruelling classes – dance, singing, acting – and the novel excitement of my urban life quickly replaced my old reality with a new and far more superficially glamorous one.
Of course, that reality wasn’t really so glamorous at all. Up close, the costumes and make-up lost their magic under the glare of the spotlights, revealing their makeshift tackiness. We would change in cramped dressing rooms, vying for space in front of the mirror among a clutter of clothes, eyeliner and hairpins, where everything was covered in a fine layer of the powder that we used to set our make-up and kill the shine. The air would be heavy with the smells of sweat and stale perfume and the damp soot carried in on our coats from the London streets, and we would snap at each other, releasing little bursts of pre-performance nerves. But all of that would be forgotten in an instant with the adrenaline rush of the five-minute call.