in Tinsel Town, Maggie remembered Euan saying, but had passed on all her beauty and ambition to her daughter, Connie. There wasn’t a resident in the whole of Lochnabrae who didn’t know of the ‘Connie connection’ and there was always great excitement when a new Connie film was released, with carloads of residents making the short journey to the old cinema in Strathcorrie. It didn’t matter if it was a thriller or a romantic comedy, a leading role or a voice-over in an animated movie, they were there to support their Connie.
‘We really should have our own cinema here,’ Euan had announced one evening.
‘Where?’ Maggie had asked, trying to imagine such a luxury in the main street of the village.
Euan shook his head. ‘I don’t know but we should do something – have some way of acknowledging our Hollywood lassie.’
And that’s when he’d come up with the idea for a fan club.
‘With websites and everything,’ he’d said, waving a great hand in the air as if he knew what he was talking about.
‘Oh, you have a computer now, do you?’ Maggie had asked wryly.
‘Well, no, but you do,’ he’d said.
Maggie had leapt at the chance to run the fan club. She’d always adored movies and this was her chance to be a small part of that magical world, and so she’d got to work, creating a website, updating the pages with new pictures of Connie and all the latest movie news.
Then the fan mail had started to flood in with people asking for signed photos of their beloved actress.
‘What shall I do?’ Maggie had asked Euan. ‘They all expect a reply!’
‘Then send them what they want.’
‘But surely we’ll be done for fraud!’
‘Och! Nobody will ever find out.’
‘But it’ll cost money if we start sending out signed photos and things,’ Maggie said, thinking of the meagre income she had from the shop.
‘Then charge them.’
Maggie had gasped and had taken the problem to the Connie Committee.
‘We could make a small charge,’ Hamish – Maggie’s brother – had said. ‘Just to cover costs, you understand.’
‘That’s not unreasonable, is it?’ Euan had said. ‘We can’t have you out of pocket, can we?’
Maggie waited to hear what everyone else thought. ‘Angus?’ she probed.
Angus hurrumped from his corner in the pub. ‘Waste of time. We should have a decent fan club. For westerns.’
Everyone groaned. They were all well aware of Angus’s obsession with the western. He was even wearing cowboy boots just then.
‘Westerns are the thing,’ he said. ‘I’ve got no time for anything else.’
‘Rubbish!’ Maggie said. ‘I saw those tears in your eyes when we went to see Connie in Waltz with Me.’
Angus shifted uneasily in his seat. ‘That was a fly,’ he said. ‘I had a fly in my eye that evening.’
‘Right,’ Maggie said with a grin. ‘Alastair? What do you think we should do?’ she asked, turning to Lochnabrae’s resident playwright for a sensible answer.
‘Well,’ Alastair said, his dark eyebrows hovering over eyes the colour of the loch in summer, ‘the village hall needs some money spent on it.’
‘Aye, that it does,’ Euan agreed.
Maggie frowned. ‘What’s that got to do with the signed photographs?’
‘If we charge for them, any profit could go to the upkeep of the village hall.’
‘But nobody would pay for that!’ Maggie protested.
‘They might if you call it the Theatre Charity. Make a small donation to our Theatre Charity and we will be happy to send you a signed photograph of Ms Gordon,’ Alastair said.
‘And where do I get all these signed photos from?’ Maggie asked.
‘There’s the newsagents in Strathcorrie. They have one of them big printers now, don’t they?’ Hamish said.
‘Okay,’ Maggie said. ‘But how do I get them signed?’
Everyone looked at Maggie.
‘Use your imagination, lass,’ Euan said.
And so Maggie had. She was really quite good at it too because, as a youngster, she used to daydream about what it would be like to be a film star or – at the very least – a character from a film like the ones Connie Gordon played. How wonderful it must be to be beautiful and adored like Connie Gordon and how very different from the little life that Maggie led working in the village shop in Lochnabrae. She would while away many a happy hour in the shop imagining that she was like a Connie Gordon heroine and that a happy ending of her own was just around the corner. For Maggie, running the fan club was like giving in to her inner film star for a few short hours a week and it didn’t seem like she was doing anything wrong.
During those early days of the fan club, Maggie had found a copy of a signed photo of Connie Gordon online and had printed it out, studying the feminine flourish and practising it over and over again until she felt that the very spirit of Connie Gordon was with her and she’d got it just right. Which was just as well because demand was high even with the charge that they made.
Sitting back down at her desk, Maggie woke up her computer and stared at the image on the screen.
‘Hello, Connie,’ she said with a bright smile. ‘How are you today?’
The beautiful face stared back at her. Soft white skin that was almost luminous, dark red hair like a silk curtain, bright hazel eyes and that gorgeous megawatt smile that regularly graced a million magazines.
‘You’ll be wearing that smile tonight, won’t you?’ Maggie said, checking the online Connie diary and noting that it was the ‘Cream of the Screen’ awards ceremony. Maggie gazed out of the window but, for once, she didn’t notice the view. She was imagining the gowns and the jewels and the wonderful new photos of Connie that she would soon have for the website.
‘How wonderful it would be to walk down that red carpet,’ she said with a wistful sigh. ‘Lucky, lucky Connie.’
Chapter Two
A big bright smile. That’s what everyone wanted so why was it so hard to give? Connie walked down the red carpet, trying desperately not to trip over in the silver sequinned dress, which kept wrapping itself around her legs. It was most uncomfortable even if it did make her look like a million dollars. It was the last time she’d be wearing one of Tierney Mueller’s designs, that was for sure. He’d practically submerged her with clothes for the last few months and she’d finally given in but she was regretting her decision now. She had to give an award
