Page 37 of What Would Dolly Do?

T here certainly was only one Dolly Parton in the world, and I knew her story inside out.

The woman who had fought her way from an impoverished childhood in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee to become an American icon; a singer, songwriter, actress and philanthropist whose name and image were synonymous with the very best of country music.

I also knew that Dolly wasn’t scheduled to visit Edinburgh right now so what was she doing sitting in my bar?

From her tumbling blonde hair to her tiny waist and gravity-defying bosom more than a billion people across the world would be able to recognise Dolly Parton in an instant.

All except for me, that is. Because of course it wasn’t the actual, bona fide, real Dolly Parton sitting in Sonny’s Bar that day.

It wasn’t the one and only; instead it was one of the many, many lookalikes Dolly’s talent and fame had spawned across the globe.

Didn’t I know about those all too well, having been in that club for years myself?

Now this one was sat looking at me, her head on one side, with a quizzical look on her face.

‘What’s a gal gotta do to get a drink around here?

’ Her accent was pure Southern. I did a double take, wait a cotton-picking minute …

was I wrong? Was this really Dolly after all?

I’d thought I’d been hallucinating when I drove past her the other night but was I jumping to the wrong conclusion to immediately presume this must be an imposter, an impersonator, an impressionist of the highest calibre?

‘Dolly?’

Dolly slapped her hand down on the table and threw her head back releasing a burst of laughter. ‘Not quite, sweetie, but thanks for the vote of confidence, maybe you could write me a five-star review for my show.’

Dora, as she turned out to be, was an actress and she’d brought a play she’d written all about Dolly to the Fringe Festival. It was Dora I had seen making her way to her digs after a late-night show at The Assembly Rooms. Her play was called Dumb Blonde?

‘The question mark in the title is important,’ Dora told me after I’d fixed her a white wine spritzer.

‘As Dolly herself would say … she ain’t dumb …

and she ain’t no blonde either.’ Dora nodded her head in agreement with the sentiment Dolly often expressed after years of being treated with disdain by the country music industry and society as a whole.

Those who had taken Dolly for a fool in the past were the ones left looking foolish now, I thought.

Dora apologised for gate-crashing the bar before we were open but I waved away her offer to leave.

It felt like fate had brought yet another Dolly to Sonny’s, like a moth to a flame, and once I revealed my own past life exploits as a Dolly tribute singer Dora and I instantly bonded and she told me to call her ‘Dorrie’.

‘That’s what everyone calls me … smashing Dora and Dolly together … I like it and it’s helped me shake off all those daft Dora the Explorer jokes.’

‘You’re just who I needed to see right now, Dorrie,’ I told her as we clinked glasses, ‘although you did give me quite a fright.’

‘You look like a woman with a lot on her mind,’ she said. ‘You wanna offload?’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t know where to start,’ I told her.

Could I really confide in Dorrie about all the crazy things going on in my life right now?

My brand-new image, the launch of a fledgling music career, a bitter ex-boyfriend and a crazy Californian with a vendetta against me?

It all sounded mad when you listed it and that was before you even got to the bit where I was mixed up with a world-famous country music star.

‘Is there a man involved somewhere? Where there’s trouble there usually is.’

Dorrie almost choked on her spritzer when I grimaced at that and answered, ‘Not one man … three!’

‘Oh honey, you can’t keep all that bottled up, why don’t you tell me all about it.’

So I did. Not all of it. I kept the stuff about me and Tom Coltrane back but I told her all about gruesome Guy and how Robbie, my ex-Kenny Rogers partner had gone all Coward of the County and now also seemed to have it in for me.

‘I don’t know what I did to either of them to make them hate me so much?’ I wailed, but Dorrie fixed me with a steely stare.

‘Really? You really don’t know what you did to make them both so mad at you?’

I really didn’t. But it turned out Dorrie did. Gently but firmly she explained it all to me from her objective perspective and everything finally started to make some sense.

Guy was clearly a creep who had taken huge offence at my obvious revulsion at his odious advances, that much we both agreed. But it wasn’t just rejection that had motivated his plan to have me arrested, according to Dorrie, it was jealousy over my closeness to his parents.

‘So he comes back from California to find you, a cuckoo in his nest,’ she said, giving me such a lightbulb moment, it threw new light on everything that had been happening.

‘Not only are you more than capable of running the family business, his mom and dad have taken you to their hearts and clearly adore you. He obviously felt hugely threatened by that. He still does.’

‘But he drove me out of Grayson’s, so why is he still coming after me? … I think the nasty online reviews for Sonny’s are down to him too.’ More things were clicking into place for me.

‘Oh I bet they are.’ Dorrie was absolute in her conviction that Guy still saw me as a threat.

‘I’m afraid the wound Guy believes you have inflicted on him goes deep.

He’s probably terrified his parents are going to leave everything they have to you in their will, including their precious jewellery shop. ’

‘That’s ridiculous! They wouldn’t do that.’

‘Well it doesn’t seem likely he’ll win any Son of the Year awards right now and from what you’ve told me they are only getting more annoyed with him.

It sort of doesn’t matter how likely it is that they would, all that matters is whether Guy thinks they might.

Remember Reba, he’s a paranoid egotist who judges other people by his own very low standards, that’s a very dangerous combination. ’

I felt a shiver go down my back as Dorrie said that. Was I in real danger from Guy? What more could he possibly do to me? But Dorrie had moved her attention to Robbie.

‘Did you ever ask him how things were going in his new job in, where was it? … Peterborough?’

I had to admit I hadn’t. ‘He didn’t really give me much opportunity for that,’ I said, still smarting at the memory of his scornful face as he’d looked me up and down and tried to make me feel awkward and embarrassed about my revamped appearance and colourful new image.

‘But after he moved, didn’t you keep in touch to find out how he was settling in?’

I thought back to those frantically busy days when I was the newly appointed manager at Sonny’s.

Robbie had been great answering a blizzard of questions I’d sent him when things were still so new and unfamiliar to me.

Then Tom Coltrane had walked into the bar, my life and my bed, Sonny’s was catapulted into the news and consequently the bar was always busy.

My bosses were delighted takings were at a record high and I hadn’t needed Robbie’s help or advice anymore, so our communication had tailed off.

I was ashamed to admit I had no idea how things had been working out for him in Peterborough while I was riding the crest of the publicity wave and conducting a secret affair with a famous musician.

‘It doesn’t excuse his shameful behaviour but it might go some way to explaining it.’ Dorrie was good at this. She had an ability to look at things calmly, while applying wisdom she had clearly learned from experience. It was extraordinarily helpful.

We talked it all over for a while until eventually she eyed me warily and asked, ‘And what about man number three?’

I hesitated while internally debating how much I should say about Tom but Dorrie then reached down into her bag and pulled out a copy of the Scotland on Sunday newspaper.

As she laid it on the table between us I saw a huge picture of Tom and Juliana Ripon plastered on the front with a smaller, blurry picture of me and Tom taken by someone in the audience when we were performing together last night.

How the heck had that made the press already?

The headline screamed ‘COLTRANE DUMPS JULIANA – Heartbreak for Hollywood star as country music hunk is snared by unknown Scottish singer.’

I gulped and my voice was barely audible as I muttered, ‘I don’t think snared is quite the right word.’

Dorrie looked at me with … what was the expression on her face? Judgement? Distaste? Envy? I finally managed to meet her eyes but all I found there was sympathy.

‘Oh honey, this guy is gonna be trouble with a capital T.’