Chapter 5
That night, Peaches lay on the white day bed beneath the skylight window of her pristine white studio in the attics of the home which she had shared alone with her mum ever since her father had taken away his half of the parental property expertise, disappearing down south to make a killing on the Cotswolds’ buy-to-let market.
He had barely ever bothered to make the trip back, unless it was to do some point scoring with expensive surprises or gifts.
Through the glass, she gazed up at the moon, waning now, but still almost full, and she tried to take comfort in its serene presence. Tonight, however, nothing about her felt calm.
Willie had been all apologies in his messages to her, and he’d been keen to find out how she’d got on without him. She tried to reassure him with her reply.
Don’t worry, honestly. Somebody was there to step in. Luckily they were about your size and build so it worked out pretty well. Just concentrate on getting better x
Willie however, had jumped on this information like an intern on comped Fashion Week tickets.
Which somebody was this? And shaped just like me? Unlikely!
Her upside-down face emoji wasn’t enough to allay his curiosity; she could still feel him awaiting a proper response.
You know Mr Forte from the community garden project? It was his grandson. He’s called Euan.
He just happened to be there to step in? Is he our age?
Guess he probably is. Tiny bit older maybe.
There was no way Willie was jealous; he was too sweet, and too exhausted with glandular fever for that, but he was definitely getting at something.
Was he cute? What about single?
There it was.
I didn’t ask. But yes, he is quite nice
Your mum was OK with him helping?
Peaches took her time replying. She knew too well what her friend was getting at.
Carenza wasn’t keen on Peaches wasting her time with men.
She tolerated Willie because he’d been seeing the same guy since their second year and didn’t represent a threat to Peaches’ future career; in fact, he was her greatest supporter, after Carenza.
Plus, Peaches relied on Willie’s friendship so much she would never allow her mother to come between them.
But dating? That was another matter entirely.
Peaches didn’t dwell too much upon it these days, but she’d been heartsore as an eighteen-year-old when Carenza had talked her into breaking things off with her boyfriend in order to concentrate on university success.
She could hear her mother now, standing over her revision textbooks on the kitchen table.
‘You can have a boyfriend any old time, they’re ten a penny, especially spotty herberts like Hamish Skelton. But exams are a one-off opportunity!’
Carenza hadn’t shouted. She hadn’t had to say much at all, in fact, but by a slow application of pressure and cold-shouldered disapproval all summer long, the soft and sensitive teen had felt obliged to tell Hamish she was sorry, but she had to concentrate on her undergraduate programme at fashion school.
Peaches had done it so convincingly you’d have thought being a single girl was all her idea.
She’d often wondered what kind of person she would be now if she had been allowed to experience the natural cycles of young love and heartache.
What would she have learned about herself and the world around her had she experienced the full blossoming of love and desire into contentment.
Even if it had ended in a mutually agreed break up, or getting dumped.
She’d have learned what everyone else her age had gone through.
She’d have been in control of her destiny, and who knows, maybe she’d still be with Hamish today if their relationship hadn’t been cut off by Carenza?
She couldn’t bear people knowing how beholden she was to her mum. It had been mortifying at the time, and that embarrassment had only shifted into a secret shame as she grew older and her mum still hadn’t relinquished control over this part of her life.
They’d been little more than sweethearts but after a delirious few months of budding romance, separating herself from Hamish had felt like being torn apart at the seams.
Teenage Peaches had cried herself to sleep for weeks thinking of Hamish’s broken heart and how, after a few chivalrous attempts at changing her mind with cards and flowers brought to her door (reminders of the lad’s devotion which Carenza had swiftly – and to her mind, discreetly – whisked from her daughter’s sight, not wanting her to dwell on him), he’d doggedly accepted his fate.
His ardour was no match for Carenza McDowell’s willpower.
Peaches had carefully kept her dating life secret after that.
Not that there’d been much to hide. There had been a nice guy at uni who she’d been paired with for a coursework assignment, and their study sessions had turned into drinks in his halls of residence kitchen, and they’d shared research outings to galleries and libraries which had turned into evenings in his room, but Carenza had somehow always been able to tell when she got home what she’d been up to, and the silent, sullen treatment had started up again, and since Peaches had no money of her own, and she had to share a house with her mother, not easy when she was sulking and snapping, Peaches resolved to let that relationship fizzle out too before the conflict at home turned up another notch.
Now here she was, aged twenty-three and still afraid of liking anyone, spending all her time working on her fashion degree or helping out at her mother’s office as a way of repaying her bed and board and her mother’s many sacrifices – and that was just how Carenza liked it.
The older Peaches got, the harder it was to admit to anyone, most of all to herself, how scared she was of her mother’s disapproval.
She especially didn’t want to admit to Willie that there’d been the briefest moment tonight, watching Euan attempting a slow turn on the catwalk, when he’d fixed his eyes on her like a dancer ‘spotting’ in order not to stumble and fall, when she had watched him pass through a shadow then emerge into the light, and he had briefly appeared as though behind a monochrome filter.
The dark had deepened the darkness of his eyes and closely-shorn hair and revealed all the more the swirling ink that ran down his ribs on his left side under the thin fabric of what she called her ‘maelstrom’ top, the one with the tight strips that wound so beautifully around his waist.
She didn’t dare mention to Willie how struck she had been in that moment by the way he was biting his jaws together to still his nerves and inadvertently making the muscles in his cheeks tense in a way that made them hollow like a real model.
She’d thought Euan was cute before she saw him walk, and she’d thought he was beautiful afterwards, even if he had immediately tripped over the trouser hems and caused Carenza to scream out, ‘Don’t you dare fall!’
Peaches typed her reply and sent it.
Mum doesn’t have anything to worry about
Then she told her friend to get some sleep, he needed it, and she had turned back to gazing up at the moon, for the briefest moment feeling like a pink-haired Rapunzel in her tower, before telling herself with a sigh that her situation was nowhere near as dramatic as all that.
She was free to come and go to her uni campus as she pleased, all her bills were paid, the fridge was stocked with her favourite things, and she had a job, even if she didn’t get the cash in her bank account at the end of the week, and if she needed books or fabric or threads, all she had to do was say so, and they appeared by special delivery the very next day.
How many people her age were half so lucky?
She was free to dream too, so long as they were dreams of success and fortune.
Her mother had given everything to supporting Peaches through her studies and, as Carenza often remarked, the two of them were – no thanks to her father – finally doing all right for themselves; their little team of two.
Peaches shared in her mother’s dreams for her future. She wanted it all, just the way her mum had described to her when, at thirteen, it became apparent she had a talent for design.
One day soon, a scout would pick her out from the crowd, taking her on as an intern or apprentice, teaching her the business side of things, flying her to Paris, comping her to London, putting her on the front row at the new season previews.
They’d recognise what her lecturers saw in her.
She’d always been a grade A student; her confirmation that her mother wasn’t entirely deluded about her talents.
She’d work hard, bide her time, feed her art, until one day she was the one with the accolades, the flowers, the bursting bank account, the keys to a townhouse and a car of her own, not to mention a global brand behind her.
That was what she wanted. Wasn’t it? Nothing short of the top spot.
She’d show ‘that no-good father’ (Carenza’s words) what she could do, and she’d pay back her mum’s faith in her, tenfold, making her proud.
Maybe then, Peaches thought as the moonlight grew hazy and her eyes closed, there’d be time for dating and holding hands with someone nice, walking and chatting, kissing, even…
She slept a long blank sleep in her white room, not daring even in her dreams to remember how dressing Euan had felt, refusing to allow her unconscious mind to explore the meaning of the sparks she’d felt in her fingertips as she’d accidentally grazed his skin.
Two floors below, Carenza was alone too, sitting up in bed, washed out by the blue glare from her laptop.
Having just closed a very nice deal on a six-bed mansion ripe for conversion in Grantoun, she was now turning to the pressing matter of her commitments to Cairn Dhu, her own little fiefdom, or at least, that’s how she saw the town.
Before her on the bedspread lay a map of the riverside recreation ground and sports field with its wide, dumpy rising of hillock, known here as ‘the Knowe’, with an ‘X’ marking the spot where the Beltane bonfire would be sited on the evening of her next big success.
All she had to do was marshal the locals, who always did as she bid – she had a talent for delegating and would brook no refusals.
There was a job for everyone, and she must make sure to partner her daughter with a particular young man, new to town, who had caught her eye and impressed her very much.
‘Yes,’ Carenza said to herself. ‘Peaches will be so pleased I’m making a match for her. And it is about time.’
Feeling very pleased with herself, she plotted on into the night.