Chapter 9
Euan had sworn he wasn’t going to haunt the repair shop, that would be weird, but after completing a second job for the Three Times Winner of Rental Expert of the Year (Cairngorms Region), he’d returned the flat’s keys to the office on the high street and, not finding Carenza there, decided he really ought to go and look for her around the town, so that he could tell her he’d completed not only the job (installing a new security alarm keypad) but the paperwork as well, and he’d left the place locked up and the alarm activated.
His new boss would appreciate this level of personal service and conscientiousness, he told himself, almost believing his own contortions as he approached the repair shop.
The truth was he’d been coming up with any excuse to go back there for days, and each time he did, he’d stretch out his visits to ludicrous lengths.
He’d picked up his grandad from Sunday garden club (Peaches hadn’t been there), and he’d hung around as late as he could last repair Saturday while McIntyre and Clyde tinkered with the bike (and Peaches stayed resolutely inside working on textile repairs for an endless queue of locals), and now today, arriving early, and on a Wednesday too, he’d had very little hope in his heart of encountering her, and yet, there she was in the light-drenched centre of the café messing about with a bunch of scraps and rags, surrounded by kids.
She turned her face to him as soon as he slid the doors apart, and even though she didn’t beam a smile at him like he’d hoped, she still left what she was doing and came closer to him, producing a neatly folded length of khaki green fabric.
She plonked it down on a little table separate to the rest, saying, ‘I had a feeling you’d come to make your Beltane costume today. ’
All pretence of searching for Peaches’ mother dissolved away. He poured them both tea from the urn, dropping a donation in the money jar, and drew up a seat at their table for two, thinking himself very clever indeed for his persistence.
‘So, why exactly are we dressing up in Muppet costumes?’ Euan said. ‘This one’s got Oscar the Grouch written all over it.’
Peaches had draped the khaki jersey fabric around his shoulders, and was now cutting a calf-length hem freehand, kneeling at his feet.
‘Didn’t you ever go to the Beltane bonfires as a kid?’
‘I’d definitely remember seeing Mum dressed up like this,’ he said, still standing statue still because she’d told him to a moment before.
The sight made her want to smile.
‘We left Clove Lore when I was six,’ he went on, ‘and only came back to visit Granny and Grandad every now and then. I barely remembered the place.’
When she got to her feet, he stood in profile to her so she could add some gathers to the cape’s collar. She took her opportunity to appreciate the outline of his features which were neat and tidy beneath a day’s stubble.
She’d been waiting for him all morning, hoping he’d call by. She’d even asked her mum at breakfast if she had assigned him any more electrical jobs and Carenza had mentioned a second one, a simple alarm set-up.
She’d tried to prolong the topic of Euan, but Carenza had been in one of her whirlwind moods and was dashing out the door to meet someone called Valerie who would be ‘thrilled at the good news’, and before Peaches could enquire what the good news might be, her mum had slipped her Louboutins on and left.
Oh well, at least her mum had been happy.
Busy and happy: that was the absolute best thing for a woman like Carenza, especially now she was opening her mind to Peaches dating again.
She was only relieved her mum was showing no signs of having forgotten their arrangement, or worse yet, having changed her mind completely.
‘This’ll be the collar for your cloak, by the way,’ she told him, cutting a large semi-circle of the same green jersey fabric freehand before setting about roughly finger-pleating and stitching it. ‘So, you still wanted to come back to Cairn Dhu, even though you only lived here for a few years?’
‘Aye, to start over. Or rather, to get started at last. I mucked about a bit at school, getting into trouble, low-level stuff. You’re really making that look easy, you know?’
‘You can sit now,’ she told him, finding once more a surprising amount of pleasure in being praised by Euan Sparks.
It had felt the same when she was dressing him for the rehearsal.
She’d felt how much he admired her work and it was more gratifying than any first-class assessment from her tutors ever felt.
‘Right-o.’ He did as he was told, like an obedient pup, but he talked on.
‘I was never much of a student, had no obvious talents to cultivate, not like you.’ He indicated how she was hand-sewing the collar.
She saw the admiration in the way he looked at her hands working.
In truth this was rough, hurried work. It was nice not to have to make something catwalk perfect.
‘Nobody ever really expected me to make much of myself,’ he went on, ‘so I coasted, working behind the cash register at a petrol station for ages. Did my nut in! I was that bored! To get out of there, I ended up taking a night class in electrical installation at the local college, and then a two-year course, getting properly accredited. The plan was as soon as I was finished with the college, I’d come and work with grandad, maybe take over his electrician business one day.
But the stroke saw to that plan. He’s been retired ever since.
Probably for the best. He grafted all his life.
He deserves to stop and take it easier. Am I talking too much? ’
She told him she wouldn’t have asked if she didn’t want to know.
‘I didn’t remember much about Cairn Dhu, but I remembered how it felt, surrounded by the mountains, remote and peaceful. I like it here… a lot.’
‘Me too,’ she agreed, and stopped to snip the thread. ‘Shall we attach this?’
As he stood once more so Peaches could pin the collar around the neck of the cape to form something vaguely reminiscent of a coachman’s cloak, he asked her how a fashion career would work out up here in the Cairngorms. ‘Do you no’ need to be in New York, or London, or somewhere?’
‘Not necessarily,’ she told him. ‘There’s plenty designers who stay here and stick to their vision, their motivation. I could make clothes anywhere, but I’m not willing to take the risk of going too far from the places I draw my inspiration from.’
Besides, her mum would go crazy if she said she was leaving the country.
It was a constant source of unacknowledged tension between them.
Carenza wanted her to hit the big time, but needed her close by.
Peaches had told herself she wasn’t curious to leave the Highlands so often that, by now, any other possible path in life sounded genuinely unappealing.
She was set to soar, but tethered on the end of a thread held by her mother.
‘The Cairngorms, and the ways creatives here are championing the circular economy, are what inspire me and my work. I’m not leaving any time soon,’ she said with a fixed smile that masked all of these thoughts and feelings.
‘Well, OK then,’ Euan replied with a satisfied tip of his head. ‘Me neither, not now I’m basically working for your mum.’
He looked so happy; Peaches didn’t want to point out that her mum had sent his way only two paying jobs so far.
It was still very early days. Carenza didn’t just trust people on sight.
You had to prove you were worthy of her backing.
Mind you, she’d wasted no time in choosing him as her approved suitor.
Odd, really. Maybe she should check what exactly her mum had said to him on Saturday?
‘I, um…’ she began, faltering already. ‘I noticed my mum taking you aside and speaking to you the other day?’
He didn’t seem to know what she meant.
‘Outside the shed, on Saturday?’
‘You saw that? Yeah, she was great!’
‘That’s my mum. Super great. So… what did you say?’
‘What did I say?’ His eyes were sparkling again, and little dimpling half-moons formed at the sides of his mouth. ‘I near aboot bit her hand off accepting!’
Peaches couldn’t hide her happiness. ‘I’m glad.’
‘Me too.’
There passed a moment’s smiling connection between them.
‘And you don’t mind her meddling?’ she asked after a while.
‘Why should I? We both get what we want. It’s a win win.’
‘I guess so. And… you are happy, right, with the arrangement?’
He plumped his bottom lip, thinking, shaking his head like there was nothing for him to be unhappy about. ‘I don’t know why people are so afraid of your mother. She’s been nothing but generous and helpful to me.’
‘She said the same thing about you. She really likes you. Which is surprising, because she doesn’t usually like guys anywhere near me.’
‘Oh?’ This drew his eyes sharply to hers. ‘I didn’t pick up on that at all. I’m sorry to hear that’s how it’s been for you.’
‘That’s OK.’ Peaches attempted a shrug. She couldn’t look into his intense eyes any longer. ‘I guess something must have changed in her.’ She sewed on in silence for a moment while he drank his tea.
‘You’ll need a mask,’ she told him. ‘Do you want one like mine?’
She pointed to Roz’s workspace, where earlier she’d cut a raggedy circle of felt, backed it with some stiffening lining and attached crumpled, frilly green scraps to look like moss and leaves.
‘Matching masks?’ he said, an eyebrow lifting.
‘Why not?’
She laid aside the cloak now that it was basically finished, and they gathered the things they needed for the mask, avoiding the looks cast their way by the Gifford sisters.
‘You know, I was considering packing up and shipping out, back to Mum’s place,’ Euan said once they were seated at their table for two once more. ‘I really thought I’d blown it in Cairn Dhu, but now I have lots of good reasons to stick around. Things are going my way for a change.’