Chapter 13
There wasn’t time to let anyone know she’d made it safely, or to reply to her mum’s forty-three missed calls and texts (hopefully not sent from a cell in Cairn Dhu Police Station after an arrest for affray).
There wasn’t time to thank Euan properly.
There was only the dizzy rush of ferrying the garment bags from the (completely illegally parked) bike and sidecar abandoned at the entrance, carrying Peaches into a sea of designers and dressers, make-up artists and hair stylists backstage, which was, it turned out, just a service corridor behind the main university auditorium where the janitors usually kept their mops.
Today there were makeshift desks and mirrors stationed here and there, each with a clothes rail beside it, and taped to the rail, papers with photos of each outfit and the order in which they were to be shown.
‘Good grief, Peaches!’ Professor Quinn-Watson peered out from behind huge dark-rimmed specs, her jewellery jangling from nerves. ‘I didn’t think you were coming. Set up over there. Now!’ She pointed a ring-stacked finger to the only empty spot in the entire backstage area.
‘Right, where do I get changed?’ Euan asked, all efficiency, and trying not to look at the people all around them in various states of undress.
‘Behind the clothes rail, I guess,’ she replied. They hooked the hanging clothes bags over the rail, and Peaches set about unzipping each one, revealing the clothes. ‘Some of these are crushed and there’s no time to steam them.’
‘Into the chair please,’ instructed a woman in a boilersuit with her hair up in a headscarf.
Euan looked to Peaches like he hadn’t a clue why someone would be hustling him away.
‘Hair and make-up,’ Peaches confirmed, still unzipping and organising the rail.
She heard Euan saying he didn’t know if that was necessary and the woman replying with, ‘You’ll have to take that hoodie off first,’ then he disappeared amongst the crowds, leaving Peaches to hurriedly change into her first look, the white bandeau dress paired with what she called her ‘arm and legwarmer sets’, handknitted in recycled, undyed wool.
Each piece was adorned with many tiny hanging reclaimed brass and clear glass beads.
The dress paired with heavy white boots, which Peaches had found online years ago from a flea and brocante trader in the borders (the graduating designers were allowed to complete their outfits using other people’s shoes and accessories so long as they were properly credited in the show notes).
As she checked herself in the mirror, the hum of the spectators being allowed to enter the auditorium met her ears.
Their light-hearted chatter contrasted sharply with her nervous energy.
Her hands shook as she smoothed the contours of the thigh-length dress over her curves, liking the way it showed her soft belly.
As soon as she’d wriggled into the outfit and straightened the hem, she arranged Euan’s look, ready for him to dress in.
He’d need help; he wouldn’t be able to tie her Maelstrom top himself.
She wished she had time to turn up the trousers that had almost made him trip in the rehearsal at the repair shop, back when Euan had been a near stranger to her.
This thought gave her pause. He was still a near stranger. What did she really know about him? Other than how his proximity made her feel?
‘This OK?’ came Euan’s voice.
Startled, she lifted her eyes to see his head, expertly shorn close at the sides and left only a little longer on top, a modelesque buzzcut fit for any catwalk.
His skin glowed with the same dewy make-up everyone else was spritzed with too, since the entire cohort had agreed on the same make-up strategy months ago, briefing the one hairstylist and her make-up artist that they wanted fresh faces with only the smallest hint of glitter shimmer underneath the eyes and a slick of high gloss on their lips.
‘Let’s get you dressed,’ she said with a hard swallow, ushering him into the space between the rail and the table.
He’d pulled off his t-shirt before she could look away.
‘No time to be shy,’ he told her, and something in the way he met her eyes burned away some of her nerves, like spring sunshine banishing morning mist.
‘Starters, positions, please,’ the professor called, and the backstage voices fell to murmurs and urgent last-minute instructions.
Peaches found she couldn’t tie the wraps around Euan’s waist as well as she had last time, and she tutted as she had to start over.
‘Hey,’ he whispered, seizing her hands in his, ‘we’ve got this. OK?’ Just then, a crackly tannoy voice asked the audience to please take their seats.
The quick peek stolen through a crack in the black curtains did not have the effect she desired.
Peaches had watched last year’s Master’s students showcasing their collections exactly a year ago, when she’d been the one sitting out there on the hard uni chairs set out in two rows around all four sides of the hall.
She’d been excited then, full of anticipation for the start of her own Master’s project.
Now she couldn’t feel her fingers or toes and her back was clammy with sweat.
‘Budge over, let me have a look,’ said Euan, now fully wrapped and looking angelic in the white top and trousers and his bare feet.
‘I don’t think you want to,’ she said, but it was too late.
‘Where are the lines?’
‘There’s no lines. Just stick to the outer edges of the hall, walking in a square right in front of the audience, OK?’
Euan rolled away from the gap. ‘Oh God, there’s loads of people. Who are they all?’
‘This side, as soon as you hit the runway, are all parents and friends,’ she said, experiencing a little pulse of pure dread at the thought of her mum missing all this, and probably incandescent with rage about being held back by the cordon.
By now she must have heard about Peaches’ motorcycle dash to get here.
She had the feeling her mother wouldn’t think of Euan in quite so heroic a light as Peaches currently was.
‘When you hit the first corner,’ Peaches coached on, not wanting to pass her fear onto Euan, ‘you turn and walk past all the faculty. That’s our tutors and professors, OK? And then the third side of the square is the most important. You must look straight at them.’
‘Why?’
‘That’s where the press and fashion bloggers, and the industry scouts, will be sitting.’
‘These are the people you want to impress?’
‘Ideally. What you really want is for them to photograph you. If they raise their camera it means they like what they see, and you’ve got a chance of appearing in the fashion stories.’
‘Look for cameras, got it. And the last lot?’
‘The row you walk past last are this year’s undergrads. They’ll be here next year, if they stay on for their Master’s.’
‘Silence please,’ someone said, and music began to play beyond the curtain. Professor Quinn-Watson in her headset was talking with some unseen person. ‘And cueing look one of the starters…’
Someone held the curtain open. A small smattering of applause went around the room, then quickly died away. The music switched to a strange, jangly beat, barely music at all. ‘And three, two, one. Go go go.’ The professor wafted the first model out through the gap.
‘Why’s everyone so tall?’ Euan whispered, looking around at the wonderfully dressed people about to showcase their clothes.
‘Most of the designers hired models to walk for them.’
‘What? Real models?’
‘Of course, look at them.’
Sure enough, the queue to walk through the curtain was populated by elegant, angular, ethereal beings, all cheekbone and barely an unbleached eyebrow amongst them.
‘But…’ Euan held his hands to his ribs. ‘But I’m…’
Now it was Peaches’ turn to reassure him.
‘You’re just as beautiful as any of these pros.
Believe me. I wanted to show my clothes on ordinary people.
I want to prove my clothes are beautiful, and not just because they’re draped on bodies that fit narrow beauty standards.
Like this.’ She stepped back to let him see her in her clothes, and she wasn’t prepared for the change in his features.
His eyes fell across her body in a way no one’s ever had before. She saw his pupils shrink to tiny black stars and she could have sworn he was heaving a breath into his lungs like he was having a hard time controlling his own body.
‘Peaches!’ someone hissed. ‘You’re on next!’