Chapter 17
When they pulled up outside the McDowell townhouse and Euan cut Rosie’s engine, Peaches told him she didn’t want to go inside.
Every light in the house was on, even though it was getting on for midnight. She was looking up at her mother’s bedroom window.
‘No sign of her pacing about,’ Peaches said, like that was some sort of consolation. Everything was still and silent.
‘You sure I’m OK parking this here?’ Euan whispered, his eyes following Peaches’ up to the third-floor bedroom window.
‘Nobody will mind,’ Peaches said.
‘The Ptarmigan will have just closed for the night,’ said Euan, not that he really felt like taking Peaches to a noisy nightclub, and he’d run out of money anyway.
And they’d both decided they couldn’t very well go back to Clyde’s.
That would be testing his hospitality, and Euan had no idea how he’d react to him bringing a girl home in the middle of the night, even if it was just to talk.
Euan looked around the silent valley. Over the rooftops, the beacons were burned to embers and smoking on the dark hills.
‘There’s only one place I can think of,’ he said. ‘If you still want to stay up?’
Peaches was typing into her phone and hitting send. He didn’t catch the words but he watched her glancing anxiously up at the imposing old house. A shadow shifted against the bedroom blinds.
‘It’s changed to “read”. Look.’ Peaches showed him her screen, where grey bubbles rippled. Her mum was typing a reply.
He quickly read the message Peaches had just sent.
I’m with Euan. We’re going to stay out a little longer to celebrate, but don’t worry, I trust him and you can trust me. I’ve got my key. x
Then, suddenly… nothing. The incoming message bubbles stopped.
‘Oh Jeez!’
‘Maybe you should just go in?’ Euan suggested, a little half-heartedly.
At every window in Carenza’s house, the lights went out. Every one except the porch lights in front of them.
He couldn’t have known it but, for a brief moment, Peaches’ panic spiked at the sight of her home falling into darkness.
Her long training in obedience was telling her she was in big trouble and she had better run right along and get to bed.
She was thinking what a thing to do to her poor mother, after everything she’d done for her, and on the night of their showcase as well!
She was busy telling herself what a horrible, ungrateful daughter she was and that Carenza would be up there worried sick.
Yet, her truer instincts were also telling her to stand firm.
It was equally as likely that Carenza’s worry would be mixed up with a whole heap of resentment and wrath, and she’d just about had enough of being ruled by them.
‘It’s probably best to let her cool off,’ she said, before taking a long drink from the bottle and handing it to Euan. ‘I’ll face the storm tomorrow. So, you said you knew somewhere?’
‘This way,’ he said smilingly, pointing their way down a lamplit side street and towards the dark hills.
Big Kenneth, the Ptarmigan’s doorman (as well as Cairn Dhu’s resident milkman), took a wee bit more convincing than Euan might have liked, but after a moment’s grumbling, he relented.
‘I cannae leave the slope lights on all night,’ he huffed. ‘I always turn them off as I’m leaving, which is now.’
‘We wouldn’t expect you to. Can we just get into the grounds?’ Euan tried not to sound too pleading.
Kenneth cast a glance over his shoulder at the ski slope complex.
He’d only this minute locked up the Ptarmigan nightclub above the ski centre at the foot of the slope and was getting ready to head to the dairy (still in his tuxedo) to start preparing for the morning milk rounds.
He must be the only dairyman in the world who delivered his pints in his doorman’s black tie, white collar and double-breasted jacket, but the folks of Cairn Dhu had accepted this as the norm years ago.
The bouncer looked at Peaches, standing a little way off.
‘She’s that Apple lassie, isn’t she?’
‘Peaches,’ Euan corrected.
He pressed on like she wasn’t in fact standing just a few yards away looking up at the moon. ‘Aye, the one that broke the boss’s heart. Years ago it was. Hamish still talks about it now, when he’s had a few whiskies.’
This was news to Euan.
‘Everything all right?’ Peaches asked, wandering over. ‘I can just go home. Call it a night.’
Euan’s calm almost capsized over into desperation.
‘No, don’t do that. I’m sure Kenneth doesn’t mind letting us in.’
‘Carenza’s your ma, isn’t she?’ Kenneth cut in, though he already knew the answer.
Something sympathetic came over him. Maybe he knew about Ms McDowell’s fiery side too?
‘Look,’ he said with a grudging sigh. ‘If you promise not to go posting selfies or doing any other nonsense that might upset Hamish’ – he said his boss’s name very pointedly, though Peaches didn’t react to it – ‘I’ll leave now without checking round the side in the ski lift gardens to see if the wee gate’s locked. ’
There followed some complicated handshakes and fist bumps that Euan didn’t follow at all, and Kenneth went on his way.
As soon as he was out of sight, Euan crooked an elbow for Peaches. ‘This way, then?’
He walked her through the little gate into what was, in the summer months, the ski slope’s garden with its shuttered outdoor concession where they’d sell slushies and ice creams.
‘I haven’t been here in years,’ said Peaches, a little more meaningfully than Euan could ignore.
‘Since you dated the guy that runs this place? Hamish?’
If her steps faltered a little, she quickly regulated them. ‘That’s the one. He worked here even then. We were only together for six months, or something like that; we never really had the chance to get serious.’
‘Ah, got it.’ The way Big Kenneth had been carrying on you’d think she’d jilted him at the altar.
‘He was happy working here,’ she pointed to the building behind. ‘Never went to uni. Mum didn’t like that. So, she made me break it off with him.’ There was real sadness in her voice, and something embarrassed too.
‘That was not cool of your mum,’ Euan said. ‘Not at all.’
Peaches clearly didn’t want to go on about it. ‘Did you ski here when you were little?’ she asked.
‘Never skied in my life. Never wanted to. But when I’d visit Granny and Grandad in the summer, we’d all come here for a Cornetto, and we’d watch the tourists hopping on and off the lifts.
Some of them would miss about ten chairs, they were that afraid of jumping on. That thing went at quite a lick!’
‘Hmm, it hasn’t worked in years, has it?’ she said.
‘Donkey’s years,’ he confirmed. ‘Here we go.’ Euan had walked them a little way up round the back of the ski centre building with the Ptarmigan nightclub all in darkness above them.
It was a steep, grassy clamber, but now they’d landed on top of the little hill there was a clear view of the ski slope above them.
The Cairn Dhu resort was nothing much to write home about, not compared to the bigger slopes near Aviemore or out at Glenshee, but it served as a dry slope for tobogganing and donutting in summer, and it could be busy with snowboarding in the winter months when it snowed.
It was less popular these days, now that the lift was broken and visitors had to drag themselves up the hill.
The slope and the huge stanchions and bullwheel that held aloft the frozen-in-time chairs were illuminated all the way to the top with two high chains of white lightbulbs and a particularly glary floodlight facing the slope.
Euan was smiling at her in their glow now. He’d let go of her arm to show her up into the seat of the stationary two-seater chair that was dangling over the boarding area, just a patch of concrete and the same bristly stuff the dry slope was made from.
Peaches climbed up into the seat, Euan steadying it for her, before getting in beside her. She was smiling and looking up at the slope.
‘Is this still safe to sit in?’ she said.
‘Sure it is. Visitors take selfies in it all the time.’ He’d been about to draw his phone out, but thought again.
‘Better not,’ she agreed. ‘Hey, I thought Kenneth said he wouldn’t leave the lights on for us?’
No sooner had she uttered the words than they heard a heavy clunk that reverberated between the ski centre building and off the hills as the big floodlight blinked off, taking with it the buzzing sound of electricity that they only noticed in its absence.
The strings of white bulbs stayed on, and Euan offered Kenneth his silent thanks. The big softie.
Alone in the moonlight shadow cast by the ski centre building at their backs, their eyes met as if asking, what did they do now?
The prosecco was still cool and they passed what was left of the bottle between them.
‘Reminds me of drinking on a park bench on a Saturday night,’ Euan said.
‘Can’t relate,’ said Peaches, tipping her head back for another swig.
‘What? You never sneaked out with your mates and got pissed in a field or a bus stop, or anything? It’s a Scottish institution!’
‘Nope, not me.’
‘Your mum wouldn’t be keen, eh?’ Euan took his turn to drink.
‘We have a glass of wine with Sunday lunch, maybe, at home. Champagne at Christmas and on birthdays.’
Euan looked like he didn’t know what to make of this. ‘I have a feeling we’ve lived very different lives. My mum didn’t ever mind where I was or what I was up to, so long as I didn’t get into bother.’
‘And did you stay out of bother?’
‘Hmm, mostly,’ he said with a sly smile.
‘I feel like I’ve been avoiding getting in trouble all my life, but I still can’t get away from the feeling that I’ve somehow always done something wrong anyway. Do you know what I mean?’
He shifted against the chair to face her. ‘To be honest, no.’
‘Well, I’m always a good girl, right?’
He nodded.
‘But Mum still disapproves of me a hundred times a day.’
‘What sort of things does she disapprove of?’