Chapter 18
A bird was singing a morning melody like the shallows of the river Nithy running in rivulets over rocks.
Peaches smiled at the sound, but kept her eyes tightly closed.
Her body ached but with a delicious tiredness like she’d been running the day before.
Her face was warm. The sun from her studio window rested on her skin, shining golden through her heavy eyelids.
She’d fallen asleep sewing on the floor again, leaning against the end of her bed.
She’d be glad when the showcase was over and she could sleep properly.
The birdsong grew in her consciousness, mingling with the sounds of traffic, and something metallic and clanking.
She was snoring softly. Strange how she’d never heard herself snore before. She lifted an eyelid, thinking she’d drag her studio curtains shut and climb into bed for another half hour’s sleep. That’s when she realised.
‘Oh my God!’
‘What!’ Euan screamed himself awake, jolting upright, then rushed a hand to his shoulder. ‘Cramp, cramp, cramp.’ He was on his feet, setting the whole ski chair swinging.
‘We fell asleep!’ yelled Peaches, like he just wasn’t getting it at all.
Euan smiled lazily as he circled his stiff shoulder. ‘We sure did. It’s a beautiful morning though, look at that view!’
‘Look at the view? Look at this!’ she yelled, showing him her phone with its red battery indicator and precisely… zero missed calls and messages from her mum. ‘Hold on.’
She shook her phone, checked for a signal, seeing three bars change to four and expecting a barrage of increasingly concerned messages. None came.
‘Oh no!’ She threw the blanket off her lap. ‘This isn’t good.’
‘Hey, wait, it’s fine. We’re good, remember?’
‘You don’t get it.’ She showed him the phone again, not understanding why he wasn’t feeling the same way. ‘I need to run.’
‘I’ll come with you. I have to pick up the bike anyway—’
‘Don’t!’ Stopping him with a raised finger, she turned. ‘Don’t come near the house, please.’
‘But, the bike?’
‘Forget it!’ she shouted over her shoulder as she slid down the little grassy knoll on her bottom, knowing she must seem ridiculous to Euan, the grown man who could probably stroll in and out of his grandad’s house at whenever hour he liked and never once feel guilty.
Hitting tarmac, she got to her feet and ran, leaving the ski centre and Euan in the dust.
‘You can’t be serious!’ Euan called after her.
As she ran down the waking high street, she tried to get a look at herself in her phone camera. It was worse than she thought. She swiped at the dried-on glitter make-up. It wasn’t coming off. Her lips were bee stung from kissing. Her eyes were swollen from lack of sleep.
It must have been two or three o’clock in the morning when she hadn’t been able to fight sleep any longer, exhausted from the showcase and all that adrenalin burned through, and kissing Euan had turned into being held very close and warm by him, and it had all been so heady and delicious, and when she’d got sleepy, he’d told her he’d wake her in thirty minutes if she wanted to take a nap, and then he’d walk her home before the sun was up.
‘Well, that was a lie!’ she told herself, sounding very much like her mother saying Boys lie all the time!
They can’t be relied on. And yet, Euan had saved her showcase yesterday, and he’d been so nice to her up behind the ski centre, not pushing her for anything more than kissing, not asking, not expecting…
‘Gah!’ she yelled to clear her head as she rushed out of the back streets and straight out into the slow-moving traffic, dodging the postie on his bicycle-mailcart and Pigeon Fergus bouncing along the road on his old red tractor.
People were waving good morning to her, surprised to see her out at this hour. Post Office Pauline stopped raising the shop’s shutters to shout after her. ‘Someone’s up early, or out late, eh?’
‘Oh no!’ Peaches cringed.
Roz was all the way along the other end of the high street with Wayward on her lead.
She’d want to hear about the showcase if she spotted Peaches, and she’d know from taking one look at her that she’d been out all night like a…
She didn’t want to hear it, even in her head.
Her mum would say it, though, when she got home.
She’d call her a stop-out, which maybe isn’t the worst thing you can be called at twenty-three, but coming from her mum, it would be unbearable.
She’d made it into the gated homes in the ‘new’ end of the old town, her feet pounding the paving stones. Her mum’s townhouse lay up ahead, all the curtains and blinds drawn for the morning, the milk bottle already taken in off the step, and the porch lights switched off.
She tried the door. Locked. Searching for her key, she knew her mum would be waiting behind the door. Carenza would pull it open any second and startle her.
Except she didn’t, and when Peaches turned the key in the latch and peeped into the entry hall, there was no sign that anyone had sat on the bottom step all night waiting for her. There were no notes in the key dish saying, You, my girl, are in big trouble!
Heels clicked across the kitchen tiles up above, and so, with dread in her heart, she climbed the stairs, stopping on the halfway landing to fix her hair in the mirror. Her cheeks were a deep pink.
‘Mum?’ she called, before taking the next flight. ‘It’s me.’ Who else was it going to be? she asked herself. Why did she feel the need to announce herself in her own home?
She caught a glimpse of a sleek and chic Carenza in her best cream skirt suit, her phone to her ear, a coffee cup in her hand.
She entered the kitchen, and nothing had changed, even though within herself she felt some kind of seismic shift must have taken place and her whole world would now be off-kilter forever. She had defied her mother.
‘Mum?’
‘I’ll take a mixed pallet of each, in the first instance, just to try them out, OK? But only grey and white fixtures, yes? And you’re set on the biscuit and oatmeal colourways for the first show flat, yes? Not the winter white and cranberry?’
What was happening? Her mum was working? Just like any other Friday?
‘All right, I defer to your expertise, Valerie. See you tonight. We’ll have a toast to our success, yes?
Good, good.’ She hung up the call and gulped her coffee just as she always did, turning for the kitchen table and lifting a bundle of papers and brochures, before stuffing them in her oversized handbag.
‘Mum?’ Peaches stood frozen to the spot. She’d seen a movie like this where the guy was dead, only he didn’t know it, and everything around him went on like normal, and he was just… frozen out.
Carenza whipped open a mirrored make-up compact, reapplying red lipstick.
‘I’m heading out,’ she said at last, snapping the case closed. ‘It’s my May Day event today.’ As if Peaches wasn’t already aware of it.
‘OK. Do you… want me to make you some lunch and bring it to the—’
‘See you at six.’ Carenza cut her off. She was tying a silk neck square into an elegant knot, not meeting her daughter’s eyes even for a second.
‘I’ll wash this…’ Peaches reached for the coffee cup with her mother’s red kiss on the rim, but Carenza beat her to it, conveying it to the dishwasher with clipped efficiency.
‘Mum, are we going to talk about last night, or…?’ Her knees were shaking.
Leaning a hand on the table didn’t help.
She’d expected a lecture on irresponsibility and gratitude.
She’d hoped for a telling off and a pointed fingernail wagging in front of her nose.
This was worse. This wasn’t even a sulk or the familiar cold shoulder.
Carenza was way past petulance. This was icy civility at its coldest, not something she’d experienced before.
Carenza had her keys in her hand and was leaving.
‘Mum, where are you off to so early? I can show you the showcase photos I took, if you like?’ She quailed at the memory of all the sidecar selfies it’d be impossible to avoid her mother seeing as she scrolled.
Her with the prosecco bottle to her mouth.
Euan up above her riding the motorbike, one arm thrown above his head, his leathers lifted off the seat, a triumphant yell on his lips.
‘Freedom!’ they’d shouted, like Braveheart.
‘I’m going to collect the elders’ votes from the oak tree,’ Carenza said as she left the room.
Peaches followed after her, stopping at the top of the landing and watching her descend the stairs as elegantly as ever, only stiffer. Not just her usual chilly smile, but an arctic frost set on her face.
Desperate, needing some sign that this wasn’t how things were going to be from now on, she skipped down the stairs in her mum’s wake.
When she was Hamish Skelton’s sweetheart, her mum had sulked and complained for months, and that had been bad enough. How long would it take an unprecedented hoar frost like this one to melt?
Carenza pulled a spotlessly clean Hunter welly bag from the boot room beside the front door. She had her hand on the latch now.
‘Are you not even saying goodbye?’ It was bold of her, Peaches knew. Rude, too. She’d never, ever spoken out of turn to this woman.
Carenza’s neck stiffened. It would have been barely perceptible to anyone else, but to Peaches she felt like she was about to turn to salt on the bottom step.
‘You’ve been with that boy all night?’ Carenza addressed the door, refusing to look at her daughter. ‘The electrician?’
‘Yes. Nothing happened. We talked. We fell asleep. It was all perfectly innocent.’ Why was she explaining herself?
She was twenty-three. She paid her way with her work at her mum’s office.
And yet she could still hear the scolding she’d had as a teenager when she’d been forced to break up with Hamish.
You live under my roof, you live by my rules.
Perhaps she’d had a point back then, but now?
Why hadn’t things moved on? Why couldn’t she set some boundaries of her own?
Her mother turned her face so Peaches could see her mouth moving in partial profile. ‘I have a million things to do before tonight. Do you at least intend to keep to your side of the bargain?’
‘Huh?’ Peaches had no idea what she meant.
‘Felton Cromarty?’
‘Oh, that!’ Her heart fell down to her stomach. ‘I…’
‘You can’t let the poor boy down just because you’ve stopped out all night—’
‘I said I’d go with Felton, so I will.’ She had to cut her mother off in case this descended into something much worse.
Carenza turned to face her with widening eyes. She wasn’t used to being spoken to like this.
‘I’m looking forward to it,’ Peaches added, even trying for a smile.
‘Good.’
She was sure Carenza had been about to call her a good girl but couldn’t bring herself to say it. Well, that was fine by her. Being a good girl was massively overrated, and there was no denying she had loved being a reckless girl last night.
She wished she could embrace that same bravely defiant part of herself now, but it was extinguished by the stony glance Carenza cast her way before opening the door and storming out into the morning sunshine.
Her mother locked the door behind her and click-clacked her heels down the path.
Peaches crumbled onto the bottom step, awash with unease.
Now she knew. This was what she got for breaking the unspoken rules. The teenager that still lived within her, who had so needed the security of her mother’s validation and approval, hugged her arms round her knees now, wondering if she’d ever get back on Carenza’s good side.
Then a fresh memory stirred, and for a brief moment it felt even stronger than her mother’s disapproval.
It was the image of Euan Sparks standing inside the frame of the swinging chairlift this morning, his arms wide, holding onto the bars. He was looking at her like she was crazy.
Had she shouted at him? She’d awakened with such a start. It was instinct taking over. She hadn’t meant to spook him.
She shouldn’t have left him there on his own, and she shouldn’t have told him not to follow after her. Jumping to her feet, she ran to the little spyhole in the door and peered outside. There was no sign of her mum, and worse, there was no sign of Rosie the motorbike and sidecar.
Euan had done exactly as she’d told him. He hadn’t even tried to involve himself in her messy home life. He’d just taken the bike and gone, and she knew she couldn’t blame him if he wanted to steer clear of her from now on too.