Chapter 26
Peaches would have run all the way out of the recreation grounds if Clyde hadn’t stopped her with a summons of, ‘Did he no’ find you?’
She slid to a stop in her trainers. ‘You mean Euan? He was looking for me?’
‘Aye.’ Clyde’s expression clouded. ‘To say goodbye?’
The Knowe around them seesawed horribly at this. He was leaving?
‘Where is he right now?’ she demanded.
Clyde looked at his watch. ‘On his way home to Glasgow, probably. Me and him just said our goodbyes, and he went to collect his bags. Nothing I said would stop him, I’m afraid.’
She didn’t wait for more, but picked up her feet and broke into a sprint.
In moments, she’d made it down the recreation ground path and onto the main road turning towards the bungalows, scanning the street both ways, listening out for the sounds of a motorbike.
Nothing.
Had she missed him? If there was a chance she could catch him, she was going to take it.
Her feet pounded the tarmac. Fireworks lifted into the night sky over the riverside as she made her way into the estate, passing dark house after dark house.
Everyone was at her mum’s bonfire event.
Everyone except the one person she wanted.
As she rounded the corner and came within sight of Clyde’s house she was greeted with a sight that swelled her heart.
A lamp glowed from the front of a bike, dazzling in the twilight, accompanied by the rev of an engine, the snap of a kickstand, and the crunch of tyres as the bike rolled out into the road.
‘Stop!’ she screamed at the top of her lungs, throwing herself in its way.
The bike slammed to a stop, the front guard inches from her shins.
Euan snapped his visor up. ‘You near aboot got yourself killed!’
Ignoring this, she made her way to his side as he steadied the machine with both feet on the tarmac and turned off the engine.
‘Don’t go without saying goodbye!’ she yelled.
‘Eh?’ He pulled the helmet off and held it under the arm of his leather jacket.
‘You were leaving and you never said goodbye! That’s terrible, Euan!’
‘I came to the bonfires to see if it was true. I thought your mum might have been lying the other night, saying you were going to the bonfire with a date.’ He looked down, shaking his head.
‘I had to see for myself if you really did have a boyfriend. Turns out, she was telling the truth after all.’ A scowl spoiled his beautiful lips.
‘Boyfriend? When did Mum tell you this?’
‘It doesn’t matter now.’
‘God’s sake, Mum!’ she lamented to the dark sky.
He looked straight at her, a frightening aloofness in his eyes.
‘It’s not the boyfriend that’s the issue, even if he does look and act like a knob; that’s for you to worry about, not me.
But it’s the fact you could spend Walpurgisnacht with me’ – he lowered his voice – ‘on the ski lift like that, when you were seeing someone else.’
‘I’m not, though! That was just Mum being delusional. He’s one of her old business cronies’ sons, and yes, he is a total knob!’
A beat passed while he processed this.
‘You’re not seeing him?’
‘No.’ She shook her head, delighted to confirm it. ‘And you can’t leave. Not now, anyway!’
He cocked his head. ‘Eh?’
‘For a start, my mum will be looking for you in the morning. And so will the fire officer!’
‘Hey! I never touched that PA system,’ he protested. ‘It was those feral kids, Jolyon and Shell! They unplugged the DJ set-up. Mind you, the disco was total garbage, so they did us all a favour.’
‘No.’ She couldn’t laugh at his mistaking her meaning.
He’d taken the blame for too many things this spring, it was only natural he’d think he was in deeper trouble.
‘They’ll be looking for you to apologise.
You didn’t cause the fire at the flat. Mum knows that now for sure.
It was that dodgy keypad thingy. Totally not up to code.
She should never have supplied you with it! ’
Euan let this sink in. ‘She’ll want to apologise? To me?’
‘When she’s wrong, she says she’s wrong.’
Peaches thought of the time Carenza had led a whole rebellion against the repair shop when she incorrectly thought there was some kind of organised crime gang operating out of there.
Her mum had banned her from volunteering there and even got Willie’s mum roped in to the embargo, so neither of them were allowed to set foot in the place.
In the end, when she’d been proven wrong, Carenza had held her hands up and apologised in front of the whole of Cairn Dhu.
‘She’s still learning, like all of us are. ’
Euan only nodded, glancing at the road ahead of him. It wasn’t quite sinking in.
Peaches took a moment to scan the bike. ‘Hey, you removed the sidecar?’
‘I couldn’t take it with me to Glasgow. It belongs here. And I’m going to pay Grandad for the bike, not that he wanted to hear anything about that, but still, I will.’
‘What? You’re going anyway? Even though you’re not in trouble?’
‘I was going to try again, back home. Set myself up as a tradesman there. At least if I make a mess of a job in Glasgow, I won’t lose every customer within an eighty-mile radius, not like this place.’
‘But you didn’t make a mess. I promise. This will all be fixed by breakfast. Mum’s nothing if not efficient. Trust me, she’ll sort things out and I know she’ll get you your jobs back.’
‘She can do that?’
‘She can do anything she sets her mind to.’
They paused in a breathy silence. For a moment, her worst fears gripped her. They told her she was too late. She’d blown it.
‘Yesterday…’ Euan broke the silence. ‘When we woke up and you ran, it wasn’t me you were running from?’
Peaches winced. The pain he must have felt in that sudden jolt awake, watching her making for home without even kissing him goodbye, or thanking him for saving her runway, it all showed on his face now. She’d hurt him, and made him insecure when he was already feeling low.
‘No. I was running to Mum before she burst all her blood vessels because I’d stayed out all night. I told you she hasn’t liked me dating in the past. My panic had nothing to do with you. You’re… you’re lovely!’
Hope and wonder burst like fireworks in his irises. ‘Nobody’s ever called me that before.’
‘You believe me, right?’
‘Grandad did say that your mother would be behind it somehow, you running off like that. I crawled in at dawn and I told him the whole story. He said it would be your scunner of a mother making you fearful. I didn’t believe him. Everything that goes wrong, it’s always my fault usually.’
Peaches dropped her eyes. A faintness washed over her.
He was off his bike with one swing of his leg.
‘Hey!’ He opened his arms and, not wanting to miss this chance, she threw herself to his body and gripped him tight, her head pressed to his shoulder.
For a long while they didn’t speak, only holding one another, panting with relief and tiredness and amazement.
‘I don’t think your mum’s that much of a scunner, though,’ he said eventually. ‘I always kind of liked her. She’s had a hard time of things, you can tell, and she can’t rely on anyone easily, except maybe you.’
Peaches looked up at his earnest face. His eyes were soft and dopey, the way they’d been last night. ‘What makes you say that?’ She didn’t disagree with his assessment of her; she just needed to know how he could see Carenza’s vulnerability when others only saw the spikes.
‘She’s a lot like my mum, in some ways. Only, instead of holding on to me too tightly, my mum never held on tight enough. Doesn’t mean I don’t love her or that she wasn’t trying her best with the tools that she had at the time.’
‘Right,’ she said quietly.
‘Right,’ he echoed back to her.
Soon they were staring into the other’s face as his hands strayed over her back, holding the straps of her dress, tracing the fabric up and over her shoulders, round to her collarbones.
The air around them resonated with a new pitch, their hearts jumping into new rhythms.
‘You think I should stay?’ he said, already lowering his mouth to hers.
She nodded, making her lips brush over his in the lightest sweep. ‘At least until we’ve made up our minds where we both really want to be, and then…’ She pressed one soft kiss against his parted lips.
‘And then we hit the road together?’ he suggested, and she gave him her answer in a kiss that banished all his pain.