A woman in tall heels and with a severe blonde bob, who Euan hadn’t even noticed in the shed until this point, was trying to calm her down. ‘I know, sweetheart, but glandular fever can be like that. People can relapse for months afterwards.’
Just in case anyone was thinking this a sympathetic, kindly woman, she made sure to add, ‘Damned inconvenient of Willie to be sick tonight!’
‘I hate to add to your worries, but this replacement bulb doesn’t work either,’ Cary was announcing from next to the spotlight scaffold where he was unscrewing a huge light bulb. ‘It’s the last one we’ve got as well.’
The girl let her phone fall in her hand to her side. ‘Thanks for trying. I guess it doesn’t matter about lighting, Cary. It’s not going to be a proper rehearsal anyway, not with my model missing and no guaranteeing when he’ll be well enough to come back.’
Euan was signing off the repair docket, having filled in his phone number and Clyde’s address, when McIntyre said in a stage whisper, ‘Uh-oh, lad, I’d get on yer bike and go, right this minute, if I were you.’
‘Huh?’
Euan hadn’t a moment to process what was happening. The blonde woman was clicking across the floor towards him in her towering heels.
‘You?’ she commanded. ‘Young man. You’re an electrician?’ The woman cast her eyes over him as though she couldn’t believe that was true.
‘I am,’ Euan replied, unsure if he should be glad that news of his bad reputation hadn’t reached everyone in town’s ears, or if he should be worried about whatever she was cooking up behind those sharp, canny eyes.
‘Do you fix lights?’ she said, pointing to the top of the spotlight scaffold.
‘I can,’ Euan said with a shrug, then, after seeing the woman’s impatient scowl, he jumped to attention and peeled off his jacket. ‘Right now? Yup, okey-doke.’ He made his way to the steps and shimmied up. ‘Is this thing turned off at the mains?’
Cary, who was getting his coat on now, muttering something about it being another date night so he couldn’t stick around, directed Euan’s eyes to the snaking cable leading to the plug on the floor. Sachin made after Cary, telling McIntyre he was meeting some old pals for band practice tonight, and the two left together.
‘It doesn’t matter about the spotlight, Mum, honestly,’ the girl said in the gloom. ‘It was only for atmosphere, really.’
‘No. It was to properly illuminate the garments, to see how they will show onstage on the real runway. We need appropriate lighting to identify what needs to be altered.’
So, the blonde bob woman was the girl’s mother, and she clearly wasn’t the sort to take broken for an answer. He’d better make a decent job of this.
He reached up into the spotlight’s hinged shades and opened them wider, untwisting the bulb Cary had shoved back in before leaving, and sniffed the contact. The burned-out smell of the first bulb lingered. ‘I’m willing to bet the first bulb popped, and this second one is just a dud. Have you really not got a third?’
‘Nope,’ said McIntyre. ‘Those bulbs have been hanging around the repair shop for years. I’m no’ surprised both of them were dodgy.’
‘Sorry,’ Euan told the woman, who from the look on her face seemed to hold him personally responsible for the useless lightbulbs.
‘Ugh, it doesn’t matter,’ the girl cried out, going over to the big sofa in the café nook and dropping herself into it. ‘All of Willie’s clothes were custom made for him, so I can only rehearse my half of the show tonight. I’ll just have to hope he’s better before the end of the month and we can fit in another rehearsal.’
Euan heard all of this, not liking the sad note in the girl’s voice. His attention, however, was drawn to the girl’s mother staring up at him from the foot of the ladder. No, she wasn’t just staring, she was assessing him.
‘You’re slim,’ she said. ‘And muscled in a scrawny sort of way.’
‘Um, thanks?’
‘How tall are you, exactly?’
‘I did tell you to run while you could, son,’ McIntyre said portentously.
Euan glanced between the woman and her daughter. ‘Modelling? Me?’ A flush of panic rose up his chest, making his throat burn. ‘I couldn’t!’ Not in front of that beautiful girl anyway. ‘Nope. Not for me, thanks.’
‘You’re a local boy?’ the woman went on, standing in his path at the foot of the ladder, not letting him descend.
‘Aye.’
‘Do you know who I am?’ Without waiting for an answer, she told him she was ‘McDowell Property Management’, before adding that her usual electrician had for some reason neglected to sign the renewal of his contract she’d sent him. ‘Are you for hire?’
Visions of a shiny white Transit van pulling tyre-smoke donuts on tarmac filled his mind. ‘I am.’
The woman handed up a card, but just before he took it in his hand, she snatched it away. ‘You are fully qualified and registered?’
