Euan found himself emerging tentatively from between the shelves, passing the darkened café corner and hitting a makeshift runway that he hadn’t noticed before – two parallel lines chalked onto the floor of the repair shop, running in between the workbenches that lined the shed walls.
‘Down there?’ he asked, suddenly nervous, pointing at the long walk.
‘Yes. Like this. Watch me,’ Peaches told him, and she left him standing.
He’d always thought models strode down catwalks in a rush, but Peaches was sailing unhurriedly, and the sight once more set off a feeling within him of being in the presence of some sort of goddess.
She was holding her head up, making her way down to the end of the lines where the room opened up into the kids’ corner with its beanbag chairs and crates of repaired and rescued toys.
Carenza, Roz and McIntyre were watching her walk too, as her dress billowed behind her. Even without a spotlight she was definitely the star of the whole scene.
She stopped at the end, crossed one foot over the other and turned in a slow rotation until she was facing in his direction, before setting sail once more, straight at him.
‘First class,’ his brain made him say out loud, and he had to check himself. ‘Uh, that’s how I’d assess this collection, I mean. First class. One hundred per cent. Degree awarded with merit.’
Carenza threw him a look that stopped his rambling, just as Peaches drew close.
‘Now it’s your turn,’ the young designer said, breaking into a smile.
Euan knew as soon as he started walking that it wasn’t going well.
Carenza was shaking her head in the corner of his vision, and even Peaches, when he tried to replicate her model-like turn at the end of the parallel chalk lines, seemed to be hiding her embarrassment.
‘Those side seams just need another press,’ Roz was saying, taking notes.
‘Willie’s an inch taller, so those pants are long on Euan,’ said Carenza coolly.
‘And there’s a loose thread on the right shoulder needs snipping,’ noted Roz.
After what seemed a long time, he made it back to Peaches’ side. ‘Sorry, I… I’m an electrician, not a model. Obviously.’
Peaches’ insistence that he’d done a great job almost convinced him she wasn’t regretting her choices.
At that moment McIntyre’s mobile rang and he excused himself from the shed, saying he’d ‘better take this, whoever it is’.
No one noticed Roz’s look of silent surprise turning to dismay as she watched her husband sneaking furtively from the shed, not answering the ringing phone until he was outside in the twilight.
‘All right. Next two?’ Peaches said, and Euan could do nothing but dutifully follow her back to the rail.
Alone with her once more, he wanted to talk, to say any old thing, just so he could coax more from her about her life and her designs, but Carenza was putting paid to that with her shouting.
‘That’s forty seconds… Fifty! Pick up the pace back there!’
Euan found himself undressing and carefully re-dressing while Peaches fiddled with the coat hangers and handed him things to put on, layering up this next outfit. It seemed to be made from lots of separate parts – a neck cowl, sleeves connected only by fabric across his shoulders, a wide, tight thing wrapped round his stomach. It was mind boggling, but he let it happen, feeling like a living art installation.
As she worked, she told him that this wasn’t a ‘ready to wear’ kind of collection, but one that forced people to pay attention to each piece.
‘I want people to remember that everything we put on our bodies has a story. It was made by someone. Every thread was manufactured somewhere. Ethical consumerism begins with being curious about the people and processes that bring us our clothes, you see?’
‘I think so,’ Euan told her, though he hadn’t really thought about what he wore all that much before. ‘I’ve been wearing the same six t-shirts on rotation since I left school.’ He’d never once thought about where their cotton might have been grown or what kind of dyes had been used in turning them black or grey.
‘But my bike leathers,’ he said, inspiration striking him. ‘They were a moving-in present from Grandad. I love them. They were all hand cut, padded and stitched, bespoke for me, somewhere in England. Grandad said once you have a good set, they’ll last decades. I wouldn’t be without them now.’ A second, thicker skin, he thought. They’d moulded to fit him already, and when he pulled them on, he felt more like himself than he ever had before.
‘They have a heritage,’ Peaches told him. ‘You understand their construction and their purpose. You own those leathers in a way you don’t own your other clothes.’
He wasn’t completely sure he understood what she meant, but he appreciated the way her whole face became animated as she said it.
She tugged and yanked and tightened the clothing around him and neither of them spoke. He’d never been more aware of his breathing than when she had her hands on him. It was funny how until this moment his lungs had just done their job and his heart just knew to beat on its own, but now, here he was having to force them to work for him. It was dizzying. He’d never felt more alive within his body.
