She couldn’t bear people knowing how beholden she was to her mum. It had been mortifying at the time, and that embarrassment had only shifted into a secret shame as she grew older and her mum still hadn’t relinquished control over this part of her life.
They’d been little more than sweethearts but after a delirious few months of budding romance, separating herself from Hamish had felt like being torn apart at the seams.
Teenage Peaches had cried herself to sleep for weeks thinking of Hamish’s broken heart and how, after a few chivalrous attempts at changing her mind with cards and flowers brought to her door (reminders of the lad’s devotion which Carenza had swiftly – and to her mind, discreetly – whisked from her daughter’s sight, not wanting her to dwell on him), he’d doggedly accepted his fate. His ardour was no match for Carenza McDowell’s willpower.
Peaches had carefully kept her dating life secret after that. Not that there’d been much to hide. There had been a nice guy at uni who she’d been paired with for a coursework assignment, and their study sessions had turned into drinks in his halls of residence kitchen, and they’d shared research outings to galleries and libraries which had turned into evenings in his room, but Carenza had somehow always been able to tell when she got home what she’d been up to, and the silent, sullen treatment had started up again, and since Peaches had no money of her own, and she had to share a house with her mother, not easy when she was sulking and snapping, Peaches resolved to let that relationship fizzle out too before the conflict at home turned up another notch.
Now here she was, aged twenty-three and still afraid of liking anyone, spending all her time working on her fashion degree or helping out at her mother’s office as a way of repaying her bed and board and her mother’s many sacrifices – and that was just how Carenza liked it. The older Peaches got, the harder it was to admit to anyone, most of all to herself, how scared she was of her mother’s disapproval.
She especially didn’t want to admit to Willie that there’d been the briefest moment tonight, watching Euan attempting a slow turn on the catwalk, when he’d fixed his eyes on her like a dancer ‘spotting’ in order not to stumble and fall, when she had watched him pass through a shadow then emerge into the light, and he had briefly appeared as though behind a monochrome filter. The dark had deepened the darkness of his eyes and closely-shorn hair and revealed all the more the swirling ink that ran down his ribs on his left side under the thin fabric of what she called her ‘maelstrom’ top, the one with the tight strips that wound so beautifully around his waist.
She didn’t dare mention to Willie how struck she had been in that moment by the way he was biting his jaws together to still his nerves and inadvertently making the muscles in his cheeks tense in a way that made them hollow like a real model.
She’d thought Euan was cute before she saw him walk, and she’d thought he was beautiful afterwards, even if he had immediately tripped over the trouser hems and caused Carenza to scream out, ‘Don’t you dare fall!’
Peaches typed her reply and sent it.
Mum doesn’t have anything to worry about
Then she told her friend to get some sleep, he needed it, and she had turned back to gazing up at the moon, for the briefest moment feeling like a pink-haired Rapunzel in her tower, before telling herself with a sigh that her situation was nowhere near as dramatic as all that. She was free to come and go to her uni campus as she pleased, all her bills were paid, the fridge was stocked with her favourite things, and she had a job, even if she didn’t get the cash in her bank account at the end of the week, and if she needed books or fabric or threads, all she had to do was say so, and they appeared by special delivery the very next day. How many people her age were half so lucky? She was free to dream too, so long as they were dreams of success and fortune.
Her mother had given everything to supporting Peaches through her studies and, as Carenza often remarked, the two of them were – no thanks to her father – finally doing all right for themselves; their little team of two.
Peaches shared in her mother’s dreams for her future. She wanted it all, just the way her mum had described to her when, at thirteen, it became apparent she had a talent for design.
One day soon, a scout would pick her out from the crowd, taking her on as an intern or apprentice, teaching her the business side of things, flying her to Paris, comping her to London, putting her on the front row at the new season previews. They’d recognise what her lecturers saw in her. She’d always been a grade A student; her confirmation that her mother wasn’t entirely deluded about her talents.
She’d work hard, bide her time, feed her art, until one day she was the one with the accolades, the flowers, the bursting bank account, the keys to a townhouse and a car of her own, not to mention a global brand behind her. That was what she wanted. Wasn’t it? Nothing short of the top spot. She’d show ‘that no-good father’ (Carenza’s words) what she could do, and she’d pay back her mum’s faith in her, tenfold, making her proud.
Maybe then, Peaches thought as the moonlight grew hazy and her eyes closed, there’d be time for dating and holding hands with someone nice, walking and chatting, kissing, even…
She slept a long blank sleep in her white room, not daring even in her dreams to remember how dressing Euan had felt, refusing to allow her unconscious mind to explore the meaning of the sparks she’d felt in her fingertips as she’d accidentally grazed his skin.
Two floors below, Carenza was alone too, sitting up in bed, washed out by the blue glare from her laptop. Having just closed a very nice deal on a six-bed mansion ripe for conversion in Grantoun, she was now turning to the pressing matter of her commitments to Cairn Dhu, her own little fiefdom, or at least, that’s how she saw the town.
Before her on the bedspread lay a map of the riverside recreation ground and sports field with its wide, dumpy rising of hillock, known here as ‘the Knowe’, with an ‘X’ marking the spot where the Beltane bonfire would be sited on the evening of her next big success. All she had to do was marshal the locals, who always did as she bid – she had a talent for delegating and would brook no refusals.
There was a job for everyone, and she must make sure to partner her daughter with a particular young man, new to town, who had caught her eye and impressed her very much.
‘Yes,’ Carenza said to herself. ‘Peaches will be so pleased I’m making a match for her. And it is about time.’
Feeling very pleased with herself, she plotted on into the night.
6
It was the second Sunday in April and the Cairn Dhu community garden project in the grounds of the McIntyres’ mill house and repair shed was in full spring bloom. Roz busied herself deadheading the daffodils that had flowered in March and faded already.
The volunteers were slowly arriving to help. Dr Alice Hargreave, the new GP, and her carpenter boyfriend, Cary Anderson, were waiting for her patients to arrive – referred onto the project as part of the surgery’s ‘social prescribing’ scheme, getting folks out and about, making friends and exercising in the fresh air.
Roz didn’t mind the doctor greeting Cary with a kiss, or his arm slipping around her back in the sweet way that he always supported her. She didn’t mind when her son, Murray, turned up with his adoring, if a little grouchy, boyfriend, Finlay Morlich, the mountain ranger, and the pair of them fussed their spoiled rescue dog, Wayward’s mother, Nell, and Finlay pretended for appearances’ sake that he resented Senga slipping Nell some sliced sausage.
What Roz did mind was the fact that McIntyre had gone off in his van not thinking to tell her where he was going, or asking whether she wanted him to pick up anything for her when he got there.
‘Murray?’ she asked her son, handing him the plastic trug of deadheads to take to the compost bins. ‘Have you noticed your dad acting a bit… strange lately?’
Murray laughed off the urge to say something smart about how anybody would be able to tell.
‘How’d you meanstrange?’ he said instead.
