Peaches cringed. ‘My chaperone?’
‘I’ll be busy overseeing the event, you see? And I want you to be kept safe and to enjoy yourself. I think you would have a very pleasant time with him, if I were to… engineer a meeting. What do you think?’
Peaches couldn’t understand what had got into her mother, but she didn’t want to shoot herself in the foot if Carenza was willing, for once, to yield a little on the topic of her dating. Still, she couldn’t resist asking, ‘Why now?’
Carenza didn’t need to consider her answer. ‘Because it’s time. You’ve all but completed your studies. You’re well on your way to success and it can’t hurt to have someone suitable accompanying you. A strong alliance is not to be sniffed at.’ Carenza’s eyes dropped to the now blank iPad screen on her lap. ‘For a long time, I had an alliance with your father, and we were unstoppable. With my ambition and talent and his… spark, we were really something. It’s not my fault he had other ideas?—’
Peaches cut her off. ‘I’m in.’ Anything to stop her mum wallowing in the bitterness her dad had left them with.
‘You are? Oh, you are a good girl, Peach! I know I don’t say it often enough.’
‘You say it all the time.’
‘Yes, well…’ Carenza was positively misty-eyed as she leaned in and kissed her forehead, right in the middle of her bangs. ‘You are a good girl. Right!’ She clapped her hands, decisively. ‘You don’t need to do a thing. In fact, I’ll go and let him know my wishes right this instant.’ She stood and, after hugging her daughter, who could only laugh giddily at the unexpected turn of events, bustled right out the door.
Peaches ran to the little window at the front of the shed, just to be sure she wasn’t imagining things, and there she saw her mum practically dragging Euan Sparks aside, speaking to him with a severe, determined look on her face, a look that meant business.
She peered out long enough to see him nodding his head, a little bewildered, and shaking the hand Carenza offered him.
As her mother marched out of the driveway and disappeared, she watched Euan’s fine mouth break into an abashed smile. He flicked his eyes in the direction of the shed. Afraid of being caught looking, Peaches ducked and hid.
The rest of her morning, occupied in helping Roz mending and altering clothes and textiles for the folks of Cairn Dhu, passed in happiness as visions of talking with Euan while sparks from the bonfires rose into a starry sky played in her imagination. She was going on a date and, for once, she didn’t have a thing to hide or to feel sorry about.
8
Roz wiped her damp forehead with the back of her hand. It had been a long, unseasonably sunny Wednesday for mid-April, and it was stifling up here on the repair barn’s storage mezzanine up against the huge glass wall at the shed’s deepest point. McIntyre had been hoarding stuff up here for months, even though the repair shop volunteers had made him swear he wouldn’t. They hadn’t forgotten his old clutter-loving ways.
Everything comes in handy if you hold on to it long enough, he’d say. Sod’s law, as soon as you chuck something out, someone comes along needing exactly that thing!
It had driven Roz mad over the years, and yet, today, when she was looking for something actually precious that should have been stored away carefully up here, it was nowhere to be found.
She heard steps on the loft ladder below her, followed by her husband’s voice.
‘What are you rifling for up here?’ He’d popped his head over the mezzanine platform. He did not look happy.
‘Have you seen our May Day costumes? I could have sworn they were put up here when the extension was finished.’
McIntyre clambered up the last few steps, inserting himself between his wife and the accumulated piles of boxes and bags.
‘They’re no’ up here.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Well, did you find them?’ he said in a prim, pointed way, clearly agitated.
‘You don’t think they got binned when the builders were here, do you? There was a lot of disruption. Who knows what ended up in that skip?’
‘Aye, aye, that’s probably it. The builders will have binned them.’
The careless way he said it made her gasp. Didn’t he know how important that stuff was to her? To them?
‘Bloomin’ builders!’ he growled, like a man making a point of being annoyed. ‘It’ll be under a mountain of landfill by now.’
‘But… our May King and Queen cloaks?’ she implored. ‘My dress and mask, and your crown? Mac, are you sure you haven’t squirrelled them away in one of your’ – she’d been about to say hoards, or clutter corners – ‘in one of your storage spots?’
‘Sure I’m sure. Now, come doon! It’s no’ safe up here.’
That wasn’t strictly true. The railing protected against falls, and the whole extension had passed its safety inspection in January. Still, he was taking her by the shoulders, guiding her towards the ladder. Yet, she would not be hurried.
