‘Oh?’ This drew his eyes sharply to hers. ‘I didn’t pick up on that at all. I’m sorry to hear that’s how it’s been for you.’
‘That’s OK.’ Peaches attempted a shrug. She couldn’t look into his intense eyes any longer. ‘I guess something must have changed in her.’ She sewed on in silence for a moment while he drank his tea.
‘You’ll need a mask,’ she told him. ‘Do you want one like mine?’
She pointed to Roz’s workspace, where earlier she’d cut a raggedy circle of felt, backed it with some stiffening lining and attached crumpled, frilly green scraps to look like moss and leaves.
‘Matching masks?’ he said, an eyebrow lifting.
‘Why not?’
She laid aside the cloak now that it was basically finished, and they gathered the things they needed for the mask, avoiding the looks cast their way by the Gifford sisters.
‘You know, I was considering packing up and shipping out, back to Mum’s place,’ Euan said once they were seated at their table for two once more. ‘I really thought I’d blown it in Cairn Dhu, but now I have lots of good reasons to stick around. Things are going my way for a change.’
‘I know, right!’ Peaches couldn’t help exclaiming, even if her sudden change in fortunes and the opening up of her world in new ways felt strangely too good to be true.
‘Listen. About this Beltane bonfires thing,’ Euan was saying, a new shift in nervous energy in the air around him. ‘I was wondering if?—’
‘Euan Sparks!’ screeched a voice from the barn doors, and every pair of eyes in the place flew to the woman silhouetted against the bright April day, her arms spread across the doorway like a bird of prey in full span.
Peaches watched the pink flush drain from Euan’s cheeks and his Adam’s apple bobbing in a gulp. He rose to his feet.
‘I’m here, Caren— I mean, Ms McDowell. Is something wrong?’
Carenza reached him in a few furious strides, bringing with her a strange charred smell.
‘You just cost me five hundred pounds and lost me my good standing with Fire Officer Dunoon.’
Now she was face to face with Euan, Peaches could see the singed ends on one side of her mother’s platinum-blonde bob.
‘Mum! What’s happened?’ She was on her feet too. Partly out of concern for her mother, partly to insert herself between Carenza and Euan, who was shrinking beneath her mum’s burning stare.
‘What did I do?’ Euan said after a quick glance around the room, as if to confirm that, yes, every single person was transfixed on whatever drama Carenza was meaning to bring down upon him.
‘I called by the flat to check on your work of this morning.’
‘OK?’ Euan’s voice grew smaller and shakier.
‘I keyed in the security code andboom! The entire circuit board blew, but not before the alarm keypad erupted in sparks and smoke like you’d packed it full of firecrackers!’
‘I assure you, I?—’
‘Your shoddy workmanship singed my hair and put two burns in my LaCroix scarf! See!’ She demonstrated both atrocities to the stunned and gaping Euan. ‘And now my regular electrician is on his way back to town to put right whatever it was that you did! But first the whole building has had to be evacuated until the fire officer inspects the place and declares the hazard over, with no further risk to life.’
‘Mum, it was just a scarf, wasn’t it? Nobody was hurt?’ Peaches tried, only to be rewarded with a sharp glance that meant she should be quiet and remember her place.
‘I take my commitment to my tenants very seriously, Mr Sparks!’
‘I care about my customers…’ he tried before she cut him off again.
‘Because of the fire?—’
‘There wasn’t a fire, Mum!’ Peaches refused to let her blow this out of proportion like she did so many things.
‘There was an electrical explosion, Peaches. Which meant the plaster had to be torn from the walls around the keypad to trace how far down the wires the burning had extended. There is now a gaping hole in the plasterwork. The whole thing needs redoing. Plus, the cost of a new alarm system, plus the call-out costs for the electrician and any fines the fire officer chooses to impose, and it will need a full review by the buildings inspector. On top of that there’s the expense of rehousing the tenants temporarily.’
Peaches knew her mum had a few empty flats in the area, so it wouldn’t be that much of an issue, but she dared not say anything.
