As Jolyon ran for the door with a happy laugh, Mhairi stopped to say one last thing to Roz. ‘You know, on nights when I’m torturing myself imagining the very worst-case scenarios for Jolly’s old age, I’ll ask myself the same question and it helps shut out some of the worry.’
‘What question is that?’ Roz inclined her head.
‘I ask what if it all goes right?’ Having said it, Mhairi’s usually serious expression melted into a smile and her eyes misted. She shrugged at the simplicity of the idea before going on. ‘I ask myself, what if things basically fall into place, and maybe we get a few best-case scenario outcomes and a few not-so-bad scenarios, and even some really nice, surprising things happen?’ She shrugged again. ‘Jolly is always surprising us.’
‘What if it all goes right?’ Roz turned the words over, feeling their impact.
‘There you go! You’ve got it now.’ Mhairi went off in search of Jolyon in the gardens.
As Roz filled a couple of empty jam jars with water at the café’s kitchen sink, she spotted a streak of rainbow colour flashing past the big window at the back of the shed. She went outside for a better view.
In the repair shop gardens, around the flowerbeds and under the budding Aspen saplings ran Jolyon. Every eyelet cut into his cape, front and back, was now stuffed with tiny posies of white daisies and yellow dandelions, pink twin flowers and blue saxifrage. He wore his paper plate mask down over his face too, only the white disc was now disguised in flowy strips of green crepe paper like the leafy face of a woodland spirit.
Mhairi Sears was grinning, watching her son’s dance and snapping pictures with her phone, as though she’d never worried a moment more in her life than the other mothers.
None of the happy threesome paid any attention to the rising winds whipping around the garden or the spitting rain that was now dotting the shed windows.
Roz knew then that she needed to take a leaf out of Mhairi and Jolyon’s books. They both seemed to have some things figured out about life’s happy surprises which she, at the age of fifty-six, was only just on the brink of discovering.
Popping her head back inside the shed, she called out, ‘McIntyre? I’m heading over to the house for a bit. Sachin, can you log any textile repairs that come in for me?’
Without waiting for their replies, she was gone, absolute determination set upon her brow.
12
The first signs that there was anything seriously wrong came about twenty minutes after this, after Jolyon and Mhairi had gone home in their car and Sachin was locking up for the afternoon. PC Jamie Beaton’s radio crackled into life, just as the officer was wiping the coffee froth from his lips and putting down his empty cup.
‘All service alert. Two trees are down over the main road northbound out of Cairn Dhu, and one pylon’s blocking both ways on Station Road leaving town. Stand by for emergency protocols.’
Peaches, who was at the doors looking out for her mother, responded first. ‘The roads are blocked? How?’ She heaved the shed doors apart, finding them heavy on their runners. A sharp wind howled inside.
‘Close the doors!’ Sachin and Senga shouted at once, flattening the papers on their counters to stop them blowing away.
She was trying to slide them closed when a figure appeared and squeezed inside.
‘Jings! I nearly blew all the way to the Arctic Circle!’
It was a very windswept Clyde Forte, his head bare and his cigarette extinguished by the gusts. ‘Can I wait in here while it dies down? Freak winds, they’re sayin’ on the telly!’
Jamie spoke into his radio. ‘This is PC Beaton. I’m at the repair shop. Where do you want me? Over.’
‘Mum’s supposed to be here by now to take me to my showcase!’ Peaches said to anyone who’d listen as she and Clyde hauled the heavy doors closed once more.
Peaches’ phone rang, and this was the moment everyone in town realised their best laid plans were about to be scattered like a plough going through a fieldmouse’s nest.
Carenza bellowed so loudly down the line Peaches had to hold the phone from her ear. ‘These oafish police officers, the Mason brothers, aren’t letting me through onto the high street!’
Everyone in the shed, who had gathered near the doors by now, heard her, even though she wasn’t using speakerphone.
‘Tell your mother she cannae cross a police cordon. No one can,’ Jamie instructed sternly, mid-call on his own radio. ‘Got it, thanks, Sarge.’
‘But—’ Peaches started to protest. All her beautiful garments lay over the chair backs around her, ready to be bundled into her mum’s Lexus.
‘Everyone’ll have to stay put until the wind drops.’
‘I’ll get to you, one way or another! You are not going to miss your showcase! Get your hands off me, Officer Mason!’ Carenza howled, before hanging up, leaving Peaches picturing her mother being bundled into the back of a van for breaking through a cordon.
‘I have to be there in an hour and a half,’ Peaches said, looking at her phone limp in her hand.
