If he wasn’t immersed in a dream before that moment, he certainly was now Peaches was gripping his waist, and he’d have stayed in the dream if it wasn’t for the sight that greeted them at the entrance to the university auditorium.
He had to prematurely brake to stop Peaches jumping from the bike while it was still rolling up next to an ambulance.
‘Willie!’ she was shouting, as Euan gave the trusty bike a thankful pat on its tank for getting them here.
Willie was her model and her friend, he knew that much, and the guy had been ill lately, but ambulance ill? He followed close behind Peaches as she ran alongside the stretcher-trolley containing a worryingly sallow guy. The cool bloodlessness of his face contrasted sharply with the damp sweatiness around his hairline.
‘What happened?’ Peaches was shouting at another guy, also about her age, who was holding the patient’s hand.
‘I told him he wasn’t up to this, but he insisted!’ the stranger cried back, frantic. ‘He turned suddenly feverish, and then the next thing you know, whomp, he was flat on the floor.’
‘Oh my God! Willie! You should have said you were still ill.’
‘Who’s he?’ Willie said weakly from behind a steamed-up oxygen mask.
All eyes turned upon Euan, and that feeling of being sussed out, so familiar since he moved back here, returned to him.
‘This is Euan Sparks,’ Peaches said, absently. ‘Are they really taking you to hospital?’
The ambulanceman slotted the stretcher into the mechanism in the back of the vehicle and slid the strapped-down man inside.
‘We’ll take him to the out-of-hours clinic to get checked over. Can’t be too careful with glandular fever,’ the second paramedic said. ‘We’ll run an ECG for a start, and try to get on top of the fever.’
‘I’m sorry, Peach.’ Willie looked even smaller and weaker now. ‘Your runway…’
Peaches swept this aside with her hand. ‘I’m not doing the fashion show! I’m coming in this ambulance with you!’ she said, one foot on the step into the vehicle.
Willie pulled the mask away. ‘No, you are not! You haven’t come this far to only come this far. Get in there and show your collection before Quinn-Watson has an aneurism and I end up sharing this ambulance with her!’
‘He’s right,’ said Thom, Willie’s partner.
‘I’ll stand in for Willie,’ Euan said, and even the ambulance staff stopped to look him up and down. ‘What? I did it before! The garments are so well made,’ he said, scrabbling for the words. ‘They’d look good on anybody, even me. I can do it!’
‘He’s got a lot of opinions about fashion for a man in a grey JEEP hoodie,’ gasped Willie, before the paramedic placed the mask back over his mouth and told him not to talk any more.
‘We’re going,’ said the paramedic, and Thom jumped inside, just before the doors were pulled shut.
Euan thought Peaches might run after the ambulance as it rolled out of the car park, flashing its blue lights but foregoing the siren. ‘Peaches?’ he said, trying to awaken her from her panic. ‘Let’s get inside and get set up.’
Peaches looked at the time on her phone with drowsy, disbelieving eyes, like this really was her worst nightmare. ‘We’ve got ten minutes,’ she said, draining as pale as poor Willie had been a moment ago.
13
There wasn’t time to let anyone know she’d made it safely, or to reply to her mum’s forty-three missed calls and texts (hopefully not sent from a cell in Cairn Dhu Police Station after an arrest for affray). There wasn’t time to thank Euan properly. There was only the dizzy rush of ferrying the garment bags from the (completely illegally parked) bike and sidecar abandoned at the entrance, carrying Peaches into a sea of designers and dressers, make-up artists and hair stylists backstage, which was, it turned out, just a service corridor behind the main university auditorium where the janitors usually kept their mops. Today there were makeshift desks and mirrors stationed here and there, each with a clothes rail beside it, and taped to the rail, papers with photos of each outfit and the order in which they were to be shown.
‘Good grief, Peaches!’ Professor Quinn-Watson peered out from behind huge dark-rimmed specs, her jewellery jangling from nerves. ‘I didn’t think you were coming. Set up over there. Now!’ She pointed a ring-stacked finger to the only empty spot in the entire backstage area.
‘Right, where do I get changed?’ Euan asked, all efficiency, and trying not to look at the people all around them in various states of undress.
‘Behind the clothes rail, I guess,’ she replied. They hooked the hanging clothes bags over the rail, and Peaches set about unzipping each one, revealing the clothes. ‘Some of these are crushed and there’s no time to steam them.’
‘Into the chair please,’ instructed a woman in a boilersuit with her hair up in a headscarf.
Euan looked to Peaches like he hadn’t a clue why someone would be hustling him away.
‘Hair and make-up,’ Peaches confirmed, still unzipping and organising the rail.
She heard Euan saying he didn’t know if that was necessary and the woman replying with, ‘You’ll have to take that hoodie off first,’ then he disappeared amongst the crowds, leaving Peaches to hurriedly change into her first look, the white bandeau dress paired with what she called her ‘arm and legwarmer sets’, handknitted in recycled, undyed wool. Each piece was adorned with many tiny hanging reclaimed brass and clear glass beads. The dress paired with heavy white boots, which Peaches had found online years ago from a flea and brocante trader in the borders (the graduating designers were allowed to complete their outfits using other people’s shoes and accessories so long as they were properly credited in the show notes).
