‘Good.’
She was sure Carenza had been about to call her a good girl but couldn’t bring herself to say it. Well, that was fine by her. Being a good girl was massively overrated, and there was no denying she had loved being a reckless girl last night.
She wished she could embrace that same bravely defiant part of herself now, but it was extinguished by the stony glance Carenza cast her way before opening the door and storming out into the morning sunshine.
Her mother locked the door behind her and click-clacked her heels down the path.
Peaches crumbled onto the bottom step, awash with unease.
Now she knew. This was what she got for breaking the unspoken rules. The teenager that still lived within her, who had so needed the security of her mother’s validation and approval, hugged her arms round her knees now, wondering if she’d ever get back on Carenza’s good side.
Then a fresh memory stirred, and for a brief moment it felt even stronger than her mother’s disapproval.
It was the image of Euan Sparks standing inside the frame of the swinging chairlift this morning, his arms wide, holding onto the bars. He was looking at her like she was crazy.
Had she shouted at him? She’d awakened with such a start. It was instinct taking over. She hadn’t meant to spook him.
She shouldn’t have left him there on his own, and she shouldn’t have told him not to follow after her. Jumping to her feet, she ran to the little spyhole in the door and peered outside. There was no sign of her mum, and worse, there was no sign of Rosie the motorbike and sidecar.
Euan had done exactly as she’d told him. He hadn’t even tried to involve himself in her messy home life. He’d just taken the bike and gone, and she knew she couldn’t blame him if he wanted to steer clear of her from now on too.
19
The day ought to have run like any normal Friday, and to the unaccustomed eyes of an outsider, maybe that’s how it looked as the local businesses kept to their usual hours, and the gossips stopped one another in the street to share details of the strange and sudden storm the night before, which, they delighted to recount, had taken some tiles off the school gables and dashed old man Sneddon’s gate clean off its hinges and torn the felt from the accountant’s outhouse roof.
The woman from the delicatessen on her delivery bicycle and the postie with his cart made their deliveries up and down the valley, and PC Beaton walked his beat and greeted everyone he passed, just as the three of them always did.
Yet, as the afternoon wore on, there grew an undeniable buzz in the air. A busload of lads from out of town arrived shortly after the lunch rush to prop up the bar and ply the jukebox with coins at the Cairn Dhu Hotel Restaurant, and their presence only encouraged the old-timers and barflies to sup all the harder, so the whole place sounded like a party by the time the bonfire was finished being constructed out on the Knowe.
This year’s bonfire would be the biggest in the town’s memory. A great stack of kindling and logs propped up like a teepee, bulked out with all the fallen branches and sawn trunks that had blocked the roads the night before.
The afternoon school-run traffic had cleared by three thirty, with the children even more excitable than on a regular Friday, knowing they’d have to rush their dinners and get into their masks and costumes before gathering at the repair shop for tonight’s big procession.
By the dot of five, as the sun’s warmth was fading, the shops were closing up but leaving their window lights on and the shutters up so passers-by could admire their Beltane displays, all pastel plastic flowers and twiggy arrangements in the shape of wild beasts and curious creatures. Ozan the barber was hoping for some kind of special recognition from the committee for his display of a somewhat disturbing ‘Beltane Bogle’, which he’d made out of floristry wire stuffed with the week’s hair sweepings (his creative process aided by the fact no one really knew for sure what such a thing as a bogle might look like).
An ice cream van, a thing very rarely seen in the valley due to the widely dispersed population making a resident van unprofitable, rolled down the high street at five thirty chiming an out-of-place ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’ as it made its way to the turning off the main road and down onto the rec.
All day long, Carenza McDowell had careered around town making phone calls, delivering things to the site, and checking everyone was on target for opening, and all with the look of a woman who just cannot get the staff these days, though, in actual fact, all of her volunteers had seen to their tasks as instructed.
There now stood a series of tents and stalls and haybale benches constructed around the field’s outer perimeter with the bonfire at its centre and the two smaller ‘blessing’ bonfires a little way off, towards the southern tip of the Knowe near the river. There was even a small raised platform where Sachin had installed his DJ deck and speakers under a garden gazebo, not that the evening showed any signs of rain.
Even the Gifford sisters had put away any animosity they might have for Carenza and, thinking only of the town (and the repair shop coffers), began setting out their stall with their homemade Beltane rum ball truffles (for the grown-ups) and their chocolate-dipped apples on sticks and bags of sweet vanilla tablet (for the bairns, and Finlay Morlich, whose sweet tooth, the women knew, would bring the grumpy mountain ranger to the site even though he hated large crowds).
Sachin was biting down his annoyance and running his soundcheck using one of Carenza’s permitted tunes, so ‘The Birdie Song’ was pervading the entire area. The council had allowed the committee to rig their PA and Sachin’s electricity supply from the rec’s own electricity distribution cabinet which the park’s CCTV ran from. The bouncy castle company had also set up in their corner of the field and started their noisy petrol-powered blower, inflating a big pink princess castle.
The Knowe was lit with fairy lights and low, late-afternoon sun. PC Beaton and the two Mason brother officers were stationed at the site’s official entrance to pretend to check a few bags for illicit substances (to pacify Carenza who didn’t want a drop of booze near the punch cauldrons) and to manage crowd control. Fire Officer Dunoon had arrived to oversee the bonfire and keep the safety barrier in place around it, and Dr Alice and some St John’s Ambulance volunteers from Garten were in the field’s medical tent, hoping their services wouldn’t be needed this year. Carenza surveyed the site before giving the go-ahead to start letting people in. She’d ticked everything off her to-do list. Nothing looked set to go wrong.
Over at the repair shop, Rosalyn McIntyre had marshalled the costumed kids, all in some version of the traditional mossy masks or twiggy antlers, green capes, besoms and leafy crowns, into hand-holding pairs, ready for the procession. The children, with their teachers and parents, lined up in the car park.
‘Very nice to see you, Rosalyn,’ Mrs Hoolit greeted her, wearing her old familiar owl headdress with great round eyes made from Christmas tree baubles. She’d worn the same thing each Beltane for as long as Roz could remember. ‘Not dressing up this year?’
‘Ah! No. Decided against it.’ The truth was her precious old costume and crown had never turned up anywhere. She hadn’t felt like running up a new set; no matter how pretty they might turn out, they wouldn’t be the same.
‘When are we leaving?’ Shell Cooper wanted to know from behind her mask, champing at the bit, having dragged her mum to the head of the procession.
There rose from the crowd other similar grumbles and enquiries. ‘Where’s McIntyre with the light?’ one of the grown-ups asked. ‘We should be on our ways by now!’ said another.
Roz didn’t dare reveal that she knew exactly where McIntyre had sneaked off to, and it had taken all her fortitude to disguise the fact. The discovery still hadn’t quite sunk in.
