The disco was awful, Shell had informed Jolyon, who’d chosen to agree wholeheartedly, and the pair of them had sulked around Sachin’s DJ station.
‘It’s not very good, is it?’ Shell had shouted up to Sachin, and he’d had to agree as well.
‘I’m not allowed to play anything good!’ he’d said, and a band of old blokes leaning on his light-up table thing holding pints and looking just as fed up as Sachin had grumbled about ‘bloody Carenza’ and ‘party poopers’ and how it was ‘nae fun withoot proper music!’
‘Do you have KPop Demon Hunters?’ Shell asked, only to be met with a sorry look.
They’d wandered off together looking for something to do, but all the grown-ups were talking about school starting and other boring stuff and Jolyon had already overheard his dad say to his mum that it was ‘probably bath time’ and shouldn’t they be ‘heading back soon?’, which he did not like the sound of, and he’d told Shell as much using his tablet and a lot of very insistent vocalisations, all of which was enough to have the little girl’s mind made up.
‘We’re staying upwaypast bath and bedtime tonight, Jolyon,’ she whispered in his ear, ‘just like last year!’
Jolyon didn’t think he’d been brought to the bonfires last year, or any year for that matter, but he’d heard Rhona talking about all the dancing, and the fireworks and the flames and how some people had even jumped over the bonfires barefoot last year! He wanted all of that.
Shell looked at Jolyon in such a way that told him she wanted him to follow her. She had a plan, and so the two scampered off across the field in Sachin’s direction, trying to avoid being seen by the lady in charge.
Peaches said ‘hello’ to Clyde Forte as he passed by the bonfire. ‘Oh,’ was all he said, having taken one look at her date for the evening. ‘Oh, I see.’ Then he’d wandered away, scratching his head and casting a quick glance back to take in Felton all over again. He didn’t look very pleased with what he saw.
The look made her wonder what exactly Euan had told his grandfather about where they’d spent last night and what they’d got up to. A deep sense of shame shot through her.
Shame had to be the worst feeling in the world, like the time her dad had turned up out of the blue that one Christmas Eve to ‘surprise’ her, or rather blindside her mother, and whisk her away to Lapland to ‘meet the real Santa’. Her mum had stood at the door of their old flat with her arms folded. Peaches had only been tiny then, but she’d known her mum was fighting back tears. Her dad had tucked her under a blanket in the back of his car and waggled a passport. ‘Most magical place on earth!’ he’d declared, grinning. She hadn’t seen him since the summer holidays. His car smelled of the strange lady in the passenger seat’s perfume. ‘Have her back by Boxing Day!’ her mum had shouted just as he was slamming the driver’s door shut. He’d waved a dismissive hand. ‘Yeah, yeah,’ he’d said, and they’d pulled away from the fairy-lit flat where Carenza had planned a cosy Christmas for two. Peaches had been drenched in shame that entire trip, not wanting to enjoy the hot chocolate, the gifts, or the snowmobile ride to the glittering woodland grotto out of loyalty to her mum at home.
It never got old, shame, or she never got too old to be ruled by it. It could always reduce her to mortified silence. She’d have asked herself who had been responsible for instilling the feeling within her in the first place if she’d had any headspace whatsoever over this last few peculiar days, where she felt herself as tethered to her old life as she’d always been, even whilst she’d been daring to test out her own boundaries and life seemed determined to knock her off her feet.
‘Do you need to move away from the bonfire?’ Felton asked, reaching to touch her arm.
Peaches turned her body a fraction of an inch, enough to prevent him making contact. ‘Sorry,’ she said, flushing redder. ‘I’m a bit jumpy tonight.’
‘I’m not surprised, you’re waiting on some big uni results, aren’t you?’
She nodded, not inclined to talk about it with him, but unsure why.
‘I can take you back to your place?’ he said, with an easy shrug.
‘Mum’s place?’
He seemed confused. ‘You live with your mum, don’t you?’
She’d been about to say ‘yeah, but it’s Mum’s place, really’ when a cluster of firecrackers went off somewhere out on the dark part of the rec, accompanied by whoops and hollers, the sounds of adult men, drunk as can be. Nell, who’d been walked up and down the field umpteen times so far, got spooked by the noise and barked so much she couldn’t even be silenced by Finlay offering her half his hotdog.
‘Let’s go eat instead,’ Felton said, taking pity on her, she guessed, just as a firework whistled into the sky above them and burst into an enormous glitter ball. Some kids cheered, some adults oohed and ahhed like this might be the start of an organised display. A few babies and toddlers screamed in surprise, and Nell kept on barking. Carenza screeched from many yards away, ‘No fireworks permitted! Officers!’ and she stomped right past Peaches and Felton, her jutting elbows swinging, her eyes narrowed upon the dark corner of the Knowe where the men were still in hysterics.
‘Do you want to go help your mum?’ Felton asked.
‘Uh…’ Peaches didn’t really have to think about this. ‘Not really. Let’s get food.’
The atmosphere in the field was shifting as the moon grew brighter in the starry sky. The looming mountains that lined the valley were only a magnetic suggestion of a presence now having sunk into the inky black of the sky.
Even more people had arrived and some had got through without having their bags checked because the Mason brothers’ wives had arrived not so long ago and the men each had a child on their shoulders dropping toffee apple gloop onto their police hats, and neither minded at all as they strolled the field enjoying themselves.
A big group of staggering teens from the high school at Garten were cringing and laughing and filming on their phones as though everything and everyone around them was painfully embarrassing, but they were adding to the rising laughter nonetheless.
Unseen, a swift-footed someone, no one would ever know who, had seized the opportunity open to her, and sneaked, quick as lightning, to the unmanned drinks cauldrons, emptying a homemade witches’ brew of some bright and lively pink-tinted spirits into the ginger ale and orange juice and, before retreating once more with a silent tread in sensible sandals, had made sure to rub off the chalked prefix ‘non’ from that cauldron which was now giving off boozy fumes, leaving only the words ‘alcoholic ginger ale and orange juice’.
After the mystery woman had slipped back into her everyday guise, blending with the crowd, it took only moments for the townsfolk to notice the change and to fall upon the ladle with gusto.
Peaches had an empty feeling in the pit of her stomach that reminded her of hunger but was also heaviness like a stone. She tried to fix it by scarfing down two hotdogs with American mustard round the back of the first aid tent. Felton only ate the one and when it was gone he offered her a hipflask from his inside breast pocket. It was some fancy liqueur she’d never even heard of. This hadn’t put her off taking a long swig. She heard her dad’s voice laughingly saying his favourite phrase, ‘Ask forgiveness, not permission.’
‘Eugh!’ It tasted awful, but she still took a second swig.
