An instinct sparked in Peaches to stop her mother going to a difficult place where she might be in pain, but if they were going to climb out of this hole of horrible old habits, she needed to let it happen. She couldn’t parent her own mum any more. She couldn’t be responsible for Carenza’s feelings like she’d always tried to be, ever since Dad left.
‘Somewhere along the way,’ Carenza said, her voice quiet and shaky, ‘the dream of having it all turned intodoingit all. When your dad abandoned us, I was suddenly only half a person. He took so much of me away with him, and I had to carry on: doing the school run, keeping house, trying to put the business back on track. We only had eight properties at the time he ran off, but I took charge of the lot. And for a while it was just so incredibly hard. But I kept my head above water, most of the time, and you and I became a little team of two. The McDowell Girls.’ The smile this raised in her quickly faded. ‘I realised if we were going to stand a chance in this market, I had to diversify the business, so I went from lettings into holiday properties, and remodelling. I gave it my all. And in a funny way, this town supported me. They wanted me to do well. Old Cairn Dhu families were only too willing to sell up and leave, for the right price, and so I scooped up their properties all across the valley and beyond.’
‘I know, you worked hard. I was there.’ Peaches tried to inject enough coolness into her voice to draw her mum back to the matter in hand: how on earth they were going to survive this.
‘That’s right,’ Carenza said. ‘You were always there. And you were such a help for me too. But I wanted you to do something exciting with your life, to be something I never got the chance to be. A real star, you know?’
‘Yep, I’m destined for the very top, I know that,’ Peaches said dryly.
‘Well, you are! I won’t back down on that. I believe in you. Enough for your father and me combined, ten times as much as all that, actually. And if I’ve been over-invested, it’s because I wanted to make up for the fact he never came to your graduations, never read your report cards, never took you out for a milkshake at the end of term, or sat in the car outside while you were at your high school prom, waiting for you, should you need someone.’
‘You waited outside?’ Peaches said, doing a double take.
Carenza cut short a pained laugh. ‘Of course I did.’
‘But, Mum, it’s all become too much. I need to do my own thing sometimes, with my own people. People of my own choosing.’
‘You don’t understand, darling, how frightening it is to lose control of everything around you. To have everything exactly in its place and for it all to just fall away. He took it all away. And I promised you that was never going to happen again…’
Peaches had heard variations of this sorry tale all her life.
‘You say you don’t want me to leave, but you’re pushing me away by trying to control me. I need to make my own decisions.’
‘You’ll leave me here, and then what was it all for?’ There were tears breaking through the steel in her mother’s voice. This was new.
‘If I go,’ Peaches said, offering a hand for her mum to take, ‘I won’t go far, or at least I won’t go forever.’
Carenza held her daughter’s hand, knowing it was meant as a consolation for what was going to be a readjustment, a period of yet more loss.
‘Cairn Dhu is my home,’ Peaches went on. ‘And we’ll always be a team of two. But if we don’t make a bit of space between our lives now, how will either of us be able to grow?’
Carenza lifted her eyes, drawing a deep breath in.
Peaches watched her mother do battle inside herself, not knowing yet which part of her would be the victor: her need to control, along with her mistaken belief she could keep them frozen in time; or the pragmatist who, deep down, knew they were on a slippery slope to estrangement if she didn’t loosen her grip.
‘OK,’ Carenza said, reluctantly. ‘I’ll try not to interfere quite so much, I promise, but the thought of you spreading your wings and flying away, even if it’s not forever, scares the life out of me.’
‘There are worse things than being a little bit scared,’ said Peaches, and the idea awakened a pang of urgency in her.
‘Such as?’
Peaches dropped her hand as the thoughts overtook her. ‘Well… not reaching your potential? Missing out on opportunities that are clearly meant for you?Peoplethat are meant for you.’
All the time she was saying this, Peaches’ body was demanding she get to her feet in order to make room for the resolve growing inside her. It was telling her there was something else she needed to do tonight, now that she’d tried to establish some kind of boundaries with her mother.
‘In fact… Mum, I’ve got to get out of here, right now!’
For the first time ever, Peaches didn’t ask her mum’s permission, and she didn’t fear the cold shoulder, or any of her other old means of control, and for once there was a look in her mum’s eyes that told her she had no intention of trying to impede her way.
‘I’ll be back,’ Peaches said. ‘As soon as I’ve made things right,’ and after kissing her mum on the cheek, she was gone, leaving Carenza alone, raising her fingertips to the place where her daughter had kissed her, and with tides of competing emotions swelling within her.
‘Good luck, darling,’ she said, though Peaches was no longer there to hear it.
26
Peaches would have run all the way out of the recreation grounds if Clyde hadn’t stopped her with a summons of, ‘Did he no’ find you?’
She slid to a stop in her trainers. ‘You mean Euan? He was looking for me?’
