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Roz immediately swiped her phone off and downed the last drop from her glass. ‘Maybe I will do some sewing after all.’
4
A highland repair shop on a Saturday afternoon when its resident repair experts are drooping with tiredness after fixing things all day long is neither the time nor the place for a love story to begin.
Not when there’s been a spill of oil behind McIntyre’s workbench, and the Gifford sisters are arguing over next Saturday’s showstopper bake, and Cary Anderson is hoovering up iron filings from under his tool-sharpening wheel, and the horologist, Doctor Bonnet’s newly repaired clocks are all chiming and bonging for five o’clock and the racket is making everyone but her flinch.
Nobody could be expected to fall head-over-heels on sight in these conditions. Not when Sachin was showing the last of the customers out into the car park and there was rain spitting and Wayward was trying to sneak out to freedom every time the barn doors slid apart.
‘She’d go home with anyone, that mutt, so long as they had a takeaway bag of Senga’s rock cakes in their hands,’ said Sachin, gripping the thwarted escapee’s collar for the third time.
No, there was just too much going on to allow for romantic inclinations of any kind. You only had to ask McIntyre, who, having dumped a load of fresh sawdust over his spilled oil, had been trying to coax a smile from Roz at her sewing machine by offering her a cup of tea and the last of Senga’s toasted, buttered Bannocks.
‘No thanks,’ Roz replied, while her husband eyed her with a touch of wariness, thinking how something was different about her. She was, however, smiling placidly as she helped Peaches with a few last-minute touches before her catwalk rehearsal, a picture of quiet contentment.
No, this was no time for romance. Everyone was far too preoccupied.
Euan had no sooner raised his hand to knock at the door of the big barn than he regretted his decision. His grandad had made him come, and since he’d do anything for him, he’d agreed.
‘Mind out for those old fogey gossips at the café counter,’ Clyde had warned, which was a bit rich coming from him as Senga Gifford was only two years his senior.
It was McIntyre who slid the shed doors open and his expression told Euan he had no idea who he was.
‘Sorry, are you closed?’ Euan asked, checking the time on his phone. ‘Is five o’clock your closing time?’
‘Just aboot,’ McIntyre said, reluctant to move aside.
‘Euan? Is that you?’ came a woman’s voice, and he peered around McIntyre to find out who it belonged to.
For all that this place was supposed to be shutting for the night, there were still people in the shed, some of them busy shifting furniture and rigging lights, God knows why. One thing Euan did know was that he shouldn’t have come.
The woman who’d known his name was making her way over in a long dress with some kind of crocheted spider’s web jumper over the top of it.
‘Sorry, I didnae mean to butt in to a private party,’ Euan told her quickly, making to leave, but the woman made him stay, calling his name once more.
‘You’re Euan Forte, aren’t you?’
Something about her seemed familiar.
‘It’s Euan Sparks now,’ he told her.
His mum had remarried when he was little and it had meant a move out of Cairn Dhu to Glasgow and putting up with a boozy dosser of a stepdad who drove his mum to distraction with his empty promises and sneaky ways until he’d inevitably sloped off into the night and never come back. The surname had stuck with him though, and proved to be an endless source of jokes at his expense while at college training to be a sparky.
‘That’s right!’ she was saying. ‘I remember. You moved away. I knew your mum. She was the dinner lady when I worked at the primary school. I’m Roz McIntyre.’
‘Ah, right enough,’ Euan answered, but in truth he barely remembered Roz, he’d been so small when they left.
‘How is your mum?’ she pressed.
‘All right, thanks,’ said Euan, with a little pang of guilt. He hadn’t seen her in ages. She was still at home in Glasgow, looking after his wee sister. ‘I’m living with Grandad now.’
‘Euan Forte, is it?’ came another voice from behind Roz. Was he ever going to get to the point of his being here? Cairn Dhu really was kind of infuriating.
