The Beachside Flower Stall

by Karen Clarke

  ‘Can’t you wow him with your personality, hen, show him you’re worth ten of her.’ Jasmine exaggerated her Scottish accent for effect.

  ‘Honestly, I don’t mind.’ I twisted a length of hair around my finger. It felt limp from all the sweating I’d done, but I couldn’t face washing it. ‘It wasn’t meant to be.’

  ‘You can always pick another.’ She clutched her heart, dramatically. ‘The man of your dreams is out there somewhere, you just haven’t met him yet.’

  I couldn’t face going over my conversation with Tom, so told her about my visit to Hudson Grange.

  ‘She sounds like a right rocket, as we say in Scotland,’ Jasmine said, when I got to the bit about Megan and Jay laughing themselves silly at the wedding-pups.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘She’s a shitehawk.’

  ‘Hmm,’ I said. ‘That does sort of sum her up.’

  Jasmine paused in the act of pouring boiling water onto a Pot Noodle and looked at her phone screen. ‘Are you OK?’

  Tears swelled again, and I hoped she couldn’t see.

  ‘I saw Tom today, that’s all,’ I managed. ‘But, I’m fine.’ I rolled onto my back so that the tears ran into my ears. ‘How was your dinner with Vinnie?’

  ‘Good,’ she said, taking my cue. ‘We went dancing afterwards, I mean proper dancing.’ She jabbed her hips from side to side and snaked her arms around, her pyjama top riding up. ‘He knows this bar and took me for a lesson.’

  ‘Sounds amazing,’ I said.

  She did a spin and tripped over. ‘Oops. I think I sprained a buttock, but it was fun.’

  ‘Looking forward to your holiday?’

  ‘Can’t wait.’ She stirred the noodles with a flourish, and took a second Pot Noodle from the cupboard that she’d assigned herself after moving in; one which had escaped the water damage. ‘You will be back by then, won’t you?’ Before I could answer, she dived over and picked up her phone. ‘I meant to ask, what colour do you want the kitchen wall painted?’ She swung the screen over a colour chart on the worktop and I gave it a desultory glance.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘You pick something.’

  Her eyes filled the screen, zigzagging with astonishment. ‘Are you insane?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘You really want me to choose? Me?’ She stabbed herself with her finger. ‘Can I pick an actual colour that’s not beige, beige or light beige?’

  ‘Yep.’

  Her eyebrows dived together. ‘But when you finally gave me permission to paint my room purple, you wouldn’t come in because you said it made you feel scared.’

  If I hadn’t been at Ruby’s, I’d have been all over that paint chart, picking a colour that was fresh and neutral, much like the colour that had been there before the water pipe burst – magnolia, perhaps, or linen. But at that moment I couldn’t think of anything that mattered less. ‘Honestly, Jas, I don’t care.’

  ‘Care?’

  ‘Mind,’ I said, covering my face with my arm. ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘Right, well I’m going to go, if you’re sure you’re OK,’ Jasmine said. ‘I promised Vinnie I’d make him a gourmet supper…’

  ‘He’s there?’ My head shot round.

  She waggled one of the Pot Noodles. ‘Keeping my bed warm, not that he needs to, it’s been roasting here today.’

  ‘Jas, you’re unbelievable.’

  ‘I know.’ She dipped a curtsy, then frowned.

  ‘What is it?’

  She was squinting past me, pretending to adjust a pair of spectacles. ‘What, in the name of Peter Andre, is that yellow beauty?’

  I looked to where she was pointing with a pretend-shaky finger and laughter fizzled up. ‘Me and Ruby had a flower-arranging session after dinner,’ I said. ‘They’re not real.’

  ‘You don’t say.’

  ‘Can you tell what it is?’

  ‘It looks like…’ she tipped her head, and pretended to think. ‘Is it a one-eyed donkey?’

  I picked up my pillow and pretended to lob it. ‘Duck,’ I said, and she did. ‘No! I mean, it’s a duck.’

  I was still chuckling as I undressed for bed and set my alarm.

  Thank God for Jasmine, I thought, lying on top of the duvet in the stuffy room, my wonky flower-duck beside me.

  Unlike Megan, she was everything a friend was supposed to be.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  It was almost a relief to be back at work on Monday morning, after my rollercoaster weekend.

  It was another hot day, sunshine rippling across the square, over the beach to the sea, where a pair of hopeful surfers were paddling their boards in the shallows.

  I stood in the shade of the flower stall and tried to stay focused, listening politely while Calum told me that a Sunday picnic with his girlfriend had ended in A & E, when she was stung by a wasp and her leg swelled to twice its size. I even managed a horrified laugh when Jools, the delivery lady, told her own insect horror story, involving being bitten by a spider that she swore had eyes and winked at her.

  But as I fetched some water from the standpipe and watered the flowers and plants, then scrubbed the buckets and swept up petals, I kept glancing around, expecting a visit from a furious Mr Hudson, or for Megan to appear, having heard about my visit to Tom’s cottage. Or for Peter to show up with a uniformed officer, or Tom to come down, to at least let me know what was happening with my car.

  Seeing Tom was what I wanted most and least. I would have to steel myself to turn him away, regardless of the dream I’d had, of us locked in a passionate embrace on top of a fluffy cloud, while my family looked on in smiling approval, salsa music playing in the background.

  I’d woken, tangled in my duvet, to the sound of my phone alarm thrumming out a beat of bongos and maracas.

  In the event, only Doris turned up, bringing fresh flowers from her garden.

  ‘It seems a shame that I’m the only one to benefit from them,’ she said, freeing up a couple of buckets and cramming them with tall lilies, and a confection of tissue-pink roses, their scent gathering strength in the heat.

  ‘Better put those in the shade,’ I said, shifting the bucket beneath the canopy, and onto a pallet close to the workbench.

  Doris gave a brisk nod. ‘You’re learning.’

  ‘You know I’ll never be a florist,’ I said rather bad-temperedly. ‘Flowers are fine, but I’m much more comfortable with numbers.’

  Doris’s head bobbed an eager endorsement. ‘Nothing wrong with that,’ she said. ‘The world has enough people doing flouncy things.’ Her expression grew haughty. ‘I enjoyed being married to an officer of the law, but I didn’t want to become one.’

  ‘What did you do, Doris?’ I was hoping to delay her bringing up the one topic I was dreading.

  She opened her handbag, which was parakeet-green to match her A-line skirt, and provided an eye-catching contrast to the meringue whiteness of her blouse. In comparison, I looked like a faded photo in my beige T-shirt and jeans.

  ‘I was a secretary at a furniture company, before Roger and I got married,’ she said, tugging out her gardening gloves. ‘A very classy one too.’

  I could easily see her with a shorthand pad in her hand. ‘But you gave it up?’ I said, as she got busy at the wheelbarrow, pinching dead leaves off the plants.

  ‘My boss liked spanking ladies’ bottoms.’ She picked up the watering can and tipped it over the soil. ‘It was before political correctness came in.’

  ‘Blimey, that’s… awful.’ I thought of my mild-mannered boss at Cars 4 U. The only bodywork he’d been interested in was of the vehicular variety. So much so, his wife had filed for divorce.

  ‘I was more than happy to give up my job and become a good housewife and mother.’

  ‘Good for you.’ I meant it, but she looked offended.

  ‘I’ll have you know I became a leading member of our local Neighbourhood Watch scheme, which Roger set up after a spate of robberies on
Maple Hill in the eighties.’

  ‘Sounds fascinating.’ I meant that too, but it came out sounding droll.

  Doris stopped fiddling with the wheelbarrow and gave me a hard stare. ‘Any luck with you-know-who?’

  My shoulders tensed. ‘Shall I get us a drink?’ I glanced at Cooper’s Café, the tables outside all taken by visitors baring various parts of their bodies to the sun.

  ‘No, thank you,’ Doris said. ‘I had a red blossom tea and a birdseed muffin before I came out.’

  ‘Birdseed?’

  ‘I had some left over,’ she said, bafflingly. ‘So?’

  I checked for customers, disappointed to see there weren’t any. Better get it over with. ‘OK, I went to see Donny, or should I say Peter, and it didn’t go at all well.’

  Doris’s mouth turned down. ‘Well, that’s a pity. I thought if anyone could get through to him it would be you.’

  I remembered Tom saying the same thing, and didn’t know whether I should be flattered, or upset that I didn’t possess whatever qualities they’d bestowed. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you’re family.’

  ‘Oh. Well, he doesn’t want anything to do with Ruby.’ I was gripped by a sudden sense of unfairness. ‘He won’t even give her a chance.’

  Doris tutted. ‘Is there anyone else you could appeal to?’

  ‘His wife said she’d try to talk to him, but he seemed so angry I can’t imagine him going for it.’

  ‘What a bugger.’ Doris tugged her gloves off and rammed them back in her bag. ‘It seems such a waste to have all that bad feeling when we’ll all be dead one day.’

  It was a bit dramatic, but I guessed she was thinking about her husband, turning his back on their son. ‘I suppose not everyone can have their happy ending.’ I thought of Tom, and a lump formed in my throat. ‘To be honest, I’ve probably made everything worse.’

  Doris’s features settled. ‘You’ll have given him food for thought,’ she said resolutely. ‘He might come around yet.’

  I somehow doubted it. ‘Thanks, anyway,’ I said, still not sure whether I should be tearing a strip off her for interfering.

  ‘At least we tried.’ She patted her bob a bit too vigorously, as if pressing down her disappointment. ‘Will you tell your aunt?’

  ‘Definitely not.’

  ‘Then I shan’t either.’

  A moment of silent understanding passed between us.

  ‘Thank you for the flowers,’ I said.

  She inclined her head, then spun on her sensible heel and tip-tapped across the square to the newsagent’s, just as my pocket vibrated.

  It was the work phone. I pulled it out, praying it was only a booking and not Megan.

  ‘Carrie?’

  It was Megan.

  I’d have expected her to confront me face to face, but maybe she was too upset by whatever Mr Hudson had told her.

  ‘Hello,’ I said, with a surprising absence of panic. Maybe discovering she’d misled me about spending the night with Tom had blitzed my guilt about spending an afternoon with him. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Ooh, steady!’ she tittered, not sounding remotely upset. ‘Just letting you know I’ve booked a table at Off the Hook for tomorrow at seven, so I hope you and Cooper can come.’

  For a second, I wondered whether I’d misheard. ‘A table?’

  ‘A square thing with legs.’ She paused for me to appreciate her wit. ‘The meal? You and Cooper, me and Tom – if I can drag him away from work, that is. He keeps stalling. The seafood restaurant?’ Her voice rose. ‘Oh, do say you’ll come, Carrie, I’m dying for us to get together.’

  ‘I forgot to check if it was OK.’ My mind was racing. I couldn’t believe Mr Hudson hadn’t mentioned me being at the cottage, then reminded myself that Tom and I had only been talking, not making passionate love on the kitchen table. More’s the pity.

  ‘Carrie?’

  I jumped. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Tuesday night?’ A note of irritation had crept in.

  I thought for a moment. It was unlikely Tom would come to the meal, but if I turned down the invitation it might look odd – as if we were trying to avoid each other’s company. Easier to accept, and leave it to Megan to cancel when Tom refused. Then I could spend the evening with Toby to take my mind off things. ‘Fine,’ I said, a bit too forcefully. ‘We’ll see you there.’

  ‘Great! I’ll order a bottle of champers and we can make a night of it!’

  ‘Should you be drinking?’ I said, without thinking.

  ‘I meant for everyone else, not me.’ As she rang off, with a cheery, ‘Ciao for now!’ a terrible thought snuck into my head. What if Megan wasn’t pregnant?

  She could be faking it, knowing Tom would stand by her. If she wasn’t pregnant, they’d have no reason to be together! It was hard to believe that a woman in the twenty-first century would go to those lengths, but what if she had?

  My heart raced, making it hard to concentrate as I laid out a selection of flowers on the workbench for a customer, snipping them to size, before gathering the stems and tying them with blue ribbon.

  As soon as she’d gone, I whipped out my phone and called Sarah.

  ‘How far along were you before you started to show?’

  ‘Started to show what?’ she said. ‘Chloe get out!’ There was a scrabbling sound, and my niece started grizzling in the background. ‘She’s bored, and keeps getting in the tumble drier,’ Sarah said, sounding frazzled. ‘I’ll be glad when the school holidays are over.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to Portugal next week?’

  ‘Yes, thank god,’ she said. ‘Give the kids a beach and some sea and they’ll be in heaven.’

  ‘You could have come here,’ I said. ‘It’s lovely.’

  ‘Bit of a busman’s holiday, considering we grew up in Dorset.’

  ‘But wouldn’t it be nice for the children to see some of the places we used to go to?’

  ‘They don’t take much in at this age, apart from where the nearest ice-cream van is, but maybe one day,’ she conceded. ‘Funnily enough, Mum’s been saying the same thing. I think she’s missing Dorchester.’ Chloe’s grizzle became a roar, and I heard Jack tell her to stop being a stinky noisy-knickers.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Sarah, ‘what was it you wanted me to show you?’

  ‘Don’t worry, it wasn’t important.’ I felt suddenly silly. As if Megan would fake a pregnancy. She was a lot of things, but not stupid. She would know she couldn’t keep it up, beyond a certain point. The point where she and Tom were married.

  I was thinking in clichéd film-plot terms. ‘You need to get a grip,’ I said.

  ‘I’m doing my best.’ Sarah sounded hurt, and I realised I was still on the phone. ‘You wait until you’re a mum.’

  ‘Oh, no, I didn’t mean you…’

  But she’d already hung up.

  I was talking out loud to myself. Love you xx

  I texted, knowing she’d have forgotten it in the next ten minutes.

  ‘Did you get to see your vet?’

  Startled, I turned to see the woman that Jane had introduced me to about a century ago. Celia, I remembered. Without her Labrador today. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You asked for directions?’ She tucked her walking stick under her arm and picked up a pot of peppery-scented pink and white phlox. ‘I’ll take this, please,’ she said, pulling a sequinned purse from the pocket of her tribal-print jumpsuit.

  ‘Yes, I saw him, thanks. My car broke down and he gave me a lift.’ Talk about putting a unique spin on events.

  ‘He’s marrying that awful woman who works for his father, according to Paddy.’ She lifted the visor of her baseball hat and gave me a direct look. ‘Paddy, my boyfriend,’ she said. ‘He’s a groundsman at Hudson Grange.’

  ‘You mean Megan?’

  Celia nodded. ‘My daughter, Laura, and her partner, Mario, have bought a wine cellar in Langham, and this Megan swanned in, scouting sites for a new type of boutique hotel her boss is inte
rested in.’ She said ‘boutique’ as though it was a swear word. ‘She offered them half what the place is worth.’

  ‘Really?’ I said. I wondered if Tom knew.

  ‘When they said no, she got a bit nasty.’ Her expression suggested she didn’t know what the world was coming to. ‘Lord only knows what he sees in her.’

  ‘Well, that’s their business.’ I took the money for the plant. ‘He’s a grown man, I’m sure he knows what he’s doing.’

  Celia made a harrumphing sound, as she dropped the plant in her Adidas rucksack and zipped it up. ‘Doris said you had a crush on him once.’

  What? ‘How… how on earth would she know that?’ I stammered.

  Celia’s eyes grew round. ‘Doris Day moves in mysterious ways.’ She twirled her stick like a magic wand, almost cracking a passer-by over the head. ‘And since when do men know what’s going on under their noses?’

  She had a point, I thought, watching her stride towards the parade, the sun bouncing off her silver trainers.

  Mr Hudson hadn’t noticed how far he’d pushed Tom until he’d left home, and Tom hadn’t had a clue about my real feelings, though I must have been giving off signals. And then there was Peter/Donny, blinded by hurt to the fact that he had a whole other family who would love to get to know him.

  ‘Bloody men,’ I said, plucking a foil-wrapped scone out of my bag, attracting the attention of a lurking seagull. ‘Why should I be the one to enlighten them?’

  Then I remembered Tom saying he’d had feelings for me, and my stomach bunched up in a knot. How had I not noticed that?

  I pulled out my mobile and rang Toby. ‘You know you offered to be Cooper if I needed you again?’ I said. ‘Would you mind being my date tomorrow night?’

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  My car was parked in its usual slot behind the bakery after work the following evening, the flower-pups in the canvas bag on the front seat.

  ‘A chap said to tell you it’s sorted and paid for, and here are your keys,’ Bob said, coming out with them hanging from his finger.

  ‘What sort of bloke?’

  ‘A mechanic type, in overalls.’