‘I should ring Dad.’ I half-heartedly scoped the room for my handbag. ‘Thank God he’s not in the country at the moment, it would be a nightmare having him and Mam here together.’ They’d divorced eight years ago, not friendly, not pretty.
‘Where is he?’
‘A lecture tour in the US.’
‘Oh, is this for that new book that none of us will ever read?’ Jay sniggered into his beer.
‘It is: The Choice of Freedom. I scanned the first chapter and saw the word polemical and quickly threw it away.’
Jay pretended to shiver. ‘Way too intellectual for our tiny, pea-sized brains.’
‘You’d think I would have inherited some of his genius,’ I joked.
‘Well, we can’t all be high-flying sociologists, some of us need to be gamers and some of us need to be florists.’ Jay smiled at me and raised his bottle for a cheers. ‘Congratulations, by the way. Here’s to not dying alone.’
‘Thanks, I am so happy, you know.’
The party went on until the birds came out, someone lost their shoes, someone vomited at the foot of our blossom tree in the front garden, and fourteen glasses were smashed. It was a roaring success.
3
I worked out of my mam’s garage. I realise that a garage start-up could sound positively romantic and that I was only a few double-clicks away from billionaire status but the reality was that a south-side Dublin suburban housing estate wasn’t remotely glamorous. Mam still lived in the house that we grew up in; she got it in the divorce settlement. It was a standard three-bed semi-detached house that looked exactly like the other two hundred red-brick houses on the estate. It was too big for Mam on her own but it was a good location, just four miles from the centre of town, so she didn’t want to move. It was not an ideal spot for me to run my business from but it was rent free. On most days the garage was cold and a bit damp and I had to wear a woolly hat and fingerless gloves indoors.
I also had to put up with Richard, Mam’s retired neighbour who thought I was still fifteen and working on a school project. The fact that I thought I was still fifteen and trapped in a body-swap movie was irrelevant. At least, trapped until the fortune teller/lightning strike/voodoo-smoodoo drink turned up again and my pretence was shattered through a series of comical yet meaningful events. I felt that Richard, in his itchy cardigans, cradling cups of milky tea that he took inhumanly loud slurps of, should respect my fully blown, twenty-eight-year-old adult status. I was a business owner now, after all. Blooming Brilliant, flowers you can count on. I still caught myself every time I heard the name. I was so proud of myself, or at least normally I was, but a few weeks ago I banged into Suzy McGrath and felt a bit rattled. I had just done a delivery and BBest told me I needed a coffee, so I swung into a Starbucks for an Americano. I spotted Suzy and immediately tried to retreat but the lure of coffee was strong and so were the customer service skills of the bearded barista, who seemed to start brewing my Americano before I’d even uttered the words ‘double shot’.
‘Freya Flannigan, I don’t believe it.’
She was a heavenly vision in all white: tight jeans and a billowy white blouse pulled in neatly around her very large, pregnant belly, which was clearly no impediment to her towering on high heels. She was still managing to walk with a sexy wiggle, the wiggle she mastered during gym class at school while the rest of us were learning life skills like rope climbing or, if you were me, shot putting.
‘Suzy McGrath.’
‘How are you?’ she asked. The key to her Dublin stones-in-her-mouth south-side accent was to give emphasis to words that didn’t really need to be emphasised, so she sounded more than a little bit moronic.
‘Great.’ I could feel my eyes rolling as she came into me for an embrace. ‘Look at you.’
She placed a protective hand over her belly like I might snatch her unborn child away. ‘Eight months, feels like eighteen, you know yourself. It’s my third. What about you, Freya?’
I flashed a nervy glance at the barista, willing him to hurry up. ‘No, no, haven’t done that yet.’
‘Well, you know, there’s still time.’ She looked at me with fake concern in her eyes.
‘Yes, yes, plenty of time.’ I grinned like a halfwit and noticed that she shook her head, disagreeing with herself and my ticking biological clock. ‘You look great,’ I said.
She smiled knowingly. ‘So do you.’ Her eyes raced up and down. My hair was pulled back in a ponytail, quick lick of mascara on my lashes, none-too-clean runners, apron. She peered at the logo.
‘Blooming Brilliant. Oh, do you work for a florist?’
‘Yes. Well, actually, it’s me.’ I felt my chest puff out with pride. ‘I am a florist. I have my own business.’
‘Marvellous. Do you have a shop nearby?’ She flicked her long blonde hair over her shoulder.
I pointed out the window. ‘Oh yes, around here, nearby here. A big, shiny successful place.’
‘I’ll have to look you up.’
‘Americano, two sugars, for Freya.’ The barista placed a paper cup in my hand with a wink.
I shouldn’t have fluffed it with Suzy McGrath. It was fine to work out of Mam’s but sometimes when I met annoying people from school or just people with great hair who were clearly winning at life, I felt like I should big-up myself. Anyway, the truth of the matter was I had to get out of Mam’s garage at some point, I needed footfall to drum up new business, and I had to expand and build. I also owed Dad money – not a huge amount, but he had given me a loan to get the business started when the banks wouldn’t go near me. Hopefully they would now; I had an application for a line of credit at BBest Banks. I also had a knot in my stomach every time I thought about it.
Floristry hadn’t been my first career choice. I’d studied business in college but hadn’t really intended going into it. I hadn’t really intended going into anything. I had no ten-point plan. I joined conversations with friends about entering graduate programs where we’d all hug our laptops to our chest, flick our hair and talk knowledgeably about things like corporate tax rates and Silicon Valley and how that would affect our job prospects. I engaged as much as the next lip gloss-wearing graduate. I even said that I had applied for internships. My dad was particularly mystified that I wasn’t getting interviews, and he was full of mini pep talks and fist pumps that everything would be alright in the end. I smiled, pretended to look a little upset with downcast eyes and protruding bottom lip, and just never admitted that I never even sent off for the application forms. I told myself I didn’t want to get stuck on the corporate ladder – I was far too independent and single-minded for that. I wanted to do something else, I just didn’t know what.
So I took a job waitressing in a family-run Italian restaurant on the quays in the centre of Dublin while I figured out what to be when I grew up. A modern, glass, light-filled building that overlooked the Liffey, the restaurant was right near the Seamus Heaney Bridge which, it transpired, had just the right number of ridges on it for nimble-footed Dublin knacker kids to climb up with great ease. On a summer’s day they would strip off their T-shirts, lasso them around their heads and launch themselves and their lily white torsos off the bridge to swim in the sluggish, polluted, green waters of the Liffey, turning the Dublin Quays into a rougher, cider-swilling, curry-chipped version of the South of France. We always had a bird’s eye view of these events, which really ramped up in comedy value when the guards arrived, waving notebooks and shouting at the divers.
My waitressing was only supposed to be for a couple of months, a short-term thing while I decided on what I really wanted to do with my life, but as with all interim jobs, it ran on and on and I stayed four years.
I was a terrible waitress. I started with boundless enthusiasm but the shine quickly wore off as the months passed and I got no better at it. I’d watch the other waitresses sashay through tables like confident, heel-clicking flamenco dancers, balancing dishes on their little fingers, flirting with the customers, full of w
ide smiles and sounding like they’d plucked the grapes from the vineyards themselves. My waitressing talents seemed to peak at being able to carry two plates at once and walk all the way to the kitchen. On reflection, I still feel that my feet let me down. I have huge feet, big clumsy clodhoppers. As a little girl, I used to pray especially hard to Holy God to save all
the starving children in Africa and to please, oh pretty please, shrink my feet. And if I’m being honest with myself, I will admit that even to this day when I pass a church or a holy statue I say a little prayer that I might one day have size seven feet and not my giant size nines, and I normally throw in something about the starving kids too, because while I’m at it and have His ear and all, I might as well. How was I ever supposed to be a rock-star waitress and mince delicately between tables with feet like that? It was never going to happen.
But what did happen was a fling with the head chef. It was mainly a series of booze-fuelled fumbles in the store cupboard that were a bit of a laugh. He was a creative-genius type in the kitchen. Not, I assure you, in the store cupboard; definitely not in the store cupboard, the fridge, the back kitchen or the parking lot. There he was pretty mediocre. And management were too nervous of upsetting him, they didn’t want to get him hot and bothered by firing me, so my job was safe in spite of my many mishaps.
So while my friends saddled up and took their positions on the corporate merry-go-round, I continued to lament my big feet and plod aimlessly through the abyss of minimum-wage servitude.
Around that time, the BBest app expanded into career forecasting. I had been living my life by BBest. In fact, I could hardly remember what life was like before. It’s incredible to think the app had only been around for four years. How did people make decisions before that? My BBest was tailored to me, based on my digital fingerprint. When I signed up, I surrendered all my information to BBest: my online searches, shopping preferences, diet, dating, commuting details, fitness, financial transactions, travel, healthcare, you name it; everything I had ever done online. All of my choices were absorbed into machine-learning algorithims. This program factored in my behaviour, including my previous online history, and looked at social constructs in Ireland, infrastructure in my neighbourhood, the political environment and laws of nature to predict the best outcome for my future actions. BBest knew what I should do before I did. It delivered a percentage outcome, giving me three options. For example, if I took the train to work there was a forty-five per cent chance that I would not arrive on time; however if I took my bike, there was a ninety-four per cent chance I would.
BBest eliminated mind-boggling choice. We lived in a time where there were thirty thousand different brands to choose from in an average-sized supermarket. Which cracker to buy could cause hours of indecision: sodium free, gluten free, fat free? How did you choose? It could take a full day to buy a pair of jeans, to decipher which brand, which colour? Dark denim, stonewashed, pre-washed, light denim? Which fit? Relaxed, super slim, skinny, boyfriend, straight, boot cut? BBest eliminated the paralysis of indecision. It knew you, and it knew current fashion trends and what fitted with what in your wardrobe. Then it would recommend three choices, with an emphasis on the fashionable: skinny, stonewashed, three-quarter-length style. And the best part was BBest always made the right choice for you. BBest never made mistakes. Your wardrobe and your life were in a safe pair of virtual hands.
One and a half billion people used BBest worldwide. The average BBest user accessed the app up to two hundred and thirty-four times a day. Most described it as ‘another limb’, an ‘extension of me’. And in a way, it wasn’t just an extension of you – it was you. BBest was tailored to you and it knew you better than you knew yourself, because it knew what you would do next. BBest allowed you to be the best version of yourself. When BBest merged with banking systems, it became even easier to amalgamate your profile. Updates happened automatically, not like in the early days when you had to input your purchases yourself.
People were reluctant to sign up to BBest when it launched – they were nervous about privacy. But the reality was that old-school privacy had disappeared a long time ago; the climate on privacy changed a few years earlier, during a dark period when terrorism was relentless, and devastating sporadic attacks in public places meant that no one felt safe, ever. The governments of Europe fought back; to find the terrorists they needed blanket access to private emails and phone calls. It was a small price to pay to get our freedom back. The general consensus since then has been that transparency is good: if you have nothing to hide, why hide? When BBest appeared they actually asked for your information, which almost seemed novel, and it was worth it for what you got back.
I was excited when BBest moved into career management. I felt like, at last, maybe I could get some direction. As usual, up popped three options, tailored to me: masseuse, beautician or florist. Each proposed profession allowed me to work for myself in a creative environment, two things that appealed to me immediately. Floristry flashed orange as the preferred option, with a seventy-four per cent chance of success. Good odds, and I’d always loved flowers. I was a sucker for nature programs and couldn’t walk past a street seller without grabbing some tulips. I didn’t like the thought of running my hands over people as a masseuse, far too oily, and there was bound to be some perverts looking for happy endings, so no thank you. A beautician appealed a bit, but you’d have to wax a lot of fannies, and even one fanny was too many for my liking. So of the three, it was floristry. And honestly, since that day, I haven’t looked back. BBest was right, as always. I found my niche, my gloriously happy niche.
I’d managed to turn the garage into a good work space. Every morning I revelled in the floral scent that greeted me as I swung the door open. Shelves lined the walls, stacked with a collection of vases like mismatched glass soldiers. Tin buckets were scattered around like pebbles on the beach, waiting to be filled. To the back of the room were two large sinks and a long countertop that allowed me to cut and brush and dethorn my blooms, the heavy lifting, and then, in the front of the room where the light was good, I had a table and comfortable chair where I could do the more delicate work. Here I could twist wires and cut and bend flowers into shape. This was where I made bouquets and garlands.
Part of my absolute joy in being a florist was delivering flowers, not the driving bit and getting lost in a housing estate, but that exquisite moment when I handed a bouquet to someone. There was nearly always an initial look of surprise. I watched their minds ticking over as they patted their chest and shook their head in disbelief: Me? No, surely not. Who would buy me flowers? I got asked all the time, Have you made a mistake? They’re probably for next door, check the address. I’ve had the occasional bouquet thrust back into my hands, like it was a live grenade, as if they couldn’t possibly receive anything so beautiful. And then they realised something, or remembered someone, and their eyes would well up with tears, or they might blush as they buried their head in some peonies: Thank you, thank you, thank you. And the best part was I knew what the card said: Sorry; I love you; Congratulations. I built up a little story in my head as I knotted the arrangement together: Sorry for what? Why did he need to say ‘I love you’ today? My flowers were just one piece in someone’s life’s puzzle. I knew other florists used delivery people, but for me, that was what being a florist was all about – that moment – and I couldn’t hand that over to anyone. No way.
I had a wedding booked the following day, so the place was higgledy piggledy and I needed to start prepping, but just as I rolled up my sleeves to start work, my phone rang.
‘Dad, I haven’t had a chance to talk to you.’ I was delighted to hear from him.
‘Well, congratulations. I am absolutely thrilled for you both.’
‘Thanks. There was a surprise party, and I’ll send you a pic of the ring.’
‘Yes, yes, I heard – I was already talking to Mason.’
I felt a bit of a stab there, not of jealousy because that would be weird, but
maybe a little hurt that I didn’t get to talk to Dad first.
‘He’s my future son-in-law, after all,’ Dad continued. ‘You made a good choice, Freya, he is a stand-up guy.’
‘I know, Dad. It means a lot to me that you approve.’
‘Approve? I bloody love the guy.’ He laughed full throttle down the phone.
‘Where are you, Dad?’
‘Silicon Valley, I just came out of a meeting with some tech leads. There’s big things happening here, Freya. I’ll shoot you through my schedule for next year so we can work out wedding dates. I’m back to back right through to autumn. You’ll have to work around me.’
‘Great, thanks, I mean, I haven’t even thought about when we’ll have the wedding, I haven’t had a chance to consult BBest on it yet. It might be a while, we’ll have to save up and, you know, I’ve got work.’ I felt my head beginning to spin.
‘Nonsense. Let’s hop to it. Don’t you have the Crayling wedding? That will move things along, a good review from them will mean a lot.’
Even Dad knew who the Craylings were. Mr Crayling was a terrifying finance man with a red face and pot belly, who took trips to the Middle East to buy apartment blocks, and owned a few nightclubs in London’s West End and airlines in China. And the painful Mrs Crayling with a shrill voice, who would no doubt be squeezed like a sausage into something very expensive and floral but still, with all that money, hadn’t managed to fix her horsey teeth.
‘Yes, tomorrow, I’m prepping for it now. It’s going to be a big affair,’ I said, excited. It was their only daughter, the blessed Portia’s, wedding. I quite liked Portia, she definitely wanted to do her own thing, marrying the very nice, quiet and unassuming Elliot, a school teacher who, judging by the gritted-teeth photographs, was a disappointment to her parents. Even hiring me was unexpected. I had never been a society florist. I had great reviews and ranked really well on BBest, but I was small fry compared to some of the established florists out there.
Right Girl Page 2
