The Teashop on the Corner

by Milly Johnson

  Missus?

  ‘Totally agree wiv ya, love . . . Funny you should say that, we’ve just had some business from a firm who were let down . . . not good, not good . . . Well that is great to hear that we can expect more business from you if we make your mum happy and we will . . . Yep . . . got that . . . she’s seventy on Friday . . . she must have had you in her fifties then from the sound of your voice . . .’

  Carla raised her eyes skyward. What cheese. But the customer was obviously loving it.

  ‘Two hundred quidsworth? That is one serious bouquet . . . Are we looking at any particular colours . . . ? A mix . . . nice traditional arrangement or something a bit avant garde . . . ? Traditional – as I thought . . . Oh, I think we can throw the delivery in for nothing . . . Yep, let me get my pen and take down a few details . . . Mrs Ellen Jacobs, Chloe House . . . as in the perfume? Love that . . . Maltstone . . . It’s off the main Maltstone Road to the left of the White Rose Corner Shop, private drive . . . we’ll find it, don’t you worry, my darling . . . Certainly, Visa is fine . . . if you’d give me the long number on the front first.’

  A two hundred pound bouquet? Carla gulped in a good way. She went out front when Will came off the phone.

  ‘Who was the customer? Elton John?’

  Will read from his notepad. ‘No, a Mrs Julie Pride.’ He looked up to see Carla had turned into a frozen open-mouthed statue. ‘Carla? You all right, love?’

  Carla was in total shock.

  ‘Carla?’ Will prompted.

  Carla took a deep steadying breath. ‘You’ve only gone and sold a bouquet to Martin’s wife,’ she said in mock-cockney.

  ‘Jesus. Want me to ring her back and say you can’t do it?’

  Carla’s lips spread into a slow smile. She clamped her hand over her mouth to stop the giggle jetting out of it.

  ‘You are joking. I’m quite content to take her money. And her future money. Did I hear you say something about more orders if she’s happy?’ She didn’t wait for Will to answer. ‘Oh she’ll be happy all right. I’ll give her mother the best bouquet she’s ever seen.’ Carla laughed. ‘Dear God, you couldn’t make this up.’

  ‘I expect you’d like me to deliver it though,’ said Will. ‘I think the future orders might dry up before they start if she suspects she’s buying flowers from you.’

  ‘Would you?’ asked Carla. Without thinking she put her arms around Will’s neck and kissed his cheek. ‘What would I do without you?’

  It all happened so fast that neither of them, when dissecting it later, could remember who made the next move but suddenly their lips were touching, pressing together, Will’s hands were around Carla’s back, pulling her closer, then just as abruptly they sprang apart.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Will.

  ‘So am I,’ said Carla, feeling a blush overtake her whole head, neck and then her shoulders. ‘Forget it.’

  ‘Heat of the moment,’ said Will, embarrassed that Carla seemed so eager to erase that moment.

  ‘Absolutely,’ replied Carla, wanting the floor to rise up and drag her down. Will was obviously totally horrified about what had just happened.

  Then a knock on the door rescued them. It was Theresa with a bottle of champagne.

  Chapter 104

  Bull O’Gowan was easy enough to find. He might have moved house but he still used the same watering holes in Ketherwood where he enjoyed being a big fish in a small pond. Shaun tried the Duke of Wellington first, a dive of the lowest order, but he wasn’t in there. He had more success with his second port of call: the Fighting Cock. Bull O’Gowan was sitting at a table with a skinny, over-tanned girl in a very short skirt. If the empties on the table were anything to go by, Bull was on his fourth pint.

  Shaun was aware of eyes on the back of his neck as he strode over to Bull, a nickname that O’Gowan enjoyed because of the wild, unpredictable nature of such a huge beast. O’Gowan’s natural build was a long streak of piss like the rest of his family, but he’d gathered bulk over the years first through muscle-building, then through bad diet. Really he was more hyena than Bull: a sly, vicious, scavenger.

  ‘I want a word,’ Shaun said, a statement, not a request. Bull’s head slowly lifted to see who had the audacity to address him so and when he saw that it was Shaun McCarthy, the expletive that he’d been about to spit out stayed put behind his lip.

  ‘Fuck off,’ he said to the gum-chewing, tangerine-skinned girl at his side. Although she looked older, Shaun guessed she was only about seventeen. Bull liked them young and pliant. She tutted in displeasure but obediently moved to the bar. Uninvited, Shaun sat, occupying the chair she had just vacated.

  ‘It’s about your boy, Ryan,’ Shaun began, not waiting for Bull to get the first word in.

  ‘What’s he fucking done?’ Bull said, twisting in his chair to fully face Shaun, puffing out his chest so anyone watching them – and they would be – would see that he wasn’t threatened by the Irishman. Bull and Shaun had crossed paths just once, years ago, and Bull hadn’t come off well at all. The truth was that Shaun was one of the few men that Bull was wary of. Shaun might not have been as wide or as tall as O’Gowan, but he had cement running through his core. And word was that he knew some nasty bastards in Ireland. Bull didn’t want to cross him again, but neither did he want anyone to know that.

  ‘He hasn’t done anything,’ said Shaun. ‘Your Leslie has thrown him out on the street. A friend of mine has been putting him up.’

  ‘Leslie’s a nutter,’ said Bull. ‘The lad will be better off away from him.’

  Shaun couldn’t keep the anger rising in his voice. ‘That it, is it? That all you’ve got to say about it?’

  Bull threw up his hands in exasperation. ‘What do you want me to fucking do about it? I don’t live in the house any more.’

  ‘I don’t want you to do anything about it,’ said Shaun, his voice now calm but brimming with menace.

  ‘Then why are we having this conversation?’ Bull took a slow controlled sip of his pint.

  ‘The lad has been taken in by the woman he works for on Saturdays. She’s very fond of him.’

  ‘Money. I get it,’ Bull half-laughed, half-grunted. ‘She can fuck off.’

  ‘She doesn’t want your money.’

  Bull’s bloated features scrunched up with confusion. ‘Then what?’

  ‘She doesn’t want trouble from your family.’

  Bull lifted his glass again. ‘Why would she have any trouble?’ and he drained his pint, his great Adam’s apple rising and falling like a fairground test-your-strength machine marker.

  ‘Family ties? Loyalty?’ Shaun spat at him, frustrated by the huge man’s dimness.

  Bull let loose a loud, unpleasant bark of laughter. ‘Family ties to who? I’m not his fucking father. Have you see him? His head’s always stuck in fucking books. Does that sound like an O’Gowan to you?’

  Shaun stopped himself from laughing in the big man’s face. How could he be that oblivious to the family resemblance? Strip back the years and build-up of blubber and there was no mistaking that Ryan was Bull’s son. All the O’Gowan boys had Bull’s cat-shaped eyes, high cheekbones and wide mouth, although his were now buried under fat. Shaun might have wanted to hammer that fact into Bull, but that wouldn’t help Ryan’s case.

  Bull gave a long beery burp then stretched to the side and shouted to his girlfriend. ‘Shan, get me another in.’

  Shaun stood up. There was nothing much else to say here.

  ‘So you have no problem with her making a formal arrangement to look after the boy?’

  ‘Not a paedo is she?’ Bull’s smirk died on his lips as soon as he registered the flash in Shaun’s eyes. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I ain’t got a fucking problem.’

  ‘Good,’ said Shaun. ‘I wouldn’t want her to have any trouble. None at all. She’s a very good friend of mine.’ The inference was clear: mess with her and you messed with Shaun. ‘I’ll hold you directly responsible if any one of you lot even look
at her in a bad way.’

  Bull’s girlfriend brought the pint to his table. Bull picked it up and delivered the edge of the glass to his mouth in a smooth arc but Shaun could see the slight tremor in his hand. And Bull knew that he could see it.

  ‘Enjoy your drink,’ said Shaun, turning. He had to get out of the place before he exploded. There was a wild, angry place inside him primed to rage. How could anyone give up their child so easily? He half wanted Bull to stand up, tower over him, scream at him, who the fucking hell do you think you are trying to take my lad off me? He would have walked away, made Leni realise that family – however dysfunctional it might be – was family and the boy belonged with his own. He might even have respected Bull for seeing him off. But he’d been little better than Pontius Pilate washing his hands of his boy, his own son. Shaun didn’t want to believe what he had just witnessed. Because it was all too easy to apply to himself.

  Chapter 105

  That impulsive kiss they shared for seconds had a ridiculously long-reaching effect. Will and Carla were politeness itself to each other afterwards, but the dynamic had altered between them. There was an awkwardness that hung in the air like a stench.

  When they got home, Will went off to the gym and Carla didn’t see him for the rest of the evening. And he didn’t travel into work with her the next day but said he would meet her there mid-morning. Carla wished she could have rewound time to the moment before she hugged him. Her head was all mixed up now and she felt that a cloud of sadness had appeared above her. On the drive from the flower market, she decided to act as normally as possible, as if nothing untoward had happened. She tried to smile rather than grin when she saw Will walking across the square to the shop at ten.

  The second day of trading at The Lucky Flower Company started off slowly, throwing Carla into a worried panic, but then someone called in for an on-spec bouquet just before lunchtime which Carla put together whilst the lady waited. There was a spray on order to be delivered at one so Carla went into the back room to make it up. Will had just put the phone down from a man requesting an anniversary bouquet for the following week when the doorbell tinkled and an unwelcome sight appeared in the shop doorway.

  ‘Well, well, well, I did hear rumours but I wouldn’t have believed it had I not seen it for myself. Mr Linton Roofing – a chuffing florist.’

  Gerald Scotterfield’s sneering face was grinning so hard that his lips were nearly splitting. With him was one of his side-kicks, who laughed at everything he said but alone wouldn’t have dared even make eye contact with Will; a wimpy little pilot fish clinging to a shark’s back.

  Will’s brain was telling the rest of his body to keep calm and ride it out.

  ‘I’m helping a friend,’ he said as casually as he could. ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘How’s the ladder-climbing? Get dizzy reaching up to them top shelves, do you?’ Behind Gerald pilot-fish man in his donkey jacket tittered into his hand.

  In the back, Carla stopped what she was doing and listened, not knowing whether to venture out into the front or not. She decided to stay where she was for now.

  ‘Yep. It’s a condition called vertigopia majora. Comes from years of overworking,’ said Will, quite impressed with himself for making that up on the spot. ‘You’re pretty safe from getting it, Gerald.’

  ‘Ooooh,’ mocked Gerald. ‘If you look out of the window, you just might see my new Lotus. Why work hard when you can get others to do the work and you cream off.’

  ‘How the hell can you fit your fat arse in a Lotus?’ chuckled Will. ‘That why you brought the shoe-horn with you?’ Will pointed to the skinny man whose grin instantly faded.

  ‘Anyway, enough of the small talk,’ said Gerald, switching subjects. ‘I’m here to give you some business. Thought you might like to send a bouquet to my new bird. Nice big one, full of red roses. Hundred quidsworth.’

  ‘Quite happy to take your order, mate,’ said Will, picking up a receipt pad and pen. He didn’t like the way that pilot fish had started to smirk again. He should have seen the next part coming really.

  Gerald began to slowly dictate the details. ‘It’s to a Miss Nicole Whitlaw, The Views, Hare Avenue. You know, the road behind the park.’

  Time seemed to stand still for a long moment. In his mind’s eye, Will saw his hand drop the pen and pad, felt his body leap like a cougar over the reception desk, his arm extend and his fist crash into Gerald’s spotty, pudgy face. But in real time, Will felt no more than a single heavy thud of heartbeat as his body instinctively reacted to the mention of Nicole’s name. But that was all his senses were going to afford her, and he was as astounded by that as Gerald was.

  Will slowly raised his head and said in a voice as straight as a spirit level on the flat, ‘You sure you only want to spend a hundred quid? I used to get her hundred and fifty quid bouquets.’

  ‘Make it hundred and sixty then. I can afford it,’ Gerald batted back, and for his benefit, Will raised a couple of perfectly impressed eyebrows.

  Pilot fish watched quietly as Gerald peeled off eight twenty-pound notes from a big wad retrieved from his pocket. ‘I’ll have a receipt,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve made it out for a corporate expense, so you can claim it back on your tax,’ smiled Will, handing over a written slip of paper.

  Gerald snatched it out of his hand and turned to the door. ‘Don’t you be putting any fucking worms in it or anything,’ he called over his shoulder.

  ‘I won’t even grace that with a reply,’ said Will. ‘My missus prides herself a bit more than that.’

  Gerald’s hand stilled on the door and he swivelled slowly around and a smile crept over his thick wet lips.

  ‘Missus? Not my ex is it? That would be too ironic.’

  ‘Naw. But then again sloppy seconds have never been my thing, Gerald.’

  Touché, thought Carla in the back and clenched her fist in supportive victory.

  That wiped the smugness right off Gerald’s face. But Will didn’t feel entirely happy to have won the point.

  ‘Enjoy working with your pansies,’ Gerald spat.

  ‘You too.’ Will made a point at nodding towards the pilot fish. ‘Onwards and upwards, Gerald.’ Will forced out his cheeriest and smuggest grin.

  Gerald’s eyes swept from wall to wall. ‘You call this fucking upwards?’

  ‘You have no idea, mate,’ nodded Will.

  When Carla heard the door close on the customers, she crept cautiously into the front.

  ‘I wasn’t eavesdropping, but I did hear most of that. Are you all right, Will?’

  ‘Least I know where Scotterfield heard about my fear of heights from. My dutiful ex-wife. It was bugging me.’

  He looks sad, thought Carla. Then again, who could blame him?

  ‘That must have been difficult to hear: that he was buying flowers for her. You could have told him to stuff the order. I would have totally understood.’

  ‘Naw,’ Will held up his hand in protest. ‘Bothers me less than you think. I’m angry at myself for saying the sloppy seconds line. Kay Scotterfield is a decent person, she doesn’t deserve me talking about her with that sort of disrespect. She’ll be absolutely gutted that he’s left her.’

  ‘He doesn’t sound a very nice man,’ said Carla. She’d taken a peep through the keyhole to see what Gerald looked like too and the face fitted the voice. He had wet-looking fish lips and a combover that made him look ten years older than he was. She wouldn’t have matched him with the glamorous Nicole, whose picture she had found on the internet after taking a sly peek.

  ‘He ain’t,’ said Will. ‘But he has everything Nicole most values in a man: lots of money, lots of people working for him, big house, posh car; and he won’t believe his luck that he’s landed her so he’ll be chucking presents at her left, right and centre. He’ll think he’s got a proper trophy.’ He laughed. God he’d been such a fool and it was so obvious now. Seven years ago, he’d been Scotterfield, unable to believe his luck th
at a woman of Nicole’s calibre couldn’t leave him alone. He’d been sucked into her circle of people trying to outdo each other, to be the wealthiest, have the biggest house and the most luxurious holidays. He’d taken his eye off the ball, over-gambling his luck to be ‘king of the set’, and why? He didn’t even like them – they weren’t his sort of people. He’d lost sleep, lost weight, lost everything – for an illusion of happiness.

  ‘You want them delivered?’ asked Will, pointing to the bouquet which Carla was holding. ‘I’ll do it for you. Could do with the fresh air.’

  ‘Erm, great,’ said Carla. ‘I’ll get you the address.’

  He might have said he was okay, but Carla thought he looked anything but. She fought her natural urge to give him a comforting squeeze. The last one had ruined everything.

  Chapter 106

  Shaun saw Leni leaving Carla’s flower shop and called to her.

  ‘I wanted a quick word,’ he said. ‘About the O’Gowan boy.’

  He saw her stiffen.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said, tightness in her voice.

  ‘I bumped into his father,’ said Shaun. He supposed a tweak of the facts would do no harm. ‘We had a wee chat. You won’t be getting any trouble from his family.’

  ‘Oh thank you,’ she said, and he knew that he’d shocked her. Maybe she had been expecting another lecture from him. ‘That was very kind of you.’

  ‘Obviously in the short term that takes the pressure off, but maybe you ought to formalise things if you are serious about fostering him.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ she replied, her brow furrowed. He’d assumed she would huff and tell him to mind his own business.

  ‘I’d think carefully about it, of course.’ He saw that defensive look spark up in her eyes again and held up his hands in a gesture of peace. ‘Look, if these social workers think that you’re acting not in the boy’s best interests, they could take him away and you might never see him again.’