My Kind of Happy - Part Three: A new feel-good, funny serial from the Sunday Times bestseller

by Cathy Bramley

  ‘He sounds like a dreamboat.’ Lucas looked misty-eyed.

  ‘He was.’ Biddy reached into her pocket and fished out a tissue. ‘But he was a married dreamboat and we were destined never to be together. Thank you for listening, both of you. But now, I’d better get back to the shop.’

  With promises not to breathe a word to anyone, we waved her off and as she reached the door with her two bunches of flowers, Juliet, one of Rosie’s staff appeared with two coffees in takeaway cups.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, looking at the three of us in disappointment. ‘Is that sexy man-mountain of yours not here any more?’

  ‘Sadly not,’ I said, donating Sam’s coffee to Lucas. ‘But then he was never mine in the first place.’

  And unless Pandora threw him out again, he was never likely to be either. Like Biddy’s admirer, he was a married dreamboat, I thought glumly.

  ‘My turn to tell a story!’ Lucas piped up, taking a slurp at the coffee.

  ‘I’d better not stop to listen,’ said Juliet, promptly pausing to give Scamp some fuss. ‘We’re snowed under next door, hence taking so long with the coffees.’

  Lucas pouted as Juliet marched back to the café.

  I put my arm around his shoulder. ‘I’m still listening, go on.’

  ‘OK.’ He brightened and gave a little shimmy. ‘So this guy comes into the gift shop earlier and buys twelve cards with I love you on the front, all different. He’s going to write a message to his girlfriend in each one, leaving clues on where to find the next card.’

  ‘Like a treasure hunt?’

  ‘Exactly!’ He nodded with enthusiasm. ‘And in the final card, he’s going to ask her to marry him! How romantic is that?’

  ‘Very,’ I agreed.

  ‘I suggested hiding the ring in one of the café’s handmade truffles, they do a heart-shaped one. He’s in there now buying them, you’ll see him come out in a minute. Oh, there he is!’

  I looked out of the shop window to see a man with blond hair tied back in a ponytail and wearing a leather jacket head away from us.

  Lucas ran to the door. ‘Cooee!’

  The man turned around and held up his parcel. ‘Thanks for your help!’

  ‘You’re welcome, good luck!’ Lucas shouted back.

  The man pulled on a motorcycle helmet and my stomach gave an involuntary lurch; parked a few metres away at an angle to the kerb was a gleaming black and silver bike.

  ‘Cute isn’t he?’ Lucas joined me at the window, leaning forward to get a better look.

  ‘Hmm.’ I forced myself not to turn away and tried to ignore the waves of fear inside me. ‘Good luck to him. I hope she says yes.’

  Lucas sighed dreamily. ‘How could she refuse?’

  There was a black Range Rover parked in front of the bike. Suddenly the red brake lights came on followed by the white reverse lights. My heart began to pound.

  ‘What’s that car doing?’ I gasped.

  The car began to creep backwards towards the motorbike. The biker waved his arms at the driver. But the driver evidently didn’t see anything because the car kept on coming. My heart was in my mouth as I heard the crunch of metal. The car stopped with a screech of brakes. The biker stared in horror at the mangled remains of his bike.

  And then I was running. I was outside on the pavement banging on the driver’s window.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ I yelled. ‘Don’t you look behind you before you reverse?’

  The door of the car was flung open and I had to jump out of its way. A blonde woman wearing huge sunglasses looked at me coolly and then brushed past me.

  ‘Are you OK?’ she asked the biker, joining him at the back of her car.

  He was squatting down looking at his bike in dismay. ‘I’ve had better days.’

  ‘But you’re not injured.’ The woman sagged with relief, resting her hands on her thighs. She was wearing jeans, a strappy top and high heels.

  ‘No thanks to you,’ I yelled. ‘If he’d been on that bike, you could have killed him.’

  ‘But thankfully he wasn’t,’ said Lucas, appearing by my side. He put his arm around my shoulders, trying to console me.

  But I’d gone too far to be soothed. All the anger, the terror and the grief inside me bubbled up to the surface and I shook free of him.

  ‘He is about to propose to his girlfriend. His whole life ahead of him and you, you just casually reverse your massive car into him. You could have wiped out that life like that.’ I snapped my fingers in her face.

  ‘I’m fine, honestly.’ The biker removed his helmet, he was pale and shaky. ‘But thanks for your concern.’

  ‘Get a car, please,’ I begged him. ‘For her, for your girlfriend so she doesn’t have to live in fear of you having an accident.’

  ‘I’ll bear it in mind,’ he said grimly.

  ‘Oh please,’ muttered the driver. ‘What a drama queen.’ Her flippant tone sent my fury into overdrive.

  ‘You haven’t even said sorry,’ I spluttered, squaring up to her. ‘At least apologise to him.’

  She drew herself up tall and whipped her sunglasses off. Fierce brown eyes burned into mine.

  ‘No one has been hurt and quite frankly this is none of your business.’ She took a step forward and prodded my chest. ‘You are mad.’

  ‘You’re right there,’ I replied furiously. ‘In fact I’m livid. I’m calling the police.’

  ‘Back off, lady,’ she hissed.

  ‘You, you … monster!’ I gasped furiously.

  ‘OK, petal, let’s get you inside,’ said Lucas firmly, gripping my arm.

  Someone else appeared and took my other arm. It was Rosie. Between them they bundled me back into the shop where Scamp was waiting anxiously for me.

  Rosie made me hot tea laced with sugar and Lucas stroked my hair.

  ‘Want to talk about it?’ he asked once my sobs had subsided.

  I shook my head. How could I explain what I didn’t even understand myself? I knew it was irrational, this fear I had of motorbikes. I’d always felt safe on the back of Freddie’s bike but all my happy memories had been wiped out by the enduring image I had of his last, fatal ride. I hadn’t even seen it for myself: I hadn’t needed to; my imagination had created it for me and I couldn’t envision a time when I’d ever feel any differently.

  Chapter Four

  The following week I arranged to speak to Nina on the phone. So far, we’d spoken mostly via text and email because of the eleven-hour time difference between us. But the cost of the flowers I was going to need to fulfil the Edelweiss order was so enormous that I’d wanted Nina’s blessing before committing to it. It was morning here, and night where she was. It was lovely to hear her voice and she sounded in very good spirits.

  ‘Just go for it,’ she trilled down the phone. ‘I trust you wholeheartedly.’

  ‘Are you absolutely sure?’ I said, wincing at the amount in the ‘total’ box on the screen. ‘Last chance to back out.’

  ‘Edelweiss have emailed their approval, haven’t they?’ Nina asked before hiccupping. I’d interrupted her having a drink with her new friends. I suspected it wasn’t her first.

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘Press confirm and stop worrying about it. As the saying goes: you’ve got to speculate to accumulate.’

  Even from over eleven thousand miles away, I could detect the new lightness to her voice. And not only because of the alcohol. Her time away from the business was definitely doing her good.

  ‘OK, here goes.’ I tapped the ‘confirm’ button, committing us to the largest amount of flowers the shop had ever bought for a single event. ‘Let’s hope this is the start of our accumulation phase.’

  I had butterflies in my stomach; I felt the weight of responsibility passing from Nina to me as I took the company bank card out of the drawer and typed in the number.

  I kept thinking about what Nina had said about corporate flowers being for ‘faceless’ people. Of course Marcia at
the Claybourne Hotel was a real person and I had already been paid the deposit. But I hadn’t actually spoken to anyone at Edelweiss and although I’d had a prompt response to my email I still felt nervous about it. I tried to explain this to her but she was only half listening; it sounded like someone was topping up her drink in the background.

  ‘Did you always meet your clients face-to-face in your last job before doing a market research project for them?’

  ‘No. You’re right,’ I admitted. Perhaps I was being over cautious. ‘I just want to do a good job for you.’

  ‘Are you kidding me!’ she shrieked. ‘Thanks to you I’m in New Zealand for six weeks while it’s business as usual for Nina’s Flowers. There’s no way any of this could have been possible without you. You’ve made my dream come true. Well, between you and Freddie. If you hadn’t told me about the lovely letter he wrote to you, I’d never have had the balls to actually go ahead with this. I’m finally doing what makes me happy and I’m so proud of myself.’

  My heart skipped for her. ‘Oh, that reminds me, talking of letters, Biddy was telling me about her romantic past. Can you remember her receiving a weekly bouquet for a while?’

  Biddy’s story had really stuck with me, so much so that I’d spent the last two evenings going through every single one of Nina’s old order books to take a glimpse at the messages he wrote to her for myself. But I hadn’t been able to find anything which matched what she’d told me.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘It was early on, probably during the first year of me opening the florist’s. The whole thing was utterly romantic. The first note was something about her bringing sunshine into his life. She cried when she got the first bouquet. And they got steadily more intimate. He told her that he counted down the days until he saw her again, that she’d always own a piece of his heart, that he dreamed of the day he could wake up and the first thing he saw would be her. The loveliest one brought tears to my eyes; it said something like her smile was his sunrise, her eyes his stars, and her heart the centre of his world.’

  No wonder Biddy was heartbroken when it ended. Imagine having a love as intense as that and losing it.

  ‘Goodness, I don’t think anyone has felt like that about me,’ I said.

  ‘Me neither. Anyway, this went on for months. And then one day he wrote that even though they could never be together, he’d never stop loving her. And that was the last I ever heard from him. It nearly broke my heart delivering that final bouquet.’

  Poor Biddy. At least the reason the love affair finished was because he’d decided to do the honourable thing and stick by his sick wife.

  ‘What was he like?’

  ‘I never met him. That was the weird thing. He used to drop an envelope of cash through the shop letter box along with a handwritten note. Whoever he was, he was a beautiful letter writer. I used to look forward to getting them to read first and then once I delivered the flowers, just knowing that Biddy had received that romantic message used to make my day. Biddy has never said a word. Not one word of explanation. I’ve always wondered. Why do you ask?’

  ‘She mentioned it the other day, that was all and I was intrigued.’

  So that was why I hadn’t found any records, because there weren’t any. I’d had some vague notion of somehow trying to track him down via his credit card details. Just as well; it would probably have been breaking a dozen data protection laws anyway.

  ‘What else has been happening in my absence?’ Nina wanted to know.

  ‘Besides making a fruit and vegetable-themed coffin spray and planning a flower workshop for a cricket team?’ I said airily. ‘Not much.’

  ‘A what?’

  She snorted with laughter and gasped in delight as I filled her in on what I’d been up to.

  One of Wendy’s staff had collected the arrangement for Mrs Benton-Ridley’s funeral yesterday (from the look on his face he’d never seen anything like it), and Sam had called in again yesterday evening to confirm numbers for the cricket team workshop this coming Saturday night and paid a deposit of twenty-five pounds per head. And then of course, the big event at the Claybourne Hotel.

  True to his word, Victor had been really helpful, and yesterday when he made our delivery, I’d gone over my list of requirements with him and he’d made a few suggestions to save me a bit of money. Just as well, because any more and I’d have wiped the bank account out completely.

  ‘And as well as everything else,’ I said, ‘I’m thinking of doing a customer newsletter.’

  She interrupted me with a burp. ‘Oh excuse me. We are staying on this apple and pear and cherry orchard farm thing today and they keep giving us cider.’

  That explained a lot, I thought fondly. ‘Sounds fun. Lucas wants to know whether you’ve met any hot farmers yet?’

  ‘There are farmers everywhere you look here. Well, one every few acres anyway. The ones on the show are a mixed bunch. My favourite, but not in a sexy way, is Ralph. Massive arms, short legs and grunts a lot. Then there’s Pete, who addresses our chests instead of our faces. Then little Scott who trembles and blushes when a woman comes near him, definitely a thirty-five-year-old virgin. I’m going to take him under my wing, help him out.’

  I was going to ask what she meant by that but her snort told me all I needed to know.

  ‘Any romance in the air?’ I asked.

  ‘Nah, not so far.’ She hiccupped again. ‘Although Eric the sound man is cute and makes me laugh. But I don’t think getting together with a member of the film crew is quite in keeping with the spirit of the show.’

  ‘Maybe not. But I’m glad you’re enjoying it enough to stick the whole six weeks.’

  ‘God yes! Easily. I used to think people were mad doing a gap year, living in the same three scruffy outfits, all their belongings stuffed into a fusty-smelling rucksack. But I get it now. Now I’m wondering how they can give it up and return to normal life after a year. I’m not sure I’ll be able to.’

  My ears pricked up. ‘But you are coming back, aren’t you?’

  She gave a high-pitched laugh. ‘Yeah, yeah. Don’t worry, I’m just talking hyper-theo-pathetically.’

  ‘Easy for you to say.’

  ‘I think I’ve had enough cider now.’ She giggled. ‘Being a florist is part retailer, part therapist. It makes a refreshing change to concentrate solely on myself for a while. I’d forgotten what I was like.’

  ‘You’re fab. And I miss you,’ I said, realising with a jolt just how true that was.

  ‘Aw, thanks. Listen, I’d better go, someone is playing guitar around the campfire and I want to go and join in.’

  ‘Have fun!’

  It was only after I ended the call that I noticed that she hadn’t said how much she missed me. And that nervous laugh when I mentioned coming back didn’t go unnoticed either. Still, I was happy here. If she did extend her stay, the worst that would happen was that I’d have to work on my own for a while longer. I was sure I could manage that.

  I didn’t have much time to dwell on Nina’s intentions, I was too busy keeping the flowery wheels of commerce turning in her absence. For the rest of the morning, I worked solidly, dealing with customers and, in every spare moment, putting together the first customer newsletter to go out to everyone who’d left their email address with us in the past.

  At lunchtime, I was about to lock the door and take Scamp for a walk when the phone rang.

  ‘Nina’s Flowers, Fearne here, how can I help?’ I said, sending Scamp a look of apology as he settled patiently back in his bed.

  There was a long pause on the end of the line.

  ‘Did you say Nina’s Flowers?’ He sounded confused. ‘Or Fearne?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘Gosh.’ There was another pause, followed by, ‘Good grief. It’s been years since. Gracious me.’

  ‘Is everything all right?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, yes.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Sorry. That took me by surprise for a second. I asked the funeral
director for your number to thank you for the flowers – well, garden arrangement – you did for my wife yesterday. Using fruit and vegetables might not be to everyone’s taste, but it suited her perfectly.’

  ‘Mr Benton-Ridley!’ I said, realising who it was at last.

  ‘Call me Nigel, please.’ There was warmth in his voice as he spoke. ‘Benton-Ridley is such a mouthful.’

  ‘You’re very welcome. It was a privilege to do something so special and personal. I hope the service went … well, or as well as it could do.’ My voice trailed off.

  That was possibly one of the most superfluous pieces of polite conversation in the English language. You know yesterday when you watched the person you love most in the world disappear from sight forever in a coffin? Did it go well? I’d hated that sort of comment in the weeks after Freddie died; I should have known better.

  ‘It was a fitting send-off,’ said Mr Benton-Ridley, coming to my rescue. ‘Just a small gathering. She didn’t have any family and she could be a difficult woman, she’d never been one for friends. As her Alzheimers took an ever firmer grip on her mind she lost contact with the few friends she did have. I did my best to keep her happy and calm … anyway, she’s at peace now.’

  I heard the tremor in his voice and my heart went out to him. ‘You must be in need of a rest yourself.’

  ‘Looking after Val has taken every spare minute for the last four years, I’m going to try and remember what I used to like doing. Anyway, I’ve taken enough of your time. I just wanted to thank you. And I’m sorry if I sounded confused when you answered the phone, the name of the florist’s threw me for a moment. A blast from the past.’

  He laughed awkwardly and I had a sudden thought. Nigel. A wife with Alzheimers. It couldn’t be, could it?

  ‘Have you shopped with us before, then?’ I thought back to the database. There were hundreds of names on it but I’d have remembered a Benton-Ridley. But then if he always paid in cash, it wouldn’t be.

  ‘I … Yes.’ His voice was barely audible.

  My breath caught, goose pimples instantly covering my arms.