Page 11 of The Second Chance Bus Stop
‘Hang on. You told me you said no to a commission for the Sweden markets,’ she says.
I had told Lina about the offer and why I decided to pass on it. The markets are lively, old-fashioned events with fun fair rides, fresh doughnuts and gyros. I was dragged to them enough as a child as they were my family’s idea of a fun day out. I found them stressful, loud, oddly smelly, and somehow I always wound up with sunburnt shoulders.
‘Too stressful for me.’
‘Maybe they’re stressful, but you’re forgetting what you’d gain. Money, Sophia. Looking at these—’ she nods at the screen ‘—I think you need to call up your uncle’s friend and say you’ve changed your mind.’
‘How would I even do the job, though? The farthest market is in Jönköping. That’s close to a three-hour drive. How would I transport all the flowers there? I’d need a car, probably a van, and I would need help. I’m not sure I could do it all.’
‘Often I find a solution will present itself. But only if you’re open to it.’ She drains her glass and closes the document. ‘Thank goodness there wasn’t a second page as that would have meant a second bottle, and I have to open up at seven tomorrow. But seriously, you keep saying you need the shop to make money. Or, rather, more money if you want to buy your brothers out and keep Blom’s Blooms.’
‘I thought about expanding to sell vegetables. Broccoli is a flower, and I’d love to stock them. They are useful, strong and green, a very peaceful colour. I think they’d do well in the store. ‘You and your wife just had a huge fight? Here, have a side of broccoli with your flowers. Bring home dinner and an apology all at once.’
‘I somehow don’t think people will want to come to a flower shop and walk out with broccoli.’
‘Or I could try offering faster delivery? An Uber Eats–type thing but with flowers?’
‘You want to tell me you’d bike across Skane delivering flowers in one-hour slots? Since you don’t have a delivery van currently, remember, or anyone else on staff to help with that.’
‘Okay. Maybe that isn’t the winning idea.’
‘I tell you the winning idea. You have an offer that will fill a second excel page. Take the job, sort out the logistics later. Don’t your parents live near to those last few locations? Maybethey could help, or even if you stayed with them, saved a little on lodging? This could be a huge moneymaker for the store, maybe an actual opportunity for you to keep it.’
My parents.I shudder. Not at the thought of them exactly, but rather at the thought of their house and everything in it. Expensive ornaments and carpets. Surfaces wiped with antibacterial spray and constant ‘take your shoes’ offreminders. Then there’s the questions about life choices and stories about my childhood friends who have been promoted or had babies or, shock and horror,both. My parents are tulips—Tulipas. They’re formal and elegant, even though their outline is simple. They’re very uptight.
But Lina has a point. I need to dosomething.My uncle would expect me to dosomething.That’s why he left me shop, right? He thought I could do these things.
‘Okay, fine. I will email him tomorrow and see if the contract is still on offer.’
‘Good. Just keep an open mind, okay? I bet there’s a way to make this work.’ She closes my laptop. ‘And this wine was excellent. Let’s tell the wine shop you’re cooking the same fish again next week.’
Blade
London
Today has cheered Mum up. Immensely. Her ankles are swollen from running around all day, trying to get me organised for my trip. She’s created folders for me, each one with a different category. ‘To complement the letters.’ Letters we still have to locate. And that I didn’t know existed until yesterday. She’s even started letting Swedish words slip into her daily vocab again. This was one of the things that spurred a diagnosis three years ago. First, it was French.Will you be so kind as to pass me thesel, she’d say like some posh dame. She’d lived in Paris for six months, I knew that. Made sense. Then the Swedish words happened.
‘Did you ever go to Sweden?’ I asked when she’d loudly proclaimed that her hat was amossaand I’d consulted the internet to determine the language.
‘I almost did,’ she said.
‘When?’
‘When I fell in love.’ I knew she wasn’t in love with my dad: She’ll proclaim that and the irrelevance of men to anyone that will listen. That he was useless and disappeared out of our lives as soon as he had the chance. So then,who?
‘It was Sven. You almost moved to Sweden because of Sven,’I state now, years later, as I watch her finish off another list, her handwriting wonky and wild. ‘Ialmost moved to Sweden too.’ Images of a blond sibling show up uninvited. A second language. Afather figure.I was a toddler back then, if Mum has the year correct.
‘Everything would have been different if he’d turned up.’
‘Maybe you could have tried to move on. To meet someone else?’ I suggest.
‘Oh please, you turned out just fine. More good women are lost to marriage than to war. If I’d had a father figure for you, you might have ended up an airhead. You might have become a general manager, middling about in some sort of generic life. We may have struggled at times, the two of us, but struggle is good for children. Happy people are so much less interesting.’ I feel the fight rising inside me and decide to refocus. The days of arguing with Mum are behind us. Because her confusion means she will sense my anger but not see the reason for it, which makes for a much crueller experience for us both.
I set the table, bright yellow bowls that I ordered off Amazon. Yellow to contrast the food. Unless we are having scrambled eggs or korma, it stands out, and Mum sees that there is food on the plate. Because dementia doesn’t just affect memory, it impacts sensory experiences involving touch and sight and smell too.
‘I have no idea where the table starts and ends,’ Mum says as if to confirm my thoughts just then.
‘Trace your fingers along the side of it,’ I say. ‘Find your way as if it were dark.’
