Page 28 of The Little Flower Shop By the Sea
‘Oh, a monkey!’ Amber cries, leaving her new Women’s Guild friends and coming over. ‘Is he yours?’ she asks Woody. ‘A monkey cop, how cute!’
‘Definitely not,’ Woody says, trying to shrug Miley off his shoulder.
Miley takes the hint, and climbs on to Amber. She delights in examining the colourful braiding in Amber’s hair, and then moves on to the many beads and chains around her neck.
‘Miley!’ Jake warns. ‘Behave.’
‘No, she’s fine,’ Amber says. ‘The guy across the street from the florist’s shop back in New York has a monkey. I love animals.’
‘As much as I hate to break up the impromptu street party that’s building here,’ Harriet says, ‘we need to sort out what to do with all these flowers we’ve got for the shop. We can’t just put them into storage until you open again, Poppy, and we can’t just throw them away.’
‘Ah, yes, that… erm?’ I look to the others for help, but they all stare blankly back at me.
‘I know,’ Amber says calmly, with Miley now sitting cross-legged on top of her head looking like some sort of weird Buddha statue amongst all Amber’s hippiness. ‘You won’t make much money out of it, but it will be fun…’
Nine
Lady’s Slipper – Capricious Beauty
‘Are you sure?’ I ask Amber for about the tenth time as we sit on the floor of the shop amongst rolls of ribbon, wire, and the heads of hundreds of flowers.
‘Yeah, they’re gonna love it, and they’ll love you for doing it too.’
Amber’s idea, so we wouldn’t waste all the flowers the ladies had in their van, was to make floral hair garlands, then give them away to the ladies of the town. She said it would be a nice friendly welcoming gesture.
I think Amber had visions of us standing in the street giving out flowers to passers-by like peace-loving hippies from the seventies, while Bob Dylan played in the background.
But I, with my more sensible head on, had suggested we should look on it as an early marketing campaign for the new shop, and we should ask for a minimal donation to cover our costs, then donate any leftover money to a local charity.
‘That’s what you call a loss leader,’ Jake had helpfully told us, before he and Miley had rapidly disappeared when the Guild ladies started to produce tools, wire and ribbons by the bucketload from the back of the shop. ‘Nope,’ he’d said, shaking his head. ‘I grow flowers – I definitely don’t arrange them! But,’ he’d suggested before he’d departed, ‘I’ll have a word with my daughter Bronte. This sounds just the sort of thing she and her friends would like. I’ll see if they can come down from the school in their lunch break and take a few off your hands.’
‘He’s a nice guy, that Jake,’ Amber says now, as I pass her another carnation head and she winds it expertly on some wire. ‘Hot, too.’
I don’t say anything, but I casually glance at the rest of the ladies to see if they react to her statement.
‘Jake has had a very unfortunate past,’ Harriet says as she begins to form another circle of wire – just as Amber had shown her.
‘Oh, why?’ Amber asks. ‘I thought I was picking up some sadness from him but I couldn’t place it.’
Harriet looks at Willow and Beryl.
They both give a sombre nod of approval.
‘His wife, Felicity, was taken from us very suddenly a number of years ago. Felicity was such a bright light all over St Felix – from the school PTA to our own Women’s Guild, our lovely Felicity would always be there, raising funds and helping out with a cheerful smile and a kind word for everyone.’
‘She sounds wonderful,’ Amber says.
‘Oh, she was,’ Harriet continues. ‘Everyone in St Felix loved Felicity.’
‘We were all heartbroken when she died,’ Willow says, cutting a long length of ribbon. ‘Felicity was wonderful to be around; always a kind word, always time for you, whatever you were doing. So gentle, so delicate, so —’
‘Willow, you make Felicity sound like a saint,’ Harriet says. ‘Yes, of course she was a lovely lady, and I wouldn’t hear a word said against her. But she had her faults like the rest of us. Nobody is perfect.’
‘Ain’t that the truth,’ the usually silent Beryl mutters.
‘But Jake has kids – yes?’
I’m thankful to Amber; she’s asking all the questions I want to, but without appearing nosy.
