Page 29 of The Little Flower Shop By the Sea
‘Yes, and what a wonderful job he’s done in bringing them up since their mother passed away,’ Harriet says with approval. ‘Bronte is fifteen now – she’s in the same class at school as my son. And Charlie, he’s seventeen.’
‘Wow, he doesn’t look old enough to have kids that age,’ I hear Amber say, while I’m still absorbing this information. ‘He must have had them young.’
‘Felicity and Jake were childhood sweethearts,’ Willow says wistfully. ‘It was very romantic. Met at sixteen, engaged at eighteen, married at nineteen, first baby when they were in their early twenties.’
‘Then separated by death over a decade later,’ Beryl finishes for her. ‘Very Romeo and Juliet, if you wish to romanticise the pain of death, Willow.’
I’m beginning to like Beryl more every minute. She may be quiet, but when she does speak there’s no beating about the bush – an admirable trait, in my book.
Willow pulls a sulky face and goes back to her job: tying the ribbons on the ends of the garlands.
‘Are you OK, Poppy?’ Amber asks me. ‘You look a little pale.’
‘I’m fine,’ I reply quietly. ‘Let’s just get on with these garlands.’ But I can’t help looking towards my grandmother’s old desk while I cut the heads off more flowers, and remember…
As Amber predicted, the flower garlands are a huge success.
After we’ve finished making them up, the ladies of the St Felix Women’s Guild leave the two of us standing outside the shop. Willow and Beryl, both wearing flower garlands in their hair, walk down the high street together arm in arm.
We manage to give away a few garlands to the odd passer-by in return for a donation, and then Ant and Dec arrive and delight in parading a couple back up to their bakery, where I know for a fact they wear them for the rest of the afternoon, because when I pop by to get a couple more custard tarts later (Amber had enjoyed hers as much as I had) they still have them on.
It’s when lunchtime arrives and the girls from the high school come marching down the hill led by Jake’s daughter, Bronte, that our trade really takes off. In fact in the space of forty-five minutes we shift nearly all of our garlands.
‘This is so cool,’ Bronte says, spinning around with flowers in her hair. There can be no mistaking whose daughter she is. She has Jake’s sandy brown hair and deep brown eyes. ‘We never get anything like this here; it’s like having our own festival. Will you be doing cool stuff like this all the time when you open up for real?’
‘Yes,’ I assure her. ‘The Daisy Chain will definitely be very cool.’
She smiles. ‘I thought it might. With you two running it, it would have to be.’
I smile at her and am about to say thanks when she continues.
‘I mean, an ageing Goth and an American hippy coming together in one store, what sort of mega mash-up is that going to be! The two of you will be wicked together. I can’t wait.’
With that Bronte and her friends merge into one big pack of short school skirts, bottle-green jumpers, shrieks and giggles, and disappear back up the hill.
I look at Amber, still holding the near-empty box of garlands.
She smiles awkwardly. ‘I’d say I was more New Age than hippy.’
‘I’d sayyougot off lightly. I’m not a Goth! Let alone an ageing one!’
She looks me up and down. ‘How old are you then?’
‘I’m thirty!’
‘Really?’ Amber looks surprised. ‘I thought you were much younger. You look it. Maybe it’s your clothes, like Bronte said. You are alittle… how can I put it politely?’
‘Just say it, Amber.’
‘Dark.’
‘What do you meandark? Just because I don’t wear all the colours of the rainbow like you, doesn’t make me a Goth!’
‘No, but look at what you’re wearing now,’ she gestures at my clothes. ‘They’re all black.’
‘Today, perhaps. Yesterday I had on burgundy DMs.’
‘With…?’
