Page 30 of The Little Flower Shop By the Sea
I sigh. ‘OK, with black leggings, but that doesn’t mean —’
‘I’m just saying what I see, which is exactly what Bronte did. Plus your personality is also a little…’
I roll my eyes. ‘Go on, you might as well get it over with.’
‘Harsh.’
‘I’m harsh?’ I snap.
‘See.’
‘OK, but not all the time, surely?’
‘No, not all the time.’ Amber smiles and plucks a stray flower that has fallen from one of the garlands from the bottom of the box. ‘I think you have a softer side hidden somewhere in there, my new friend. But the question I can’t answer yet is…’
‘Go on.’
She places the flower behind my ear and I shudder internally.
‘Why do you keep it hidden from us?’
Ten
Flax – I Feel Your Kindness
It’s funny how once you really set your mind on doing something it suddenly starts to come together very quickly.
The day after Amber and I had stood outside selling flower garlands in the street, everything began to fall into place regarding the new shop.
When I realised Amber had nowhere to stay in St Felix and had planned on staying at the Merry Mermaid until she found somewhere, I’d asked her to stay with me at the cottage.
This went against all my natural instincts, as I hated living with anyone. I was always better on my own. But I couldn’t let Amber live at the pub when I had a spare room, especially when she was being so helpful to me and the shop. Besides, for all her ‘alternative’ ways, Amber was fun. She made me smile – which was a tricky thing for anyone to do.
So I moved my stuff into my grandmother’s old room upstairs, which was very odd to begin with, but turned out to feel a lot less odd than sleeping in Will’s and my old room, which I’d found very unsettling for the one night I spent there. Then we turned our attention to planning our new shop.
Both Amber and I agreed from the beginning that whatever sort of shop my grandmother had run in the past, or the ladies of the St Felix Women’s Guild had been running for the last year, this new generation Daisy Chain should be something with our own unique stamp on it.
Even though I was officially the new owner, in my eyes Amber was as much a part of the shop as I was. She was the florist; I was just someone who had been thrown in at the deep end.
We quickly decided between us that, along with fresh flowers, we should stock flower-based trinkets too – cool pieces of jewellery and pottery. We wanted Daisy Chain to be somewhere that the ladies of the St Felix Women’s Guild would want to come to buy their fresh flowers from, but at the same time somewhere Bronte and her girlfriends would want to hang out in. If you loved flowers in any form, then you’d love Daisy Chain.
And that was my big problem in all this.
I didn’t.
Love flowers, that is.
Amber knew everything there was to know about them: their names, their scents, their colours, how long they lived for, what temperature of water they liked, and what temperature you should store them in. Her knowledge and enthusiasm for flowers was endless.
We spent lots of time together at the cottage dreaming up ideas for our new shop – some helpful, like my idea to sell flower-related items, and some not so much, like Amber’s idea of laying a trail of fresh petals outside the door every morning to entice people inside. We agreed on a slight name change: Daisy Chain instead of The Daisy Chain – we both thought it sounded funkier. We also agreed that an overhaul of the dark interior of the shop would be needed, yet we both wanted to retain the essence of what had made my grandmother’s shop so special.
We surfed the Net on Amber’s iPad, doing image searches and looking on Pinterest for photos of modern flower shops and florists, trying to get a feel for what everyone else was doing these days. After much discussion, we decided on a seaside theme to complement the shop’s surroundings.
Bright blue walls would be our backdrop, with whitewashed wooden units displaying all our flower knick-knacks. Scrubbed wooden tables would hold the cast-iron buckets of fresh flowers that we’d sell and Amber would arrange into bouquets on request. We were also going to keep the original desk my grandmother had served behind. Amber said it felt lucky, and she could feel the spirit of all the former owners who’d stood behind it. Besides, I didn’t want to see it go – that desk held too many memories for me. So the desk had been worked into the new design.
We also discovered some vintage floral china hidden in the drawers of the wooden dressers, and we were going to display these pretty pieces on the newly painted units, as a tribute to the shop’s long history.
We hoped the overall look would be eclectic, yet chic. Hopefully it would not only be the perfect tribute to my grandmother, but the perfect setting for a new and successful business.
