Page 4 of The Little Flower Shop By the Sea
It’s bigger than I remember. Perhaps that’s because I only ever saw it filled to the brim with flowers. When my grandmother was in here you couldn’t move without bumping into a tin pot filled with brightly coloured blooms waiting to be arranged into a bouquet and sent out into the world to brighten someone’s day.
The shop is still filled with the same long tin pots, but today they stand eerily empty, as if waiting for someone to come along and fill them with the latest buds.
I sigh. Even though I don’t like flowers or want anything to do with them, I loved my grandmother, and I can remember spending many a happy, sunshine-filled holiday here in St Felix with her. It was here that my brother and I graduated from building sandcastles on the beach, to learning to surf when we were that bit older and stronger. When the evening tide was high in St Felix, huge waves would crash down on to the Cornish sand, wiping out the day’s carefully built, but now abandoned sandcastles. My grandmother would cheer us on from her red-and-white striped deckchair, a steaming hot flask of drinking chocolate ready to warm our wet and aching bodies when we could battle the waves no longer…
I shake my head.
That’s all in the past now. I have to remain focused on what I’m here to do. So I begin to step carefully about in the dim light, trying to gauge the fixtures and fittings. I might have to sell those on separately if I put the shop up for sale and the buyer doesn’t want them. But to be honest, they don’t look like they’re worth much. Everything I can see is made of heavy dark oak. Huge dressers and cabinets all stand empty, pushed up against grimy cream walls. Who’s going to want to buy those? Shops these days opt for modern, light-coloured fixtures – to make the ‘shopping experience’ as pleasurable as possible for the consumer.
I once spent a ghastly few months working on the tills in a large supermarket during the run-up to Christmas. I nearly went insane passing people’s huge festive shops over the barcode scanner hour after hour. It got so bad I began having nightmares about ‘3 for 2’ and ‘BOGOF’ offers, until it reached the point where I leapt on to the checkout conveyor belt in the middle of one of my shifts and used it like a treadmill, shouting to anyone that would listen that greed would kill us, and we should all – staff and customers alike – be ashamed of ourselves.
If that incident had only been a dream like so many others about the shop, it wouldn’t have been so bad… But I was dragged down from the checkout by two security guards who thought I was marvellous for giving them something to do other than look at security screens all day, then escorted to the manager’s office where I was fired on the spot and banned from every branch of this particular chain within a fifty-mile radius.
It was one more item on the ever-growing list entitled:Unsuccessful jobs Poppy has had.
Would this shop – my grandmother’s pride and joy – turn out to be yet another?
‘The rest of us would have jumped at the chance of taking on Grandma’s shop,’ Marigold had piped up at the will-reading. ‘It would be an honour. Goodness knows why she left it to you, Poppy.’
‘Iknow…’ Violet joined in whining. ‘You of all people. I mean, can you cope with that sort of thing these days?’ She’d tipped her head to one side and regarded me with fake pity. ‘I heard you were still takingmedication.’
‘The only medication I’m taking is a pill to help me deal with annoying and ignorant cousins,’ I’d told her as she’d glowered at me. ‘I’ve been fine for some time, Violet, as you well know. Perhaps Mum’s right, perhaps Grandma Rose knew that and she wanted to give me a chance. Unlikesomepeople.’
Violet had then stuck her tongue out at me like a petulant child.
‘I’m really not sure about this, Flora,’ said Aunt Petal, turning to my mother with a look of concern. ‘The Daisy Chain is such an important part of our heritage. Should we allow Poppy to be put in charge of it with her…history.’ She’d whispered the last word as if it was poison.
‘I am here, you know,’ I’d reminded her.
‘Poppy,’ my mother had put her hand up to quieten me, ‘let me deal with this.’ She’d turned back to Petal. ‘Poppy may have had herissuesin the past, we all know that. Just as we all know,’ she’d added pointedly, ‘what caused them.’
The others had all looked slightly ashamed, and I’d closed my eyes; I couldn’t bear people pitying me.
‘But she’s a changed person now, aren’t you, Poppy. How long were you at your last job?’ my mother asked, nodding with encouragement.
‘Six months,’ I’d mumbled.
‘See!’ Marigold shrieked. ‘She can’t stick at anything.’
‘It wasn’t my fault this time. I thought the guy was coming on to me in the hotel room, what was I supposed to do?’
In my last job I’d been quite content working as a maid in a 5-star hotel in Mayfair. It was hard work, but not taxing, and I hadn’t minded it anywhere near as much as I thought I would. In fact I’d stuck it longer than any job I’d had before. That was until one evening a guest had got a little too frisky for my liking when I knocked to turn his bed down one night – a pointless part of the job, if you ask me. I mean, who can’t pull their own sheets back? However, it was part of my job description, and every evening at around six o’clock I’d begin knocking on doors. On this particular occasion I was told I’dover-reactedby tipping a jug of water over the guest’s head after he’d suggested from his bed that I might like to help him ‘test his equipment to see if it was working’. How was I to know that five minutes earlier he’d called down to reception to ask if someone could come and sort out his room’s surround-sound system, which didn’t appear to be working?
So I’d beenaskedto leave yet another job…
Ignoring the interruption, my mother had fixed her smile and continued:
‘Well, however long it was, it’s an improvement, and that’s all we want to see.’ She’d nodded at the others, hoping to gain their approval. ‘I think we need to give Poppy a chance to prove herself to us, and to herself. I know you can do this, Poppy,’ she’d said, turning to me. ‘And Grandma Rose knew it too.’
I peer through the gloom towards the back of the shop to see if the old wooden counter that I remember my grandmother serving behind still remains. To my surprise it does, so I make my way carefully across the shop towards it. As I do, I knock into one of the empty tin buckets standing on the floor and it crashes to the ground. I quickly stand it upright again and continue on my way.
I approach my grandmother’s desk slowly; my brother and I had spent many fun-filled hours hiding under here when customers came into the shop; for a laugh, sometimes we would leap out from our hiding place to make them jump. Well, I did; Will was always too polite and well mannered to go through with it and scare someone.
I run my hand gently along the soft, warm, now heavily worn wooden surface, and recollections of the three of us fill the room as I do. It’s as if I’ve rubbed a magic lantern and released a genie made up of memories.
I wonder?
I crouch down behind the desk and pull out my phone, activating the torch on the back. The underside of the desk is suddenly filled with light, and I direct the beam into a corner.
