Three sharp knocks on my shed door woke me up at seven a.m. on Tuesday morning. I blinked at my Bart Simpson alarm clock, quite prepared to have a cow. Between reliving every moment of my weekend and stressing about work, I had barely slept a wink.
‘Morning, Sleeping Beauty,’ my mother opened the door and poked her head inside. ‘Are you still in bed?’
‘Yes,’ I replied, pulling a pillow over my face. ‘Because it is the crack of dawn. Please go away now.’
What was the point in being banished to the bottom of the garden like a common Womble if my parents could still let themselves in my room whenever they wanted? Surely that kind of intrusion warranted full-time washing machine rights?
‘I thought you’d want these,’ she said, throwing the door open wide and carrying in the most enormous bouquet of flowers in sunset colours. ‘They came yesterday but you got home so late and the lights were out by the time I looked in on you.’
‘They’re for me?’ I asked, bouncing out of bed. Flowers! I had flowers! But that didn’t mean the flowers were from Patrick, they could be from Lucy for kicking that awful doctor’s metaphorical backside or from that man on the 521 bus who put his hand a little bit too deep into his trouser pocket every morning when I got on. Not even a very meaningful glance at my #TimesUp badge had put him off.
‘They’re for you,’ Mum confirmed, setting them on the collapsible dining table and handing me the little white envelope that only ever came with flowers.
There was no name on the card, just a quote.
Oh, do not ask, ‘What is it?’ Let us go and make our visit.
A line from his favourite T.S. Eliot poem. No doubt about it, they were from Patrick.
‘All right then, what does it say?’ Mum asked, the same smile on my face spreading across hers.
‘It’s just a bit from a book,’ I replied, keeping the card safely in my hand. ‘They’re beautiful, aren’t they?’
‘Gorgeous,’ she affirmed. ‘Whoever he is, I already like him better than the last one.’
I fluffed out one of the sunburnt orange blooms and said nothing.
‘I love dahlias. Grace, honesty, kindness, commitment and positive change,’ Mum said, pulling the language of flowers from some corner of her brain that hadn’t been corrupted with the names of all the different Instagram filters. ‘Your dad used to send me dahlias when we were first courting.’
‘And what do foxgloves mean?’ I asked, combing through the other flowers in the arrangement and wondering how much research Patrick had done when he was choosing the bouquet. Had he known all that or were these just the nicest bunch? Maybe they’d been on offer. Maybe it was the first bouquet he saw. Or maybe I could stop trying to ruin this for myself and just revel in the fact that Patrick had sent me flowers.
‘Mostly that foxes are snazzy dressers.’ She settled down on the arm of my tiny sofa and cast an eye across the room, taking in the pile of shoes, the dirty clothes next to the wash bin and the dishes in the sink. In my defence, I’d been very busy shagging all weekend and domestic tasks hadn’t been my top priority. Or any sort of priority. But I would have to tackle the washing soon or I’d be out of knickers and forced into a lunchtime trip to Primark. The worst of fates.
‘Foxgloves are complicated. Some people think they’re good luck, some people think they’re bad but they’re often associated with honesty and magic.’
‘Miracles, more like,’ I mumbled as I tore into the pack of flower food and sprinkled it into the bottom of the vase.
‘Perhaps we should have dahlias at the renewal ceremony,’ Mum said. ‘If they’re in season now, I’m sure they’ll still be available in a couple of weeks.’
‘A couple of weeks?’
Mum and Dad’s wedding anniversary was on the ninth of August, which was … in a couple of weeks. Well, bugger me. Time flies when you’re living in a shed.
‘It’s on a Saturday so your father and I thought it rather makes sense to have it on the day than wait any longer. I was hoping you might pop to the shops with me over the weekend. We’re both going to need new frocks, don’t you think?’
I hadn’t been clothes shopping with my mum since I was fifteen and she made me try on bras over my clothes in M&S and Caroline Beaumont, Shari Singh and Thomas McCall from the lower sixth all saw me and took photos and stuck them up all over the sixth-form common room. There was a reason I hadn’t lost my virginity until university.
‘I don’t need anything,’ I said automatically even though I very much did. ‘But I’ll come and help you find an outfit.’
‘Don’t laugh but I thought it would be nice if you and Jo wore the same thing,’ Mum said, busily rearranging my flowers. ‘Since you’re going to be my bridesmaids.’
Oh god, I’d forgotten. An adult bridesmaid wearing the same dress as my gorgeous younger sister, for my mid-sexual-renaissance, sixty-year-old mother. Maybe Patrick hadn’t sent the flowers, maybe the universe sent them as a preemptive apology. Jo was not going to like this at all.
‘Does Saturday work?’ I asked, staring at my dahlias and channelling their grace.
‘Saturday is wonderful,’ she hopped up to her feet. ‘I’ll see if I can book us a table somewhere nice for lunch, we can make a day of it.’
‘Perfect,’ I said, pulling the covers back up over my face. ‘Is Jo coming?’
‘I think Jo might be too busy to come back from Cambridge for the day,’ Mum said, not-so-discreetly running a fingertip along the windowsill. ‘So you get the deciding vote on your dresses. And I did think it might be nice if you wanted to help us plan the actual shindig, I haven’t organized a party since you were nine.’
A sudden flashback to my dad accidentally waterboarding Adrian when we were supposed to be bobbing for apples.
‘I’d love to, Mum,’ I told her. ‘It’ll be perfect, I promise.’
‘And you never know,’ she gave my flowers a knowing look. ‘Could be good practice for your own wedding.’
‘All right, enough’s enough,’ I said, waving her out the door. Not that I hadn’t already worked this very bouquet into my wedding speech already but still. ‘Please lock it on your way out.’
‘I’m going, I’m going,’ Mum laughed as she let herself out. ‘Oh, and Rosalind, please tidy up in here before you leave for work, it’s a disgrace.’
I knew she wouldn’t be able to help herself.
It took me all the way to work, two very large coffees and a forty-five-minute deliberation in the group text before I decided how to reply to Patrick’s flowers. Eventually I got two-thirds approval to say ‘Thank you for the flowers, they’re beautiful.’ Simple, honest and safe. Sumi was the holdout and lobbied hard for ‘Stick them up your arse’ but our official friend group rules said you only needed a two-thirds majority approval to send a text. Had it been a photo, things might have been different but it wasn’t so she was outvoted.
‘I just don’t trust him,’ she yelled down the phone after the text had been sent. ‘One bunch of flowers does not a decent human make. It’s every arsehole’s go-to move.’
‘So sending flowers is worse than not sending flowers?’
I was never going to win. Patrick could reveal he was the second coming of Christ and Sumi would still say he was trying too hard.
‘In his case, yes,’ she replied with trademark bluntness. ‘Next you’ll be wanting to bring him to my birthday dinner.’
I saw my horrified face reflected back in the glass of the recording booth. Sumi’s birthday. She hated parties, detested surprises and was universally accepted as the most difficult person to buy for on the face of the earth and yet, every year, she insisted we ‘do’ something, even though she refused to give any sort of direction as to what the something should be, where it might take place, at what time or for how long.
But I was up to the challenge. In fact, I was going to ace it.
‘Sumi.’
‘Ros.’
‘Did Jemima book anywhere yet?’
‘No,’ she replied, already distracted. ‘She’s been away, she’s not back until Friday.’
‘Let me plan your birthday,’ I said, suddenly feverish with excitement.
Sumi paused before she replied as I pressed my hand against my forehead to check I wasn’t actually feverish. What was I thinking?
‘You know I don’t want a fuss,’ she replied.
This was a lie.
‘Something quiet, just us.’
Another lie. A previously prepared guest list would be forwarded at some point in the next hour and it would include at least seventeen people. It always did.
‘It’ll be perfect,’ I promised, already scribbling down ideas on my notepad. ‘Just keep Saturday night free and await further instructions.’
I heard her breathe in, second-guessing herself before she spoke, and I knew exactly what she was going to say.
‘You’re not going to bring him, are you?’ Sumi asked.
‘Not to be an arsehole but yes,’ I said, kind but firm. ‘I would really love it if you could give him one tiny chance to prove he’s not actually Satan himself.’
She huffed down the line. ‘And I would really love it if Kristen Stewart showed up on my doorstep with two cats and a minivan but that doesn’t seem very likely either.’
‘Don’t give up on that dream just yet,’ I said, scribbling down notes. ‘I’ve got four days to make magic happen.’
‘Ros Reynolds, if you throw me a Twilight-themed birthday party, so help me god, I’ll murder you.’
I crossed out my first idea.
‘I promise he’ll be on his best behaviour and, if he isn’t, you can be incredibly horrible to him and hunt him for sport. Please can I invite Patrick?’
Sumi considered the request.
‘I can hunt him for sport?’
‘Yes.’
‘Like in Hunger Games?’
‘You can go full District 12, with my permission.’
‘Then he may attend.’
‘You won’t regret it,’ I promised.
‘I almost certainly will,’ she replied. ‘But I want to be proven wrong. Right, I’ve got to go.’
‘Important lawyering?’ I asked, firing up my computer.
‘I have an all-day arbitration session scheduled to try to resolve a dispute between two hotel development groups and the Dominican Republic that could result in a two-billion-dollar lawsuit,’ she replied.
‘A hotel is suing a country? How does someone sue a country?’ I asked. ‘Did they fall down a pothole or something?’
‘Yes, Ros, that’s exactly what happened,’ Sumi answered with a sigh. ‘I’ve got to go. Love you.’
I ended the call determined to plan Sumi the greatest birthday party of all time. When we were younger, we’d gone on so many wild, spontaneous adventures but for anything other than an evening out, I’d have to get approval from Jemima and it couldn’t be too energetic or Lucy wouldn’t be able to participate. And while Adrian might be able to splash out on a ten-course tasting menu at some super fancy restaurant I had never even heard of, I was on a tight budget if I ever wanted to live somewhere that wasn’t a shed. I needed something fun but not too physically demanding. Affordable but still exciting. Something that would make Sumi so happy, she’d forget to be shitty to Patrick and they would end the night as BFFs.
‘Piece of piss,’ I whispered to myself as I scrolled through my options. ‘It’s going to be the best birthday ever.’