You weren’t in college yesterday. Our tutor had a strop about people missing classes and sending in lame apology notes, and how everyone needed to commit, or we wouldn’t get through our exams. But I know You have been busy at the florist’s. That woman with the long blonde hair came in to see You three times this week. She won’t leave You in peace. If she weren’t getting married, I would think she had a crush on You.
There’s one advantage in it for me. She comes in the evenings, after dark, when the other florists are gone. I have found a new vantage point where I can watch You undisturbed for hours. From the backyard of Seventh Heaven, if I stand on some discarded packing crates, I can see into the Bridal Room through a small high window. Here I’m hidden from the street behind the shed. And the sofa where You sit knee to knee is positioned away from the window and You and she are both so absorbed in your intense conversations and in poring over the albums and the laptop, that You scarcely look up.
Mostly, I get to see the top of your heads. Hers is sleek and blonde and static – of no interest. Yours is the one that fascinates me. You never stay still. You tilt and You twist, and You bob, and without seeing your face, I can imagine your eyes sparking, and your smile uncovering your teeth, and your lips moving as You speak and your mouth opening and closing – and the pictures in my mind move me more than the most erotic silent movie ever made.
But it’s been over a week since I smelt your perfume or felt your breath on my arm. So even though my mother died almost six years ago, I think this would be a good day to buy her a bunch of flowers. Visiting cemeteries is becoming something of a habit. Why not? Tomorrow, I shall visit her grave.
*
Seventh Heaven was buzzing – Saturdays were always busy but today even more so since it was the day before Mothering Sunday. Celeste had arrived at 5am to help Meghan prepare the flower arrangements for the special orders of the day. The new Saturday girl arrived at the usual opening time to help with prepping the flowers and serving in the shop while Meghan went out in the van to deal with the deliveries. Celeste remained in the cold room, making up bouquets and leaving Emily who was always bright and friendly to deal with the customers face to face. She herself felt dishevelled and already exhausted as she had been up most of the night and hadn’t had time to wash her hair or do her make-up. She wasn’t in the mood to be gracious or make small talk.
Friday had been a big night out. Jessi, who seemed to know all the right people, had got the three of them onto a free VIP guest list for a new private club in Mayfair called Chimerical. Being on the VIP guest list meant they could get free entry and free drinks and they had spent a wild night dancing, drinking and having a cracking time across the five glitzy bars of Chimerical, without having to take out a credit card once. Admittedly it was a meat market in there, and they’d all had to fight off the unwanted attentions of self-important young men from the City with more money than sex appeal who seemed to think the VIP guest list (which, of course, they’d subsidised) was their ticket to ride. Even so, the girls had stuck together and had fun.
Celeste was paying for it now though, with a cracking headache and the shakes. She wasn’t in the best frame of mind to cope with Mother’s Day, a family celebration she would dearly have loved to ignore. It was unfortunate for her that in the floristry business this was such a huge day in the marketing calendar. She’d been dreading the commercial jamboree for weeks because her own relationship with her mother was so difficult and toxic and the deluge of sentimental gifts and cards that filled the shops simply served as a heart-rending reminder of all they had lost.
So, on this sad and poignant day, Celeste was in the cold room trying to lose herself in mindfulness techniques. She focused all her attention on the cool touch of the stems and leaves, the sweet, woody, damp smells of woodland and spring mornings, and the glow of sunlight reflecting off translucent petals. She was working on one of her own designs, a fresh springtime mix of lisianthus, freesias, snapdragons and miniature rainbow lilies, that featured on the Seventh Heaven website as their signature Mother’s Day bouquet. She was so much in the zone and so absorbed in the moment that it was only after the Saturday girl had put her head round the door and called her name for the second time that she looked up.
‘Someone is asking for you,’ she said. Celeste’s first thought was that it would be one of the losers from the club. ‘Enrico’ had been particularly difficult to shake off at the end of the night (he’d more or less tried to clamber into their taxi home) and she remembered that over their first drink she’d made the rookie error of telling him she worked for a florist in Pimlico. ‘He says he’s an old friend of yours.’
Phew! Not him.
Celeste’s next thought was Steve. Not him again surely!
Emily grinned manically. ‘He’s really fit!’
Celeste immediately got a bad feeling. Her fist closed tightly round the stems of her arrangement. If Meghan had been serving in the shop, she would have had the sense to be discreet, but the clueless girl had probably already confirmed to her caller that she worked at the florist’s. Celeste threw down the flowers and grabbed her coat.
‘Tell him I’m not here,’ she said. ‘Tell him I must have gone out to get some lunch. Get rid of him.’
‘I can’t.’ She pulled a face. ‘He came in to buy some flowers for his mum.’
Celeste hovered in the doorway to the backyard, hidden from view, listening intently, as Emily returned to the shop front. She could just make out the conversation. Yes, it was him. She could hear the girl’s nervous laughter. So, he still knew how to turn on the charm. She remembered that voice – confident and entitled. There was something different about it though. For a minute or so she couldn’t work it out. Then, she caught on – of course, the accent. He’d been living in the United States for the past seven years – first as a student at Yale University, then working at a financial ‘hedge fund’ in the city of New York. (Stacey insisted on giving her updates from the Shearham mums’ network that she engaged with sporadically when she surfaced from her addictions.) Understandably, his voice had taken on a slight mid-Atlantic twang.
Ben’s parents had dealt with the ‘situation’ all those years ago in the way that so many rich and privileged families deal with such things – by sending their beloved, delinquent son away – far away from the heartache, devastation and broken lives that he had left in his wake. But it had not been a hardship posting. On the contrary. He had been rewarded with a place to study Business and Economics at a top Ivy League university, the perfect launch pad for a successful and prestigious career in international finance. In contrast, Celeste had been engulfed in profound depression, dropped out of her A levels, and abandoned all hope of qualifying for her offer of a highly sought-after place on an Art and Design Foundation course at the University of Leeds.
His life had expanded. Hers had shrunk.
‘I’m happy to wait,’ she heard him say. ‘I’d really like to speak to her.’ She couldn’t make out Emily’s words but guessed she was making Celeste’s excuses. Then she heard him again. ‘Can I write down my phone number on this?’ There was a pause. ‘And please can you pass on this message. I need to speak to her urgently. She knows why. Ask her to meet me at the Cricketers Arms this evening at seven. It’s her local. She’ll know where I mean.’ She heard the doorbell as the door opened. ‘Cricketers Arms, tonight at seven,’ he called out to the girl one last time. Then thankfully the door closed behind him.
Celeste waited outside the back door for ten minutes then crept back into the cold room. The coast was clear. He was well on his way. The Saturday girl put her head around the door again.
‘He wasn’t really bothered about the flowers for his mum. He told me just to wrap up the most expensive bouquet. But he was very keen to see you – 7pm Cricketers Arms tonight. Made me promise to give you the message. Lucky you! He seems such a nice guy.’
Celeste ignored her suggestive grin. What could be so urgent? Could it be something to do with the comments she’d been posting anonymously about him online since that night at Heavana when he reappeared back on the London scene?
‘Oh, and he wrote down his number.’ The girl nodded towards the little card she’d left on the worktop beside the half-finished arrangement abandoned by Celeste. ‘Sounds very mysterious!’ said the girl, wheedling for details. Celeste picked up the card and looked at the mobile number pensively. It was one of those cards for writing names and short messages that florists attach to bouquets. She turned it over. The words ‘In Sympathy’ were printed on the back.
‘He always was a tactless moron,’ she said to herself bitterly.
Then she put the card into the back pocket of her jeans.