The Flower Shop on Foxley Street. Rachel Dove

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       CHAPTER FOUR

      Lily woke up before her alarm and lay looking at the ceiling she had slept under her entire life. There was a crack running across the ceiling, about seven inches long. It stepped out from the light fitting, a wrought-iron flower design her mother had installed throughout, and ran across the white painted surface.

      She remembered when it had happened. Years ago, her father had been getting the Christmas decorations out of the loft, and tripped. He caught himself quick enough, but not before a hairline crack had split Lily’s perfect ceiling. Her mum had gone mad, berating her father for being so daft, so dangerous. Lily had stood in her bedroom doorway, watching her dad pull the tree box down the ladder after him, shoulders hunched. Bump, bump bump, went the box, down each step slowly.

      Her mother was stood halfway up the stairs, hands on hips, a dusting of flour from baking on her apron. Lily had been twelve at the time, and she remembered being shocked that her parents were shouting. They just didn’t do it. Just as her teenage self had worried what this might mean, she heard her mother laugh. Her dad turned around too, setting the tree down on the thick landing carpet. As he turned, he winked at Lily, and she relaxed. Soon they were all laughing too, putting the hoards of Christmas decorations up together, as always.

      For years, that crack was the only reminder of that day. A subtle hint about how lucky they were as a family, to have each other. Now, as she stared yet again at that crack, she could almost see it widening, the fissure growing before her almost thirty-year-old eyes. Maybe Roger was right: she should get out. Get her own place, maybe even set a date for the wedding. The thought of her birthday, the big three-oh, was freaking her out, and nothing was going to change. Not before September anyway.

      Not without Lily actually doing something to change, and when would that happen? She knew herself too well. She would take the path of least resistance, as always. Whatever they wanted, whatever route was easier. The thought depressed her and she huffed in bed, throwing a pillow at the wall. It made an unsatisfying flumph as it hit the plaster. Figured. She couldn’t even make a mark with her own tantrum.

      Lily got out of bed and padded to the bathroom. She’d had the room to herself as a kid since her parents had the en suite, but nowadays she shared with her mother, who had seemingly taken up residence in the spare room. As she left her room, she peered around the corner. All quiet. To be honest, most days she expected to see sandbags across the landing, her parents firing up the mortars. All was peaceful. She sighed with relief and headed for the shower.

      As she shampooed her long blonde hair, she thought of her morning coffee meeting and felt the butterflies fizzle in her stomach. The meeting wasn’t even a date, not really – more an ambush of a fit customer – but it still filled her with nervous excitement. There was something about the man who came into the shop that brightened up her day, and she was looking forward to actually speaking to him without the eagle eyes of her parents, or Roger egging her on in the background.

      She had noticed him when he first started coming into the shop just over a year ago. He looked so tired, so worn down. Her mother had always made conversation with him, chatting away the silences when he came in twice a week. All nothings, every time. They discussed the weather, the politics of the day, the X Factor results.

      Over time, he had gotten brighter. He looked less drawn, more at ease. His eyes were different though. Was it the darkness, the depth of the brown they were? He had sad eyes that never quite matched his lopsided half-smile. They looked at odds with everything in the world, and she found herself counting the days in between her seeing them.

      It had become somewhat of a puzzle to her, a conundrum to solve. She found herself punctuating her working week with his visits. She almost wrote them in her diary, like a girl would record her secret thoughts. She wished that she did write them in her diary to be honest, if only to have something to jot down in there at all. The only thing she wrote in there lately were changes to deliveries, and the usual birthdays and anniversaries that everyone writes in a journal.

      She often daydreamed about him, like now, when she had washed her hair three times. What his story was, the places he had seen. What work did he do? He sometimes came dressed up; sometimes he wore scruffy jeans, ratty T-shirts. He often had the telltale sign of dirt under his fingernails, so she knew he worked with his hands, out in the open.

      Sometimes, when she was daydreaming, or reading one of her romance novels, she thought about what kind of job he did. Farmer? Builder? Did he live local? Westfield was a pretty close-knit place. Everyone knew the colour of your pants on the line, or so the saying went. Not that she dare ask around about him, of course. She just knew she wouldn’t be able to ask casually. Roger was already on to her.

      Stuart worked outside for the most part, but he didn’t have hands like him. His hands were smooth, moisturized, not a callus in sight. In fact, you would think he was a hand model the way he went on sometimes. She had once asked him to put a few shelves up in the shop and he had looked at her as though she had asked him to hack someone’s head off. In the end, Roger had done it, Stuart ‘supervising’ from a distance. Lily was still amazed to this day that Roger hadn’t nailed him to the wall by his thumbs.

      After that, she hadn’t bothered to ask him again. She still had some plans for the shop DIY wise, but she was determined to wait till she had more money in the bank, then at least she could hire a handyman. Simon from the village often did the odd job or two on a weekend, when he wasn’t busy working at the greengrocer’s with his dad, or chasing down new clients for his own business. He had been busy though lately in other ways, wining and dining the new girl who was working at the boutique. She seemed nice, not that Lily had spoken to her in person yet.

      Lily didn’t have many friends, not really. She was popular at school, being a kind girl who loved flowers. People liked her – it was easy. Who didn’t like a girl obsessed with flowers?

      The thing was, she was left behind. Because Westfield was a small village, people moved on. Few moved in, though the ones who did tended to stick, once they fell in love with the countryside. After school, there was college, university, travelling. The next steps in life that people took, when they left the nest. Lily had waved off every one of her friends, one by one, and watched them fly off, while she clung to the sticks of her parental home. The point was, until yesterday, she had never really minded. Even Simon had left, but now he was back, called to his roots. Eager to set down some of his own.

      Until Roger had spoken those words. Take a chance, for once in your life. The sentence haunted her. For once in your life. That was just the thing. She never had taken a chance. Sure, she had her own business now, but the truth was, she had been destined to have the shop since she was born. Her parents helped her save up her deposit, guaranteed her loan. The pampered princess way of earning a living, really.

      The shop thrived, had for years, and it was a pretty safe investment. She knew the shop by heart, having had many of her first milestones either here or in the house she had lived in all her life. Even when she went to college, she was a short bus ride away, and her dad had ferried her in half the time, on his way to a delivery. She had been sheltered like a bird born in captivity, happy with its lot in СКАЧАТЬ