by Karen Clarke
‘Sorry, I answered the call,’ I said, meaning it literally.
‘It’s OK, that’s what you’re here for, silly.’ She unhooked the baby’s chubby fingers from her hair and handed her back. ‘So, who was it?’
‘A possible wedding booking,’ I said, marvelling that I’d managed to take down the details, when my hand had been shaking so badly I could barely hold the pen. ‘At Hudson Grange.’ I cleared my throat. ‘Their florist has let them down, and they’d like us to do the flowers.’
‘WHAT?’ Jane’s hands flew to her cheeks. ‘Hudson Grange?’ she repeated, as though I’d said Buckingham Palace. ‘The Hudson Grange, in Moreton?’
I nodded, knowing I’d enjoy her reaction a lot more if I wasn’t still in shock. ‘Tom Hudson is getting married.’ It felt as if I was coughing up a fur ball, but Jane seemed too enraptured to notice my strangled tone.
‘Oh my days!’ Her face split into a grin, revealing crooked teeth in need of a polish. ‘Why us?’
‘Every other florist in the area’s booked.’ When the spark went out of her eyes, I wished I hadn’t said it.
‘Oh.’ Her hands dropped to her sides. ‘I thought maybe someone had recommended us,’ she said. ‘We did the flowers for Ellen Partridge’s daughter’s wedding, last year.’ She said it as though I should know who Ellen Partridge’s daughter was. ‘Ellen’s a good friend of mine,’ she elaborated. She darted to the van, returning with an old-fashioned portfolio. ‘Her daughter teaches yoga classes in the community centre. They’re very popular,’ she said. ‘I went a couple of times, but all that bending and stretching released a lot of gas, and in the end I couldn’t hold it in.’ Her cheeks blotched with colour as she flicked through the few pages inside. ‘Here,’ she said.
I found myself examining an array of shots of a bridal bouquet in delicate shades of lilac and cream, and a high-ceilinged reception hall, where each table was decorated with a daintily elaborate centrepiece.
‘They’re lovely,’ I said, trying to focus.
Tom and Megan are getting married, Tom and Megan are getting married. The words pranced around my head, like show ponies.
‘Your aunt let me help.’ Jane inflated again, studying the pictures fondly over my shoulder. ‘It was our first wedding, and we’re hoping to do more but… well, she turned down a few bookings when she started to feel unwell.’
I remembered the paperwork I’d looked at. A few weddings were exactly what Ruby’s Blooms needed.
‘The arrangements are great,’ I said, recoiling from a photo of the bride, grinning maniacally and gripping her bouquet like a gun. I wondered what had possessed her to cram her curves into a plunging white sheath, split to the crotch at the front. With her tanned flesh spilling out at both ends, she looked like a sausage baguette.
‘I think all eyes were on the flowers,’ said Jane, though I was certain they wouldn’t have been.
‘And Ruby decorated the church.’ Jane turned the page, and I admired bunches of ethereal flowers tied to the pews with long, trailing ribbons, lit by coloured sunlight streaming through a stained-glass window.
‘She’s good,’ I murmured, shoving away an image of Tom and Megan at the altar, gazing into each other’s eyes. ‘Weddings wouldn’t be the same without flowers, would they?’
‘When you think about it, flowers are associated with the saddest and happiest times in people’s lives,’ Jane said, simply. ‘And we florists play a big part in what those memories look like.’
‘No pressure then.’ A thought struck me. Megan’s mother had booked an appointment, which meant… Megan would be coming to the stall. My heart picked up speed.
Had Tom told her about my call? I wondered. Did she know I was in Shipley?
I can’t see her. I had to get out of it. ‘Do you think Ruby will want to meet the bride-to-be?’ I couldn’t even vocalise Megan’s name.
‘It’s worth mentioning,’ Jane said, slamming the portfolio so a puff of dust flew out. ‘It could be just what she needs, a high-profile booking like this.’
‘High-profile?’
‘The Hudson son and heir getting married.’ Jane’s eyes went dreamy. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if Hello! magazine got involved, what with his dad owning all those hotels,’ she gushed. ‘Didn’t Leonardo DiCaprio stay in one, when he was filming that zombie movie in Cornwall?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ I said, the mention of Tom’s dad sending a tremor through me. He was probably over the moon that Tom was finally marrying Megan; someone whose family – although dysfunctional – had credentials.
I switched my mind away, glad to see a customer waiting to speak to Jane.
‘Can you do me a bouquet?’ she said with a friendly smile. ‘It’s my mother-in-law’s birthday and she loves fresh flowers. Anything apart from tiger lilies, which make her sneeze.’
Jane sprang into action, selecting a colourful arrangement, and although I pretended to watch, my thoughts kept catapulting off. Long-buried feelings were rising to the surface like mud off a riverbed, and I didn’t like it one bit.
‘Carrie?’
Jane’s voice forced me back and I smiled, as if I’d been present all along. ‘That was a lovely bouquet,’ I said automatically, watching the customer walk off with it cradled in her arms.
Jane’s brow furrowed. ‘I was saying, did you write down the time of the appointment?’
‘What? Oh! Yes.’ I kept my smile intact. ‘Ten o’clock tomorrow, if that’s OK.’ I should have said we were fully booked. Why hadn’t I said that?
‘Do you want to tell Ruby?’ Jane rubbed her hands together as if trying to start a fire. ‘I bet you anything she’ll be out of that bed in a flash.’
‘I could go and tell her now, if you like,’ I said, desperate to escape.
‘Why don’t you ring her?’ Jane jutted her chin at the phone.
I shook my head. ‘I’d rather tell her in person.’
Jane lowered her eyebrows. ‘We have to make a good impression,’ she said. ‘This booking could bring in more business.’
‘I know, I get it,’ I said, cheeks aching with the effort of smiling. ‘It’ll be good for business.’ It would be good for business, there was no doubt about that.
If only it wasn’t Tom and Megan’s wedding.
‘Now.’ Jane glanced around in a businesslike way. ‘How about you tell me the names of the flowers without looking at the labels?’ she suggested. ‘They all have meanings, you know.’ Her glasses slipped down to the end of her nose ‘Orange blossom for virginity, camellias for faithfulness, dahlias for dignity and elegance, and daffodils for unrequited love.’
I wondered why anyone would send daffodils to someone they weren’t in love with? Surely not sending daffodils would get the message across more successfully.
‘There aren’t any daffodils,’ I said, glancing about.
‘They’re not in season yet.’
‘Ah.’
‘What are those?’ Jane nodded at a pail of pom-pom-like flowers, but my focus had slipped again.
‘Maybe I could go and get us something to eat?’ I said. ‘I feel a bit peckish.’
Disappointment flashed over Jane’s face, which was as expressive as a retriever’s. ‘I’m still off my food,’ she said, twiddling her plain gold wedding band around her finger. ‘But you go and get something.’
‘I won’t be long.’
Cooper’s Café looked busy, so I sped off in the direction of the bakery, past dawdling holidaymakers in swimsuits and sarongs, their sandy feet in flip-flops. The sun baked the back of my neck, and I paused to gaze at the swathe of sea, sparkling like blue-green silk. I wished I’d never heard of Tom Hudson or Megan Ford.
Waiting in the queue in the bakery, half-heartedly eyeing the display of generously filled sandwiches, I felt in the back pocket of my trousers for the ten-pound note I kept for emergencies. My fingers closed over the photo and letter I’d picked up off Ruby’s floor the day before. I pulled them out and looked at
the small Polaroid, its colours badly faded.
As the woman in front of me ordered two prawn sandwiches, four flapjacks and three jam doughnuts – ‘not all for me!’ she blustered, unconvincingly – I studied the photograph and recognised Ruby by her crest of bright blonde hair. She looked about sixteen, and was sitting on a bed, holding a tiny baby. A boy baby, judging by the pale blue shawl he was parcelled in. His face had the crumpled look of a newborn, and his hair was a feather-soft swirl of brown.
My pulse quickened. As far as I knew, Ruby had been living abroad when Sarah and I were born, so who did the baby belong to?
I turned the photo over and saw the name Donny written on the back in spidery black ink. I recognised Ruby’s handwriting from Christmas and birthday cards, and for the second time in twenty-four hours felt as if I was falling down a lift-shaft.
‘Can I help you?’ The assistant’s chirpy voice was like an alarm.
‘I haven’t decided yet.’ I turned to a man behind me, who smelt faintly of mackerel. ‘You go ahead,’ I told him.
As he sidled past, I unfolded the letter, which was soft with handling. As I read the neatly handwritten paragraphs, my heart crashed about in my chest.
When I’d finished, I had to bite my lip to stop myself crying.
How had Ruby kept a secret like this for so many years?
And more importantly, why?
Chapter Six
‘What would you like, madam?’
The assistant’s voice snapped me into action.
‘Nothing,’ I said, and ducked behind the counter. Ignoring her cry, I shot through the kitchen, registering the astonished face of a ruddy-cheeked man in a baker’s hat, who was expertly plaiting a loaf. I took the stairs to the flat two at a time, unlocked the door, and flung myself into Ruby’s bedroom, panting as though I’d escaped a serial killer. ‘You had a baby!’
Ruby remained motionless beneath the duvet, only a wad of hair visible in the patchy light leaking through the curtains. The air smelt of bins, and cake wrappers were scattered on the rug, alongside a half-eaten Scotch egg. A fly hovered over an open ketchup bottle, tipped on its side, the scene reminiscent of a Tate Modern art installation.
‘I know you can hear me,’ I said, in a trembling voice. ‘You gave him up, then found him, but he doesn’t want to know, and he threatened to get a restraining order if you contacted his family again.’ I was fighting to get air in my lungs. ‘That’s why you’re feeling like this, why you get down every year. It’s the anniversary of when he was adopted.’
There was the tiniest movement in the bed.
‘Oh, Ruby, why haven’t you told anyone?’ I cried. ‘What happened? Why did you give him away?’
The duvet was shaking in earnest now, and a strange sound erupted, like a weasel having an asthma attack.
‘Talk to me,’ I pleaded, sinking onto the bed as my jelly-like legs gave way.
The duvet moved to reveal my aunt’s tear-mottled face. ‘I don’t know what to say.’ The words were a ragged whisper.
‘I can’t believe you kept something like this a secret,’ I said, lifting my fingers to her cheek to brush away a tear. ‘I’m assuming it is a secret?’
‘How did you find out?’ she managed, her face contorting as a fresh bout of crying took hold.
‘I found some stuff when I was in here yesterday,’ I confessed, showing her the photo still clutched in my other hand. ‘There was a letter from him, from Donny, though he’s called Peter now.’ I glanced at the scribbled signature at the bottom of the grimly worded letter. ‘I didn’t mean to snoop, but—’
‘It’s not your fault,’ Ruby hiccupped. ‘I normally keep them in my knicker drawer, but was going through some things the other day and stuffed them in that box.’
I looked at it, still tipped over on the floor. There was a wristband lying beside it that I hadn’t noticed before; the sort you get in hospital. It was the size of a baby’s ankle.
‘Oh, Ruby,’ I said again. I picked it up and read the faded letters, my brain fumbling with meaning. Dashwood 5/8/76. ‘Do Mum and Dad know?’ I knew it was unlikely. Mum wouldn’t have been able to resist mentioning it, and I doubted Dad would have kept it from her if he’d known. They were very vocal about honesty being crucial in a marriage – apart from the true price of clothes, which Mum said men didn’t understand. Especially Dad, who bought his clothes at Tesco’s.
‘Of course they don’t know,’ Ruby said, as though the idea was unthinkable. She peered at me through swollen eyelids. ‘It wasn’t something I could talk about.’
‘But it was the seventies,’ I said, tentatively. ‘Things like that were more acceptable, weren’t they?’
‘I was sixteen when I got pregnant, and my parents were about as Catholic as you could get.’ She ground the heels of her hands into her eyes. ‘So, no, they weren’t acceptable, not in our house.’
I rewound to myself at sixteen. The closest I’d come to romance was a tingling feeling in the pit of my stomach whenever I saw a boy called Digger, from the boys’ school nearby. Megan ended up going out with him for a while, but what if it had been me and I’d become pregnant? It was impossible to imagine. I hadn’t even been kissed at sixteen.
‘What about the father?’ I asked Ruby.
‘He was killed in a car crash a few months later.’
I clapped a hand to my mouth. ‘Ruby, I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s all in the past,’ she said, voice cracking. ‘He was just a boy I didn’t even know that well.’
‘And you definitely couldn’t keep the baby?’
She looked at me with soaking wet eyes. ‘If you’d got to know my parents, you’d have understood.’ She spoke with such sadness my throat tightened. ‘Your dad was older, he’d left home by then, and they didn’t want to be saddled with a grandchild to help bring up, so they sent me to stay with my grandmother until the baby was born.’
‘That’s so sad.’ I tried to imagine my parents’ reaction, if Sarah or I had been in that situation. It wouldn’t have been what they wanted, but I was certain they’d have stood by us.
Ruby sniffed. ‘Anyway, he was adopted by a local family, which I knew was best for him, and I stupidly thought that one day I’d find him and explain. I had this fantasy about us reuniting.’ She looked at me through her fingers. ‘When I came back from Hong Kong after Henry died, I was in my forties, and decided it was time to look Donny up, but he practically slammed the door in my face. Said he was happy with his life, and didn’t need a mother who’d abandoned him.’ More tears pulsed down her cheeks. ‘He was married and had a little girl,’ she wailed, grinding her eyes with her fists. ‘I have a granddaughter, Carrie, and I’ll never know her, just as I never knew my son, and it serves me right.’
She was sobbing so hard I felt frightened.
‘Don’t cry.’ I crawled around on the duvet so I was kneeling in front of her. ‘Come here,’ I said, hauling her up by her shoulders and wrapping my arms around her as far as they would go.
I felt her muscles soften as she leaned into me and wept. ‘He’s called Peter Robson, h-h-how boring is that?’ she cried, body heaving. ‘Peter Robson! Not my Donny Dashwood any more. But he’s still my son!’
A sob wavered at the back of my throat. ‘Of course he is.’ I kissed her hair, which smelt faintly of straw and chocolate. ‘He’ll always be your son.’
She pulled away, making a visible effort to pull herself together. ‘I’m sorry,’ she croaked, blotting her nose on the back of her hand. ‘I always think I’ve got it out of my system, but around this time it hits me all over again.’ She gulped. ‘He turned forty this year, I think that’s why it’s worse. Another milestone I’ve missed.’
‘Here,’ I murmured, pulling a tissue from a box on the bedside cabinet and handing it to her. ‘I wish we’d known.’
She trumpeted into the tissue, scrunched it in her palm, and sucked in a shaky breath. ‘There was nothing anyone could do.’ Her voice had become s
ing-song, as if to deny the terrible weight of her words. ‘I kept hoping he’d change his mind one day, but he moved a few years ago and I don’t even know where he is. I had another go at contacting him, you see.’
I realised my own cheeks were damp, and wiped them with my fingers. ‘I wish I could help.’
She summoned a smile. ‘It’s enough that you’re here, love, while Jane has a little break. I just can’t be on the stall while I’m feeling like this.’
‘But, Ruby—’
‘I mean it, Carrie.’ She sounded resolute. ‘I’m really sorry to have dumped all this on you, but I don’t want to discuss it any more.’
I stared at the littered carpet. If my parents had any idea they’d be there for her, I knew they would. Dad would probably be gutted that she’d never told him.
‘Don’t you even think about telling your parents,’ Ruby said, as if my teeming thoughts had flashed up in neon lights. ‘Please, Carrie. It’s my secret to bear and I intend to carry on doing it.’
‘OK,’ I said, reluctantly. I knew it was none of my business, really. I’d only been back in Ruby’s life a couple of days, and it wasn’t up to me to start dictating how I thought she should live her life. But still…
A son. A cousin I’d never meet. With a child. My… second cousin? Cousin-in-law?
‘Anyway, shouldn’t you be at the stall?’ Ruby folded her pillow beneath her head, revealing a glittering cluster of Quality Street wrappers that brought fresh tears to my eyes.
‘I was going to get something to eat,’ I said, reminded of the real reason I’d wanted to escape from the stall, before Ruby’s bombshell had pushed all thoughts of Tom and Megan from my mind.
I got up jerkily, placed the baby photo and wristband on Ruby’s dressing table, and folded the letter beside it. Ruby’s eyes were as tightly shut as the curtains, as if to block me out, and I was swept with a feeling of helplessness. I suddenly longed for my old job, where my biggest concern had been what to wear on dress-down Fridays, which had grown increasingly silly, with staff turning up in onesies or superhero costumes.