Wildflowers

by Debbie Howells

  I knew what she meant. But Mrs Orange reserves her most evil glare for Honey, who’s too posh and outspoken for her liking.

  ‘But we agreed it’s my shop - and she did teach me everything I know,’ I said stubbornly. ‘Sorry – I want her to stay.’

  So Mrs Orange continues to pop in and out when she feels like it and spies on my brides from across the road while she gossips to Mr Crowley in Demelza’s.

  Every so often she imparts gems of doom, like ‘that young couple, that carrotty one and the skinny lad, it won’t last, you mark my words. You can tell...’

  ‘I hope you’re wrong,’ I told her, horrified. ‘They’ve just ordered a ton of flowers and paid me a lovely fat deposit. I’m absolutely sure they’re serious…’

  ‘Ttchh…don’t mean nothing, girl. When are you going to learn?’

  With Mrs Orange clucking in the background, I took the plunge. So much for her retiring. Once I was up and running, she couldn’t stay away.

  And so three years later, I’m still here. Welcome to my world! It’s the small, converted cowshed on the edge of Dexter’s Green, with a hand painted pink-and-white sign outside - ‘Valentine’s Flowers’- and an old water trough overflowing with daisies. The stable doors are tatty, the brick floor uneven which means the buckets tip over and there’s virtually no passing trade, but that’s not why I’m there. You see, things have moved on. It just so happens I’m slap bang in the middle of wedding country, the sun is shining and my accidental business is booming.

  It was entirely a stroke of luck, but I’ve discovered since opening that brides travel miles to get married round here in one of the many barns or country houses. There’s even a real-live castle, complete with portcullis and dungeons and a headless ghost. Quite simply, it’s the dream, along with the frou frou dress and the towering cake no-one eats. And with my penchant for low carbon footprint, real, seasonal flowers, I, too, am the latest fashion. None of your Dutch roses or all year round gerberas for me – oh, no! Think instead of an exquisite country garden, the air heavy with the scent of old-fashioned roses and herbs, or in winter, little white narcissi and hyacinths lighting up the darkest corners. What could be more perfect for that once-in-a-lifetime fairy princess day?

  ‘You need some hazel with them roses, pet,’ Mrs Orange butts in. She’d be a dahlia if she was a flower. One of those pompom ones – round, loud and forthright. ‘Good for reconciliation, hazel is. Pop a bit in, so they don’t see it, like.’

  ‘It would look lovely,’ I agree, ‘but it’s a wedding bouquet, not a peace offering and the client wants just flowers. No leaves, no twigs, no anything else at all.’

  And the client will be livid if she gets them. It’s a dummy run for a mega-wedding and a complete pain in the arse. Personally I blame the wedding magazines. Ask your florist to mock up your bouquet in advance... Who came up with that bright idea? Not helpful. Not at all, especially when said bouquet features spring flowers and your bride wants to see it in November.

  ‘Now, I’m hoping you’re going to tell me that young bride’s got black hair, my lovely…and green eyes, I’m thinking, yes, green,’ she says firmly, gazing at my flowers. Not entirely blameless in my accidental career, she has some fairly outlandish ideas. And she’s completely mad, by the way – in case you hadn’t guessed.

  ‘Yes Mrs Orange, as a matter of fact she has. The hair, I mean - I haven’t a clue about the eyes. Now if you’ll excuse me…’

  But she just stands and chuckles as I tear around my shop, my own hair flying all over the place, one eye on the clock as I snatch up roses from the dozens of buckets that fill the floor space.

  ‘I told you, pet, didn’t I, that it’s the flowers that chooses the bride, not the other way round. Here, you can’t go putting those two together…’

  She clucks disapprovingly and tries to take the flowers from me. ‘Ttch, ttch, the florist knows best, that’s what I always say. Give her the hazel twigs. She’ll come round.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ I whisk the flowers away from her – she keeps on about it but I don’t buy into all that superstitious nonsense. ‘These are perfect as they are. Anyway, I thought you didn’t like weddings?’

  Fortunately she backs off. As I wind the stems with beautiful, hand woven ribbon, right on cue a shiny silver car pulls up. Mrs Orange stomps over to the door, a short stumpy figure in layers of clashing clothes, peering nosily outside.

  ‘You expectin’ someone important, my lovely? It’s one of them real posh jobs,’ she says loudly over her shoulder.

  ‘Sshh. It’s probably my client.’

  Which it is. Sarah McCauley strides up the steps, squeezing past Mrs Orange who comes up to her elbow and refuses to budge from the doorway. A feel a flicker of pride as I glance around – it’s gorgeous in here this morning, like an English country garden crammed in buckets, with tall lilies in various stages of opening amid gracefully arching stems of foliage, with all the smaller buckets filled with delicious smelling things like roses and lavender and mint. Not that Sarah notices.

  ‘Morning Frankie. I’m early. I hope that’s alright?’ She’s thin and glamorous, Sarah, in pale cashmere and immaculate jeans, and smells of Chanel No 5. But it’s her hands and the hair that I notice. She’s clearly one of those ladies who have their nails done and their highlights touched up before they need to. Unlike me. My hands are beginning to look like Mrs Orange’s.

  ‘Mrs McCauley! Of course. Do come through. I’ve just finished it.’

  It wouldn’t look out of place in a glossy magazine – a soft confection of the most delicate scented roses contrasting against the rough wood of the workbench. Stems of apricot Paul Ricard nestle beside ivory Margaret Merrill, with a scent to die for. In between are glimpses of the palest green hydrangea. Not too round or symmetrical, it’s perfection, though I say so myself.

  ‘Hmmm.’ She picks it up. She doesn’t rave about it - clients like Sarah McCauley rarely do. They discern… She turns it this way and that, studying it closely, feeling the ribbon between her fingers.

  ‘I suppose it’s what Melissa wants,’ she says dismissively. ‘I’ll tell her I’ve seen it. Add it to the bill, will you?’

  I know for a fact it’s exactly what Melissa has in mind. We’ve spent many hours and countless emails deliberating over precisely which varieties of rose to choose. Sarah marches back outside and through the window, I watch her toss it carelessly onto the back seat of her Mercedes. She didn’t even bother to inhale the sublime scent. I wince – that’s a hundred pounds worth of my favourite roses, tossed…

  Mrs Orange might be a bit of a fixture, but she doesn’t actually do any work, just stands around and divulges pearls of wisdom as the mood takes her, so I ended up advertising for an assistant. After nine interviews that were as painful as extracting teeth, Skye was number ten and the only one with a modicum of creativity. She wears odd clothes, like today’s purple camisole with enormous army surplus trousers held up by men’s braces, and the DM’s she wears with everything, but she’s a hard worker, though more than a little flaky at the best of times.

  ‘D’you think…’ she says absent-mindedly, screwing up her face and peering through her round spectacles at the particularly vicious roses she’s de-thorning, ‘we’ll ever get any like, celebrities coming in? Only it would be cool, wouldn’t it, Frankie, to do, like, flowers, like, for someone really famous, like that fit bloke from Big Brother…’

  She really does say ‘like’ that many times, aspiring also to the giddy heights of creating a wedding bouquet for someone off some naff reality TV show. If they ever darken our doorstep, she can have them.

  ‘Everyone’s wedding is their big day,’ I remind her. ‘Fame doesn’t come into it.’

  Oh. I shouldn’t have said that – because I’ve far from given up on the idea of fame and fortune. In fact, quite the contrary. You see, squirreled away, I too have this dream - of being a celebrity florist…

  2

  ‘Frankie. Din
ner on Friday.’

  Now this is perfectly to be expected from Honey. She never asks, she orders. I dread to think how she talks to her clients. Her husband Johnny, however, loves her enough to put up with it, which is just as well and she’s a wonderful friend – in small doses - only now I have a small, thriving business, Honey’s onto the other part of my life she likes to stick her nose into. My love life - her mission being to find me a husband.

  As I keep reminding her, it’s not as though I don’t have a boyfriend. I have Greg – but that’s not good enough for Honey. Right from the start, she told me I was wasting my time.

  ‘He’s emotionally stunted, Frankie. Unreliable.’

  ‘You only say that because he’s not like Johnny,’ I objected. It’s true – they’re polar opposites. ‘Greg just has all these friends he hangs out with. And truly, Honey, if he was at mine all the time, you know me, I’d hate it…’

  But as I spoke, I crossed my fingers, because there was more than a grain of truth in her words and I’d no idea why I was defending him.

  ‘You’re completely missing the point. It’s how he expects you to be there when he wants you, at his beck and call, but in between times, he does what the hell he likes. He just has to snap his fingers, Frankie and you drop everything. I’ve seen you…’

  ‘I don’t…’ I protest uncomfortably, wishing she didn’t have to always say it like it is, and grateful at least that she doesn’t dredge up the subject of my instinct for complicated men. We all know the type. Oh my days, we can’t resist them. The more screwed up, the better and though we kill ourselves trying, deep down we know they’ll never change.

  Greg, I’m pleased to say, isn’t one. He has no emotional complications whatsoever. He’s just casual. And though our fling has its merits, a secret part of me likes to imagine that somewhere out there’s a gorgeous specimen of a man – an uncomplicated one, obviously - for whom I’m the only girl in the world. It’s a big world though, I’m finding. And he could be absolutely anywhere.

  Back to the present, as Greg is going through one of his elusive phases, I decide perhaps I’ll go. I’m just wondering who she’s pairing me off with this time. So far there’s been Joe, the trainee barrister who was handsome but far too serious. Patronising too, as I remember – he thinks flowers are a sweet little job for a girl – his words. I was on the verge of reminding him about the super-talented mega-florist-to-Royalty Shane Connelly before slapping him, but decided he wasn’t worth the effort.

  Next up was Alistair, equally good-looking but newly divorced and heart-broken. Definitely in the with-baggage category. His sole topic of conversation was his ex and all the personal problems she’s left him with. Way too many hang-ups even for me.

  Last time, however, it was bloody gorgeous, sex-on-legs Rosco. Utterly jaw-droppingly ravishing with thick curly hair and the longest eye-lashes I’ve seen except on a cow. For a moment, I’d thought my luck was in but as I soon discovered, he clearly has dental hygiene issues and not only that, he kept feeling me up. Under the table. At our first meeting, in front of the other guests.

  I told Honey the next day, when I phoned to thank her for dinner.

  ‘Dinner was lovely,’ I said. ‘Really. You excelled yourself, Honey. Thank you.’

  ‘Well?’ was all she said.

  ‘Oh, Honey…. He was fondling me through the chargrilled langoustines, positively groping me all through the bouillabaisse - that was divine, by the way, really tasty. By the time we got to the clafoutis, it wasn’t the plums on my plate he was thinking about. One word, though. Listerine…’

  ‘You’re so ungrateful,’ she says huffily. ‘And fussy. Plenty of women would jump at him.’

  ‘Res ipsa loquitur. That, my friend, says it all. I’m not plenty of women. And you’re forgetting - I do have Greg...’

  Back to the latest invitation, I quiz her. ‘Who else are you inviting?’

  Honey says, ‘actually, Josh. You know, Johnny’s brother. And Ryan and Elise.’

  ‘Oh. How lovely…’ My heart does a back flip then sinks.

  Don’t get me wrong. Ryan and Elise are a lovely, sweet, kind couple – but they leave you with this nauseating feeling like you’ve overdosed on schmaltz and need to vomit. Josh, however, happens to be drop dead gorgeous in a Colin Farrell kind of way, which swings it. I stop trying to think of excuses.

  ‘Frankie, are you coming or not?’ Patience isn’t Honey’s strong point.

  ‘Yes, of course I will. Thank you.’ Not that I’d dare say no, but on this occasion, I don’t want to. In fact, I’m already looking forward to it.

  You see, we’ve met before, Josh and I, just the once, at Honey and Johnny’s wedding. And I was horribly, squiffily drunk and I snogged him. Not the greatest start. Still, given that a, he’s a bloke and b, he was probably squiffy too, I’m hopeful he’ll have forgotten. And if this time, I stay sober and behave impeccably, then just maybe he won’t recognise me.

  But as I hang up, I don’t have time to worry about it, because while I was talking to Honey, today’s flower order arrived and after closely examining the contents of all four boxes, I have a problem.

  ‘Shit!’ I cry, dropping the last and making Skye jump out of her skin. ‘He’s left us the wrong roses! They’re cream, not my pinky-red ones. I ordered Deep Secret… Oh my God! This is a disaster… What will I do? The bride’s mother will refuse to pay and word will get around and I’ll be out of business before you know it. You won’t have a job,’ I add, to make sure I have her attention. ‘Honestly, this is a nightmare...’

  ‘Chill, man,’ says Skye. ‘Call Milo. And like, you know what brides are like – she probably won’t even notice.’

  Sometimes I wonder if I missed something and Skye’s colour blind. ‘What? Not notice the difference between pink and white? I think she will,’ I say fervently, whirling off dervishly, stress puffing like smoke out of my ears. Rummaging through the notes on my desk and flinging them everywhere, eventually I find the phone.

  ‘For fuck’s sake. You need to like do something about that stress, Frankie. It’s not healthy.’ Skye stares at me like I’m mad.

  I feel mad. But this is what weddings do to me. I simply can’t bear the thought that the biggest day of someone’s life will be ruined because a hapless florist, namely me, messed up.

  Milo’s a marvel. He sources from a whole collection of English growers and co-ordinates the delivery of most of our flowers - and some. He’s tracked down rarer than rare blooms, chased up missing orders and even fixed a puncture for me. In a crisis, he’s been known to perform miracles.

  ‘Milo! You can’t do this to me! I’ve got the wrong roses! They’re not Deep Secret and I need Deep Secret you’ve got to help me…’ I wail down the phone at him, without pausing for breath.

  Milo’s quite used to hysterical florists – God knows he deals with enough of us. He doesn’t turn a hair. ‘I know, darlin’…’

  He calls us all darlin’. I’m sure we all believe too, just like I do, that we’re his favourite.

  ‘Dropped the wrong box, I did,’ he says cheerfully. ‘You got Iceberg over there, darlin’! What an eejit! Don’t worry! Got your Deep Secret here on the van.’ He laughs.

  ‘It’s so not funny!’ I cry distractedly. ‘It’s a huge wedding and they particularly chose the bridesmaids dresses to match the roses and I really need them today…’

  ‘Blimey!’ He sounds amused. But it’s true. Some brides actually choose dresses to match flowers, not the other way round. ‘Well…ever so sorry, I’ll call by later on. Don’t you worry.’

  I put down the phone and slump at my desk, but instantly it rings again.

  ‘Frankie, it’s Lizzie Goff.’

  Double shit. It’s Lizzie’s roses that are half way across the county. She sounds upset even before I tell her.

  ‘Hi Lizzie. Your roses have just come in. Actually…’ I break off. Skye’s frantically shaking her head at me as she drags her middle finger across her t
hroat.

  But Lizzie interrupts me. She’s a scary girl, Lizzie, a first degree bridezilla. ‘Oh Frankie, there’s been a disaster… Mummy’s little Rollo got hold of one of the dresses. Not mine, thank God. I’d have killed the little bastard.’

  She actually does sound quite murderous – I’ve met little Rollo. Small and cute as Jack Russell’s are, but with eyes of steel and needle-sharp teeth like a piranha’s. I quake in my boots as I think of her roses. I don’t wish to be murdered. I’m too young.

  ‘Complete nightmare, you wouldn’t believe. I’ve been tearing my hair out and I’m so sorry and it’s so last minute… But we’ve bought new ones. They’re wearing chocolate, only do you think that pink rose will still work or should we order something different? Or is it too late? Honestly Frankie, it’s completely terrible…’

  What is it about weddings? She sounds as mad as I do.

  ‘Actually,’ I say slowly, as a flash of true inspiration strikes. ‘It is awfully late notice, Lizzie, but you’re right… It really would be better. I think cream, don’t you? It would be perfect with chocolate bridesmaid dresses. Just imagine, little creamy white roses, with your mint and lavender like we planned…’

  ‘Oh Frankie… that sounds wonderful…thank you so much! What a stroke of luck! I was so worried… you are sure that’s ok?’

  ‘No problem at all, Lizzie. Don’t worry about it. We’ll see you bright and early on Saturday morning.’

  With my early demise averted, I call Milo and tell him not to worry about the roses, while Skye shakes her head disbelievingly at me. Then the phone rings again.

  ‘Watch and learn, my friend,’ I say, feeling smug as I go to answer it.

  ‘Good morning, Valentine’s flowers…’

  It was the call I’d waited my whole life for.

  *

  I’m on an adrenaline-fuelled high as I rush home and change in no time – into my new skinny jeans with a loose fitting tunic pulled on over the top – then fly round to Honey’s – far too early.