The Little Flower Shop by the Sea

by Ali McNamara

  ‘Or me.’

  Jake.

  Woody turns to see Jake and Miley standing on the opposite pavement watching the proceedings.

  ‘I can vouch for Poppy; her mother phoned me to say she’d be coming down to take over the shop a few days ago.’ He walks over towards us. ‘And as for you, Harriet, I’m surprised Caroline didn’t phone and tell you that you wouldn’t be needed today. She knew all about Poppy taking over the shop last night.’

  I notice when Jake speaks to Harriet how coy she is with him to begin with, but then when he imparts the news about Caroline, she immediately begins to bristle.

  ‘Caroline knew?’ she demands. ‘Then why didn’t she say?’

  ‘Why do you think?’ Jake says with a shrug of his shoulders. ‘To cause trouble, as always. She likes to do that when she doesn’t get her own way.’

  Harriet quickly evaluates the situation, working out how she can extricate herself without losing face.

  ‘If what you say is correct, and you, Poppy, are indeed the new owner of The Daisy Chain, then I must apologise to you.’ She holds out her hand to me, and I shake it. She nods firmly. ‘As you have heard, it is our president, Caroline, who is apparently to blame for this mix-up. Although I’m sure this is a complete oversight on Caroline’s part – she was very much involved with the shop to begin with, but lately she hasn’t had quite so much time…’

  Jake coughs loudly.

  ‘… it is unforgivable,’ Harriet continues, after giving Jake a steely glare, ‘that the St Felix Women’s Guild should welcome you here to our town in this way. I do hope you can find it in your heart to forgive us.’

  I nod, a little taken aback by her speech. ‘Yes, of course. Apology accepted.’

  Woody, standing next to us watching all this, bursts into spontaneous applause, then hurriedly hides his hands behind his back and adopts the typical policeman’s stance while his cheeks flush bright red.

  ‘Can I just thank you all for looking after my grandmother’s shop while she was in hospital. It was very good of you.’ I turn and smile at Willow and Beryl. Willow beams back; Beryl sort of snarls something that might be a smile.

  ‘Not at all,’ Harriet replies for them. ‘Rose was thought of very highly here in St Felix, it was the least we could do. Any member of Rose’s family will always be welcome at our guild meetings. I do hope you might consider joining us, Poppy. We could do with some younger blood.’

  Willow nods eagerly. From behind me I hear Jake chuckle.

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ I say politely.

  ‘Can I join too?’ Amber asks, stepping away from the door of the shop. ‘I’ve never been a member of a Women’s Guild. I don’t think we have them in the States – what is it? It sounds fun!’

  While Amber discusses the benefits of the St Felix Women’s Guild with Willow and Harriet, I go over and talk to Jake and Woody.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say.

  ‘Not a problem, miss,’ Woody replies. ‘All in a day’s work.’

  ‘I meant Jake actually, for vouching for me like that.’

  Jake grins smugly.

  ‘But if you hadn’t arrived when you did, Woody,’ I quickly add when he looks upset, ‘I don’t know what might have happened. It was starting to get a bit aggressive.’

  Jake snorts now.

  ‘It was!’ I tell him. ‘You weren’t here. That Beryl woman looks quite vicious.’

  ‘Ah, Beryl’s harmless enough,’ Jake says. ‘She’s the verger at the local church, has been for years. Clarence would be lost without her.’

  ‘Clarence?’

  ‘Father Claybourne,’ Woody explains. ‘He’s our vicar. Lovely man; he was most helpful to me when I first came to St Felix. Poppy, you know I would have vouched for you if I’d known. You didn’t tell me who you were when we met yesterday.’

  ‘I know, I’m so sorry, Woody.’ I gently touch his arm and Woody’s face flushes again. I don’t know what it is about Woody. Unlike most women, I don’t go for men in uniform at all. But Woody was just so cute. Cute like a puppy: you wouldn’t want to make him sad or upset.

  ‘So, I’m gathering from all this hoo-ha this morning you really have decided to keep the shop,’ Jake says quickly, changing the subject. He looks up at The Daisy Chain. ‘I wondered last night if you might change your mind.’

  ‘No, of course I wouldn’t change my mind,’ I lie. ‘Why would I do that?’

  Jake shrugs. ‘Just thought you might have rushed into your decision a bit, and then had second thoughts in the cold light of day.’

  I shake my head. ‘Nope.’

  ‘Good, I’m pleased. So the question is, now you’ve decided to keep the old girl, what are you going to do with her?’

  I liked how Jake referred to the shop like it was a person. ‘Run it as a flower shop, you’ll be pleased to know,’ I tell him. ‘I think I’d be lynched around here if I did anything else. Plus my mother has sent me Amber over from New York.’ We both look over at Amber. She’s got her eyes closed and is waving her hands rhythmically around Willow’s head, while Harriet and Beryl look on sceptically.

  They’ve obviously moved on from discussing the Women’s Guild.

  ‘She’s supposed to be some hotshot florist over there.’

  Amber suddenly clicks her fingers, snaps her eyes open, and pronounces Willow’s aura clean.

  ‘Time will tell, though,’ I add.

  Miley climbs on to Woody’s shoulder and begins fiddling with his uniform buttons. Woody looks apprehensive.

  ‘She won’t hurt you, Woody,’ Jake insists. ‘I’ve told you a hundred times.’

  ‘I know, I know, I’m just concerned about my uniform – this is police property, you know?’

  ‘Oh, a monkey!’ Amber cries, leaving her new Women’s Guild friends and coming over. ‘Is he yours?’ she asks Woody. ‘A monkey cop, how cute!’

  ‘Definitely not,’ Woody says, trying to shrug Miley off his shoulder.

  Miley takes the hint, and climbs on to Amber. She delights in examining the colourful braiding in Amber’s hair, and then moves on to the many beads and chains around her neck.

  ‘Miley!’ Jake warns. ‘Behave.’

  ‘No, she’s fine,’ Amber says. ‘The guy across the street from the florist’s shop back in New York has a monkey. I love animals.’

  ‘As much as I hate to break up the impromptu street party that’s building here,’ Harriet says, ‘we need to sort out what to do with all these flowers we’ve got for the shop. We can’t just put them into storage until you open again, Poppy, and we can’t just throw them away.’

  ‘Ah, yes, that… erm?’ I look to the others for help, but they all stare blankly back at me.

  ‘I know,’ Amber says calmly, with Miley now sitting cross-legged on top of her head looking like some sort of weird Buddha statue amongst all Amber’s hippiness. ‘You won’t make much money out of it, but it will be fun…’

  Nine

  Lady’s Slipper – Capricious Beauty

  ‘Are you sure?’ I ask Amber for about the tenth time as we sit on the floor of the shop amongst rolls of ribbon, wire, and the heads of hundreds of flowers.

  ‘Yeah, they’re gonna love it, and they’ll love you for doing it too.’

  Amber’s idea, so we wouldn’t waste all the flowers the ladies had in their van, was to make floral hair garlands, then give them away to the ladies of the town. She said it would be a nice friendly welcoming gesture.

  I think Amber had visions of us standing in the street giving out flowers to passers-by like peace-loving hippies from the seventies, while Bob Dylan played in the background.

  But I, with my more sensible head on, had suggested we should look on it as an early marketing campaign for the new shop, and we should ask for a minimal donation to cover our costs, then donate any leftover money to a local charity.

  ‘That’s what you call a loss leader,’ Jake had helpfully told us, before he and Miley had rapidly disappeared when the
Guild ladies started to produce tools, wire and ribbons by the bucketload from the back of the shop. ‘Nope,’ he’d said, shaking his head. ‘I grow flowers – I definitely don’t arrange them! But,’ he’d suggested before he’d departed, ‘I’ll have a word with my daughter Bronte. This sounds just the sort of thing she and her friends would like. I’ll see if they can come down from the school in their lunch break and take a few off your hands.’

  ‘He’s a nice guy, that Jake,’ Amber says now, as I pass her another carnation head and she winds it expertly on some wire. ‘Hot, too.’

  I don’t say anything, but I casually glance at the rest of the ladies to see if they react to her statement.

  ‘Jake has had a very unfortunate past,’ Harriet says as she begins to form another circle of wire – just as Amber had shown her.

  ‘Oh, why?’ Amber asks. ‘I thought I was picking up some sadness from him but I couldn’t place it.’

  Harriet looks at Willow and Beryl.

  They both give a sombre nod of approval.

  ‘His wife, Felicity, was taken from us very suddenly a number of years ago. Felicity was such a bright light all over St Felix – from the school PTA to our own Women’s Guild, our lovely Felicity would always be there, raising funds and helping out with a cheerful smile and a kind word for everyone.’

  ‘She sounds wonderful,’ Amber says.

  ‘Oh, she was,’ Harriet continues. ‘Everyone in St Felix loved Felicity.’

  ‘We were all heartbroken when she died,’ Willow says, cutting a long length of ribbon. ‘Felicity was wonderful to be around; always a kind word, always time for you, whatever you were doing. So gentle, so delicate, so —’

  ‘Willow, you make Felicity sound like a saint,’ Harriet says. ‘Yes, of course she was a lovely lady, and I wouldn’t hear a word said against her. But she had her faults like the rest of us. Nobody is perfect.’

  ‘Ain’t that the truth,’ the usually silent Beryl mutters.

  ‘But Jake has kids – yes?’

  I’m thankful to Amber; she’s asking all the questions I want to, but without appearing nosy.

  ‘Yes, and what a wonderful job he’s done in bringing them up since their mother passed away,’ Harriet says with approval. ‘Bronte is fifteen now – she’s in the same class at school as my son. And Charlie, he’s seventeen.’

  ‘Wow, he doesn’t look old enough to have kids that age,’ I hear Amber say, while I’m still absorbing this information. ‘He must have had them young.’

  ‘Felicity and Jake were childhood sweethearts,’ Willow says wistfully. ‘It was very romantic. Met at sixteen, engaged at eighteen, married at nineteen, first baby when they were in their early twenties.’

  ‘Then separated by death over a decade later,’ Beryl finishes for her. ‘Very Romeo and Juliet, if you wish to romanticise the pain of death, Willow.’

  I’m beginning to like Beryl more every minute. She may be quiet, but when she does speak there’s no beating about the bush – an admirable trait, in my book.

  Willow pulls a sulky face and goes back to her job: tying the ribbons on the ends of the garlands.

  ‘Are you OK, Poppy?’ Amber asks me. ‘You look a little pale.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I reply quietly. ‘Let’s just get on with these garlands.’ But I can’t help looking towards my grandmother’s old desk while I cut the heads off more flowers, and remember…

  As Amber predicted, the flower garlands are a huge success.

  After we’ve finished making them up, the ladies of the St Felix Women’s Guild leave the two of us standing outside the shop. Willow and Beryl, both wearing flower garlands in their hair, walk down the high street together arm in arm.

  We manage to give away a few garlands to the odd passer-by in return for a donation, and then Ant and Dec arrive and delight in parading a couple back up to their bakery, where I know for a fact they wear them for the rest of the afternoon, because when I pop by to get a couple more custard tarts later (Amber had enjoyed hers as much as I had) they still have them on.

  It’s when lunchtime arrives and the girls from the high school come marching down the hill led by Jake’s daughter, Bronte, that our trade really takes off. In fact in the space of forty-five minutes we shift nearly all of our garlands.

  ‘This is so cool,’ Bronte says, spinning around with flowers in her hair. There can be no mistaking whose daughter she is. She has Jake’s sandy brown hair and deep brown eyes. ‘We never get anything like this here; it’s like having our own festival. Will you be doing cool stuff like this all the time when you open up for real?’

  ‘Yes,’ I assure her. ‘The Daisy Chain will definitely be very cool.’

  She smiles. ‘I thought it might. With you two running it, it would have to be.’

  I smile at her and am about to say thanks when she continues.

  ‘I mean, an ageing Goth and an American hippy coming together in one store, what sort of mega mash-up is that going to be! The two of you will be wicked together. I can’t wait.’

  With that Bronte and her friends merge into one big pack of short school skirts, bottle-green jumpers, shrieks and giggles, and disappear back up the hill.

  I look at Amber, still holding the near-empty box of garlands.

  She smiles awkwardly. ‘I’d say I was more New Age than hippy.’

  ‘I’d say you got off lightly. I’m not a Goth! Let alone an ageing one!’

  She looks me up and down. ‘How old are you then?’

  ‘I’m thirty!’

  ‘Really?’ Amber looks surprised. ‘I thought you were much younger. You look it. Maybe it’s your clothes, like Bronte said. You are a little… how can I put it politely?’

  ‘Just say it, Amber.’

  ‘Dark.’

  ‘What do you mean dark? Just because I don’t wear all the colours of the rainbow like you, doesn’t make me a Goth!’

  ‘No, but look at what you’re wearing now,’ she gestures at my clothes. ‘They’re all black.’

  ‘Today, perhaps. Yesterday I had on burgundy DMs.’

  ‘With…?’

  I sigh. ‘OK, with black leggings, but that doesn’t mean —’

  ‘I’m just saying what I see, which is exactly what Bronte did. Plus your personality is also a little…’

  I roll my eyes. ‘Go on, you might as well get it over with.’

  ‘Harsh.’

  ‘I’m harsh?’ I snap.

  ‘See.’

  ‘OK, but not all the time, surely?’

  ‘No, not all the time.’ Amber smiles and plucks a stray flower that has fallen from one of the garlands from the bottom of the box. ‘I think you have a softer side hidden somewhere in there, my new friend. But the question I can’t answer yet is…’

  ‘Go on.’

  She places the flower behind my ear and I shudder internally.

  ‘Why do you keep it hidden from us?’

  Ten

  Flax – I Feel Your Kindness

  It’s funny how once you really set your mind on doing something it suddenly starts to come together very quickly.

  The day after Amber and I had stood outside selling flower garlands in the street, everything began to fall into place regarding the new shop.

  When I realised Amber had nowhere to stay in St Felix and had planned on staying at the Merry Mermaid until she found somewhere, I’d asked her to stay with me at the cottage.

  This went against all my natural instincts, as I hated living with anyone. I was always better on my own. But I couldn’t let Amber live at the pub when I had a spare room, especially when she was being so helpful to me and the shop. Besides, for all her ‘alternative’ ways, Amber was fun. She made me smile – which was a tricky thing for anyone to do.

  So I moved my stuff into my grandmother’s old room upstairs, which was very odd to begin with, but turned out to feel a lot less odd than sleeping in Will’s and my old room, which I’d found very unsettling for the one night I spent ther
e. Then we turned our attention to planning our new shop.

  Both Amber and I agreed from the beginning that whatever sort of shop my grandmother had run in the past, or the ladies of the St Felix Women’s Guild had been running for the last year, this new generation Daisy Chain should be something with our own unique stamp on it.