I scan the cart for flowers to take home. She follows my gaze as I eye off the hyacinths. Apricot Passions. ‘They smell sweet while they last,’ she says, lifting one from the bucket and shaking the excess water off the stem. She pierces me with her hooded blue eyes, and holds the flower close to my face so that I can inhale. Her eyes, marked with crow’s feet, open wider, filled with intrigue. ‘These ones lean towards the light.’
‘I’ll take them.’
She nods and reaches for a sheet of tissue paper to wrap them in.
‘And the daffs …’ I say. I eye the rest of the flowers on her cart. An assortment of in- and out-of-season blooms, as well as what are no doubt imported roses—too perfect and packaged to be locally grown. In what feels like slow motion, I continue pointing to various other flowers—chrysanthemums, tulips, paperwhites, banksias and filler foliage like seeded eucalyptus and woody pear. The flower seller wraps each bunch with care, as if she were bundling a baby in a blanket.
‘Special occasion?’ she asks.
A smile, laced with a hint of hope, forms on my lips. ‘Yes. I think you could say that.’
NINE
I spend the next hour circling in and around crowds at the bustling market, and am edging my way towards a stall of fresh produce, trying to call to mind a way to cook the rainbow-coloured stalks of silverbeet, when someone taps me on the shoulder.
‘Fancy seeing you here,’ says Flynn, smiling. He smells of fresh aftershave and is wearing a grey coat and jeans, with a navy rib-knit scarf around his neck. He eyes the vegetables in my basket. ‘Decided to stock the fridge, have we?’
‘How observant.’ I laugh, rolling my eyes. ‘Now I just need to figure out what to do with them.’
‘I could help you with that.’
‘Oh, you definitely seem to be the helping sort,’ I reply with a hint of sarcasm. I pick up a broccoli to admire its tiny yellow flowers before adding it to my basket. I grab a few oranges, some imperfectly shaped carrots, their tops still on, a bunch of kale and some pumpkin. Flynn offers to take the basket for me while I pay for the produce, and when I turn around, a brown-and-white Cavalier King Charles, with long ears he hasn’t grown into, jumps up at me, wagging his tail.
‘Easy, boy,’ says Flynn. ‘Looks like he’s excited to see you.’
‘What’s his name?’ I ask, crouching down to pat him.
‘Parrot.’
‘Parrot?’ I titter, looking up at Flynn as Parrot licks my face. I wipe my cheek with the cuff of my sleeve.
Flynn shrugs. ‘It makes him unforgettable. And he’s also super loyal and trustworthy.’
I nuzzle my face against Parrot’s. ‘Well, he’s very cute, too.’
‘Sit,’ commands Flynn, and Parrot obeys, but looks up at me with his innocent eyes, his tail thumping against the ground, as if to tell me we’re not done yet with the affection.
‘I think he likes me,’ I say, nodding Parrot’s way.
‘Seems like it. He’s totally smitten,’ says Flynn, but the way he looks at me, the way he doesn’t look at Parrot but directly at me, makes me wonder whether I should be blushing. Parrot yawns.
‘I fixed your front gate this morning,’ he says, changing the subject. ‘Noticed it was stuck when I came to visit earlier. Did you forget about our deal?’
‘Our deal?’
‘You know, the firewood. I was going to charge you, but since we’re neighbours I suggested a drink might work instead.’
‘I’ve been busy,’ I reply, as we nudge our way past market-goers. ‘Besides, don’t you have better things to be doing with your time than assisting random neighbours? Don’t you have … I don’t know, a job or something?’
‘Nope, actually I don’t. I’m between jobs.’ He looks up at the sky and squints. ‘Well, kind of between jobs.’ Flynn stops at one of the stands, and hands a note to the vendor in exchange for a stick of fairy floss.
‘Kind of between jobs?’
He shrugs his shoulders. ‘Exactly,’ he says, shoving a wad of fairy floss into his mouth. The way he says it makes me think there’s more to it than he’s letting on.
‘Aren’t you a little old for fairy floss?’
He pretends to give my question some thought before replying, ‘Nope.’
‘All that sugar is so bad for you.’
‘I know,’ he says, swallowing down a mouthful. ‘I just can’t seem to let go of sweet things.’ He pulls off a wad and offers it to me. ‘Go on …’ he says playfully.
I laugh, and wave his hand away. ‘Thanks, but I’ll pass. I’ll stick to the veggies for now.’
We make our way across the street, where I stop in front of a bakery. Three arched panes of glass, the frames painted in midnight blue, provide a glimpse to an interesting display of bread loaves protruding from a rustic wooden barrow surrounded by artificial sunflowers.
‘I just need to pop in there,’ I say.
‘I’ll wait here,’ says Flynn, leaning against a lamp post that some white flowers cascade down on. I snap one of the buds off the stem and bring it to my nose. ‘Clematis,’ I whisper to myself.
‘What’s that?’
‘Nothing,’ I dismiss. ‘Oh, and you don’t have to wait for me. I can manage on my own.’
‘It’s a twenty-minute walk. I could use the company. And I do make good company. Promise,’ he says earnestly, as he finishes off the last of his fairy floss.
Even if I won’t admit it, I’m alone here in Daylesford and Flynn, as forward as he is, does make good company. I hand him the flowers I’ve been carrying and step inside the bakehouse to the melodic sound of bells jingling.
The delicious aroma of artisan baked bread is comforting. A round woman wearing a burgundy-and-white-striped apron, with a dusting of flour on her pink cheeks, finishes serving the customers ahead of me before greeting me with a smile.
‘Morning! Cold out there, isn’t it?’
‘It sure is.’
‘What can I get you?’
I scan the labels on the baskets behind her. ‘I’ll have a loaf of the wholemeal sourdough, please.’
‘Lucky last.’ She places the loaf in a brown paper bag and squints to get a better look at me. ‘You look familiar. You from around here?’
‘Um, well, yes and no. It’s been a while since I last visited. I live not too far from town. A property called Summerhill.’
‘Well, I’m Mae,’ she says.
‘Gracie,’ I reply.
Her eyes brighten. ‘Summerhill,’ she muses. ‘That’s where they used to sell the flowers. I’ve such fond memories of that place. Such a shame they don’t grow them anymore. We used to sell sweet pea posies in baskets out front of the shop on weekends. They reminded me of my mum. Bless her cotton socks, she’s now up there with the angels. Every time I see a sweet pea, I can almost feel her with me. You know, those flowers from Summerhill lasted weeks in the vase. Not like the ones they’re importing now from Kenya and India. Some of them just don’t smell the same. Or at all.’ She hands me the paper bag with the loaf of bread, then winks at me. ‘It’s like the flowers know when they’re tended with a bit of love. They know when something’s missing. Just like a loaf of bread that’s missing a special ingredient. Like salt. You always need a pinch of salt in your bread. Know what I mean?’
I nod. ‘Yes,’ I reply. I know exactly what she means.
‘Anything else?’
‘That’ll be all, thanks,’ I reply, glancing thoughtfully out the window to Flynn and the armful of flowers he’s holding for me.
‘Since you don’t have a job, what are your plans here?’ I ask Flynn, as I munch on an apple on our way back to Summerhill.
‘I think you could say that I’m waiting to see where life leads me,’ he says, squinting up at the clouds. He goes silent for a heartbeat before turning his attention back to me. ‘You?’
‘I’m sort of doing the same, I suppose.’
Flynn waits for me to say more, to expand on the little information
I’ve given him, but it’s hard for me to give someone a glimpse into my life when I don’t yet seem to fit into any kind of routine.
‘You’re full of secrets, Gracie Ashcroft,’ he says. He tosses his apple core into a paddock and shifts the basket of vegetables he’s carrying for me into another hand to check his phone, which is ringing. He tucks it back into his pocket.
‘Don’t mind me, you can answer it.’
‘It’s no-one important. So, you were saying …’
‘Oh, I don’t have secrets—I’m just not ready to let you in,’ I tease.
‘Well, maybe I’ll just need to knock a little harder.’
I briefly smile to myself but don’t answer him. Flynn lets a beat pass before speaking again.
‘You must have come here for a reason,’ he says casually, kicking a loose stone down the road.
‘Maybe,’ I reply, my attention on the pebble.
Flynn doesn’t say a word, just keeps walking, the pebble grazing the road, as if he’s lost in his own thoughts. So I join him, losing myself in mine. We meander along, the quiet settling between us. It’s not a heavy quiet, or an awkward quiet, but a peaceful kind of quiet, broken only by the sound of magpies and the rumble of cars passing us by every so often. Flynn’s pebble veers in my direction. I kick it with my right foot, and it skims the ground in his direction. He kicks it back, and we continue, taking it in turns.
‘Have you ever made a decision to follow something in your life, knowing that it might not necessarily turn out to be the right thing to do?’ I ask finally.
‘And here’s me thinking I’d have to knock really hard,’ murmurs Flynn, a grin forming on his lips.
I put my hand on my hip and frown at him, pretending to be annoyed with him.
He shrugs off a laugh. ‘I thought it was going to be much harder,’ he says, before his expression turns serious. ‘What exactly did you do?’ he asks, his voice low.
‘I called off a wedding,’ I tell him. Saying it out loud makes it feel more real and somehow it sounds so much worse to me than it did before. ‘I lost him and he lost me, and I think we both lost a really good, beautiful thing, but I can’t be sure. Every morning I wake up, I can’t help wondering whether I made the right decision. I’ve hurt him and he didn’t deserve to be hurt like this. The thing is … even if I change my mind, I don’t think things will ever be the same.’
Flynn blinks at me, taking it in. He shrugs. ‘Maybe you just need to give it some time.’
‘I wish it was that simple.’
By now we’ve almost reached Summerhill. Charlie waves at us from across the road.
‘Charlie!’ calls Flynn, waving back.
‘What are your plans for the rest of the day?’ I ask, pausing at the driveway entrance.
Flynn’s mouth twists into a suspicious smile. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Because I like your company, Flynn. And one day, I’m going to tell you my secret.’ I waggle a finger at him. ‘But until then, I’m going to try to figure yours out because I think there’s more to you than you let on.’
His phone starts ringing again.
‘You going to answer that?’ I say, raising an eyebrow. ‘Or is it no-one important?’
He puts his phone on silent and shifts his attention back to me. ‘What are you thinking?’
‘I’m thinking you might want to come over for a late lunch and maybe even a drink.’
‘Lunch?’ he says, tilting his head to the side.
‘Yes, and I’m thinking of something a lot healthier than fairy floss. I’ll need your help though, because I have no idea how to cook silverbeet.’
‘This stuff?’ he says, pulling the rainbow stalks from the basket. ‘I know a great recipe for a Japanese-style oshitashi.’
‘Well, that sounds healthy enough.’
He laughs. ‘I did just eat an apple.’
‘That hardly counts.’
‘I’ll jog off the calories tomorrow.’
You wake up at 5.45 am and go for a run.
‘You like to jog?’ I ask.
‘Yep,’ he says. ‘You?’
‘Mmm, I think so.’
Flynn looks curiously at me.
‘Well, I haven’t been jogging since I got here. But I think I’m going to start again soon.’ By now we’ve reached the front gate. I push it open, expecting it to creak and groan as it usually does. I stand there, moving it back and forth. ‘Well, look at that …’
Flynn laughs. ‘Interesting.’
‘You’re something else.’
‘Couldn’t help myself. I’m finding it hard to stay away.’
‘We’re just friends,’ I warn, making my way to the front door.
‘I know,’ he says. ‘Strictly just friends.’
TEN
The hellebores, with their stamens still intact, have crashed. They last longer in the vase if harvested when ripe, as opposed to when they look their most beautiful. Demanding patience, it’s only once their stamens have dropped and their seed pods have started to develop that they’ll show their appreciation by happily remaining on show for a while longer as a cut flower. There are more secrets I know about the flowers, and I’ve been sitting here, under the early-morning bluish-purple hues of light filtering through the house, my blunt pencil scratching away at the faded pages of an old notebook, unearthing details one by one. Like the way daffodil blooms should be cut in the early-morning hours, once the dew has settled and the stems are at their sturdiest. Or how a determined gust of wind, in one cruel act of fate, can sweep through a spring garden and destroy every last petal, snapping even the most robust of stems, halting the blooming process altogether. And roses, they sometimes ball. Life unfolds perfectly for them, but with too much cold and rain, they fail to open. While their tight shells might appear papery and withered, inside lie their beautiful petals, intact, all along. Eventually, the sun comes up, and once I finish documenting every flower I bought yesterday, I head back to town for more.
It turns out that the flower seller’s name is Matilda. ‘You can call me Tilly,’ she says. Her voice crackles like a steady fire in the middle of winter. ‘That’s what everyone’s been calling me since I moved here.’ She pulls the leaves from a rose stem, removes the thorns with a stripper and drops it into a bucket filled with water.
‘How long have you lived around here?’ I ask.
‘I’ve been around these parts longer than you’ve been alive.’ She continues stripping more stems, hardly open to carrying a conversation, but I continue.
‘I used to live here when I was younger. About a kilometre from here, actually. On the flower farm. Well, it was a flower farm. It’s called Summerhill. You might know it?’ I pause and watch her slowly turn to face me. She furrows her brow, the creases so deep, of the variety you’d expect to see from someone who’s worked every single day of their life under the sun.
She sizes me up and down and then clicks her tongue. ‘You Lainey’s Gracie?’ she asks finally.
I nod. ‘Yes,’ I reply eagerly.
‘You’re all grown up now,’ she mumbles, with a slight shake of her head.
‘So, my mum … did you know her?’
‘Did I know her?’ She chuckles, tipping her head back to the sky. ‘Oh, I knew her all right.’ She moves away from me and starts selecting flowers from the buckets on her stand, arranging them into a posy. I’m mesmerised by the way she deftly picks each stem and gathers it in between her thumb and forefinger, twisting the posy around so it retains its symmetrical shape as it grows larger and more colourful. She does this almost without looking.
‘I don’t remember you.’ I’m almost hovering over her shoulder.
‘I wouldn’t expect you to. It’s been a very long time since we saw each other,’ she says, shaking her head. ‘Last time I saw you, you were swinging off rubber tyres for fun and were about this high.’ She motions to her hip. ‘You have her eyes,’ she muses.
‘How did you know her?’
She tugs on a roll of grosgrain suspended from the stand, and pulls down a length of a blue ribbon before cutting it with a pair of scissors.
‘It doesn’t matter how I knew her. Fact is, I knew her.’ She wraps a band around the posy and slips it into a paper sleeve before tying a bow around it.
‘Was she a friend? My mother? She loved flowers, too.’
Tilly gives me the kind of expression that warns me not to ask more questions.
‘I came for more flowers,’ I say, changing the subject. I figure I’ll press her more about this conversation some other day.
‘Another special occasion, I imagine.’ She walks to the front of the cart to deposit the bouquet of tulips into a bucket, but I stop her.
‘I’ll take them. And the gerberas, too. Is this Queen Anne’s lace?’ I ask, pointing to a stem bursting with tiny white florets.
‘That depends,’ she says. ‘Some call it wild carrot, some call it a wildflower and some just call it a weed.’
‘It’s too pretty to be a weed,’ I reply, taking a bunch and admiring the cluster of flowers.
‘It’s their unseen beauty that makes the flowers special. They’ve got the power to change the circumstances of someone’s life. What can’t be seen is what makes them beautiful.’
I snap to attention at her words. Words that seem familiar, though I can’t pinpoint why. ‘How do you know that?’
‘Anyone who knows the secrets of the flowers knows that,’ she scoffs.
‘Too bad if you don’t know what you’re looking for,’ I say, directing the words more to myself than her.
She rests her hand on her hip and speaks with an air of frustration. ‘You give them a place to grow, they’ll show you all they need to. You of all people should know this.’
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