Page 24 of Hooked On The One That Got Away (Miss Lovelock’s Agency for Broken Hearts #3)
FORCED PROXIMITY, BURNED BY LOVE, SWEETLY SPICY, MAGICAL MATCHMAKING
How could your heart not lift at the sight of a bucket of sunflowers? If sunflowers were a song, they’d be ‘Dancing Queen’.
The cheery little Abba earworm wriggled in, only to be squashed by the voice in Chloe’s head answering, Quite easily , actually , if today is the one-year anniversary of the day your heart got broken into a million pieces .
‘Closing in quinze minutes !’ called Aunt Daisy from behind the peonies. ‘You can bring the rest of the seaux in now.’
Seaux . Buckets.
Chloe’s aunt, the colourful, fragrant owner of Coeurs et Fleurs (the conveniently rhyming French for Hearts and Flowers) used a French-English mash-up when conversing with Chloe, in the hope that this would help her pick up the language quickly.
Chloe let out a sigh. ‘ Oui , je suis on it.’
Even after a year, her French was nowhere near fluent. Not even conversant. Probably because, apart from turning up here for her job as trainee florist, she hardly ever went out, preferring to spend her evenings curled up on the sofa with only Patapouf and Netflix for company.
The shop bell tinkled as she headed outside. Such a pretty sound. Everything in Paris seemed just that little bit more charmant than in Huddersfield.
But she wouldn’t think about Huddersfield, today of all days. This was a day to be got through, to be endured, and thoughts of home wouldn’t help with that. Not at all.
Mindfulness. That was what she needed. To focus on the here and now, appreciate the beauty of these sunflowers – tournesols – the sublime scent of the old English roses by the door. To be thankful for the fact that she was here, doing a job she loved, in the most beautiful city in the world.
Practising her French – that helped. What was the French for bell? Cloche . Like the thing you use for forcing plants, or one of those nineteen-twenties hats.
The bell – cloche – rang again as Chloe struggled back inside, a tin bucket of blooms in each hand, pushing the door with her bottom. As she did, one of the buckets tipped, slopping water onto the floor.
‘Prop it open!’ called Aunt Daisy, her tone exasperated.
Chloe put the buckets down with a clatter, parked a trolley of house plants in front of the open door and fetched a cloth.
She didn’t blame Aunt Daisy for losing patience.
Chloe had been all kinds of hopeless today, moping around the shop in her cloud of sad.
Distracted, clumsy, forgetful. Her mournful expression had probably wilted the flowers, put the customers off.
At least, those customers who weren’t already unhappy, which in fact applied to an awful lot of them, given the shop’s location.
But she couldn’t help her despondency. She’d known today would be horrible. An absolute pig – cochon – of a day. Twelve months since the wedding day that wasn’t. Her first un-wedding anniversary. Thank goodness closing time was in sight.
She mopped up the water then headed outside again to bring in more buckets.
In front of the shop, the Rue de Rondeaux wasn’t busy.
Sundays in central Paris were generally quieter, and most shops were closed.
Coeurs et Fleurs was an exception, being opposite a cemetery that saw many visitors over the weekend.
Family members, tourists … lovers. It was a popular spot for a romantic stroll.
At first, Chloe had found that strange. Who’d want to kiss among the dead? Make out behind a mausoleum? (Unless you were into that sort of thing. Turned on by thoughts of vampires, maybe. Rumours abounded of such goings on at night, on the far side of those high, spiked walls.)
But if you ignored the thought of the million bodies apparently buried there, viewed the cemetery as just another park – Paris’s largest – it was a lovely, verdant place in which to lose yourself.
A city oasis with a maze of tree-lined pathways and thriving bird life.
She even saw the occasional fox as she cut through on her walk home.
Chloe blocked the image of loved-up couples wandering those paths before it could further embitter her, and turned back to the flower displays in front of the shop.
It had been a good day for rose sales – there were hardly any left. Those lovers again. Roses for the dead, roses for the living. And as always, white lilies had done well, the number-one bestseller of every funeral-friendly florist.
Aunt Daisy had struck floristry gold when she’d found premises opposite the entrance to Père Lachaise cemetery.
The constant stream of flower-buying visitors included the tomb tourists.
Many famous Parisians were buried there: writers, composers, artists, revolutionaries, and other movers and shakers who’d made the journey from the City of Light to the City of the Dead.
She picked up another bucket of sunflowers (popular with visitors to Oscar Wilde’s grave) and one containing the few remaining red roses, and headed back inside.
Aunt Daisy had come out from behind the counter.
‘Here, laissez-moi ,’ she said, taking the buckets and putting them to one side.
She flipped the notice on the door to Fermé.
‘I’ll finish off.’ She touched Chloe’s arm.
Her tone had softened from exasperated to sympathetic.
‘Look, sweetheart,’ she said, ‘I know today’s been hard.
I do understand. Why don’t you get off home.
Pop into the patisserie on your way, and …
take some of these with you.’ She took two bunches of sunflowers from the bucket and put them on the worktop. ‘They’ll cheer you up a bit.’
Chloe pinched the bridge of her nose as tears gathered. This switch to sympathy was harder to handle than the earlier impatience.
Aunt Daisy slipped off the elastic bands from the sunflowers and began adding other flowers to make a small bouquet, deftly mixing and matching, holding different blooms together to compare, cutting the stems to suit the shape of the arrangement, adding in sprigs of greenery.
For a moment Chloe forgot her misery as she watched the bouquet take shape.
This, she reminded herself, was why she was here. Not just to escape Huddersfield and its painful memories, but also because of her love of plants, her dreams of being a landscape gardener, or perhaps owning her own florist one day.
Aunt Daisy had inspired her since childhood.
She wasn’t a ‘proper’ aunt; she was her mum’s oldest friend, and Chloe’s godmother.
She was a free spirit – as different to Chloe’s conventional, suburban mother as it was possible to be.
They were like a sunflower and … maybe a neatly clipped privet hedge.
She smiled as Aunt Daisy cocked her head to one side, assessing her arrangement.
She was tiny – a pocket rocket. Her eyes were an unusual greeny-gold with dark flecks, like slices of golden kiwifruit, and her pink hair was held back from her rosy cheeks with a yellow headband.
As always, she was wearing her denim dungarees with a pouch on the front, in which nestled her little cutters, her fold-up floristry knife, scissors, spools of tape and wire – Aunt Daisy’s dungarees were the floristry equivalent of Mary Poppins’ carpet bag.
While Chloe’s mother’s reaction to last year’s disaster had mostly been embarrassment, and deep, frequently voiced annoyance at the inconvenience of it all, Aunt Daisy had swooped in and offered her heartbroken goddaughter a job in Paris.
And, as if by magic, she’d also found her a tiny fifth-floor apartment in the 11 th Arrondissement, just across the cemetery from the flower shop.
Its owner, a regular client of Aunt Daisy’s, was heading to the US for a while, and had been looking to sublet to someone who would also care for the cat. Le chat . Patapouf .
‘ Voilà ,’ announced Aunt Daisy, tying an orange ribbon around her exuberant creation. The colour palette was eye-watering, but somehow she’d made it work. Beautifully.
‘ Pour vous, ma cherie ,’ she said, handing over the bouquet.
‘I remember how it feels to have your heart broken.’ Her own eyes glinted with sudden tears, and she turned away.
‘Me too. But tomorrow is a new day. Forgive me, je plonge into cliché.’ She faced Chloe again.
‘Off you go, my pet. Au revoir , see you lundi .’
Choked, Chloe could only nod. She wondered who’d broken Aunt Daisy’s heart. She’d known nothing about that until now.
She sniffed. ‘Thank you. You’re so kind.’ She gave her a watery smile. ‘ Très gentil .’
‘Be off with you. Allez! ’
Chloe hooked her little backpack over her shoulder and, clutching the bouquet, headed out the door. Aunt Daisy followed, and set about taking in the rest of the flowers.
‘ Je t’aime, Tante Daisy! ’ called Chloe, turning briefly as she headed across the road. Aunt Daisy blew her a kiss.
The heady scent of the flowers formed a fragrant cloud around Chloe, as if trying to displace the bubble of misery in which she’d been suspended today.
The warm sun on her back lifted her mood a little more.
It was a balmy September evening, and although sunset wasn’t until around seven thirty, the cemetery would be closing at six.
That usually gave her just enough time to walk from one side to the other on her way home, but today she could take it more slowly.
As she passed through the gates, most visitors were coming in the opposite direction. Nobody wanted to get locked in here overnight. She checked her phone: five fifteen.
She’s on her way. The girl with the sad eyes and dark hair in a messy ponytail. Plain blue shirt, jumper tied round her waist, jeans, trainers, and a bunch of sunflowers. You’ll need to slow her down by a few minutes. Got that?
Get Tangled with the Wrong Guy here !