Page 2

1 DAVID

No matter what David tried, he couldn’t get the new mixed bouquets to sit right. He must have been crouched down in the window of the shop for ten minutes before he, or maybe his knees, gave up and he moved on to the rest of the morning’s list.

After clearing out some stagnant grey water from the peonies and spraying the most tricky houseplants, he returned to the window and spun the bouquets round one last time, about ninety degrees. No, this wouldn’t do. He bent down again.

‘Come on, little guys,’ he said, under his breath.

They were beautiful, fresh from Holland, delivered at five in the morning, and arranged by his hand two hours later. A white, pink and orange mix for any occasion, lilies and chrysanthemums and snapdragons, wrapped in crisp brown paper with the shop’s logo on. He continued to fiddle with some of the stems. Sometimes it only took one flower to move to make the whole collection work.

Savage Lilies, the flower shop, was his pride and joy. It had been a lifelong dream; a little slice of heaven in Woburn Sands, one of the small towns that dotted the edge of Milton Keynes. The wooden exterior was bright green, repainted last year by his partner Mark and some of the teenagers from the youth club, and the inside was a busy vista of plants, flowers, greetings cards, café seating, and a couple of make-your-own bouquet tables he used for evening classes.

The shop had ebbs and flows but they tried to listen to customers, and to Mary Portas, to keep the shop going. Make shopping an experience, she always said. Innovate. What with Mark having a proper job too, they just about got by. It never felt like work. After more than half a century on this planet, he had something close to the perfect life.

Modernizing the shop had added several extra jobs to the morning checklist that Mark had printed and stuck up in the back room (thanks Mary!) but if it kept his lovely life going, then it was worth it. David turned on the PHOTO-SYNTHESIS photo booth, which began to whirr with electricity and then he stretched up towards a row of string-of-pearls plants hanging from a high shelf that needed watering. He’d never loved houseplants, but if that was what people were buying alongside flowers, it made sense for them to branch out, a pun Mark never failed to use where he could.

Lastly, he adjusted the volume of the shop’s Plant Playlist, a kind of in-joke between him and Mark. He must have got a little too energetic earlier that morning listening to Savage Garden, since the volume was at level forty-five. He spun the dial down to thirty as ‘Build Me Up Buttercup’ segued into a recent addition: ‘Flowers’ by Miley Cyrus.

Just as David began to make a cappuccino for himself – it was around half nine when they opened that the tiredness of a five o’clock alarm would start to get to him – he noticed a woman sitting on the bench outside the front of the store. She must have been waiting to come in, or perhaps waiting for somebody, since she kept looking up and down the street and jumping at the sound of every car. She was incredibly pretty in that effortless way of someone wearing no make-up. From where David was stood, she looked to be about thirty, with medium-length black hair tied in a ponytail that rested over one shoulder. She was wearing dungarees, a piece of clothing David had noticed becoming much more popular again recently, and was checking her phone.

He walked to the store windows and poked his head out the door, pretending to need to wipe at a non-existent smudge on the glass.

‘Morning!’ he said. ‘Lovely day.’

‘Yes,’ the woman said quietly. She had a kind, soft voice, but she was clearly sad, and David noticed a tiny pride-flag pin, the modern one with all the other bits on, affixed to the pouch on her dungarees. ‘Summer’s coming!’ she added, before looking down at her phone again. He could see from where he was standing that she was just flicking between apps, nothing to do and nowhere to go.

David nodded at her, paused, and then sensing her wish to be left alone, went back inside the empty shop.

‘She’s been there for twenty minutes!’

‘David,’ Mark said, putting on the gentle voice he used whenever David had one of his big ideas. David could hear him holding back a sigh on the end of the telephone. ‘You can’t help everybody. Remember when you thought that boy had fallen over outside the shop but he was just sitting down?’

‘Okay, that one was unfortunate,’ David reluctantly agreed.

‘And the old woman when you asked if she needed anything and she said she needed you to leave her alone …’

‘Okay, Mark, I get the picture.’

‘I’ll have to go, my ten o’clock’s here,’ Mark said. ‘Just give it five minutes. Why don’t you … pot- ter around for a bit, distract yourself.’

Chuckling at his own joke, Mark said his goodbyes and David hung up the phone.

He glanced up again, because he couldn’t help himself, and felt immediately vindicated when the woman outside began to cry. She put her head in her hands, and even now somewhat hidden by the troublesome bouquets in the window, he could see her shoulders shaking. Scrambling, nearly kicking over the empty Dutch buckets near the door in his haste, he moved quickly outside, feeling terrible that he’d had space in his brain to feel vindicated.

‘Hello again,’ he said, offering her a tissue in his outstretched hand.

The woman looked up.

‘Oh, thank you,’ she said, taking the tissue and dabbing at her eyes. She sniffed. ‘That’s really thoughtful of you.’

‘Are you okay?’

The woman looked unsure. She checked her phone again and took a big, shaky breath in to try to control her crying.

‘Maybe that’s too big of a question.’ David smiled at her. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Meg.’

‘Well, Meg, I’m David. What about an even easier question – do you want a coffee?’

Meg, clearly desperate to not be crying on the high street, followed him inside and sat down at the table furthest from the front of the shop. Before he set about making her a drink, David put a Viennese whirl as big as his head on a plate and brought it to the table. Meg’s tears, which she had been attempting to stop, suddenly poured down her face at this act of kindness and she brought her hands up to her face again.

‘It’s okay,’ David said, patting her on the back. ‘You can cry in here. You won’t be the first. Or the last.’