The Flower Arrangement (26 page)

“You're not from around here then?”

“Widda naxent like dis?” She exaggerated it, flattening out the vowels, dropping the
h
's. “Whadda yew tink?”

He scratched his chin. “I think you've just put those trainers into the wrong box and accents don't matter as much as people think.”

“Yeah?” She pushed the bulging lid down, trying to squash the reluctant Reeboks into the Adidas box. “Well, you would say that, wouldn't you? I've had it up to here with stuck-up Southsiders.”

“Look,” he said. “I apologize for our Tango-skinned friend, but you can't write off half the population of Dublin because of a stereotype.”

“Why not?” Becca loaded her arms up with boxes. “She did.”

“See you,” he called after her as he left.

“Not if I see you first.”

That same Saturday night he was waiting for her when she came out of the shop after it closed, sitting in the deserted mall like a benched footballer, his legs apart, his blonde head bent, his hands clasped between his knees.

“I was wondering if you'd like to do something?”

“Like what?” she said. “Rob a car?”

He grinned. “Never break the law till the second date. It's kind of a rule of mine. I'm Gavin.”

“Date?” Where she came from, people shifted and snogged and shagged. They didn't date.

She walked away, the sound of her footsteps rattling around her in the empty mall like gunfire. “Nice idea, but we have nothing in common.”

“Come on.” He caught up with her at the door. “I just want to hang out with you. Is that a crime?”

She slowed down and they walked out into the piazza. It was
raining, and the skating rink was almost empty. The ice, lit from beneath, glowed the blue of a butterfly wing.

“You want to try?”

“I don't know how,” she said, biting her lip.

“Come on. I'll teach you.”

“Hey!” Gavin tottered at the edge, clinging hard to the railings as she swooped past. “You knew how to do this all along.”

“Try to keep up, Southside boy.” Her laughter trailed in little foggy puffs behind her as she gathered speed, and the Christmas lights on the shopfronts around the rink dissolved into a jeweled blur.

“Well, that was embarrassing,” Gavin said afterward when they were at a window table in the Thai restaurant that overlooked the piazza. “Any other Olympic-level skills you haven't mentioned that I should know about? Pole vaulting? Snake charming?”

“Lots of Poles Northside, not so many snakes.” She peeled the paper off her chopsticks.

“Never used chopsticks before, but I think I'll be just brilliant at it.” Gavin stabbed a wonton and held it up. She shook her head and laughed.

“Okay.” He twisted a strand of noodle around one chopstick like spaghetti. “How's this?”

“You need to hold both of them at the same time.”

“Like this?” He deftly picked out a single grain of rice.

“Hey!” Becca said. “You knew how to do this—”

“All along. You see. We have more in common than you think.”

But did they? Becca wondered. Living on the other side of a river didn't make you better than someone else, but it made you different. Gavin's parents, she learned, were lawyers who lived in a big house in Donnybrook somewhere. Her mam was an office cleaner. Her dad was on disability. They lived in a two-up two-down on an estate that had more cars stuck up on blocks in the front gardens than flowers.

He asked her about her friends, offered a couple of times to give her a crossbar ride home on his bike. But Becca felt sick at the thought of
him seeing the house, let alone sitting in their tiny living room being too polite to her mam and dad. Squirmed when she imagined how nice he'd be to Jasmine, who'd fancy him but would still be laughing at him behind his back.

She didn't want to go back to his house either and feel out of place. Didn't want to hang out with his mates worrying about her accent. She'd seen them around the mall—rucks of raucous rugby player types who wolf-whistled when they passed her on the opposite escalator.

So they spent almost all their time in no-man's-land. Wrapped around one another in the doorway next to the Cath Kidston shop at the shadowy end of the piazza. In the shelter with the broken light trying to stretch out the last few moments before her bus arrived. They kissed through entire movies at the mall cinema. Love scenes and car chases and shoot-outs and once to the screechy soundtrack of an opera beamed in live from Italy.

Becca had kissed other boys before but it had always felt like a battle of wills, as if she was being pushed over a line she didn't want to cross, but this was different. Every week, they edged closer to the line and just about pulled back. Part of her was scared to cross it but part of her couldn't wait.

Gavin was going skiing with his parents at Christmas. “Three weeks.” He leaned his chin against the top of her head. “How am I supposed to get through three weeks without you?” They were in a corner of the emptying cinema foyer, putting off the moment when they had to go back out into the world.

Three weeks was nearly as long as they had been together. It was long enough to lose him. He'd meet someone in France or realize that he didn't want to be with someone like her. Even if he didn't, even if they made it through Christmas, what was going to happen in the New Year? Her job at the mall was ending after the sales.

“Tell them you don't want to go,” she said.

“I can't.” He tucked his hands into the back pockets of her jeans.
“But they're leaving a day before me,” he said. “You could come and stay. We'd have the place to ourselves.”

*   *   *

Just looking at the huge redbrick house behind the high hedge made Becca feel small. She had the sense that it was looking down at her and that if Gavin's parents had been there, they would be looking down at her too.

“Come on,” Gavin said, leading her down some steps to a basement door. She felt as if she was shrinking when she stepped into the kitchen. It occupied the whole basement area of the house. There was an enormous Christmas tree at one end and at the other a wall of framed pictures that Becca tried not to look at. Snapshots of Gavin's
real
life. Teenage boys and girls in black tie and evening dresses. Family dinners in posh restaurants. Tanned faces, white teeth, swimming pools.

They sat like tongue-tied children at the huge dining table, picking at a lukewarm Thai takeaway with forks, then they swapped Christmas presents. She gave him the Nike Zooms she had spent too much money on, even with her staff discount. He handed her two small packages wrapped in tissue paper. A silver bracelet with two charms and a red T-shirt with a screen print of white chopsticks. Becca pulled it on over her top. Gavin took it off again on the way upstairs to his room.

Afterward, he ran her a bath and found a hair grip that must have been his mother's so she could pile her long hair up. She got under the water quickly and shuffled down till her body was hidden by the bubbles, awkward suddenly, though a few minutes before she'd been anything but.

Gavin sat on the floor in a gray dressing gown, one finger making slow circles in the water. He lifted her arm out of the bath and wiped foam off the bracelet. “The charms are supposed to remind you of something.”

She stared at the tiny silver trainer and the miniature ice skate, then looked up at him. “I don't think I'm going to forget this.”

He reached into the dressing gown pocket and then held out his hand. On his palm was a third charm, a claw-footed bath the size of her fingernail.

“Just in case.”

*   *   *

The dad dressed as a clown twisted balloons into swords and crowns. Two of the others had an air battle with giant remote-control balloon goldfish. Josh watched them the way he always watched other children's fathers, with a mixture of envy, curiosity and awe.

After Darcy had blown out the candles on her mermaid cake, the kids invaded the bouncy castle again while the grown-ups, in twos and threes, wandered back up to the house. Becca was turning to follow them when a tiny figure in a pink tutu ran up the grassy slope, stopped abruptly and vomited at her feet. It was Darcy.

“I've got sick on my fairy dress.” She hiccuped.

And my shoes, Becca thought. They were ruined. “Just as well”—she opened her bag, pulled out the packet and started cleaning Darcy's dress—“that I brought my magic wipes!”

“I've been looking for you.” It was him again, Mr. BMW, coming toward her.

Becca glared at him but he walked straight past her and held his arms out to Darcy, who toppled into them and clung to him like a wallaby. So this was Karen's husband, Becca realized.

“Oooh!” He winced. “Something smells bad.”

“It's my sick.” Darcy looked down at her dress, then pointed a sparkly pink-nail-varnished finger imperiously at Becca. “But it's going to be okay. She has magic wipes!”

“Right,” he sighed, “let's get you out of public view and get you cleaned up.”

He carried Darcy behind a box hedge and they worked on the skirt together, on their knees, scrubbing at the scratchy pink net till most of the damage was gone, leaving a damp patch.

“Kids,” Becca heard the clown dad shouting, “come on! Gather round for the goodie bags.”

Darcy's eyes opened wide and she smiled at Becca, then squirmed away from them and ran back out into the garden.

They began to stand up. “You've just cleaned vomit off my ungrateful child.” Mr. BMW took her hand and helped her up. “And I don't even know your name.”

“Becca.”

“I'm Gary. Nice to finally meet you.” He bent forward to kiss her on the cheek just as she turned, and their mouths collided briefly. She pulled away instantly.

“Wait!” he said. “Don't move.”

“But . . .” Becca felt embarrassed and anxious.

He put a hand on her shoulder to stop her getting away. “Darcy got you!” He leaned over, picked up a strand of her hair at the root and zipped his fingers along the length of it.

“Ugh!” He shook his hand. “How come kids' puke always has carrots in it, when it's near impossible to get them to eat them? Is there something about a child's digestive system that magically transforms sugar and E numbers into vegetables?”

They both started to laugh, but just then, out of the corner of her eye, Becca thought she saw someone watching them through the gap in the hedge and realized how they might look to others—alone, out of view, standing close together. Had someone seen that stupid kiss, Gary touching her hair, the two of them laughing?

“Wait!” she called, but by the time she'd scrambled past Gary back onto the lawn, Karen (why did it have to be her of all people?) was already some way away and didn't look back.

“Oh no,” Gary sighed from beside her. “I'd better go sort this out.”

*   *   *

He'd explain, Becca thought, as she rushed back to the house trying to find somewhere to wash her hands. Karen would understand. The
glass corridor that should have led to the bathroom took her instead to a shallow flight of gray-carpeted stairs. She hesitated, caught a whiff of Darcy's vomit, then took off her shoes and hurried upstairs up—a house this big probably had half a dozen bathrooms she could use.

She heard the voices just before she got to the top and saw the two women standing at a closed door, their heads bent, listening intently.

“Karen, let us in, please.” Glenda tapped on the door with her ring, the diamond on it the size of a piece of popcorn.

“Why is she so upset?” Emma whispered. “What happened?”

“That slut in the red dress happened!”

Becca froze, unable to go forward, too scared to go back downstairs.

“
Josh's fader is noh in de pitcher
.” Glenda's malicious impersonation of her accent was horribly accurate. “Well, she obviously doesn't intend to be on her own for long. Karen just got a charming
pitcher
of her trying to get off with Gary behind the bushes in the garden.”

*   *   *

The children were sitting in a circle around the clown dad, who was handing out bags festooned with ribbons, pink for the girls, blue for the boys.

“Josh!” Becca grabbed his arm. “It's time to go home.”

“In a minute,” he said reasonably.

“Now!” She hauled him to his feet, making the other kids turn and stare.

“Wait! I haven't had my goodie bag!” He dug his heels in as she dragged him up the garden. “Mum! You! Have! To! Wait!”

*   *   *

Emotional stress, a change in routine, not eating properly, tiredness. There were lots of reasons for a period to be late. Becca had googled them. But by New Year's Eve, she was frantic. She sneaked out of work on her coffee break and bought a test at Boots, loading her basket up with other things—shampoo, a sparkly nail varnish, a fake tan
mitt—so nobody in the queue would notice it. She hid it at the bottom of her bag, then transferred it to the hot press, stuffing it under an old pile of towels at the very back. Every night, after her mam and dad had switched their light out, she took it out. She locked herself in the bathroom. Sat on the edge of the bath, her heart thumping so loudly she was scared her parents would hear it through the paper-thin walls. She held the box in her hands, turned it over, read the instructions until she knew them word for word, but she didn't tear the cellophane. She didn't need to; it wasn't going to happen, it couldn't be true.

The day Gavin got back was her last day at Shoe Locker. He wanted to go a movie but she told him to meet her at the Thai place after work instead.

His eyes were on the door when she walked in, his grin too bright, his eyes too blue in his newly tanned face. He stood, and reached out to hug her, but she slipped past and slid onto the bench opposite him without a greeting.