The Flower Arrangement (31 page)

Lara had pulled her jeans and cardigan off and was zipping up her dark green silk dress when Ciara popped her head around the door.

“Bridezilla's back,” she groaned. “I've told her you have to be somewhere but she won't take no for an answer.”

Lara checked her watch. The party at Phil and Katy's was starting in half an hour, but she couldn't send Emily away. “Tell her to come up. And can you put the kettle on?”

Most brides came to the shop just twice. Once for an hour-long consultation to discuss ideas and then a second time two weeks before the wedding, when the seasonal flowers were in, to see a test bouquet.

This was Emily's
fourth
visit. She was in her late twenties, milkmaid-pretty, with worried blue eyes in a heart-shaped face. At least, she had been pretty when Lara met her back in May, but she had lost so much weight now that she looked like a child wearing her mother's clothes.

“I've been having second thoughts,” she said as she came up the stairs, “about the snowflake hydrangeas.”

“
Fourth
thoughts,” Ciara mouthed from behind her.

Emily opened a plastic folder that contained, Lara already knew, dozens of pictures clipped from bridal magazines.

“I just think they might look dusty with the new dress. Well, it's actually the same dress but I'm going for white instead of ivory and I've asked for a marabou trim on the sleeves. I think I need the flowers
to be more romantic. White roses or lavender or lilac or agapanthus maybe?”

“Will you have a cup of tea?” Ciara asked her airily. “We have regular or mint or chamomile or Earl Grey. Or coffee? There's instant, but I could nip out for a cappuccino? Or a hot chocolate? Or would you prefer a latte?”

“Thank you, Ciara.” Lara gave her a warning look. “Peppermint would be fine.”

Emily sipped her tea while Lara scrolled through her Pinterest boards. “Everyone's tired of me,” she said sadly.

“I'm sure Dan isn't tired of you.” Lara was careful to sound casual. Emily had spent ten minutes talking about the alterations to her dress and another five explaining why she'd changed the main course from salmon to sea bass, but she hadn't mentioned her fiancé once. Lara was starting to wonder whether her indecisiveness might run deeper than flowers and menus.

“Oh!” Emily's face lit up with excitement and she pointed at the screen. “What are those?”

“Tuberose,” Lara said, pinning the picture. “And they smell like heaven.”

Half an hour later, she printed out a mood board of all the flowers they'd selected. White tuberose and two kinds of orchid, white dendrobium for romance, pale green cymbidium with pink-tipped lips for drama.

“Why don't you live with these for a while.” She handed over the printout and a couple of sketches she'd drawn freehand. “If you're still happy, we can order a test bouquet for the beginning of June. But I want you to know”—she looked into Emily's eyes, trying to send her a message, tucking it in between her words, like a card in a bouquet of flowers—“it's okay to change your mind. It's not the end of the world.”

*   *   *

The living room of Phil and Katy's flat was crowded with a peculiar mix of Phil's courier mates, in band T-shirts and beaten-up jeans, and
glammed-up girls in cocktail dresses, Katy's friends from the wedding magazine.

That was weird enough, Mia thought, but weirder still were the two couples chatting by the fireplace: Katy and her husband, Phil; and Katy's ex, Ben, with Phil's sister, Lara. “Look at them.” She jogged Ronan's elbow and one of the canapés slid off his plate. “It's like
Life Swap
.”

Ronan retrieved his devil-on-horseback from the rug and popped it into his mouth. “I think it's pretty evolved.”

“It's too evolved,” Mia groaned. “It's plankton to Einstein and it's hurting my head.”

“Where?” Ronan put down the plate.

She pointed at the middle of her forehead, where an ache was twisting itself into a tight knot. “Here!”

“Ah.” Ronan pressed his thumb gently between her eyebrows. “Your third eye.”

She rolled her first and second eyes at him but she didn't pull away, and after a few seconds the knot began to loosen.

“It's going away, isn't it?” Ronan said.

“No,” she lied, “but I am. I can't look at them anymore. I'm going to open more wine.” She brushed a few flakes of pastry from his beard. The beard was back. She pretended to disapprove, but deep down she felt a sort of proprietorial affection for it. It was her beard too.

Her mother caught at the skirt of her dress as she crossed the room. “Oh my God! They're talking to one another,” she whispered. Phil and Lara had turned to chat to one of the courier types, and her sister and Ben had been stranded together. “What on earth do you think they're talking about?”

“Evolution,” Mia said airily.

“I'm going to need another glass of wine.” Her mother handed over her glass. “I'm finding this situation extremely awkward.”

“Oh, get over yourself, Angela,” Mia snapped and stamped off to the kitchen to find a corkscrew.

*   *   *

Ben and Katy stood beside one another by the bookcase, like two people who'd just met, not two people who'd previously spent thousands of nights in this very living room. Ben had seen Katy across the bar at the Christmas Eve drinks that Lara had organized, but this was the first time they'd really spoken since their breakup.

Katy looked different, he thought, thinner, her long dark hair cut shorter, her manner more self-assured. He ran his finger along the spines of the books and pulled out an anthology of Carol Ann Duffy poems. “I think this is mine.”

“It's mine now,” she said, looking at him steadily. “Statute of limitations and all that.”

“Fair enough.” He put the book back, stuffed his hands in his pockets and turned to look out the window. The three watercolors that used to hang by the shutter were gone. In their place were half a dozen framed photographs. A couple of Katy and Phil on their wedding day (or the day he and Lara had met, as he preferred to call it) and some holiday snapshots. His eyes slid past them to the photograph of Katy with her old dog, Pat. They were face-to-face, Katy laughing, the greyhound gazing into her eyes.

“You didn't invite Pat to the party, I see,” he said. “Did you book him into a suite in the Shelbourne?”

“He's in there,” Katy said, pointing at the tall white cardboard tube on the table by the window. “He died.”

Ben stared at the tube, trying to imagine the immortal, the legendary Pat reduced to a little pile of ashes. “I'm sorry,” he said sadly. “We thought he'd last forever.”

“He did pretty well. We all did.” Katy looked across the room at Lara. “She's a lovely woman, Ben,” she said softly. “Try not to screw this up, okay?”

Before he could speak, she turned away and caught Phil's arm as he headed for the kitchen. “Hey! You can't go in there! You might see your surprise cake!”

“You mean my completely-predictable-and-expected cake?” Phil slung an arm around her shoulder.

“Oops!” She grinned.

“Happy birthday, bro,” Ben said, immediately regretting the “bro.”

“Thanks. I'm not big on birthdays.” Phil looked at him coolly. “The party was Katy's idea.”

Ben wondered whose idea it had been to invite
him.
He was guessing that neither of them had wanted him on the guest list, but they couldn't invite Lara without having him too.

Lara had wanted Ben to get on with her little brother (who turned out to be four inches taller than him). And that was what Ben had wanted too. But Phil had pushed his buttons from the start, and when he ran out of buttons, he pulled his levers and flicked a few of his switches for good measure.

He'd strolled into the Fitzwilliam Bar the night of the Christmas drinks in those ridiculous bike leathers as if he owned the place. He'd barely spoken to Ben but those big brown George Clooney eyes had never shut up. They were sending him a message now too, loud and clear.
Hurt my sister, pal, and you'll have me to answer to.
He didn't know what Katy had said to make Phil dislike him so much, but as long as she didn't turn Lara against him, he didn't care.

“Well, see you later.” He backed away from them, raising a hand in a little wave that looked, he realized too late, a bit like a papal blessing, and crossed the room looking for Lara. She was talking to some bloke when he got to her, so he veered off and headed for the bathroom. It was a relief to be away from the party, to stop pretending, even for a minute, that the whole situation was not deeply fucking weird.

He looked around the small bathroom where he had showered every day for seven years. What had he been doing? He and Katy had been all wrong together. Why had he stayed with her for so long? He stared at himself in the gilt-framed mirror over the sink. Aptly named, he thought, as he saw his guilty expression reflected back at him.

Poor Katy. He had treated her badly. He could see that now. He could
see all the little things he'd done to avoid serious conversation, anything that might have rocked the unsteady boat of their relationship.

He'd managed her mood with wine. He'd have a glass poured for her before she got through the door, but that hadn't worked for him, so he'd sneak off to the bathroom a couple of times every night to roll up a joint.

But that wasn't the worst thing he'd done. Katy used to tell him he was a commitment-phobe, and he'd ducked and dived, saying they'd talk about marriage in a year, or when he finished his screenplay, or when they'd saved enough to buy a place. Anything to avoid the truth. That she was right. That they were more like flatmates, not soul mates. That all the familiarity and friendship and affection in the world did not add up to love.

Maybe he hadn't known what love was back then, but he knew now. Love was intense and funny and deep and light and unfathomable. Love was wanting to jump into bed with someone when you were already in bed with them. Love was not needing to medicate himself with marijuana to get through an evening in someone's company. In the nine months since he'd met Lara, he hadn't been tempted to smoke a single joint.

He turned to go back out to the party. At the last moment, he went back to the sink and felt along the top of the mirror. His fingers found a little plastic bag tucked in between the frame and the wall. A stash he'd forgotten all about when he packed up his things.

Two cigarettes, a packet of Rizlas, a little nub of dope wrapped in foil. He flipped up the lid of the toilet to flush it away, then hesitated. It might float. Phil would just love that, wouldn't he? Evidence that his sister's boyfriend was still a stoner. He shoved the bag deep inside the inner pocket of his jacket, then he went back out to the party to prize Lara away from whoever she was talking to now.

*   *   *

“Was it a bit awkward for you?” Lara asked Ben as they were getting undressed.

He hung his shirt up in the wardrobe, which was still half full of her dad's things. “More weird than awkward. It made me realize some things about me and Katy that I'd tried to avoid before.” He turned to look at her. “But to be honest, when I'm with you, it's kind of hard to believe there even
was
a before.”

She smiled. “I know what you mean. Sometimes I look back on those ten years with Michael and I wonder if they were real.”

“This is real”—he kissed the top of her head—“isn't it?”

She took his hand and kissed his fingertips. “Yes.”

She watched him cross the room to the bathroom in his white boxer shorts. His broad shoulders dusted with freckles tapered to a narrow waist, his body smooth and taut.

She wished that she still had her twenty-nine-year-old body—more for Ben's sake than her own. The one without the dimples and creases and sags and folds that had arrived in her thirties.

There were tricks she could have used to hide her age—hair dye and facials, fillers and Botox—but they would be a lie. She had lived through a marriage where the truth was always covered up. She wanted nothing hidden with Ben.

She had locked her heart in a safety deposit box for safekeeping after her marriage had ended, but Ben picked the lock a dozen times a day. He scribbled lines of poetry and tucked them into her coat pocket. On mornings when she had to be in the shop early, he woke her with a cup of coffee, a plate of scrambled eggs and a dressing gown that had been warmed on the radiator. And every evening he asked her about her day.

Michael had never asked about the shop but Ben was fascinated by all her stories. So she told him about the customers, their romances and their anniversaries and celebrations, their special requests and their eccentricities.

About the man who had already proposed to four women. The artist who bought himself a hundred-euro bouquet every time he sold a painting. The girl who sent roses to herself to make her boyfriend jealous.