The Flower Arrangement (40 page)

“When am I going? Tomorrow.” Lara had decided to take the bus up the coast to hike a gorge her father and mother had visited on their honeymoon. She would spend the last night at a hotel near the airport. “Tuesday. Chania!” she said, hoping the woman understood.

“
Ochi!
” The old lady nodded, which meant “no.” “When?” She pointed at Lara and then patted her own stomach.

Lara shook her head, embarrassed. “No, I'm not pregnant—”

“
Ne!
” the woman insisted. Which meant “yes.”

Suddenly Lara froze. She looked up at the vast frozen firework of the Milky Way above the vines. I couldn't be, she thought, could I?

The old lady turned the page again and pointed down at the last painting, a watercolor of a lily growing in a green and gold olive oil tin. “
Krinos
,” she said.

Lara looked at it, her eyes widening, her hand going to her own stomach. “Lily!” she whispered.

*   *   *

Phil swam up to consciousness after the anesthetic. It seemed like only a moment ago that he was lying on the operating table and the surgeon was asking him to count backward from ten, but now he was back in his bed, trussed up to his pulleys again, connected to a new set of tubes. Moonlight was flooding in through the window of his room.

There was someone standing near the end of his bed. He thought it was the old man from the end of the ward, who was allowed to use the bathroom instead of a cardboard bedpan. Sometimes he hobbled past the door on his crutches, Phil guessed, just for the thrill of it.

But as the man moved closer to the bed and into the light from the window, Phil saw his face.

“Jesus!” he said.

“You're the one who looks like Jesus!” his father said. “You let them wash you and dress you and cut up your food. Could you not let them shave you while they're at it?”

Dad, Phil thought, but he held the word at the back of his throat, afraid that if he said it out loud, he would cry and wake himself up.

His dad snorted with frustration. “I knew this was where that bloody bike would take you in the end! You're like a turkey trussed up for Christmas.”

Phil knew it was just the drugs they'd given him for the surgery. But bloody hell, they were pretty good. It was as if his father was actually there.

He was wearing a golf jumper he had loved. Dark red, with the Slazenger logo, a tiny springing puma, appliquéd on the chest. He was clean-shaven and his gray hair was neatly cut. The tiny scar the size of
a match head at the side of his right eyebrow, where he'd had a mole removed, stood out against his tanned skin.

“Philip”—his dad shook his head—“you plonker. You were going way too fast.”

“Was I?” Phil stammered, finding his voice. “I can't remember.”

His father sat on the side of the bed. “Forty miles an hour on the Ranelagh Road. In a thirty-mile-an-hour zone. You'd no time to react.”

“To what?”

“To that bloody election poster that blew into the road.”

Phil saw it suddenly, clearly. The lightweight board lifted by an updraft from a passing car. It had come slicing at him from the left. Some part of his brain had confused the printed face for a real one and he'd braked abruptly, spooked.

The rest came back in a rush of broken flashbacks. He'd pulled sharply to the right. Swerved across into the other lane. The bike had slammed into the curb, spun ninety degrees and tossed him into the air like a toy. He had been almost weightless for a few seconds as his body somersaulted once, twice, three times, then he'd slammed down on his side on the tarmac, a few inches from the curb. If he'd landed on his back, he would have broken his spine.

“You'd be dead,” his dad said as if he could read his mind. “And you and me would be having a whole other conversation.”

A lump of emotion caught in Phil's throat. “Dad, I know you're just a hallucination, but it's so good to see you.”

“Philip!” His dad leaned over him, his eyes glinting with irritation. “If I'm not really here, then kindly refer to me as
an
hallucination, not
a
hallucination.”

This was his dad all right: the same person who rang supermarket managers to tell them that the sign at the checkout that said “Ten items or less” should read “Ten items or fewer.”

“Jesus, Dad.” Phil gripped the rail of the bed, trying not to laugh. He had a feeling that laughing would hurt a lot. “Only you,” he gasped, “would come back from the afterlife just to give me a grammar lesson.”

“Somebody has to do it,” his dad said gruffly. “Well.” He stood up. “I'd better go before we wake the hospital.”

Phil wanted to lift his arm, to catch his father by the sleeve, to keep him by the bed, the way he had when he was a child and it was time to turn the lights off. “Dad, are you okay? Are you happy?”

“Stop worrying about me,” his dad said. “And stop worrying about your sister while you're at it. We can look after ourselves.”

“Lara's in Crete,” Phil said. “On her own.”

“She's not on her own,” his dad said, looking very pleased with himself. “She has Lily.”

Lily? A wave of exhaustion washed over Phil, pulling him under. He looked up into his father's eyes and saw, past the love, the pain of loss, the ache of longing. They miss us, he thought, the dead. They miss us as much as we miss them.

“Love you, Dad,” he mumbled.

His father cleared his throat. “
Agapi mou
,” he said.

He touched the fading bruise on Philip's cheek. “That's Greek,” he whispered, “for ‘I love you,'” but his son was already asleep.

*   *   *

Lara got out at a dusty bend in the road. The driver pointed at a jumble of boulders clinging somehow to the steep slope that fell away from the road and shrugged. The bus rattled off in a hot breath of dust and diesel fumes. She put on her hat and looked for the first waymark: a pile of stones a foot high that marked the path leading down into the deep, high cleft.

There was a sign—well, what was left of a sign. A metal rectangle pockmarked with bullet holes bearing one word just about legible: “
Dragula
.” Lara had loved the name when she was a child. The story of the wild, deserted beach her parents had found at the end of their honeymoon on a long hike through the gorge.

A herd of slant-eyed goats perched on ledges on the sheer rock face watched as she picked her way carefully down the winding track. She
was soaked with sweat by the time she reached the bottom. She rested gratefully in the shade, ate some bread and an apple, refilled her water bottle at the small stone trough, then began the long walk beneath the oleander trees that followed the line of an invisible underground stream the same way she was following the invisible footsteps of her parents, who had walked here forty-two years ago.

The canopy of trees ran out and for the last kilometer she walked in full sunshine. It was midday, and heat hammered down on the crown of her head through her hat. She trudged on, too hot even to stop for a drink of water. Finally the walls of the cliff opened up and she was on the long, dramatic deserted beach. Beyond the stretch of shingle, the sea was breathtaking: crystalline, aquamarine, feathered with whitecaps.

She unlaced her walking boots and threw off her backpack and waded out into the glittering water in her shorts and T-shirt. Bubbles of colder water escaping through the rock into the sea from the underground stream fizzed up between her feet as she ducked under the surface.

She floated on her back, looking up at the sheer red and gray cliffs and the huge tent of blue sky above. A bright pink flower bobbed up beside her, followed by another. Two bougainvillea blossoms that she had tucked into her pocket in Stavroula's garden.

“We swam in the sea and we lay in the sun,” her dad used to tell her. “Me and your mother. We were like Adam and Eve. The only two people in the world. Except there were three of us! You were there too, we just didn't know it yet.”

Lara watched the two blossoms drift away, and said a prayer to the sea and the sky that Stavroula was right. That she really was pregnant and that this time her baby would make it. And that she—she had a feeling that this was a she, this child she might be carrying—would come back to this place someday, like Lara herself had.

She waded back onto the shingle beach and lay out in the sun till her clothes had dried, then she put on her boots and began the long journey home to Blossom &
Grow.

Thank you so much.

To my wonderful agent, the one and only Mr. Jonathan Lloyd. And to Lucia Rae, Melissa Pimentel, Alice Lutyens and all the team at Curtis Brown.

To my lovely American editor, Julie Mianecki, and all the team at Penguin Random House.

To fabulous fellow writers Marian Keyes, Cathy Kelly and Kate Kerrigan for all their kindness and encouragement. For reading early drafts and for being there for me every step of the way.

To Helen Falconer, who helped me to see the wood for the trees.

To my friends and family for their support. Especially Susan McNulty, Wendy Williams, Frances, Bernard, Mimmi and Mel Griffin.

To my favorite florists who shared their secrets and their stories with me. Bronagh Harte at Ginkgo, Ruth Monahan at Appassionata, Eilis Gaughan at the Garden in Powerscourt Townhouse. And Jill Whyte, whose heartbreaking tale of the guitar-shaped wreath appears in this book.

To Mags McLoughlin, Trevor Harte, Orlagh Daly, Cathal O'Flaherty, Brian Toolan, Helen Seymour, Bernice Barrington and Doug Lee for all their help along the way. To Una Hand, whose beautiful wedding proposal story I have borrowed.

And to my husband, Neil Cubley, who deserves a medal for the hours he spent reading, editing, guiding and coaching me. And a halo for pep talks, dog walks and all-around saintliness. Who has filled my house and my heart with so many flowers. And who does to me what spring does to cherry trees.

1. Flowers are part of every significant moment in our lives. Of every birth and wedding. Every joyful celebration and heartbreaking funeral. They can shout out our happiness or speak our sympathy softly. Seduce a lover or comfort a friend. Express feelings we cannot put into words. Why do you think that is?
   
2. Every story begins with a flower or plant. Ivy for tenacity. Daffodil for new beginnings. Pansy for remembrance. Did the flower meanings add to the stories for you?
   
3. Lara lost her mother when she was a child and then loses the baby she longed for. How do you think her losses shaped her as a character?
   
4. Lara is intuitive about flowers and people. She seems to understand exactly what every customer needs. Why then is she so blind to her own needs? Do you get the sense that she is using her work to hide from the sadness of her life?
   
5. Discuss Michael. Why do you think he married Lara? Do you think he ever really loved her? Was it selfish or selfless of him to try to make the marriage work?
   
6. The book deals with loss and grief. Did you feel that the author was writing from her own experience? Did any of the stories bring up a loss you have suffered in your life?
   
7. Lara's family, friends and customers all play a part in the book. They are a mixed bunch. What do you think of the way their stories are interwoven?
   
8. Were you surprised that the woman who was visiting Ted was his wife, Margaret? Do you think she was real? Or a hallucination caused by the morphine he was taking?
   
9. Katy is ready to start a family with Ben even though she realizes that they are more like flatmates than soul mates. Why do you think she has stayed so long in the relationship when he seems so unwilling to take it to the next level?
   
10. Mia has a very clear idea of the kind of man she is looking for, but she ends up falling for his complete opposite. Do you think that's true to life? Do we really have a choice about the people we fall in love with?
    
11. Lara struggles with the fact that she is ten years older than Ben. Do you think it would worry her if the age gap was the other way around? Why do we still have a problem with older women dating younger men?
    
12. Lara's story isn't tied up in a neat bow at the end. We are left with unanswered questions and unresolved situations. What do you think happens after Lara goes back to Dublin? Do you think that she and Ben will get back together?
    
13. Lara expresses her customers' feelings through flowers. If you were to make a bouquet that expressed who you are, what flowers would you include?
    

Photo by Bryan Meade

Ella Griffin
always wanted to be a writer, but before she got around to it she was a waitress, a movie extra, a pickle factory worker, a travel writer and an award-winning advertising copywriter. Her debut novel,
Postcards from the Heart
, was published in 2011.
The Flower Arrangement
is her third novel. Visit her online at ellagriffin.com, facebook.com/EllaGriffinAuthor and twitter.com/EllaGriffin1.