Page 8 of A Curious Ending

Abby looked at Lara sternly and said even more loudly, ‘That is not an excuse for bad manners. The responsibility for instigating convivial conversation falls upon you. You are older than Becky and it is up to you to put her at her ease.’

Lara was saved from answering, or from throwing a ball of twine at the ghost – which had been her favoured option – by the phone ringing. Lara sprinted over to the counter to pick it up. ‘Yes, Mum,’ Abby heard her say after a pause. ‘Not a good time now, Mum,’ she continued, as Abby gazed, with some significance, around the empty shop. ‘Yes, I haven’t forgotten… No, I know I forgot last year… Yes, I know they never forget… leave it with me, Mum, all sorted.’ Lara hung up. ‘Oh crap!’ she said to the ceiling. And then, pointedly ignoring Abby, she walked to the back of the shop. ‘Becky?’ she called. ‘I’ve forgotten my niece’s birthday. Yet again. She’s turning nineteen. It was your birthday last month, wasn’t it? Have you got any ideas?’

Becky, who was standing at a bench planting hyacinths into a blue and white china bowl, said in a muffled voice, ‘I really liked the manicure and pedicure you bought me. Maybe you could book one for her?’

Lara was taken aback. She had had no idea if Becky had really liked her gift and recalled the rather awkward drink they had had to celebrate her birthday with some embarrassment. ‘Thanks, Becky,’ she said. ‘I tell you what, I’ll do the deliveries this morning. You stay in the warm.’

‘Are you sure?’ Becky replied gratefully.

‘Yes,’ said Lara decisively, looking directly at Abby who had taken to dancing around the flower shop in a kind of slow waltz. ‘There’s someone I need to talk to while I’m out.’

Lara brought the van around to the front of the shop and started loading the bouquets and arrangements that made up the day’s deliveries. This turned out to be a protracted business as Lara kept popping back into the shop with more instructions for Becky. Just when Abby thought they must finally be on their way, customers started appearing and Lara darted back, saying in an aside to Abby, ‘That’s Mrs Sutton, back again, she can be quite tricky, I’d better go and see if Becky needs help.’

Abby, who had been watching Becky deal with customers through the shop window, privately thought she was well able to cope on her own. However, she kept these reflections to herself and took the opportunity to look around the square in which the flower shop was situated.

It was bordered on three sides by well-proportioned buildings in warm yellow stone and on the fourth there was a small park edged with white railings. Most of the buildings were shops with double frontages and a central door, all of which were painted in muted blues or greens. Some, like the wine shop and Honeybourne Antiques had bow-fronted windows but Abby found it difficult to see into these, as they were still misty with condensation from the crisp morning air. The remaining buildings appeared to be houses, their doors painted a variety of shades, as if the residents had decided to introduce a splash of colour into the life of the square. In the centre of the square stood an old pump and a cattle trough that was planted with burgundy skimmia, white heather and the palest of peach cyclamens. Lara’s work, she thought. Abby found she was nodding to herself in approval and the accompanying memory made her suddenly smile.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ said Lara, emerging once more from the shop doorway. ‘I’ll drive,’ she said automatically as she approached the van. She caught sight of Abby’s raised eyebrow and laughed. ‘What were you smiling about when I came out of the shop?’ Lara asked, as she started the engine, forgetting she was cross with her Kindred Spirit.

‘I found myself nodding in just the way my mother did when she was pleased by something. She had a particular way of tilting her head and nodding twice in quick succession. She was not a woman who was fulsome in her praise so it did not happen very often,’ Abby smiled a little sadly. ‘However,’ she continued more positively, ‘I did discover that through our mutual love of certain flowers I could, on occasion, make her smile.’

‘What flowers were those?’ Lara asked.

‘We both had a great appreciation of peonies and together we studied the many varieties grown by the Prince Regent. I believe he was an eminently unsatisfactory man in many ways, but he certainly loved his flowers. When we moved to the Dower House after my father died my mother had a glass house constructed in which we cultivated some of the more delicate hybrids.’

Lara paused, concentrating on the road ahead, trying to frame her next question. ‘Was it your father who you thought had been murdered?’ she asked.

‘Oh no,’ said Abby quite cheerfully, ‘he caught himself on a nail climbing over a fence and his leg became infected. He was dead within three days. It was extraordinary really when you consider that he had lived through two military campaigns and yet something as simple as a rusty nail was his undoing.’

Lara cast her a puzzled glance and Abby elaborated, ‘Of course at the time it was a great shock to us all and I don’t think my mother ever got over it – they were very close you know. But he was a distant, although kindly father, and,’ she added pensively, ‘it was a very long time ago.’

Lara pulled up outside a long stone house and reached into the back for a posy of white and lemon flowers. She decided to go for a more direct approach. ‘So who was it you thought was murdered?’ she asked.

‘That was my husband Miles,’ said Abby without a trace of a smile, ‘and that does still feel like it was yesterday.’

Lara gathered Mrs Mullen’s wedding anniversary bouquet to her, burying her nose briefly in the sweet scent of freesias. ‘I am so sorry, Abby,’ she said. ‘Look, I have to go and deliver this but I won’t be long. As she climbed out of the van she added, ‘If you don’t mind, would you tell me about it?’

Abby gazed at her thoughtfully and then said slowly, ‘I think we must not forget that I am here for you and our time would be better spent considering the fate of Lady Porter.’ As she turned away, Lara wondered if she detected a tinge of regret in Abby’s tone.

Walking to the cottage door she once more inhaled the scent of freesias. Lara thought it was a shame that freesias always reminded her of Julian. They were such a popular flower, the shop had to stock them pretty much all year around.

She had met Julian when she had run a plant stall at the Church fete. Lara had seen him around before this, of course. He was hard to miss. Tall, with dark blond hair. Good looking, with a bit of a… something… about him. Even if he favoured a country style dress that did not particularly appeal to Lara. Pristine cords and tweed jackets. He had run the stand next to hers promoting his property business. But in reality it was a free bar for his raucous friends. She had put much thought into her own stand and in the end was pleased with the hours of effort that created a tumble of plants cascading from antique planters and containers that she had sourced from all over the county.

She hadn’t sold a single plant.

Now, she can’t believe her naivete or how arrogant she had been, expecting to impress everyone. Yes, quite a few people had looked at her stand, and the vicar had spent some time admiring her display. Pity she suspected. He was a kind man. She had to watch as people wandered past clutching armfuls of plants grown by local gardeners from the WI stall and from the tent set up by the Gardening Club. She had tried to put on a brave face but had felt ridiculously foolish and exposed. The worst point came when Sarah, who ran the deli, had wandered over to the stall. She hadn’t said anything to start with but then turned to Lara and began, ‘I mean it’s beautiful, I mean it really is. I just...’

‘Just what?’ Lara had fired back angrily, her excruciating embarrassment emerging as a belligerent defensiveness.

Sarah had looked taken aback, but after a moment countered with, ‘Well, it would be like me setting up a cake stall. Madness with all this around.’ She gestured to the WI and homemade bake stalls.

Lara could think of nothing to say, apart from, ‘Oh, bugger off’, but she had stopped herself just in time. Although in retrospect she imagined it might well have been written on her face. Since then she has found it difficult to face the deli owner, despite Sarah being one of the people she would have liked to know better.

Julian had observed some of this exchange and hadn’t so much taken pity on her, as laughed at the turn of events. He had made very rude remarks about certain members of the WI, told her Sarah’s food was overrated, and let her in on some glorious gossip about the chair of the Gardening Club. All the time he had fed her Pimms and, later, Prosecco. Over the course of the afternoon she softened towards his dress sense and they talked flowers and about the countryside. He said he loved freesias. She liked this about a man, admitting to liking flowers and she told him she did too. Although in reality they weren’t her favourite flower – not even close to the top of her list. She could not help enjoying the envious glances of some of the women passing by, and in part this did ease her hurt. But as tipsy and grateful as she was, it did also warn her. This was a man who attracted a lot of attention. So when he asked her out she turned him down, as if it were a joke not to be taken seriously.

After that he pursued her with a dogged and surprisingly floral determination. She would come out to her van and find a freesia under the windscreen wiper, one was popped under her knocker, another posted through the shop letterbox. Sometimes it was just the flower, occasionally with a note asking her out again. She began to wish that she really did love freesias. She also began to drive the long way round on deliveries in the hope of catching sight of him. When he had stood outside the shop with a freesia in his teeth she had given in. Did she regret it? She hardly knew.

Abby watched Lara as she returned to the van having delivered the posy. She would have given much to know what the florist was thinking. Once back in the van they drove together through the winding lanes from village to village, dropping off the other deliveries. Abby stared out at the fields and woodland around her. Great swathes of the countryside were now bathed in golden light with only the odd corner still shrouded in shadow and glistening with frost. At one point the road climbed steeply and followed the spine of the chalk downs. Spread out below them was a landscape of sweeping pastures. On the horizon stark leafless trees bent as if peering down the hill, the wind at their backs. As she studied them it occurred to Abby that though she had told few people her tale it had been easier to speak of it when she gazed into the distance. She thought there might come a day when she would talk to Lara about Miles. But not yet.