Page 42 of My Kind of Happy

‘Shush, I’m concentrating,’ she replied, sifting through a stack of invoices, adding a few moments later, ‘She uses a lot of Milton’s sterilising fluid.’

‘It’s for cleaning vases.’

‘And ribbons,’ she marvelled, unfolding a huge till receipt. ‘Look at all these.’

Nina had an entire set of map drawers dedicated to the stuff. I was going to have to ban her from buying any more until we’d used the current stock up. ‘Yeah, each bunch of flowers is finished off individually.’

‘Etsy, Etsy, Etsy …’ Laura muttered under her breath, making a pile of invoices from each seller.

‘Display props and little bits and bobs to resell,’ I said. ‘Look, are you going to let me tell you about the business’s problems?’

‘No!’ She looked blankly at me. ‘I can discover it myself; this way is much more fun.’

‘You weirdo.’

‘Right.’ Laura saved the document she was working on and stretched her arms above her head. ‘I have some observations to make.’

For the last couple of hours, I’d kept Laura topped up with tea, Marmite on toast and coconut macaroons. In between catering duties, I’d been flicking through Nina’s diaries and looking at the orders she’d taken over the years. They made fascinating reading and some of the messages which must have been dictated to Nina to write on the accompanying gift cards had touched my heart.

‘And me.’ I sighed, closing the diary I was reading. ‘People are so thoughtful. Flowers come with such love and kindness. And that’s what matters at the end of the day, isn’t it?’

‘Hmm.’ She gave me a sideways look. ‘Didn’t Steve dump you with flowers?’

Steve had come round with a bunch of daffodils one evening not long after Scamp had moved in. Scamp didn’t like him much and the feeling was mutual. Daffodils were Granny’s favourites: their cheery arrival in the garden, trumpets the end of winter, she used to say. And I still thought of her whenever they appeared in springtime. I was impressed that he had remembered how much I liked them, but this particular bunch of daffodils hadn’t brought much cheer; as he handed them over, Steve informed me apologetically that he thought it best that we went our separate ways. Scamp had clung to me protectively for the rest of the evening.

‘True,’ I said. ‘But even that was an act of kindness. One of us had to call time on the relationship. We only stayed together because I couldn’t deal with any sort of emotions at all and Steve felt too guilty to dump me when I was grieving. I don’t think it would have gone on past the summer if …’

‘Hey, it’s OK.’ Laura squeezed my hand. ‘You don’t have to talk about it.’

‘I think I do,’ I said, ‘I think it might help me to say things out loud instead of bottling them up.’

Her eyes flickered with a mix of shock and pride. ‘That’s the spirit.’

‘Also. Not talking about Freddie is doing his memory a disservice. I blocked out his accident for a long time because I wasn’t ready to accept it as my new reality.’

Laura smiled encouragingly. ‘And now you are?’

I puffed my cheeks out and thought about that for a moment. ‘My heart is still in my mouth every time I see a speeding motorbike, or I think a car driver hasn’t seen the approaching motorcyclist in time, or I spot a biker on the motorway not wearing protective clothing.’

‘You don’t have to remind me,’ Laura said with feeling. ‘I’ve been there, remember?’

‘So you have.’ I smiled sheepishly.

She’d driven me to the vet when Scamp had torn one of his claws. On the way back, an impatient van had tried to overtake us and nearly wiped out an oncoming motorbike. Laura had swerved towards the kerb, the van dropped back and luckily the biker had lived to tell the tale. The incident was over. But I’d flown into a rage, wound down the window and sworn like a trooper at the van driver. I’d written down his registration plate and yelled that I’d get him arrested for dangerous driving, at which point Laura intervened and threatened to eject me from the car if I didn’t calm down.

‘Freddie’s gone and I don’t think I’ll ever come to terms with that.’ I tucked my hair behind my ears and frowned. ‘But what I can do is to be happy that he loved life, he lived it his own way and he wouldn’t have changed a thing. I want to be like him. I don’t want to get to the end and think if only. So my new mission is to make my life as good as it can be.’

For a few seconds we just sat there, blinking away tears until I cleared my throat and nodded at her laptop.

‘Now come on, Little Miss Bean Counter, tell me how to save Nina’s Flowers.’

She turned it so I could read the screen. ‘I’m afraid there’s no magic wand and you could probably have worked this out for yourself. But the business needs to cut costs, find new markets and increase profit margins.’

‘Thanks, Laura,’ I said glumly. ‘That’s all very helpful.’

Cutting costs wasn’t going to be easy with a novice like me making up bouquets at half the speed of Nina. And finding new markets was a tough one; we had lots of competition and a virtually non-existent internet profile. As for increasing profits, if Nina hadn’t made a profit in five years, it was unlikely that I’d be able to come up with a quick solution.

‘Are you absolutely sure there’s no magic wand?’