Page 73 of My Kind of Happy

Chapter Twenty-two

The next morning, there was a sharp rap on the door of the shop shortly before seven thirty.

I looked up from the counter where I was working on my laptop. There was a short barrel-shaped man with wild grey hair sticking out from under a blue cap staring at me through the glass. Outside was a huge lorry with ‘Sunshine Flowers’ along the length of it.

I opened the door, Scamp at my heels.

‘Mr Sunshine?’ I offered him my hand to shake and he pumped it up and down a couple of times. ‘Thanks for coming to see me.’

‘Morning. You can call me Victor. You the new girl then?’ His voice had a musical Welsh lilt to it.

‘Correct. I’m Fearne Lovage.’

‘That other girl given up, has she?’ He looked mildly amused. ‘Not surprised. Bloody city girls. Doing their escape to the country bit, thinking it’ll all be cream teas and village fetes. Ridiculous.’

‘If you mean Nina, the proprietor, no she hasn’t given up,’ I said evenly. ‘She’s away … on a research trip.’ No need to mention she was researching New Zealand farmers for possible husbands, I had a feeling Victor would find that even more ridiculous.

He stood in the middle of the shop, hands on hips and looked around. He was wearing a navy Guernsey jumper despite the building warmth of the June morning and wouldn’t have looked out of place mending lobster pots on the Cornish coast while singing sea shanties.

Scamp sat neatly at his feet waiting to be admired. Victor rewarded him by bending down and scratching him behind his ears.

Sourcing a flower supplier who’d make deliveries to the shop was a priority. I didn’t fancy making crack of dawn trips to the market as Nina had been doing. I’d gone with her once but we’d had to leave Scamp locked in the van and he’d been barking his head off when we’d returned. Now I never left him alone for more than a couple of minutes if I could help it. Nina had recommended I chat to Victor because she’d almost taken him on before; she’d omitted to tell me that he was a miserable so-and-so.

‘Glad to see you’re tech-savvy,’ he said, looking at my laptop which I’d set up on the counter next to my iPad.

I was using it to make a customer database by going through old order books and trying to determine a pattern in people’s ordering. I hadn’t got very far; reading the messages to go on the gift cards which accompanied each bouquet had become my guilty pleasure, it was like reading the best bits of a Mills and Boon novel.

‘The last one wasn’t,’ he grunted, bending down to inspect a bucket of stargazer lilies. ‘That’s why she didn’t order from Sunshine Flowers. Our system is state of the art.’

‘Can I offer you a cup of tea,’ I said, ‘or coffee?’

I was desperate for one myself. The café next door did wonderful coffee and Nina and I had got into the habit of buying cappuccinos every morning at eleven. But in the meantime, a cup of instant would do.

‘No time.’ Victor straightened up and looked at his watch. Scamp padded back to his bed and lay down with a ‘flump’ noise. ‘Folk will be moaning about the lorry blocking the road shortly. Bloody commuters. So. Down to business. You wanted to start ordering flowers from us?’

‘That was the idea, yes,’ I said, ‘I’ll be working on my own for the next few weeks, so anything which can make life easier for me is a win.’

‘Easy life.’ He shook his head in despair and shoved his hands in his pockets. ‘You’re in the wrong business if you want an easy life, my girl.’

‘I know,’ I said tetchily, wondering whether I should cut my losses, ask him to leave and look for another supplier. I’d called Sunshine Flowers because it had reminded me of the thing Harriet on the floristry course had said about flowers being sunshine for the soul. Also, I’d gone back through some of Nina’s old business records and found a business card for them. But Victor was about as sunny as a wet weekend in Blackpool.

‘Unsociable hours, high risk, low margins,’ he warned. ‘And of course, your stock is deteriorating from the second you order it. It’s a race against time to flog it before it dies.’

‘You remind me of my Granny; she used to say the same,’ I said. Although she seemed to enjoy the challenge. ‘The rewards are high though. As is job satisfaction. Working with such beauty is such a privilege, don’t you agree?’

‘I can tell you’re new to the game,’ he said with a smirk. ‘Beautiful it might be, but this is a business dictated to by whims and weather and—’

‘Whinging?’ I said, tongue in cheek.

‘Exchange rates,’ he ploughed on without seeming to notice my jibe. ‘One daft move by the government and the value of roses can drop twenty per cent by the time I’ve moved them from one side of the Channel to the other. Bloody politicians.’

‘Is Sunshine your real name?’ I said blackly. I couldn’t remember meeting such a killjoy. Ever.

‘Oh yes.’ He nodded earnestly. ‘Sunshine by name, Sunshine by—’

A sarcastic laugh escaped me and I coughed to cover it up. ‘Sorry.’

He glanced at me and scratched his chin. ‘No. I’m sorry, love. Business is tough at the moment and I’ve had a few customers go bust owing me money recently. They open up, heavy on enthusiasm and light on experience. And six months later you turn up to empty premises and a ‘To Let’ board outside. And with Europe the way it is …’ He winced. ‘Sorry. Again.’