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“You have the perfect life. Although I still want to fix you up with someone. You need a man.”
Flora was less convinced. All the men she’d dated had only been interested in one type of intimacy. And that was fine. More than fine on occasion, but it was like gorging on ice cream when your body was craving something nutritious and truly nourishing. Satisfying in the short term but offering no long-term sustenance.
No, what she really wanted was to matter to someone, the way she’d mattered to her mother. She wanted to be important to someone. Connected, the way Julia was. She wanted to have someone’s back, and know they had hers. She wanted someone to know her and she wanted to be needed. What was the point of being here if no one needed you? If you didn’t make a difference to someone’s life?
She had so much to give, and no one to give it to.
She was lonely, but she’d never tell anyone that. If you admitted you were lonely, people assumed there was something wrong with you. The media talked about an epidemic of loneliness, and yet admitting that you felt that way was a statement of failure. She was thirty, unattached and living in the most exciting city in the world. People assumed her life was like a day on the set of an upbeat sitcom and from the outside it probably looked that way, apart from her apartment, which was more like the set of a murder mystery. On the inside? On the inside, deep in her heart, she was crushingly lonely but if she told people they’d judge her and tell her all the things she was doing wrong. Or they’d invite her out, and she knew that wasn’t her problem. It wasn’t the number of connections she made in her social life that mattered, it was their depth.
When people asked, she told them what they wanted to hear because anything else would make them uncomfortable.
Yes, I stayed in last night and it was great. I had a chilled evening and caught up on phone calls.
My social life is so crazy it’s good to have a night in doing nothing.
Weekdays were easier than weekends when time seemed to move at half pace, and whatever she did she was aware she was doing it alone. Running in the park meant witnessing the intimacy of other people. Dodging mothers with children, couples holding hands, groups of friends laughing and drinking coffee on a bench. Shopping meant rubbing shoulders with women choosing outfits for an exciting night out.
Flora did everything she could to avoid confronting that silence that Julia seemed to prize above everything else. She went running with friends, call
ed friends, had meals with friends, joined a pottery class, an art class, listened to music and podcasts, streamed movies. In the bathroom she sometimes turned on her electric toothbrush just for the noise, but eventually she had to lie down and close her eyes and then the silence enveloped her like a smothering cloud. Not that her apartment was quiet. Far from it. Above her was a big Italian family who thundered their way from one room to another and argued in voices designed to break the sound barrier, and next door was a couple who indulged in noisy sex sessions into the early hours. She was surrounded by the sounds of other people living full and happy lives.
“I’ll be fine. My weekend plans are relaxed. Yoga. Brunch with a friend. It’s not a problem. You know I love working here.”
“You love Celia?”
“I love the flowers.”
“Phew. For a moment there I was going to suggest you got professional help. And you’re right that if you’d refused to work this weekend I would have ended up doing it, and thanks for that, but one day I want to hear you say a big loud ‘no’ to her.”
“I will.” She was well aware of the downsides of people-pleasing. In the few relationships she’d had, she invariably spent so much time pleasing the other person she forgot to please herself. That was usually the point where she ended it, in a charming it’s not you it’s me kind of way that left no hard feelings.
Julia watched Celia haranguing another member of staff. “What is her problem?”
Flora took advantage of her lapse in concentration to make a few swift adjustments to the arrangement. “She’s anxious. She owns the business and these are challenging times. We worry enough about our own jobs. Imagine if we were responsible for everyone else’s, too.”
“I don’t think it’s concern for us that’s keeping her awake at night. No wonder she lives alone. She probably ate her first husband. Or maybe he dissolved when she dripped acid on him. If she was a flower, she’d be hemlock.” Julia had a flare for the dramatic. She’d had dreams of being an actress, but then she’d met her husband. Three children had followed in quick succession. She’d done various jobs in her time, and Flora was forever grateful for the day she’d walked through the doors looking for work.
Julia admired the roses. “I’m getting better, don’t you think?”
Flora added a couple more stems of foliage and trimmed one of the stems a little shorter. “You have an eye for it.” In fact Julia didn’t have much of an eye for it, but there was no way Flora would hurt her feelings by telling her that and she knew how badly her friend needed the job.
“I’ll never be as good as you, but I’m still learning and you’ve been doing this since you could walk.” Julia eyed the guy outside. “Do you think he hit her and he’s here to buy ‘sorry I bruised you’ flowers?”
“I hope not.”
“You should come over the next Sunday you’re free. Have lunch. My way of saying thank you.”
“I’d like that.” Flora loved having lunch at Julia’s even though the banter between her friend and her husband gave her the odd pang. No one knew her well enough to tease her.
“I’d invite you to stay over and have a night away from that apartment of yours, but you know we’re in very tight quarters. And trust me you do not want to share a bed with Kaitlin. Is your landlord still raising your rent?”
“Yes.” Flora felt a twinge of anxiety. She’d made a halfhearted attempt to look for somewhere else, but there was a depressing gap between what she’d like and what she could afford.
“And has he sorted out your cockroach?”
“Not yet. And I have more than one cockroach.”
Julia shuddered. “How can you be so relaxed?”
