The Little Flower Shop by the Sea (2 page)

My grandmother’s shop stands at the bottom of Harbour Street, at the point where the cobbles lead out on to the harbour. My first thought was that it looked a bit ramshackle, but having seen all the other derelict shops, I’m just glad it’s still here. Down in the harbour I can make out a few fishing boats, and a patch of pale yellow sand – the tide must be on its way out. Maybe it will take this miserable weather with it.

It’s been a long day already, with a tiring drive from my flat in north London to St Felix, the little town on the north Cornish coast where my grandmother’s shop was. My mother had hired a car for me, a brand-new black Range Rover, thinking it would help cushion the journey. But for all the car’s comfort and luxury, it hadn’t made the journey to somewhere I really didn’t want to go any easier.

My stomach grumbles as I stand looking forlornly at my slightly bedraggled reflection in the shop’s window. No wonder that guy at the service station I’d stopped at had given me a look when I’d pulled up in the Range Rover; with my long black hair dangling around my pale face, I look much younger than my thirty years. He probably thought I should be sitting in the back rather than the driver’s seat.

An elderly couple holding hands with two cute toddlers – twins, by the look of their matching outfits – pass by. The lady stops briefly to help one of the twins fasten her coat, and as she pulls the hood over the child’s face to shield her from the strong wind gusting today, she gives her a kiss on the cheek.

I feel my heart tug.

My grandmother used to do that to me when I was small
…
 

I turn away from them and stare up at the shop again, feeling guilty – not for the first time today. Guilty about moaning so much about returning to St Felix, and guilty I hadn’t done so sooner.

You see my grandmother has just died.

Not passed on, moved to a better place, or any other term that people use to make the obvious sound easier to accept.

She’d simply died and left us – like everyone does eventually.

Afterwards everyone had cried. Not me, though. I never cry now.

Worn black – that part was easy, I liked that.

Went to her funeral and talked about how wonderful she was; eaten all the food they could stuff inside them at her wake – again, neither of these proved difficult for me.

Her family had been summoned to a will-reading with a solicitor who had travelled up from Cornwall to meet us at a posh London hotel.

We being myself, my mother and father, Aunt Petal, and my two annoying cousins, Violet and Marigold. Actually, after the awfulness that was the funeral, the will-reading was quite amusing to begin with. The look on Violet and Marigold’s faces when my name was read out as the sole beneficiary of my grandmother’s estate was hilarious – for a few seconds. But then as everyone recovered from their shock, and my mother with tears in her eyes hugged me and proclaimed that this would be the making of me, the reality of what my grandmother had done began to envelop me in a way that made me feel so claustrophobic it was all I could do to breathe.

‘I’m afraid you won’t get any flowers in there today, miss,’ a voice behind me says, making me return to the present with a start.

I turn to see a very tall young policeman with a mop of black curly hair protruding from underneath his hat, standing with his hands behind his back. He nods at the window of the shop. ‘There’s no one in there on a Monday – not any more.’

‘And there is the rest of the time?’ I ask, surprised to hear this. As far as I’m aware no one has been in the shop since my grandmother became too ill to look after herself just over a year ago, and was admitted to a specialist private hospital in London which her daughters had insisted paying for.

He shrugs, and I note, from the lack of rank insignia on his shoulders, that he’s a police constable.

It’s not something I’m particularly proud of, knowing how to spot the rank of the police officer you’re dealing with, but when you’ve had as many encounters with the police as I have… let’s just say it becomes second nature.

‘Yes, there’s someone in there five days a week. Well, sort of…’

I wait for him to continue.

‘You see, the florist that was there before sadly passed on. Lovely lady she was, apparently.’

‘Apparently?’

‘Yes, I never knew her. I’m new to this patch, only been here a few months.’

‘So who runs the shop now then?’

‘The local women’s group.’ He looks about him, then lowers his voice. ‘Fierce bunch, they are. Not really suited to the gentle ways of a delicate flower, if you know what I mean. They quite scare me.’

I nod sympathetically.

‘However,’ he continues, ‘I don’t like to say a bad word about anyone. The ladies run the shop voluntarily out of the goodness of their hearts – which is never a bad thing in my book.’

‘Yes, of course.’ I smile politely at him.

‘But they close on a Monday, see. So if you’re looking for flowers, then I’m afraid you’re out of luck.’

‘Oh, never mind then,’ I say, hoping he’ll leave me alone. ‘Maybe another time.’

‘Staying in St Felix long, are you?’ he asks, obviously wanting to continue our conversation. He looks up at the sky. ‘Not the best day to see the town at its finest.’

‘I’m not sure. Hopefully not too long.’

He looks surprised at this.

‘I mean, maybe a few days.’ I look up at the sky like he had. ‘Depends on the weather…’

‘Ah, I see. Good plan. Good plan.’ He smiles. ‘Sorry about the shop, but – and I don’t mean any offence to the ladies when I say this, you understand – their ways with flowers are a bit old fashioned. If you’re in need of something more modern you could always pop up the hill to Jake. He’ll see you right.’

‘Jake being…?’ I enquire, wondering if I’ll regret asking.

‘He owns the local nursery up on Primrose Hill. They deliver flowers all round the area. Just between us –’ he leans in towards me and lowers his voice once more – ‘I always go there when I need flowers for the
special
lady in my life.’

‘And would that be… your mum?’ I can’t resist teasing him. This constable is completely unlike the officers of the Metropolitan Police I’ve encountered in London. Although, thinking about it, most of those encounters hadn’t exactly been amicable, I was usually being arrested. Nothing serious – my misdemeanours ranged from disturbing the peace, to drunk and disorderly, to my favourite: trying to climb on top of one of the lions in Trafalgar Square. I’d been a bit of a rebel in my younger days, that’s all. I wasn’t exactly a criminal.

‘Yes. Yes, that’s right,’ he mumbles, his cheeks reddening. ‘Flowers for my mum. Well, I must be off – things to do, you know. This town doesn’t run itself.’

I feel bad for teasing him, he seems a nice enough fella.

He gives me a quick salute. ‘Nice meeting you, miss.’

‘Yes, and you, PC…’

‘Woods,’ he says proudly. ‘But everyone around here calls me Woody. I try and stop them, but it’s kinda stuck now. I dread to think what my superiors would say if they knew – it hardly conjures up an air of authority.’

I grin. ‘I think it suits you. Well, thanks for the tip about the flowers, Wood—, I mean PC Woods. I’m sure it will come in handy.’

He nods. ‘Just doing my job, miss.’ Then he turns smartly on his shiny black shoes and sets off briskly up the cobbled street, arms swinging by his sides.

I turn and look at the shop again.

‘Right, let’s see what you’ve left me, Grandma Rose,’ I say, reaching into my pocket for the key my mother had pressed into my hand this morning, just before I dropped her and my father at Heathrow ready to fly back to the States. ‘Or should I say, let’s see what you’ve left me to sell…’

As I warily open the shop door for the first time in fifteen years I feel my throat begin to tighten as yet again I’m cast back to the day of the funeral.

‘Why on earth has Grandma Rose left me her flower shop?’ I’d protested in the quiet of the hotel lounge. ‘I hate flowers, and she knew that. Did she really hate me that much?’

‘Poppy!’ my mother had admonished. ‘Don’t say that about your grandmother, she loved you very much, as you well know. That shop is the original link in The Daisy Chain empire, she wouldn’t have left it to you unless she thought…’ There was a pause, and I knew what she was thinking: her mother must have been losing her mind to leave her precious shop to me.

You see I’ve heard it all before, too many times – how flowers have been in my family for ever… passed down through every generation. How at least one person in every branch of the Carmichael family owns, runs, or works for a florist. It was like a broken record that never came off the turntable. But it didn’t stop there. The Daisy Chain was now international: my mother had opened a flower shop in New York, a distant cousin had a florist business in Amsterdam, and another would be opening a shop in Paris later this year. Every Carmichael loved flowers – every one except me. I may have been burdened with my family’s tradition of calling all children flower-inspired names, but that’s where the floral affinity stopped. There were no flowers in my life, and I didn’t intend for that to change any time soon.

‘Go on…’ I’d prompted. I wanted to hear my mother say it. I knew I was the black sheep of the Carmichael family; I knew I was the one they talked about in hushed tones at family parties. Maybe my grandmother had seen past that, maybe she thought by leaving me her shop it might help me. How could she be so wrong?

My mother took a deep breath. ‘She wouldn’t have left you her shop unless she thought you could do some good with it.’

‘Perhaps.’ I’d shrugged.

‘Poppy,’ my mother said, rubbing her hands comfortingly over my upper arms, ‘I know this is difficult for you, really I do. But your grandmother has given you an opportunity here. An opportunity to do something good with your life. Please, at least give it a chance.’

My father had stepped forward then. ‘Couldn’t you at least go and
look
at the shop, Poppy? For your mother, if not for yourself? You know what your grandmother’s shop means to her – and the whole Carmichael family.’

It’s begun spitting with rain, so I stop dithering on the doorstep of the shop, and dart inside, swiftly closing the door behind me. The last thing I want is for any of the other shop owners in the street to see I’m in here and come banging on the window for a chat. I’m not intending to stay long.

I resist the urge to turn on the light, so I have to try and make out the interior of the shop as best I can from what little daylight there is coming through the window.

It’s bigger than I remember. Perhaps that’s because I only ever saw it filled to the brim with flowers. When my grandmother was in here you couldn’t move without bumping into a tin pot filled with brightly coloured blooms waiting to be arranged into a bouquet and sent out into the world to brighten someone’s day.

The shop is still filled with the same long tin pots, but today they stand eerily empty, as if waiting for someone to come along and fill them with the latest buds.

I sigh. Even though I don’t like flowers or want anything to do with them, I loved my grandmother, and I can remember spending many a happy, sunshine-filled holiday here in St Felix with her. It was here that my brother and I graduated from building sandcastles on the beach, to learning to surf when we were that bit older and stronger. When the evening tide was high in St Felix, huge waves would crash down on to the Cornish sand, wiping out the day’s carefully built, but now abandoned sandcastles. My grandmother would cheer us on from her red-and-white striped deckchair, a steaming hot flask of drinking chocolate ready to warm our wet and aching bodies when we could battle the waves no longer…

I shake my head.

That’s all in the past now. I have to remain focused on what I’m here to do. So I begin to step carefully about in the dim light, trying to gauge the fixtures and fittings. I might have to sell those on separately if I put the shop up for sale and the buyer doesn’t want them. But to be honest, they don’t look like they’re worth much. Everything I can see is made of heavy dark oak. Huge dressers and cabinets all stand empty, pushed up against grimy cream walls. Who’s going to want to buy those? Shops these days opt for modern, light-coloured fixtures – to make the ‘shopping experience’ as pleasurable as possible for the consumer.

I once spent a ghastly few months working on the tills in a large supermarket during the run-up to Christmas. I nearly went insane passing people’s huge festive shops over the barcode scanner hour after hour. It got so bad I began having nightmares about ‘3 for 2’ and ‘BOGOF’ offers, until it reached the point where I leapt on to the checkout conveyor belt in the middle of one of my shifts and used it like a treadmill, shouting to anyone that would listen that greed would kill us, and we should all – staff and customers alike – be ashamed of ourselves.

If that incident had only been a dream like so many others about the shop, it wouldn’t have been so bad… But I was dragged down from the checkout by two security guards who thought I was marvellous for giving them something to do other than look at security screens all day, then escorted to the manager’s office where I was fired on the spot and banned from every branch of this particular chain within a fifty-mile radius.

It was one more item on the ever-growing list entitled:
Unsuccessful jobs Poppy has had.