The Little Flower Shop by the Sea (27 page)

‘Because the Parish Council simply won’t allow it,’ Caroline says, untying a paisley scarf from her head. ‘You don’t have a licence, for one thing.’

‘A licence?’ Amber asks, bewildered.

‘Yes, my American friend,’ Caroline gloats, patting her hair into place. ‘A building here in England needs to be approved by the local council to make it legal to hold a civil wedding ceremony on the premises. If you try to hold your wedding here it will be illegal and I shall have you arrested.’

‘Oh really?’ I ask, trying not to look smug.

‘Yes, I think you’ll find that’s the law,’ Caroline smirks, folding her arms in front of her tiny chest.

I smile back at her with equal warmth. ‘Except, Caroline, we don’t want to hold the ceremony here, only the reception. And
that
, as far as I’m aware, does not require express permission from the council, and is most certainly
not
illegal, now is it?’

Caroline’s body stiffens slightly but she continues unabated.

‘It makes no difference,’ she says, with a toss of her head. ‘You will still need a licence for entertainment and presumably you will want to serve alcohol too. I shall oppose you at every turn.’

‘I think you’ll find those are matters for the district council, not the parish council,’ I counter, glad I’ve done my research. ‘And as far as I’m aware, Caroline, even you don’t have any control over them?’

Caroline eyes me coldly, knowing she’s beaten.

‘What have you got against us anyway?’ I continue in a gentler tone. I honestly didn’t understand why Caroline was being like this about the wedding. ‘This is nothing to do with you, why be so mean about it?’

But Caroline doesn’t follow my lead; instead she sighs dramatically and rolls her eyes. ‘One,’ she begins, ‘Trecarlan is part of St Felix’s history, and I see no good reason a historic building such as this should be desecrated by using it as nothing more than a party venue. And two,’ she continues before I can respond, ‘two is more personal.’ She gives me an icy stare. ‘The Carmichael family have never got on with the Harringtons, so annoying you, Poppy, is my way of avenging past betrayals.’

She looks at us both for a moment before nodding smartly, her job done. ‘Good day to you both,’ she says swivelling around as best she can in her Wellington boots and striding off across the ballroom.

‘W-what?’ I stutter in disbelief as I watch her leave. ‘What on earth are you talking about – betrayals?’

‘Ask your friend Stan!’ she calls, not looking back. ‘A little bird tells me you two were quite pally in the past.’ Then before she disappears out of the door she turns to face us one last time. ‘Oh, wait a minute,’ she says, a triumphant glint in her eyes, ‘you don’t even know where he is, do you? Well, goodbye, girls. And good luck!’

‘What on earth is she talking about?’ Amber asks, looking at me aghast. ‘Past betrayals? I feel like I’m in one of your English costume dramas and we should be wearing corsets and long dresses… Come to think of it, that might be fun!’

‘I have absolutely no idea, Amber,’ I sigh, still staring after Caroline. ‘But I’m not about to let her stop us. I have an idea how we can get the approval we need to hold a wedding reception at Trecarlan – and at the same time hopefully discover just what on earth she’s going on about.’

‘How are we going to do that?’

‘By finding a very dear friend of mine.’

After our encounter with Caroline, I speak to Ash about the possibility of visiting Babs at her cottage, and he arranges for me to visit his granny the next day.

Ash and I are getting on just fine. He’s lovely to spend time with – always super chilled and relaxed. Sometimes I take Basil to the beach to watch Ash and his mates surf the waves that wash up on to St Felix’s long stretch of sand, and afterwards, if the weather’s good, Ash and I picnic on the beach together, snuggled up on, or under, a blanket with Basil contentedly nibbling on a cheese sandwich at our side.

Ash tries on more than one occasion to get me to mount a board with him. But I insist my surfing days are over, and I’m happy to watch him ride the waves while I enjoy being out in the fresh air.

I surfed with Will. I don’t surf any more.

I hadn’t realised how much I missed the taste, smell and feel of sea air until I returned to St Felix. Living in London and the various other cities I’ve inhabited over the years, I’d got used to the tight, smoggy air. I’d forgotten how clean, fresh and invigorating sea air was, and now I couldn’t get enough of it.

‘I’m just going to see Babs!’ I call to Amber as Basil and I get ready to leave the shop. ‘Are you sure you’ll be OK on your own?’

‘Yes, I’ll be fine. Good luck, Poppy,’ she replies, reappearing from the back room where she’s currently creating a bouquet for a young man to give to his girlfriend when he proposes. Word of Amber’s magical bouquets has begun to spread, and we’ve been getting requests from all over Cornwall from people wanting our help. ‘I really hope Babs can tell you something about this Stan,’ Amber says. ‘And not just for the sake of the wedding. It sounds to me like you really need to see him again.’

Before I can answer, the shop door opens and our fifth customer of the day walks in. And it’s only 10 a.m.! We’ll have to take on someone else to help us if this continues; Amber can’t possibly look after the shop and arrange all the flowers, and it’s inevitable there are going to be times when it’s impossible for us both to be there.

‘I’ve heard you do
special
bouquets?’ the woman says to Amber as Basil and I head out the door. ‘My mother has been ill recently, and…’

Basil and I leave Amber to it – this is most definitely her department.

We’ve got to the point we can always tell when a customer’s going to ask for one of Amber’s special bouquets. Often they’ll hover outside the shop window for a while, looking shifty, then they’ll come in and pretend to browse for a bit. Once they finally get up the courage to ask if we could make them up a ‘special’ bouquet, I hand them over to Amber, who very discreetly asks what their issue is, then disappears out back to consult her books before creating the perfect bouquet for them, always tied with a white ribbon.

As Basil and I walk down the street, waving to Ant and Dec as we pass – the bakery also seems exceptionally busy today – I think about Stan.

Amber’s right, of course. I should have tried to locate Stan as soon as I arrived in St Felix, but what with the shop and then Basil to look after…

No, I couldn’t kid myself; these were simply excuses. I hadn’t gone in search of Stan because I knew that seeing him again would remind me of past times here in St Felix with Will. Even though I’d managed to talk to Ash about Will, I knew Stan would want to reminisce even more, and I wasn’t sure I was ready for that yet.

But I had to do this. It was important, not only for Katie and Jonathan, but for me too.

So as we walk towards Babs’s cottage, pausing occasionally so Basil can do his thing, my mind is very definitely on the past.

‘Oi! Your dog!’

Shaking myself from my memories, I see Basil about to cock his leg against the side of a mobility scooter. ‘Gosh, I’m so sorry,’ I tell an elderly lady carrying a string bag full of shopping. ‘Basil!’ I pull him away from the wheels. ‘No!’

‘Oh, it’s Basil,’ the lady says, easing herself on to the seat of the scooter. ‘I haven’t got my glasses on, I didn’t recognise you, lad.’ She reaches in her handbag and pulls out a pair of spectacles. ‘There, that’s better,’ she says, putting them on. ‘Now,’ she bends down to stroke him, and Basil, as always, laps up the fuss. ‘I haven’t seen you in ages, boy. How are you?’

She looks up at me. ‘Poppy?’ she says. ‘Is that you? You were just a young girl the last time I saw you.’

I look more closely at her.

‘Babs!’ I exclaim. ‘I’m just on my way to your cottage.’

Babs nods. ‘That’s right, young Ash said you were coming over. I was just getting some cakes in.’ She rolls her eyes, ‘Can’t even make me own these days.’

‘Oh dear, how are you? Ash said you hadn’t been too well lately.’

‘I have to admit, I’ve seen better days,’ she says, gesturing to her buggy. ‘But you have to get on with it, don’t you? I heard you were back in town and looking after Rose’s shop. I’d have popped in, but I haven’t been out much lately; touch of bronchitis hit me real bad, it did. But I’ve escaped today and been allowed out on me own for a while.’

‘Well done.’ I haven’t seen Babs for so long I barely recognise her. She’s lost a lot of weight, and has got a lot greyer in the hair department. ‘I heard about Stan,’ I say, wondering if it’s too soon to mention this. ‘How he decided to sell the castle and move away. It’s a shame it had to come to that. He loved that place.’

‘Hmmph,’ Bab says. ‘Or so he let everyone believe.’

‘How do you mean?’

Babs looks furtively up and down the street, then she beckons for me to lean in so she can lower her voice.

‘Stan changed in the years after you stopped coming to Trecarlan, Poppy – and not for the better, either. He was getting on a bit, and I don’t think he was playing with a full deck a lot of the time.’

‘Oh, poor Stan. What happened?’

‘Well, I’m not one to gossip, as you know…’ She looks shiftily about her. ‘But Stan got in with a bad crowd. There was a lot of drinking went on up at the castle, and –’ she looks up and down the street, but the weather has done one of its U-turns and there are ominous rainclouds gathering overhead, so anyone who’d been out enjoying the sunshine first thing this morning has already taken shelter. ‘Gambling,’ she whispers, so quietly I can barely hear her.

‘Really?’ I can’t imagine Stan running the sort of debauched gambling ring Babs seemed to be implying.

Babs nods. ‘Regularly held parties up there, he did. He’d let all ’n’ sundry into the castle. He asked me to cater for his parties, but I said no. My job was to look after him, not a load of hoolie-billies with more money than sense. So,’ Babs puts her hand to her chest, ‘he got in outside caterers!’

Stan might as well have let in serial killers. This would have been the ultimate insult to Babs.

‘That’s awful, Babs. I can’t imagine Stan doing that – not to you. He loved you and Bertie.’

‘Hmmph.’ Babs folds her arms across her chest. ‘You’d think so, after all we did for him. But the way he treated us, we were obviously just servants to him – nothing more.’

‘What are you talking about – what did he do?’

This was all very odd. It didn’t sound like the Stan I remembered at all.

‘Well, one night Stan had another of his parties. Me and Bertie weren’t involved, of course. But we heard he had another load of these hoolies staying with him – from
London
.’

Babs spits the word out as if it’s toxic. ‘They came up in their fancy cars, lording it up all over St Felix before they even went to the party. I reckon they pissed off half the town that day with their airy-fairy ways. Sorry for me language, dear.’

‘Don’t worry about it. What happened next?’

‘I don’t know exactly what happened when they went up to the castle that night, I can only surmise.’

‘Surmise away.’

‘Well, there was the usual carryings on: too much drink and goodness knows what else. But the outcome was, Stan lost all his money – in a card game.’

‘No!’

‘Sadly ’tis true. It wasn’t long after that Stan moved out, and we lost our jobs.’ She purses her lips. ‘Me and Bertie had given that man our lives, and then he turns around and does that to us.’

‘B-but it doesn’t make sense,’ I say, trying to piece all this together. ‘Stan would never have risked his home and your livelihood on a card game.’

Stan may not have had any family, and few friends, but I know he cared about his ‘helpers’. This just doesn’t fit with the man I remember.

‘Them’s the facts, Poppy. I’ve told you all I know, and some what I heard on the quiet.’ She sighs. ‘My Bertie took ill shortly after all this went on, so maybe we were best out of there as it turns out. When he died, they said it was a stroke caused by heart irregularities. I still say he died of a
broken
heart from being evicted from the place he loved. He’d worked at Trecarlan since he was a nipper. But you know Bertie: he vowed he was going to carry on looking after the gardens, even though we wasn’t being paid no more. Bless his soul.’

‘I was so sorry when I heard about Bertie,’ I say. ‘Ash told me.’

She smiles a toothy grin. ‘I hear you and my grandson have been seen stepping out together. I may have been banished to my cottage for the past few weeks, but I still keep my ear to the ground.’

I feel my cheeks turning red.

‘He’s a good lad, is my Ash,’ Babs says. ‘He’s a looker for sure, a bit like his granddad was when he was younger. But his heart is in the right place. He’ll watch out for you.’

‘Thank you,’ I tell her, but I want to ask more about Stan. Something doesn’t sound right about all this. ‘So did you ever see Stan again after that?’

Babs shakes her head. ‘No, he went to a home Up North somewhere. What with that and Bertie, I just never got around to visiting him.’ She leans in towards me. ‘Tell the truth, there was bad feeling, you know, after we lost our jobs, and then I lost Bertie. So I didn’t really want to go. Then after a while it seemed too late to try and make amends.’