Page 6

Emmy’s still laughing. I give her a look, and she reins it in.

“Sorry! That’s honestly horrible. I tell you what, I’ll pop back to Coorie & Blether at eleven and get you another coffee.” Her mouth twitches again, but she presses her lips together. “It’s just that, in the eighteen months I’ve worked here, I’ve never seen you this wound up before.”

“Make it a large coffee and all is forgiven. Anyway, come on. We’ve got orders to get on with.”

I get back to the birthday bouquet while Emmy starts on a couple of desk arrangements for the solicitors on Hyndland Road. She was very green when she started here, but she learns fast and has a good eye, which is the one thing you can’t teach. She’s putting herself through a part-time floristry course at college too. Does she occasionally arrive in the morning a touch hungover? Sure, but she’s twenty-two, and she always gets through the shift just fine, usually with the help of a Red Bull or two.

Almost as though she’s read my thoughts, Emmy says, “Before I forget, a few of us from my class are heading out tonight. Just drinks at the pub to start, then we’ll see where the night takes us. Fancy it?”

“After last night? No, thank you. I want to be in my bed before nine. Maybe eight. I’ve got sleep to catch up on.”

“Right,” Emmy says. “Only, let’s be honest, even if you’d slept like a baby last night, you’d still be saying no.”

“That’s not⁠—”

“It is true. You always say no. With really quite impressive consistency.”

I give the bouquet my full attention. “Running this place takes it out of me. Besides, you’re young. You should be out enjoying yourself while you⁠—”

“I’m only two years younger than you, Briony.” She points a dripping stem at me. “You’re twenty-four. Not that you act like it.”

“I’m twenty-five in a few weeks.”

Emmy pounces on this. “Yes, you are! Twenty-five. A quarter of a century. That is a birthday that needs to be celebrated properly. Drinks, clubs, dancing, the lot.”

I glance at the clock on the wall. Half nine, which gives me a legitimate, unarguable reason to bring this to a close.

“Look at the time,” I say, setting down the bouquet. I cross to the door and turn the little sign round to open. Then, before Emmy can get her teeth back into my upcoming birthday, I say, “Oh, any chance you could deliver that scented geranium over there for me? It’s only going to Clarence Drive, so no need for the van. Besides, it’s a lovely morning for a walk.”

Emmy looks at me for a long moment. She knows exactly what I’m doing.

“Smooth,” she says.

“Whatever do you mean?”

“I’ve barely started on this desk arrangement, you know.”

“It’ll be there for you when you get back.”

She scoops up the geranium and levels a finger at me. “This is not the end of this conversation, Briony.” But out she goes, geranium and all.

Alone again, I finish off the bouquet—binding the stems, levelling the ends—and go to tie a ribbon around it, except the blush grosgrain isn’t on its hook where it belongs. It must be in the drawer.

I’m crouched behind the cash desk with the drawer hauled all the way out, elbow-deep in half-used reels and hunting for the roll that has to be here somewhere, when the bell goes.

I lift my head just enough to see over the counter. And then go very still.

Because it’s him. My new neighbour. Ryan.

What’s he doing in my shop?

He’s in a fitted white T-shirt, and from down here the breadth of his shoulders and the shape of his arms are impossible to miss. He ought to look wrong in this place. My shop is all soft edges—petals and ferns and paper and pale light—and he’s hard lines and inked skin, taking up far more room than seems reasonable. Yet somehow he doesn’t look wrong. He wanders among my displays, hands in his pockets, entirely at ease.

Then his head turns, and his eyes come straight to mine.

The same thing happens as last night: I forget that looking away is an option. Only now there’s no pounding music, no roomful of people. Just him and me in my quiet shop. He stands perfectly still, watching me as though he has all the time in the world. It’s…unnerving.

A sharp bark cuts through the silence, and I start so hard I catch my elbow on the open drawer.