Blake smiled. ‘Yeah, works for me. Can we get a coffee too? I’ll be needing a strong one to get this enclosure finished.’
‘An iced coffee would go down a treat,’ I agreed and we fell into step to walk back towards Willow’s four-by-four, which was parked outside the farmhouse. ‘Have you heard from Sarah since she left?’
‘No, nothing,’ Blake said, sounding relieved. ‘What about Henry?’ he asked as we climbed into the car.
‘We’re planning to have dinner together. He’s working all day too. I don’t know how I feel about seeing him later, to be honest.’ I started the engine and we set off for Birchbrook town.
‘Want to talk about it?’
‘Not really. You?’ I said, glancing at him before we left the farm.
‘Nope.’ He smiled at me. ‘Okay, let’s talk about something else. How’s your photo set-up coming along?’
‘I think it’ll work well. I just need to find the right flowers for it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t make sense to get real ones with them being outside in the heat of the day, so I need to find faux ones that look good. It means going to the florist in town, which always brings back memories of my mum.’
‘What was her flower shop like?’
‘I haven’t thought about it in so long.’ I could remember it perfectly, though. ‘It was right in the heart of where we lived. It had a green and gold sign outside. There was a bell on the door. And a sign shaped like a daisy that saidOpenorClosed. Mum had it made especially. The shop was crammed with flowers. The smell hit you even before you opened the door. She kept them outside too. Any space possible. And in the middle of the shop was her counter with the till, and she had a cuckoo clock on the wall that struck every hour. I used to go in every day once school had finished. She always had the radio on and would sing along while she made up bouquets for people. I know she had to get up early for the flower market – running a small business was hard even back then, let alone nowadays – but she seemed to be so passionate about it, you know?’
Blake nodded ‘My dad is the same. He lives and breathes that shop. It has this distinct smell. Old but clean. Like it has all these secrets and memories. I enter and I just relax instantly. I guess it’s the nostalgia of spending so much of my childhood in there. I loved hearing the stories behind everything he sells too.’
I nodded. ‘Mum would tell me why someone had ordered a bouquet and why she had included the flowers she had chosen for them.’
‘Do you know why she called you Daisy?’
‘Each flower has a few meanings but Mum said the one that struck her with daisy was “new beginnings”. She and my dad tried for a long time to have a baby so when they had me, they saw it as a new beginning, plus she bought her flower shop while she was pregnant. So, she felt like it was a new beginning both personally and professionally.’ I sighed. ‘The irony, right? I’m named after new beginnings, but I’m struggling with change and the future… Anyway, what about you? Does Blake have any significance?’
‘My dad liked William Blake’s poems. He used to read them to my mum when she was pregnant.’
‘You don’t mention your mother much,’ I observed as I found a parking space on the High Street close to the café.
Blake sighed as I stopped the car. ‘I don’t really see her now. My parents got divorced when I was young and she lives up north. My sister and I stayed with my dad. Some people thought that was unusual at the time. But we were closer to him and settled there. I suppose sometimes, we did wonder why she was happy to move so far away from us.’ He looked startled then. ‘I don’t think I’ve told anyone that before.’
‘I’ve spilled enough of my dark secrets to you,’ I said, taking my seatbelt off. I couldn’t help but feel pleased that he wanted to confide in me like I was doing with him. It felt so easy between us somehow.
‘Your secrets aren’t dark, Daisy. You’ve had a lot happen to you, yes. But you, yourself, could never be dark,’ Blake said, his eyes steady on mine.
18
Blake’s words echoed around my mind.
You could never be dark.
We hardly knew each other but he said those words with confidence regardless.
‘Thank you,’ I whispered. There was definitely something calming, something reassuring, about this man. I smiled. ‘Shall we?’ I was feeling more than a little unnerved at how he saw me. I wondered how long it had been since I felt like someone really did see me.
Jumping out of the car, I forced myself to focus on my surroundings and not Blake. I’d been in such frantic state when I first came back here, I hadn’t taken much in.
Birchbrook High Street was as quaint and pretty as it had been when I used to visit in my childhood. Each shop and business had a hanging basket from a hook to the side of it bursting full of colourful flowers. Birchbrook Café also had pots of pretty flowers outside the shop. Hanging across the High Street, tied to the lampposts, was triangle bunting in pastel colours, the sky a perfect blue above it.
‘It’s so pretty here, I forgot,’ I said half to myself.
‘I can see why Dylan wanted to move here. My hometown is like this too. I do miss it being in the city now.’
I nodded. ‘Me too. I grew up not far from Birchbrook, and spent a lot of time here then. Henry and his family live on the edge of the city; it’s so different.’ My eyes fell on the florist. ‘Shall we meet back at the café when we’ve got what we came for? Say in an hour?’
‘Perfect,’ Blake agreed, lifting his hand in a wave as he headed off towards the hardware shop to find paint. I turned to go to the flower shop, steeling myself for the inevitable memories it would stir up. I had told Blake what my mother’s shop had been like. I don’t think I’d ever told Henry that. He hadn’t asked me, though.
