Max had told Bo he would be in Berlin for three nights. He’d left early however, so Bo had no way of working out if he’d brought all his plans forward, and would still only be three days, or if he was coming back on the day he was originally meant to return, which was Monday. As such, she lived on tenterhooks the whole week, nervously anticipating Max’s return, in a half-hopeful, half-terrified kind of way.
“Send him a message back,” Willa urged her, but every time Bo picked up her phone to do just that, she couldn’t go through with it. She would stand there, wracked with indecision, typing out messages before deleting them just as quickly. Maybe it was lucky Max used a Nokia 3310. Bo was fairly certain his ancient model of phone was incapable of showing a livestream of dramatic dots every time she typed and then deleted a message to him.
“There’s nothing wrong with asking when he’s going to be back,” Ida lectured her one morning. “Nothing wrong with that at all.”
“I’ve never messaged him before,” Bo replied, her hands full of gardenias, and Ida huffed.
“The man’s been inside you, but you can’t send him a simple text message?”
Bo stopped. “Ida.”
Ida gave an innocent shrug. “What? It’s the truth.”
“Still.”
“Still what? Text the man. Ask him when he’s going to be back. Make up an excuse if you must, like, I don’t know, you need to get a plumber in or something.”
“I’m a bad actress, remember? Max sees through all my lies. I’m pretty sure that includes written ones.”
“Fine.” Ida handed Bo a roll of wrapping paper. “Keep torturing yourself then, because that’s what you’re doing, isn’t it? Don’t think I haven’t seen you standing at the counter looking morose while cutting stems. Don’t think I didn’t see you yesterday at the market looking forlorn while I haggled for daisies. Don’t think I didn’t see you when—”
“All right, all right, I get it, okay? I’m miserable. Forgive me for having feelings.”
“Having feelings is nothing to need forgiveness for. It’s not silly to be sad. However, not messaging the man who’s causing those feelings, even just to ask how he is, that is silly.” Ida frowned. “You still remind me of my friend, you know. She was like you, moping and morose over that man of hers. Well, not that he washerman, if you know what I mean.”
“No.I really don’t.”
Ida leaned forward, as she always did when ready to dispense juicy gossip. Bo couldn’t blame her. You couldn’t run a floristry business in London for forty years without seeing and hearing a thing or two. “So, my friend — mind, this was a long time ago — well, she worked for me here for a time. One day, I come into the shop and she’s standing there with the goofiest smile on her face. Turned out this chap had come in, well dressed, well-to-do, you know the type.”
Bo nodded. This was Blackheath. Of course she knew that type.
“Anyway, he came into the shop to pick up a bouquet for another woman. Took one look at my friend though and that woman was quick enough to leave his mind, let me tell you. Myfriend was just as smitten. They had the summer romance of her dreams.”
Bo smiled. “That’s a nice story.”
“No, it’s not,” Ida replied, and a dark look came into her eyes. “What happened next . . . what I wouldn’t give to go back in time and give that man a piece of my mind. Not that I ever met him. Whenever I asked to meet him, he was always conveniently busy. My friend wouldn’t even tell me his name.”
Bo paused. “Why not?”
Ida frowned. “Some nonsense about him being quite well known. An up-and-coming politician — a Tory, of course. They had to be careful, he told her. He only ever took her out to places that were never busy. They met at her place and never at his. That sort of thing.”
Bo felt dizzy. “What happened?” she asked, although she had a feeling she already knew. Had a feeling she’d heard this story before. “Did they get married?”
“Of course not,” Ida scoffed. “He was already engaged, wasn’t he? The woman he’d been buying flowers for? The day he met my friend? That was his fiancée. More than that, because he was so important, so high up in the world, he apparently couldn’t cancel his society wedding to marry my friend. Scum, that’s what he was. Proper scum, dragging two women along like that.” In her indignation, Ida’s South East London accent had come back with a vengeance.
Not that Bo noticed. Her heart was thumping quickly in her chest and her hands had gone cold and she was staring at Ida in disbelief.It couldn’t be,she thought.It couldn’t.
“He tells my friend thanks but no thanks, and he’s off out the door,” Ida carried on. “Broke my friend’s heart into a million pieces, he did. She went off the rails a bit — but then, you would, wouldn’t you? If someone had strung you along and then brokenyour heart? She felt worthless, like there was something wrong with her.”
Ida’s expression softened, her eyes distant with memory. “She kept saying that if she’d just been better — cleverer, prettier, funnier — he would have chosen her. As if it was a competition she’d lost, rather than a game he was playing. It was awful to see. All the light just went out of her. Well, she couldn’t go on working here, not with him so close by. She left. Packed up herself and her broken heart and left.”
Bo nodded. She knew that. Knew that because she’d been told this story before. He’d looked for her, hadn’t he? Searched for her for years and years and years.
“I wish I’d met him. Even just once. I’d tell that man, with feeling, to go fuck himself,” Ida declared, and Bo stared at her dumbly.
“You did meet him,” she whispered, and now Ida stared back at her.
“What are you talking about?”
