I leaned across the counter to call out before I walked straight through. My mum and Lydia had been best friends for over a decade and I knew I was welcome to make myself at home, but after the incident when I was fifteen where I caught Lydia in a clinch with one of her delivery drivers, I always made sure I announced my presence in advance.
‘Lydia?’
There was a pause and the music on the radio lowered. A middle-aged woman with an iron-grey topknot and a bright yellow apron poked her head around the door behind the counter.
‘Beth, honey. Come on through.’ She disappeared, and the volume of the music rose again. I stepped into the back room just in time to see Lydia put her hand on her hip and execute a single-girl shimmy over to the big wooden table where she was making up a flower arrangement. I snorted and joined her at the table, setting the angel down next to a bunch of long-stemmed red roses. She nudged me and tutted. ‘Go on then, if you can do any better, why don’t you show me how?’
‘I don’t need to show you anything, Lyd, you know you’ve got all the best moves. And I’m in retirement from dancing at the moment.’
She fixed me with a disapproving sideways look, then pointed her shears at the angel. ‘What are you doing with that? You can’t want her? I’ve been thinking of taking her out of the shop. I reckon she’s been putting off the customers.’
‘Mum needs an angel for the tree. Can you put it on the account for the hotel, please?’
‘How can she need another one? Do we need to hold an intervention for her decorating addiction?’ Lydia snipped at the end of a spray of tiny white buds, then laid it down to the left of the arrangement of red and white flowers she was working on.
‘Says the woman selling Christmas decorations…’
‘Which was yourmother’sidea. Use the opportunity for extra sales, she said. And the idea of some extra money in my holiday fund did appeal. I just didn’t realise she’d be the one buying most of the stock from me.’
‘Mercenaries, the pair of you.’
‘I think the word you’re looking for is “businesswomen”.’ She unspooled a length of satin ribbon with her permanently tanned hands and wrapped it around the bunch of flowers. ‘Finger.’ I pressed my finger on the knot while she finished tying off the bow and all the disparate stems and lonely petals drew together to make a bouquet in the shape of a heart.
‘Wedding?’ I asked, unable to hide the note of grim inevitability creeping into my voice.
She nodded and twisted at one of the stems at the bottom. ‘Tomorrow. Won’t it be romantic for them if that snow we’re forecast comes early?’
‘It’ll be cold. And half their guests will probably get stranded.’
‘Oh, Beth darling. You’re far too young to sound so bitter.’
‘I beg to differ.’ I crossed my arms over my chest. ‘I think twenty-six is the perfect age to start sounding bitter. I’ve been sarcastic since I was a kid. Now I actually have some life experience, bitterness is the next logical step.’
‘And what comes after bitterness?’
‘Crabbiness. Then meanness. I’m looking forward to that one. When kids kick their ball into my garden, I’ll puncture it. Then I’ll go inside and feed all thirty-two of my cats.’
Her mouth quirked at the corner, but she didn’t laugh.
‘That’s not going to happen to you.’ She picked up the bouquet with two hands, like it was a sleeping newborn, to place it in a small polystyrene crate.
‘You’re crushing my dreams, Lyd.’
‘This is a just a hiccup.’ She patted my cheek as she walked past towards the kitchenette area behind her, skirting a stack of holly wreaths, which must’ve been for all the houses with doors opening out onto the high street. She donated them every year for the Dickensian festival, Loganbury’s annual Christmas fayre, along with a bunch of mistletoe, which the villagers liked to hang in the prettiest spots that most lent themselves to a romantic moment. ‘Men fall over themselves to get a date with a pretty girl like you.’
‘Men with a basic lack of co-ordination you’re saying? Seems about right.’
‘Oh, you’re hopeless.’
I laughed even though the word snuck between my ribs and needled at me.
I knew she didn’t mean it. That she was just exasperated with my defensiveness when all she wanted was to boost me up and send me out to meet my Prince Charming. But still. ‘Hopeless’. If the boot fits.
‘Are you staying for a cuppa?’ She picked up the kettle and waved it at me.
I flicked a glance at the clock on the wall behind the table, even though I had no intention of staying. Tea with Lydia would only mean more well-meaning but soul-destroying pep talks.
‘No, I better get going. I want to pop to the bookshop before my lunch break’s over.’
