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CHAPTER ONE

BRIONY

There’s never a good time to be drowned out by an electric saw, but right now—mid-consultation with a restaurant manager who could put a standing weekly order on my books—feels especially cruel.

“Sorry,” I say brightly, smile fixed in place. “Builders. They’ll stop in a minute.”

I have absolutely no evidence to support that, but Rhona nods and I press on as though my eardrums aren’t actively filing a complaint.

Between us on the counter sits my pitch: a trial arrangement in a squat glass jar, a scatter of loose stems beside it so she can see the individual flowers that have gone into it. Ranunculus, a few anemones, some soft grasses for movement. It’s pretty. It’s exactly the sort of thing that should make a person lean in and go ooh.

Only it’s hard to go ooh when it sounds like someone’s sawing a car in half outside.

The saw finds a new pitch, a long, tearing shriek that goes right up my spine. I pause because unless Rhona knows how to lip-read, there’s no point carrying on. At my feet, my dog, Penny, hauls herself up, pads a few steps towards the back, then pauses to throw me a look of intense dissatisfaction over her shoulder, as though the noise is somehow my fault. She trots through the doorway to the back room, where her bed is and where it will likely be marginally less deafening. Smart girl.

Mercifully, the saw cuts out again, and now there’s only a faint drilling somewhere overhead. Still far from ideal, but compared to the saw, it’s practically birdsong.

“Sorry again about the noise,” I say, gesturing vaguely at the ceiling. “The two top-floor flats are being done up. Knocked into one, apparently. It’s been an…interesting few weeks.”

I keep it breezy, like it’s just one of those things, though interesting is doing a heroic amount of smoothing over. If it’s not the cutters and the drills, it’s the shouting in the stairwell, or another avalanche of broken plaster and smashed tile roaring down the chute into the skip parked right outside my florist’s shop. And, lucky me, I live on the next floor up, so I don’t even get to escape the dust and mess when I go home.

I pick up an anemone and force my smile back to full bloom. “Right, where were we? Something soft and seasonal, but practical. Nothing that’s going to end up in anyone’s soup.”

That earns me a small smile, which I decide to count as a win.

“For the tables, I’d keep it all low.” I touch the jar between us. “This sort of height, so nobody’s peering at their date through a hedge. But for the bar, you can afford to go bigger. More texture, a bit of drama. Still natural, still seasonal, but⁠—”

The shop door swings open and a builder leans in. Work boots, high-vis, dust powdered over his shoulders and sleeves.

“’Scuse me, love. That your wee van parked outside?”

My smile stays put, though it takes some doing.

“Yes. Why?”

“Any chance you could shift it? We’ve a lorry trying to reverse in, and the driver’s moaning that he cannae make the angle.”

Of course he can’t. I set down the anemone with what I consider admirable restraint.

“I’ll move it shortly,” I say, keeping my voice pleasant by force of will. “I’m with a client just now.” Then, because I have to know how much longer I’m expected to put up with this: “Do you know when this is all likely to be finished? The work, I mean?”

He puffs out his cheeks. “Ah, that’s a wee while away yet. The owner wants in next week, mind, so we’re chasing our tails to get it livable at least by then.” He shakes his head like a man badly wronged. “He’ll be living up there while we finish off, which is always a nightmare. It’s never nice working away wi’ the fella that’s paying for it hovering about the place. Having to keep the noise and mess down. Minding your p’s and q’s the whole time.”

It doesn’t seem to occur to him that keeping the noise and mess down might have been nice for me too. You know, since I am trying to run a business here.

Still, from next week, it should quieten down a bit. That’s something to cling on to. So I turn my attention back to Rhona and do my best to salvage what’s left of the consultation.

A week later things have quietened down—during the day. But now it’s 2:03 in the morning and the newly moved-in owner is apparently hosting a music festival upstairs. My ceiling is a drum.

I’m flat on my back in bed, staring up into the dark, and the bass is coming straight down through the plaster and into my chest, a steady dun, dun, dun. It’s not even a good song. If I’m going to be kept awake, I feel it should at least be by something with a decent chorus.

Threaded through the music, there are voices. Men’s voices, lots of them, deep and rolling, and every so often a great bellow of laughter.

Beside me, Penny lifts her head off the duvet and growls.

“I know,” I tell her.

I’ve got a system for the usual West End noise: traffic, students spilling out of somebody’s flat singing, drunk men declaring undying love to a lamppost. You learn to let it wash past you.