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“Nearly. You don’t have to like her, Ryan. You don’t even have to move your car, if that’s really too much to ask. But there is one thing you do have to do, and that’s treat her with respect. If she comes into the shop again upset because of you, you’ll be hearing from me.”

I look down at her. She holds my gaze. Doesn’t even blink.

“Is that right?” I say.

Her chin goes up another inch. “It is.”

I almost laugh. Not at her, at the sheer audacity of it. It’s the flat-warming all over again: a wee woman standing her ground against a man who towers over her. Whatever I thought about lassies who arrange flowers for a living, I’m going to have to revise it. These two have got more balls than half the men I’ve shared a cage with.

Emmy picks up her bucket, turns on her heel, and marches into the shop. The bell above the door gives a bright, innocent wee tinkle.

Niamh watches the door swing shut, then sighs wistfully. “I think I might be in love.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

BRIONY

“You,” I tell the aquilegia, “are showing everybody else up. Keep it going.”

It’s Thursday evening and I’m in the back court with my watering can and my snips, working along the beds while Penny snuffles around the edges of the lawn. The garden belongs to everyone in the building, which these days means me, Mrs Dunlop, and—though I’m not sure he’s ever even been out here—Ryan Sloan.

When I moved in, the back court was little more than a square of tired grass and a patch of weathered paving slabs. Two years on, there are raised beds, pots, bee-friendly planting, two bird feeders, and a bench. Last autumn, I also scattered wildflower seed along the far wall. It’s only mid-May, so that strip is still all leaf, but the older planting is earning its keep: the aquilegia is out, forget-me-nots have spread in little blue patches through the beds, and the chives in the pot by the drain have opened into fluffy mauve pompoms.

Mrs Dunlop is delighted with what I’ve done, as were the neighbours who used to live in the two top-floor flats. They’re gone now, though. I wonder if, technically, I should be checking with Ryan whether he’s happy for me to continue to take ownership of this space. But why bother? What’s he going to do, object? Say he’d rather look after the flowerbeds himself?

I picture Ryan—all tattoos and muscle—crouched over a border with a trowel and a wee kneeling pad, and laugh.

Penny gives up on the lawn, trots over to the back door, and plonks herself down in front of it. She looks at me pointedly. I check my watch: six o’clock on the dot. Her stomach keeps better time than most clocks.

“All right, madam. Dinner.”

I gather up my things and let Penny inside. I leave the watering can and snips in their usual place by the back door, then head for the stairs. Voices drift down from above—Mrs Dunlop chattering away, with the occasional low response from Ryan.

After the way he spoke to me yesterday, I’m in no rush to see him again. Then again, Ryan making conversation with Mrs Dunlop is something I can’t not see. I’m only human.

We go up, Penny padding beside me. When I round the turn in the stairs, I spot Ryan climbing the last few steps to the landing Mrs Dunlop and I share. He’s carrying her shopping—two bags in each hand, like they weigh nothing—while Mrs Dunlop is outside her door, rummaging in her handbag for her keys and keeping up a running commentary.

“—and the price of a bottle of milk these days! Archie would have had a stroke. Back in the day we got it delivered on a float, and the man knew everybody’s name from one end of the street to the other.”

“Is that right?” Ryan says.

Mrs Dunlop is about to go on when she spots me. “Oh, hello, dear! And hello, Penny.”

Penny goes on ahead to do her greetings, starting with Mrs Dunlop then, after being suitably fussed over, moving on to Ryan. He sets the bags down and crouches to give Penny a scratch behind the ear. She licks his fingers in thanks.

Straightening, he gives me a nod. “Briony.”

That’s it. No “princess”. No remarks about my privileged life. Just my name, delivered civilly for once. It is, of course, the absolute minimum standard of neighbourly courtesy. But it’s also a lot more than I expect from him, and it throws me so thoroughly that it takes me a couple of seconds to produce a “hello” of my own.

“Ryan carried my shopping up for me,” Mrs Dunlop tells me. “He’s a nice lad, isn’t he?” She doesn’t wait for my answer, which is just as well because I have a thing or two to say about that. “And did you see the stairs, Briony? He had cleaners in this morning. They did the whole stairwell, top to bottom.”

I look around and see she’s right. The steps are free of builders’ dust, the banister is gleaming, and the stained-glass window on the half-landing has its colours back. I climbed these stairs an hour ago and never even noticed. Must have been lost in my head.

“It looks great,” I admit, although giving Ryan credit for anything feels wrong.

“And I’ll tell you something else about this one.” Mrs Dunlop wags a key at Ryan. “Last week, he left the most beautiful basket of flowers outside my door to say sorry for all the building work. It was almost as nice as the ones you make, dear. I assume you got one as well?”

I could tell her the basket was never meant for her, and the reason it was almost as nice as the ones I make is that I did make it. But Mrs Dunlop seems so chuffed I can’t bring myself to correct her.