The Secrets of Flowers, page 1
REAL READERS LOVE SALLY PAGE . . .
‘A fabulous, funny, heartbreaking, heartwarming, emotional rollercoaster of a story’
★★★★★
‘When you’re looking for a book that will raise your spirits . . . this is the read for you’
★★★★★
‘Beautiful narrative with wonderfully rich, warm characters’
★★★★★
‘Captivated me’
★★★★★
‘Fascinating . . . funny, sad, philosophical and a page-turner’
★★★★★
‘Touching, funny and sad. The heart of the story is about the human spirit and how the relationships we have with ourselves and other people can help us to overcome’
★★★★★
‘An absolute joy to read and feel part of’
★★★★★
‘The author has a rare talent . . . will touch the hearts of everyone who reads it . . . you will find yourself getting sad, angry and then laughing like a drain’
★★★★★
‘Beautifully crafted with believable characters that are totally relatable . . . this one will stay with me!’
★★★★★
‘A real page-turner, with characters that become your friends . . . a wonderful writer who will warm your heart’
★★★★★
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street,
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2024
Copyright © Sally Page, 2024
Cover design by Ellie Game/ HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
Cover photographs: Shutterstock.com
Sally Page asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008612900
eBook Edition © August, 2024 ISBN: 9780008612917
Version: 20240811
Dedicated with my love and thanks to
Pippa & Peter Bell
who took me ‘sailing’ on
the Olympic, the Queen Mary and the Royal Yacht Britannia.
&
for florists everywhere.
Flowers are like friends,
they bring colour to your world.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
PART 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
PART 2
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
PART 3
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
PART 4
Chapter 78
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Keep Reading
Prologue
Chapter 1
About the Author
Also by Sally Page
About the publisher
Prologue
Oxford
The scent of the rain summons the memory. Uninvited. Unwanted.
She is in the garden. It is late December, seven months after Will’s death. She is digging into the frozen ground. There is no order to the way she tackles the work. All she knows is that she wants to gouge her pain away.
Rain falls as she scrabbles in the earth. She has become used to waves of disorientating anger, but this is new. She thinks her rage will consume her.
When she spots some early snowdrops peeping through a pile of old leaves, she pulls at them, ripping them from the soil. The sight of the pure, hopeful flowers is more than she can bear.
As the earth runs to mud and soaks into her frozen skin, she rocks back and forward on her knees, the tiny flowers crushed in her hand.
Five months on, the rain on the partly open window is different – a May flurry making a blustery fuss before passing on. But something in the metallic fragrance lingers, conjuring the past. Emma looks at the blank laptop screen in front of her and wonders why she is finding this so difficult. It should be a simple enough thing to write: I resign. I quit. I shall be leaving. They are just words. It shouldn’t be this hard.
There have been times when she has found exactly the right words. Experienced the satisfaction of hearing a phrase settle just where it should, like a child posting the right shaped brick into the exact shaped slot. In the main, she associates these moments of succinct expression with the clinical environment of the lab in which she works, where everything is measured and nothing is left to chance.
But outside of work, in a world untrammelled by lines of white tiles, she finds her words are more likely to twist out of shape, like a scarf caught in the wind, swirling mid-air to wrap themselves with unintended meaning around the recipient. Either that, or her words are lost, carried away to be trodden, unnoticed, underfoot. Fear of saying the wrong thing makes her falter, and in that hesitation, she feels the substance draining from her words until all that is left in her mouth is a whisper. Then the best she can hope for is a pause, and a ‘Sorry, Emma, did you say something?’
Still, better that. Better to watch, helpless, as the phrases flap quietly away, than to be a person who holds words securely between a thumb and forefinger, ready to press them with precision into the softness of flesh, burying them with a persistent, thrusting thumb so that they will eventually take root. Not to grow outwards to the sun but to burrow deep into the heart of you.
Emma wonders why she has started thinking about her mother – a woman who can plant words in her flesh like a seasoned gardener.
Ten minutes later, Emma looks down at her brief words of resignation. She knows the time has come. She has just turned forty, and she wants a change. There will be more research to do on the degenerative condition they are studying, working with other universities around the world, but they will have to tackle it without her. She suspects her colleagues will miss her grasp of languages – she is fluent in Spanish, Italian and French – but will they miss her? She doubts it. And, apart from the languages, there are others who can take her place. The team’s PhD student is clearly itching to step into her shoes, and there is no doubt that he could. Literally. Emma is exceptionally tall and has always had large feet. She long ago gave up wondering why such a shy person was given a body and hair (corkscrew curly and very red) that make her so glaringly obvious in any crowd. Neither her science nor her grandmother’s God has ever provided a satisfactory answer to that one.
She wonders who she will tell about her decision. Her stomach and heart take the plunge down the well-worn track of those she wants to tell but can’t – her husband and her dad – and there is still, after all this time, the residual surprise that, once, once, she was happily marr
This never fails to amaze her.
Suddenly, there is something she needs to find. She unearths it from under the bundle of clean washing that is piled at the end of the table – the local free paper. The pages are turned over to the small ads. What she is looking for is ringed in black.
She frowns as she reads. Her memories of her father are invariably linked to his garden. Is this why it had jumped out at her? Could this be the change she is looking for?
Wanted: Florist to work part-time in garden centre.
Experience useful but not essential. Training can be given.
Own car helpful.
Must be friendly and good with people.
Emma re-reads the advert.
Well, at least she has her own car.
PART 1
Chapter 1
Emma
Chocolate Cosmos
Emma’s favourite time in the garden centre is first thing in the morning before it opens. The banks of plants smell of rich, damp earth where the owner, Les, has been watering – he is always there before her, and she knows where he is by the yellow hose moving in jerky jumps along the path. She never follows the yellow snake, preferring to walk on her own and breathe in the beginning of the day: still air with the promise of heat hidden in the haze; or cool air stirring the leaves, the precursor to blustery showers; and sometimes, days that are so clear it looks like the window cleaner has just been. On these days Emma sits on the bench by the cosmos that smell of chocolate and watches the downs that rise above the allotments at the back of the centre. She lets her mind go blank as shadows from the clouds chase each other across the hills. At lunchtime, she often retreats to this bench, preferring to eat alone rather than join the other staff in the café.
Emma has been working in the garden centre for just over two months and is still surprised that the husband and wife team, Betty and Les, gave her the job. At the interview she had decided not to dwell on her university work as it hardly seemed relevant, so instead, she had talked of ‘a time for a change’, ‘an abiding interest in flowers’ and said she was ‘keen to learn’. Afterwards, she recalled these clichés and the awkward pauses when she lost her nerve or her train of thought. But in the end, they had offered her the position – three days a week in the Flower Cabin, plus the odd Saturday. She can’t help wondering sometimes if anyone else even applied for the job.
It was Betty’s idea to offer a floristry service in the centre, making up bouquets, arrangements and the occasional funeral piece, in the hope of bringing in additional business. Les had happily constructed and painted a shed next to the water features and birdbaths, and the early weeks had seemed promising, but then a new ring road opened, and now less and less traffic flows through the gates. Last week, Emma heard Les muttering about turning the Flower Cabin into Santa’s Grotto in the autumn.
Betty has taught Emma how to condition flowers and make up arrangements and bouquets. She would like to use herbs and grasses from the plant section, too, but Betty is a traditionalist and likes her bouquets big and formal, filled with long-lasting, vibrant chrysanthemums and carnations. Emma is too grateful for the job to suggest anything different and has learnt how to make big bows out of shiny ribbon, just the way Betty likes.
The area where Emma feels she is making a difference is in the funeral work, and she has been pleased to find that the local funeral director is now recommending them. This has not gone unnoticed by Betty and Les and, although they raise their eyebrows at some of her tributes, they leave her to it. Emma sometimes wonders if they know about Will – theirs is an unusual surname, and Will’s death was covered by the local paper. When she sees Betty and Les exchanging concerned looks behind her back, she is almost sure they do.
Today, she is working on a large wreath for a funeral, to be made entirely of vegetables.
Betty pauses as she passes, glancing at it over the top of her glasses. ‘A few sprigs of crysanth or gyp would look lovely with that. Surely the poor woman wants a few flowers?’
Emma remembers the grey woman who arrived in the Flower Cabin after a round of calls to the undertaker, vicar, printer and caterer. She knew the exhausted woman would have accepted anything she suggested, but she wanted the flowers to be something her husband would have liked – a tribute that would remind her of the man she loved in life, not in death.
‘I did ask her, but she said he wasn’t much of a one for flowers, although he loved his vegetable garden.’ Emma wires a plump pea pod into her base next to some baby carrots. She looks up; she can tell that Betty is not convinced. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ she asks, anxiously.
‘No, love. To each their own.’
This is one of Les’s sayings. Betty peppers her conversation with them, and Emma has caught herself starting to use them. Les is a large, quiet man who never rushes into speech. Emma imagines him searching his mind for the right saying or proverb to suit his purpose. Sometimes Emma tries to match him, cliché for cliché. She always loses.
Les: ‘Looks like we’re in for a bit of rain.’
Emma, looking up at the sky: ‘Umm, yes, I think this is the calm before the storm.’
Les: ‘Well, the gardens can certainly do with it.’
Emma: ‘You know what they say – no rain, no flowers.’
Les: ‘Yes, every cloud has a silver lining.’
Emma: ‘Er…’
Les (now gently smiling as if in quiet victory): ‘Well, I’d better see to the cosmos – they won’t re-pot themselves.’
Betty’s conversation is either ‘on’ or ‘off’. If she is in the mood for talking, which she often is, her chatter flows on like water over pebbles, even if no one is in earshot. Emma finds it soothing, rather like having the radio on in the background.
Emma wonders what their home life is like: Les, big and bearded, filling the space in their compact bungalow at the back of the garden centre; Betty, small and busy, dodging around him. Emma is reminded of a YouTube clip she once saw of a large dog, apparently living in harmony with a small tortoiseshell cat. They shared the same bed, and the St Bernard let the cat walk all over him – literally. He looked happy enough, but Emma noticed that the dog never took his eyes off the cat for a moment. Still, she thinks, it must work: Betty mentioned recently that they are about to celebrate their fortieth wedding anniversary. That was when, with a jolt, Emma had remembered it would have been her and Will’s tenth anniversary this month.
Betty continues to study the vegetable wreath, a small crease between her brows. She smooths her bumblebee jumper down across her small, rounded stomach and crosses her arms. Betty is very fond of wildlife jumpers, especially those displaying woodland creatures. She likes to keep with the seasons and, despite it being a cool, grey day, this is July – the time for bumblebees and butterflies.
Just as Emma thinks Betty is about to say something more, the door to the Flower Cabin slams open and a large man in his forties, wearing a high-viz jacket, bundles his way in, carrying three large boxes on his shoulder.
‘Ah, Tamas, come in,’ Betty says, guiding the man towards a space by a row of empty buckets. She turns to Emma. ‘You’ve not met Tamas before, have you, Emma?’
The man deposits the boxes with practised ease into the small space.
‘Tamas is our flower man,’ Betty continues. ‘He brings our orders from the local market and from our Dutch wholesaler. I’ve changed his delivery days so you’ll be in when the new flowers come. It’ll help having the two of us to unpack them.’
The flower man turns his large frame towards her, holding out his hand. ‘Ah, Emma, I have heard a lot about you.’ He speaks with a thickish accent – Emma, the linguist, thinks it might be Dutch.
As he grasps her hand and shakes it furiously, he looks down at her, which makes a change, though she wishes he would let go of her hand.
‘Ha! Betty said you were a tall girl. And just look at you.’
‘Yes, and look at you,’ Emma fires back, surprised into an instant response.
Tamas grins. ‘Your legs, look at that – you have no ankles!’
Emma is finding it hard to order her thoughts. She knows she has terrible ankles – her mother was fond of reminding her that she didn’t get her legs – but it seems very rude for this stranger to say so.
In the end, all she can think to say is, ‘And you have no hair.’
At least this stops Tamas from grasping her hand. He runs two large hands over his enormous, bald head. ‘This is true. I am bald as a duck.’ He turns to Betty. ‘Is that right, Betty? Bald as a duck?’
