The next afternoon, I let the volunteer driver and his helper into the house. They had brought blankets and a trolley. I showed them the chair and moved out of the way.
It caught briefly in the nursery doorway. The driver tipped it, judged the angle and got it through. No one needed my advice. I followed them down the stairs, carrying the cushion that had come loose.
At the van, I put the cushion back on the seat.
“Lovely condition,” the helper said. “Someone will be pleased with that.”
I nodded.
When they drove away, I went back upstairs. The space beside the cot was larger than it had looked with the chair there. I could see a pale mark in the carpet where one foot had rested.
I stood in the empty space and waited to regret it.
I missed it. That wasn’t quite the same thing.
Ruth found me in the conservatory later, looking through old business photographs for the paintwork pictures Adam had asked about. I’d located the maintenance shots eventually, but beneath them was a photograph of Mum outside her original shop, one hand on the old front counter and the other pointing at the camera.
“What was she telling us to do?” I asked.
Ruth leaned over my shoulder.
“Hurry up. It was starting to rain.”
“That counter was beautiful.”
“It was enormous.”
I looked at the carved edge. “What happened to it?”
“She sold it.”
I turned towards her. “I thought it went into storage.”
“No. It paid for most of the first van.”
“She loved that counter.”
“She did. The shop was closing for the move, and we needed to get flowers to people without borrowing your uncle’s car every other day.”
I looked at the photograph again.
“She never told me.”
“You had three weddings that weekend and a bride who wanted black chair covers. There were more pressing arguments.”
“I was very reasonable about those covers.”
Ruth snorted.
We found another photograph: Mum, younger than I now thought of her, standing proudly beside an ugly white van with a dented door. I remembered that van. It smelled of damp cardboard, mint sweets and the rubber mat she kept rolling up to shake out. She had called it a bargain until the clutch went.
On the wall behind us, the freestanding arch held its familiar curl of ivy. The decorative panels beside it were obscured by tall buckets. I moved the buckets and stood back.
“That much,” I said.
Ruth followed my gaze.
“The arch?”
“And those panels, if they’re sound enough. Not the whole conservatory.”
She didn’t immediately answer.
“I’ve been asking where I could put this room,” I said. “I need somewhere we can work.”
“Yes.”
I sat at the desk and opened Adam’s report. On a clean page I wrote the pieces I wanted to cost for removal and reuse. The arch. Two decorative panels. Nothing that required rebuilding an entire roof over our heads.
Then I emailed the agent about the station unit. I wanted Ruth and Nina there before we discussed a trial. We needed to see how the place worked with all three of us in it, and with someone arriving who did not already know which door to use.
Ruth read the message over my shoulder.
“Ask about the kettle,” she said.
“The kettle?”
“You can plan a whole new business if you like. I want to know where we’re making tea.”
I added a question about power and water, then sent it.
Before we left, I put the photograph of Mum and the van beside the one of the old shop. She looked equally pleased in both.
The Trial Run
The first customer at the station yard was trying to return a lawnmower.
She stood in the loading doorway holding a broken plastic handle, looking past me at the flowers as though we had put them there to confuse her.
“They said the blue door.”
“There are two,” Nina said.
“Why?”
Neither of us had a useful answer.
I took her to the repair workshop at the far end of the yard. Its owner came out wiping his hands on a rag, accepted the handle and asked whether we’d moved in.
“Just trying it,” I said.
“Lovely. My wife’ll like that.” He glanced at the open door. “You’ll want a bell.”
“We’ve got one.”
“At the other end.”
“Yes.”
He looked at me kindly. It was worse than if he had laughed.
We had paid for two days’ use. On Monday the agent had walked Ruth, Nina and me through the unit with the power restored, the sink running and a packet of conditions he seemed rather proud of. Our insurer had confirmed the temporary arrangement. A hired chilled cabinet stood in the back room; it would be collected at the end of the trial. Nothing about it committed me to a lease, except perhaps the way I’d already imagined my name on the window.
By Wednesday morning we had made twelve small arrangements for a breakfast meeting, and that part had been glorious.
The van reversed directly to the loading doors. Nina could carry a tray through without turning sideways. Ruth washed buckets at a sink that didn’t require her to move a stack of boxes first. Even the hired cabinet had behaved, reaching the temperature it ought to reach without our coaxing it like a sulky relative.
I had stood at the front window with a handful of pale narcissi, watching a bus pass at the end of the road. Nobody beyond that glass knew who had slept where last night. Nobody could point to my bedroom from their workbench.
Then the bell had rung while all three of us were at the back, and we hadn’t heard it.
The meeting organiser called from outside, asking if we’d forgotten her collection. We hadn’t. I ran to the front, unlocked the door I’d locked while unloading, and apologised into the startled face of a woman holding an empty carrier bag.
“Am I early?”
“No. I’m badly arranged.”
She laughed, which was generous. I carried the flowers out to her car, discovered she had parked on the far side of the building and made two journeys round the block because the gate between the approaches belonged to another tenant.
Nina watched me return, pink and breathless.
“That needs fixing.”
“I know.”
“Before we put a display there.”
She pointed to the long front window, where I had arranged our tallest stands and three urns. They looked beautiful in the light. They also hid almost all of the working room from anyone approaching on foot.
“The display tells people what we do.”
“The sign could tell them what we do. The display’s telling them nobody’s in.”
I moved one stand six inches.
Nina went back to her bench.
Jo Mercer arrived at eleven, as arranged, in a raincoat with a phone held between her cheek and shoulder. She managed a venue called the Granary, outside town, and had contacted us after my notice about the move. She had a wedding at the beginning of May whose original florist could no longer supply the installation. A substantial wedding. The sort of booking that would pay for an inconveniently large part of my inconveniently small future.
I’d suggested she see the trial space. I wanted her to picture a functioning business rather than a woman leaving her husband with a van full of buckets.
She finished her call before she reached the table.
“Sorry. Table linen. There are apparently nine kinds of white.”
“There are more,” I said.
“Don’t tell the bride.”
She put a folder down and looked around.
“Good light.”
“Wonderful.”
“Where do clients park?”
I explained. She looked towards the front door, then at the route we’d just taken.
“Could someone collect at six?”
“We’d arrange it.”
Ruth, washing a container behind us, set it down a little harder than necessary.
Jo opened the folder. I had seen the photographs by email: a long room with a low ceiling, exposed beams and wide tables. The couple wanted colour, movement, something generous enough to warm the space but low enough for people to talk across it. They had a small child who loved yellow, and yellow had survived every family opinion about the wedding.
I liked them already.
I’d brought a sample in a stone urn. Apricot tulips, yellow ranunculus, branches reaching upwards to make a canopy. It looked like a small piece of the conservatory transported whole. I had spent the previous evening adjusting it while my dinner went cold.
Jo stood back.
“That’s very lovely.”
I knew the tone. I had used it about bridesmaids’ dresses.
“But?”
“It’s tall.”
“The flowers sit above people’s sight lines.”
“The beams don’t.” She took out the photograph again. “We’ve got the hanging lights as well. They want to see along the room.”
“We could put these at the ends.”
“And the middle?”
“Smaller versions.”
She bent down until her eyes were level with the arrangement. Through the branches, her face looked divided into sections.
“The couple showed me something lower. More spread out.”
“I saw their references.”
Nina had come closer. She held a shallow bowl against her apron, empty except for a tangle of wire.
“We could show you a different shape,” she said.
I glanced at it. “That isn’t ready.”
“I can put the stems across now.”
“We’ve costed the urns.”
Jo straightened.
“I’m less worried about containers than about what they want to look at.”
There was nothing rude in the words. I still felt my face heat.
I explained the balance of the room. The height of the doors. How a generous entrance would pull the eye towards the far end. I could hear myself doing it, laying one good reason over another until the table between us was covered in them.
Jo listened. Then she showed me a message from the bride: Please no big things in the middle. I want to see my gran.
“That’s clear enough,” Nina said.
I gave her a look I should not have given her.
She put the bowl down.
We discussed delivery windows and the time available for clearing. Jo needed a firm answer by the following afternoon. I promised revised drawings. She thanked me, took photographs of the sample and left through the front door, where she had to move sideways round a stand.
After she’d gone, I picked up the shallow bowl.
“Why didn’t you show me this before?”
“I did. Yesterday. You said we’d use the urns.”
“I meant for the sample.”
“So did I.”
Ruth turned off the tap.
The silence afterwards was humiliating. Not because they were ganging up on me. Because nobody needed to.
“I’ll do another drawing,” I said.
Nina looked at the clock. “I’m due at the wholesaler.”
“Then go.”
She went.
I spent the next hour changing the drawing without really changing the design. Every time I lowered something, I wanted to fill the space above it. I could see the conservatory’s proportions in my head, the long graceful lift I’d made so many times that my hands began it before I had decided to.
At one, Ruth put a sandwich beside me.
“I haven’t got time.”
“Then eat faster.”
She sat at the other end of the table. For a while we ate without talking. Through the front window, I watched a man slow down, peer past the urns and walk on.
“Do you like it here?” I asked.
“The sink is a joy.”
“The whole thing.”
“I don’t know yet.”
I stared at the drawing.
“Merefield must have sinks.”
“Yes.”
It was an ugly little remark, and she declined to tidy it up for me.
“I thought if we found somewhere, it would help you decide.”
“It will. But I won’t tell them no because you’ve found a room.”
“I haven’t asked you to.”
“You’ve asked me three different ways since Monday.”
I put the sandwich down.
She continued, not cruelly, “You keep saying there’ll be space for a proper lunch. I can eat standing in a cupboard if I’ve got time to eat. What will be different at five?”
“The hours.”
“Show me.”
I could not. Beside my elbow lay a drawing for a job that would have all three of us working beyond the hours I was trying to promise her.
Ruth wrapped the other half of her sandwich.
“I need to leave at four today. My sister’s coming for a couple of nights. We arranged it weeks ago.”
“All right.”
“I’ve done the collections. Nina’s back at three. There’s nothing waiting you don’t know about.”
“You don’t have to give me a defence.”
She looked at me for a moment.
“I know,” she said.
That afternoon I sent Jo a second design. It was lower, but still filled the same containers, and I described the difference in three paragraphs. By the time I pressed send, Nina had gone home. I had missed the chance to try her bowl in front of someone other than myself.
Adam called while I was packing the stems for the journey back to the conservatory.
“How was the new kingdom?”
“Two doors too many.”
“That sounds solvable.”
“Don’t solve it.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You sounded as though you were.”
A pause.
“I was asking about your day, Elena.”
I leaned against the van. The corner of a tray pressed into my hip.
“I’m sorry. It was difficult.”
“Do you want to tell me?”
“Not yet.”
“All right. I rang about Saturday. The winter garden’s clear for visitors, and there’s someone who can let us into the side room. Four o’clock?”
The side room. The remembered music. Something he wanted me to see.
“Yes. I’d like that.”
“Wear shoes you don’t mind getting dirty.”
“My romantic wardrobe is expanding.”
“Mine mostly begins there.”
I smiled, then looked at the van again.
“And I’ve chosen the pieces,” I said. “From the conservatory. The arch and two panels, if they can be used. I found the old paintwork photographs. I’ll send them.”
He was quiet for a second.
“Good. Send the list too. I’ll work out the next step from those.”
It was tempting to tell him the smaller choice ought to have made the rest easier. Instead I said goodnight, sent the photographs and finished loading.
The next day, Jo called before lunch.
I stood very still while she spoke. We had brought the twelve meeting arrangements back to clean and sort; the customer had returned them with a note saying everyone had loved the yellow. One of the bowls still held a biscuit wrapped in a napkin.
“They’ve chosen another florist,” Jo said.
I looked at the biscuit.
“Right.”
“Their sample’s closer to what they had in mind.”
“I could have—”
I stopped. The time for could have had been yesterday.
“I understand.”
“I did like your work. But I need a supplier who can follow the room and the couple. We haven’t got time to persuade each other.”
She didn’t say never. She didn’t offer me something smaller to soften it either.
I thanked her for letting me know and ended the call.
Ruth saw my face.
“Not ours?”
“No.”
Nina continued wrapping the cleaned containers. I wanted her to look up. I also wanted her never to mention the bowl.
“She liked the other sample better,” I said.
Nobody disputed it.
I went to the office and took the pencilled booking out of the diary. Underneath was Sophie and Finn on the twenty-fifth of May, the accepted four thousand eight hundred and sixty, Nina’s staircase drawing clipped to the page. A real job. Money we’d earned the right to ask for. Below it, the return collection on the twenty-sixth. I ran my finger over both entries and left them alone.
Then I took out the station trial sheet.
Cold storage: worked.
Loading: worked.
Customer approach: failed.
I nearly wrote display needs adjustment. Instead I wrote I wouldn’t change it.
At the front window, Nina was sorting the remaining stems by length. I carried the shallow bowl over to her.
“Will you show me what you were going to do?”
“For Jo?”
“She’s booked someone else.”
“I know.”
“So I don’t need a drawing to send her. I need to see it.”
Nina considered me, then pulled a crate over with her foot.
“You’ll have to hold this end.”
I held it. She threaded three branches through the low wire shape, turning the bowl after each one. The whole arrangement travelled sideways instead of up, airy enough to see through, bright flowers scattered as if they had decided where to land.
It took less than ten minutes.
I went to the far side of the table and sat down. Through the flowers I could see Nina’s whole face.
“That would have worked,” I said.
“Yes.”
It hurt. I let it.
We kept the sample on the table while we finished the trial. At four, Ruth put on her coat. I almost asked whether she could stay while we loaded. The words were ready before I looked at the clock.
“Enjoy your sister,” I said.
“I generally do.”
After she’d gone, Nina and I made two trips to the van. It took longer. I dropped a box of ribbons and had to retrieve them from beneath the hired cabinet. At half past five, I was kneeling on the floor with my arm under it while Nina illuminated the last roll with her phone.
“Further left,” she said.
“Your left?”
“There aren’t two kinds.”
I began to laugh. It was not quite a happy sound at first. Then she started, and the ribbon came free, and we sat on the floor of a place we did not yet own with our shoulders shaking.
Outside, I handed the trial key back to the agent.
“Well?” he asked.
“I want to talk about the customer entrance. The bell. And whether we can put a collection sign by the yard.”
“All possible questions.”
“And I need another week before a decision.”
“I can’t hold it indefinitely.”
“I know.”
He pocketed the key. This was not a promise that the room would wait for me. It was time I would have to use.
In the van, I drew a line through my old sketch of the window. Nina watched, saying nothing.
Then I drew a door somebody could actually see.