The Flower Arrangement Read Free

local people who emerged on the weekends to take the streets back for themselves. A Saturday could be even more hectic than aFriday, but it felt more chilled out because everyone had time to stop and, literally, smell the flowers.
    Just after nine, the door opened and her first customer came in: a man in his twenties in jeans and a very crumpled shirt carrying two cups of takeaway coffee and a plastic bag full of croissants. He winced when the wind chimes tinkled, and Lara turned the radio down in case his hangover was as bad as it looked. “Good morning.”
    â€œVery good night!” He grinned sheepishly. “Not sure about the morning yet.”
    He rambled around the shop for a while, muttering to himself, apologizing to a bucket of stargazers when he bumped into it. Lara asked if he wanted any help, and five minutes later he left with a glorious bunch of white narcissi tucked under his free arm.
    A stressed-out woman in her thirties wearing pajama bottoms under her coat and Velcro rollers in her hair double-parked her Mini on the street right outside and rushed in looking for twelve gifts for a hen party.
    â€œPerfect! Sorted! Done!” She swooped on the line of jam jar arrangements that Lara had just finished. And Lara, who had seen the traffic cop go past a minute earlier, didn’t have the heart to tell her that the twelve miniature bouquets were meant for the charity dinner.
    The shop was busy for the next two hours; then there was a lull. At about twelve, a man in his forties in a light green linen jacket, with thinning hair carefully spiked up to hide a bald patch, ducked in to avoid a sudden shower of hailstones. He cursed under his breath as he shook little nuggets of ice off his shoulders. He looked around at the fairy lights and lanterns and finally at Lara, who was working under a circle of soft light cast from the chandelier.
    â€œIt’s kind of dark in here.” He sounded disapproving.
    â€œIt is.” Lara gave him a quick smile. Choosing flowers, deciding what to write on a card, these were personal things. A little mood lighting didn’t hurt.
    Hailstones were flinging themselves against the window likehandfuls of gravel. “Bloody typical.” The man rolled his eyes. “I’m going on a blind date. Better hope she’s actually blind if I have to walk to Duke Street in that!”
    â€œWhy don’t you wait it out?” Lara smiled. “It won’t last long.” She went back to work on a new set of mini bouquets for the charity dinner. She had panicked when she found she didn’t have enough jam jars, then decided she could use a dozen mismatched china cups she had picked up in a charity shop at some stage. They were turning out better than she had hoped.
    She heard, rather than saw, the man’s mood change as he wandered around the shop. He began to whistle, out of tune, to the aria playing on the radio.
    The reason people loved to give and receive flowers, Lara thought for the hundredth time—the truth, the root that ran deep beneath the bouquets for birthdays and anniversaries and births and even deaths—was that human beings were changed by flowers. Even when they were not aware of it, some part of them basked in their beauty. They slowed down. They took deeper breaths. Their faces softened.
    â€œIt’s stopped.” The man was standing by the counter now. Lara looked up and saw that the sun had come out. The light catching in the drops that clung to the window cast tiny darts of rainbows that danced around them.
    â€œSpring is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine,” she quoted.
    â€œSeamus Heaney,” the man sighed. “One of our greatest poets. Hard to believe he’s gone. Nobody could say it the way he did.”
    â€œTrue,” Lara agreed tactfully, although the quote was by Frances Hodgson Burnett, the author of her favorite childhood book,
The Secret Garden
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    The