The Flower Arrangement by Ella Griffin

know how much he hates rugby—but I was working and I made him go.” She bent her head and rubbed her forehead hard with her fingertips. “I should have taken him to the doctor.” Her eyes darted wildly around the shop. “How did I not know that something terrible was wrong?”
    Lara remembered her father’s diagnosis. Just because you loved someone, it didn’t mean you could know everything, she thought.
    â€œI got home at seven”—Karina’s voice was robotic—“and I was exhausted and he was still complaining about his back, so I gave him paracetamol and a plate of lasagna and I plonked him in front of the TV. All I wanted to do was have a glass of wine and get into the bath. So that’s what I did. At about eight, he knocked on the door, and I was annoyed. I told him to wait five minutes, to give me a bit of peace.” She made a fist and pushed her knuckles against her mouth. “But he started to cry. He hasn’t cried since he was six or seven, so I knew something was wrong then. But by the time I came out of the bathroom, he had collapsed. He could hardly breathe and he couldn’t speak. He lost consciousness just before the ambulance came. He died on the way to the hospital. They tried to bring him back. They did everything they could, but . . .”
    She doubled over; it was a minute before she could speak again. “When we were still waiting for the paramedics, when he was lying on the landing, he was staring into my eyes. He was trying to tell me something, Lara, but he couldn’t, and now I’ll never know what it was.”
    Lara’s father, too, had looked into her eyes just before he died. He had been slipping in and out of consciousness for days, but he came back to be with her, and it felt as if he was with her again now. “Damian was telling you that he loved you,” she wanted to tell Karina, without knowing where these words came from. “He was saying good-bye.”
    â€œIt was his heart,” Karina said. “They don’t know for sure yet butthey think he had a tear or a rupture. How is that possible? He wasn’t even thirteen. His birthday is on Thursday. He wanted a guitar.”
    She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and fumbled in her bag for her phone and showed Lara a photograph of a blue acoustic guitar.
    â€œThis is the one he wanted. Can you make it for me, Lara, in flowers?”
    â€œOf course,” Lara said, without even thinking. “Is there anything else I can do?”
    Karina clenched her jaw. “Can you make me cry? Everyone around me is crying. My bloody parents, who didn’t even want me to have Damian. The customers at the restaurant. The fucking undertaker had tears in his eyes this morning.” She made a sound that was almost a laugh. A short, sharp bark. “But I can’t!” She shook her head hard. “What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I cry?”
    *   *   *
    After Karina had gone, Lara stood at the door and remembered the last time she’d seen Damian. He had been in the shop at the beginning of the summer, his inky black hair shaved into a buzz cut, his wrists covered in friendship bracelets. He had been bored, fidgeting with his phone while his mother had dithered between snapdragons and foxgloves. How was it possible that a boy who had everything to live for would go home to his mother’s house in a coffin tomorrow morning?
    Tomorrow morning! A wave of panic hit Lara. She had promised Karina that she would deliver the guitar wreath first thing. How was she going to do that? What had she been thinking? She wasn’t ready to come back to work. She might never be ready.
    She reached for the phone. She’d call all the florists she knew in Dublin. Get someone else to take the job on. She began to scroll frantically through her contacts. Appassionata, Gingko, the Garden. Then she stopped,