The Flower Arrangement by Ella Griffin Page A

remembering the look in Karina’s eyes. She could pass any other job over to someone else, but not this one. She pulled herhair into a bun at the back of her neck and rummaged in the clutter on the counter for a pen to pin it into place.
    She wasn’t even sure where to begin. Most of her customers wanted simple, elegant arrangements. She had made a few frame wreaths at her training course in London six years ago, but nothing this elaborate. There might be a supplier out there who stocked a guitar-shaped wire frame, but if there was, it was too late to order one now. And the guitar had to be blue. It was going to take a hundred flowers at least, maybe even two hundred. She looked around at the rows of buckets. There was nothing blue in stock except for some anemones that looked as if they were going over.
    She picked a card off the carousel and turned it over. Then she pulled the pen out of her bun and began to make a list.
    *   *   *
    â€œI’m going,” Phil whispered to Ciara, “before she changes her mind.”
    Ciara peered at the card over his shoulder. Lara’s handwriting, chaotic at its best, was almost illegible.
Hydrangeas. Vanda orchids, royal blue. Blue Star delphiniums. Cornflowers.
    â€œYou’re never going to manage that on the bike,” she whispered back. “You’d better take the van!” She took the keys from a hook by the till and tossed them to him. “Try the wholesalers in Dún Laoghaire. They’re expensive but they usually have a lot of stock. You might be lucky.”
    Phil tucked the card into the pocket of his leather jacket. “Don’t let her leave, okay?”
    They both looked up at the ceiling toward the workroom. They’d left Lara sitting at her worktable, her chair facing the wall instead of the window, staring into space.
    *   *   *
    Lara listened to their lowered voices, to the jingle of the temple bells as Phil left the shop, to the sounds of a few customers coming and going, to Ciara’s footsteps walking back and forth as she served them.
    For a long time she studied the photograph that she had emailed herself from Karina’s phone. The blue acoustic guitar that Damian had set his heart on. Then she reached for a pencil and one of the drawing pads she used to plan wedding arrangements and began to sketch.
    By the time Phil came back up to the workroom, she was re-creating her drawing in three dimensions, using wire.
    â€œCiara’s conditioning the flowers. I brought you a muffin and a coffee,” he said. She looked up at him quickly, and then down at the takeaway cup, afraid she was going to see the gray Camden Deli logo.
    â€œStarbucks,” he said gently.
    â€œThank you.” She bent her head over her construction. “Could you check if there’s any more of this eighteen-millimeter wire in the drawer? It should be next to the ribbon rolls.”
    For a moment there she sounded almost like her old self, Phil thought. “Sure,” he said, turning away so she wouldn’t see the relief on his face.
    Phil and Ciara wanted to stay after the shop had closed but Lara sent them home. She couldn’t bear being around other people right now. The way they treated her, as if she was breakable, reminded her of how broken she was.
    She thought about Frank’s offer as she worked, imagining the ordered hush of her top-floor office at Green Sea. The door closed, the only sound the click of her mouse as she tinkered with typefaces. Whole days slipping by without having to talk to another person.
    She stared at the five buckets that Ciara had lined up on the floor beside the workbench—a carpet of two hundred and fifty flowers. Blue after blue after blue. She might not miss the shop if she went back to design, she thought, but she would miss the beauty of the flowers.
    She went downstairs to find what she needed. Her neat store cupboard was unrecognizable. She