Page 18 of Forever Love at Fleur's Flower Shop

Fleur slowly lowered her hands and looked across the table to the older man. Reluctantly, she took his proffered hand, which he eagerly shook. This was going to be a long seven minutes. ‘Evening.’

Chapter Twelve

Stepping through the front door into her little cottage, Fleur headed straight for the sofa and threw herself down.

Yuck, she was never going to let Gregory talk her into helping out with another town function again. And certainly, she was never ever, ever going to another speed dating event again. Ever. Something which had sounded fun and interesting had turned into a nightmare.

Shifting position, she pulled a cushion from behind her back and covered her face with it, screaming into the soft filling, her voice muffling against the fabric of the cushion.

Maybe she shouldn’t completely discount speed dating. It could have been good, a quick sure-fire way of meeting numerous potential dates in a short space of time without the inconvenience of endless rounds of meaningless messaging.

Just not now. Not with everything she had going on in her mind. And not in Nettleford. She’d made the mistake of dating locally before and where had it landed her? With her ex of ten years moving right back. Nope, she needed distance.

But what was she supposed to do about Matty? He wanted to meet to discuss... what? The fact she’d left him? Yep, well, sheknew she’d done that, but what would dragging up the past do? It would only bring hurt feelings to the surface again, surely?

Throwing the cushion on the floor, she sat up and tugged her boots off before flinging them across towards the door. Forcing herself to stand up, she headed towards the kitchen. She was shattered, but she knew there was no chance of her falling asleep right now but a hot chocolate, made the way her grandma always had, might just do the trick.

After setting her grandma’s battered old milk pan on the hob, she poured in the milk and switched the oven on. She missed her. She missed her grandma so so much. And with Matty coming back, it just reminded her of that time in her life again. That time, two weeks and four days before her supposed marriage to Matty, when she’d received that call. The call from the hospital to inform her that her grandma, her rock, had passed away.

Wandering back into the living room, she picked up the photograph of her, her grandad, and her grandma from the mantelpiece and looked at it. They all looked so happy. She must have been about seventeen in the picture. Two years after her parents had abandoned her and five years before, she’d abandoned Matty.

Hurrying across to the large oak sideboard which stood in the corner of the living room, she knelt down and opened the door. Pulling out the metal biscuit tin, she traced the jolly Christmas designs with the pad of her forefinger before pulling off the lid and lifting out a handful of photographs.

To get comfy, she crossed her legs as she looked at picture after picture. She stared at a photograph of her at fifteen, the first Christmas she’d spent with her grandparents, and wiped her eyes. The expression on her young face as she opened presents was anything but joy. She looked worried, anxious, unsure.

She remembered that day. She remembered coming down the stairs into the living room that Christmas morning. She hadn’t known what to expect, every other Christmas morning she’d come down to find the usual, her parents slumped on the sofa, still asleep after a heavy night’s drinking, but instead she’d found her grandparents sitting expectantly waiting for her to rise, a feast of a breakfast set out on the table at the back of the room and a mound of brightly wrapped presents beneath the tree.

Using the back of her hand, she swiped at her eyes again as the tears began to fall. It had been the best and the worst Christmas of her life. The best because she’d finally experienced what her friends had always spoken about - a Christmas Day filled with happiness, food and presents - and the worst because she’d realised what she’d been missing out on.

She remembered the exact moment it had hit her, like a hammer in the chest, that her parents weren’t going to be coming back for her, and that she was actually happy about that. The relief had taken over whilst she’d been unwrapping her first present, a Tony Walkman complete with an album of the years’ hits, but after, whilst she held the next unwrapped present in her hands, that had been when the guilt had struck.

When she’d dropped that present and ran upstairs, the first thing she’d done when she’d reached her room was to grab the black bin liner her parents had thrown out of the car window when they’d told her to get out of the car in front of her grandparents’ house, and after shoving the new clothes and knick-knacks her grandparents had bought her since arriving, she’d turned ready to leave.

Only she hadn’t been met with her grandma and grandpa’s stern words or expressions of indifference, she’d been met with their open arms, their promises that they wouldn’t be going anywhere, that they wanted her to stay, that she was loved.

Letting the photos drop to the floor, Fleur drew her legs to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs.

She hadn’t walked out on Matty, on her wedding, on the promise of being together forever because she hadn’t loved Matty. She’d walked out on him because she hadn’t believed she deserved to be loved. She hadn’t believed anyone would want to love her, that anyone would love her broken pieces.

And from that day on, from that first step outside the church, she’d shoved her bouquet of yellow sunflowers and purple lavender into the nearest bin and vowed she’d make it on her own, vowed she was better on her own. And that’s what she’d done. She’d put on the front of being the happy-go-lucky Fleur people knew her as and become the confident florist and later the owner of her very own flower shop.

Yes, she’d dated. She’d dated a lot. Always making sure she chose someone as far from Matty as she could, which had unfortunately meant she’d been cheated on, dumped, lied to on more occasions than she wanted to remember, but she’d been safe, she’d never fallen in love.

But now he was back, and he was threatening to make a hole in her happy persona, to break down the walls she’d carefully constructed around her heart, and she wasn’t strong enough. She wasn’t strong enough to meet him tomorrow, to talk to him about what had happened all those years ago. She wasn’t strong enough to face her feelings. She wasn’t strong enough to have him tell her that he’d moved on, that her walking out on him had been the best thing for him.

She jerked her head up as the piercing screech of the fire alarm filled the room.

The milk!

Jumping up, she ran into the kitchen, waving her hands in front of her in an attempt to disperse the black smoke filling the small room. Grabbing the saucepan from the hob, she turnedto the sink and threw it in, leaping back as the milk splattered across her hand.

‘Ouch!’ Shaking the scorching liquid from her hand, she tuned the tap on and shoved her hand beneath, the freezing water dulling the intense pain slightly. Whilst keeping one hand beneath the running water, she grabbed the tea towel she kept over the handle of the oven and wafted it beneath the fire alarm.

Please stop, please stop before the noise wakes the neighbours.

Eventually, after what felt like half an hour, the fire alarm finally blinkered to a stop, the smoke-filled room once again being plunged into silence.

She looked down at her hand. The skin had turned wrinkly from the water, but the burn remained a bright red streak across her palm. Great. Tomorrow was going to be fun, trying to arrange flowers with one hand.

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