Page 4 of Finding Love at Roseford Blooms
As she closed the door to the flat, Lizzie realised, for the first time, just how empty the place felt without Paul and his stuff there. He’d been slowly moving out for a couple of months, and hadn’t actually lived there for about the same amount of time, but, in her vulnerable state, all of the emotions she’d kept bottled up after their relationship had ended threatened to bubble to the surface. She tried valiantly to feel grateful that, in selling her half of Warner-Basset Marketing Solutions, she had a very healthy bank balance, which would be a decent cushion and give her the time to think carefully about what she wanted to do next, but the shock of the events of the last couple of days suddenly hit her like a thunderbolt now she was back home, and alone.
Staggering to the sofa in the small living room of the flat, she felt the panic rising. She needed to get a grip. She couldn’t spend the next few weeks sitting alone in here, with nothing to do except wait for her arm to mend. She had to get out. But where?
Suddenly, Bee’s message on the card that came with the flowers came back to her. Could that be a possibility? Thinking about the last time she’d been at Bee’s house caused a whole raft of new emotions to rise to the surface; feelings that, in her weakened state, she really didn’t want to add to the mix. But given the choice between her own flat, upon which the lease would be up in a few months anyway, going to live with her parents and going to see Bee, even the past felt like a preferable option.
Scrabbling around in her bag for the card, Lizzie turned it over and looked at the phone number that had been written on the back of it. Could she impose on Bee, after all these years? Or was that just hope born of desperation? There was only one way to find out.
Grabbing her mobile, she dialled the number and waited. She was almost relieved when, eventually, it cut to voicemail.
‘Aunt Bee? It’s Lizzie.’ Lizzie swallowed hard. The sound of Bee’s voice on the automated system had caused a rush in her head that she hadn’t been prepared for.
‘Thank you so much for the lovely flowers. I was wondering if I might come and see you for a bit, but not to worry if it’s inconvenient.’ She paused again. ‘Well. Hope to speak soon. Bye.’ Clicking the ‘end call’ button, Lizzie carefully put the phone down on the seat beside her.
The minute she did so, she started second-guessing herself. What was she thinking? Going to see Bee was not the answer. More likely, it would stir up a whole new soup of discord that she didn’t have the physical or mental strength to deal with. So why on earth had she been compelled to make the call? Was it just because Lizzie was touched that Bee, despite not having been in regular contact for a few years, had been thinking of her enough to send those flowers? Or was it that Lizzie needed to force some kind of closure on what had happened to make her stay away from Roseford in the first place? One thing was for certain, she needed to make some decisions one way or the other, and sitting in a flat that very soon wasn’t going to be hers anyway wasn’t the way to go about it.
She was trying to decide what to get delivered for her dinner that night, cooking anything one-handed being out of the question, when her phone rang. Grabbing it, she felt a flutter of pointless hope that it could be Paul, and all of this was just some bad dream. But no. Looking at the name and number, it was immediately clear it wasn’t. She couldn’t handle Georgina right now. She needed time to think. Her sister, for all of her ‘good’ intentions, could wait. She declined the call and slumped back on the sofa. What did it matter, anyway? Georgina couldn’t offer any comfort, or answers, from where she was. This was something Lizzie had to work out for herself.
But, before she could muse on this any longer, the phone rang again. This time, it was Bee, returning her call.
‘Lizzie!’ she exclaimed down the line. ‘How wonderful to hear from you. How are you? Did you enjoy the flowers?’
Lizzie, despite her mood, smiled slightly at the enthusiasm and genuine interest in her aunt’s voice. How different things could have been if Bee had been her mother, she thought, not for the first time.
‘I’m OK, Aunt Bee,’ she began. But the enormity of that lie suddenly smacked her in the face. She most certainly was not OK. On any level.
‘You’ve had such a horrible time, my love. What can I do to help?’ Bee’s voice was so gentle that Lizzie’s tears had no choice but to fall.
‘Can I come and stay with you?’ Lizzie’s voice trembled.
There was a slight pause on the line before Bee replied. ‘Of course. When would you like to come?’
‘As soon as I can?’ Lizzie said. ‘If it’s convenient?’
‘I’ll make up the spare room downstairs,’ Bee said. ‘Come as soon as you like.’
‘Thank you, Aunt Bee,’ Lizzie replied. ‘Mum’s offered to have me while I recover, but…’
‘Say no more,’ Bee said, a note of amusement in her voice. ‘Let me know when you’re getting here, and I’ll get everything ready.’
After Lizzie had ended the call, she rang the private hire taxi firm that Warner-Basset had always used and told them the details of her journey. That confirmed, she began the slow process of packing her things.
5
As the taxi wended its weary way towards the village of Roseford, Lizzie’s spirits plummeted in parallel with the darkening skies. A night’s perspective had given her an altogether different view of the decision she’d made. Much as she’d adored Aunt Bee when she was younger, Roseford was a place she’d hoped never to see again, despite the fact that it was one of the most picturesque villages in the south-west of England. For Lizzie, the sight of the baked-shortbread-coloured buildings, the vibrant and colourful hanging baskets that adorned every shopfront, and the many tourists buzzing about the place like so many nectar-drunk bumblebees filled her with trepidation, which was completely at odds with the cheerful scenes around her. She knew, by being here, that she was going to end up thinking about things she’d not given herself permission to for twenty years and she suddenly began to wonder if she’d made the right decision in coming back here.Too late now, she thought.
Lizzie and Georgina had stayed with Bee a few times during their holidays from the boarding school they’d both attended. The distance between the school and Roseford was roughly the same as between school and their family home, so Bee had opened her house to them from time to time, encouraging them to come and visit. Bee had no children of her own, and had seemed to enjoy having the girls to stay.
Lizziehadenjoyed the time she’d spent in Roseford, until one awful weekend had changed all that. She hadn’t been back since, and was now wondering if she’d really made the right decision to return. But where else could she go? It wasn’t as if she had an army of friends who were willing to help her out. Most of her school and university mates were spread across the country now, and since the vast majority of her work friends from before she and Paul had founded Warner-Basset had spent the past year working from home, the friendships she had forged with them had assumed a kind of nebulous distance. Most people had decided to move out of London and either into the suburbs or further afield, leaving Lizzie one of the very few people living in the centre of town. But with the lease on the flat running out and the business sold, for the first time since she graduated, Lizzie felt rootless, alone and not just a little bit afraid. Was coming back to Roseford really the right decision?
These thoughts were mercifully cut short as the taxi drove carefully through the centre of the village and then turned a slow sloping right to ascend one of the side streets. Lizzie remembered, with a combination of trepidation and nostalgia, that Bee’s small cottage was on the eastern side of Roseford, about half a mile from the centre of the village. The gentle incline of the road as it began its ascent out of the village was lined with trees and as the taxi driver’s satnav chirped to make a right turn, Lizzie’s stomach again did a little flip. There was no disputing the beauty of where Bee lived. Lizzie just wished she weren’t visiting it under such strange and stressful circumstances.
The last time she’d been in Roseford, she’d begun her visit full of hope and excitement and it had ended with a night of trauma and despair. There was some irony in the fact that she was beginning her stay in the state she’d left twenty years earlier, she considered grimly, but the prospect of hope and excitement being her endpoint seemed completely out of the question.
Lizzie felt the jolt in her body as the taxi came to a stop outside a charming whitewashed cottage with the most incredible kitchen garden at the front of it. Bee’s passion for plants and flowers had driven her entire life, and this was no more so on display than in the garden of her own home. As a child, Lizzie had loved meandering up and down the channels that Bee had created in the gardens, seeking out the highly scented blooms and the unusual flowers but always remembering to ask permission before she picked any.
‘Can you manage, love?’ the taxi driver asked as Lizzie opened the car door.
‘I’m fine,’ she said quietly.
