Page 4 of The Little Island Flower Stall
Bella turned to her dad and he shrugged. ‘It was only an idea.’
‘What?’ Bella demanded. ‘What is it I need to think about? And what’s it got to do with Celestine? I mean, I haven’t seen her for years, so I don’t know?—’
‘She had a fall last week,’ Brian said, choosing to ignore his wife’s eye-rolling. ‘She’s had to shut that old flower stall she runs while she’s off her feet.’
Bella’s frown deepened. ‘She still has that old stall? I’d have thought she’d have retired years ago! I mean, she must be about ninety now.’
‘Older,’ Brian said. ‘She’ll be ninety-four in a couple of months. But she’s still very active.’
‘Not now, she isn’t,’ Wendy reminded him as she opened a box containing a coconut sponge. She cut a slice and offered it to Bella, who shook her head. ‘It’s Waitrose,’ Wendy added, as if that alone ought to be enough to entice any sane person to take it whether they wanted to or not.
‘No thanks, Mum, I’m really not hungry. So what’s going on with Aunt Celestine? She had a fall, you said. Is she OK?’
‘She’s fine, but she’s off her feet for six weeks while her ankle heals. The doctors have said she has quite remarkable bone density for a woman of her age…’ Brian bit into the slice of cake Wendy had just put in front of him. ‘Must be all that rich Jersey milk she drinks. But still, six weeks is six weeks, and it’s a long time for the flower stall to be closed.’
‘Does she even need to do that job now?’ Bella asked. ‘Surely she has a pension.’
‘That house of hers takes some maintaining,’ Wendy said, returning to the table with some cake of her own. ‘And quite honestly I think the stall is the one thing that keeps her going; it’s her way of socialising and getting out and about. If she ever had to give it up…well, I wouldn’t like to dwell on it. I don’t think she’d last long.’
Bella nodded. ‘Most people don’t make it to ninety-odd, let alone carry on running a business at that age. I don’t know how she does it – must be quite a physical job at times.’
‘I don’t know either, but she seems to manage,’ Brian said. ‘At least until now.’
‘OK…’ Bella said slowly. ‘It’s all very sad for her, but I don’t see what any of it has to do with me.’
Brian stuffed the last of his cake into his mouth and swallowed hard. ‘It was a silly idea – your mum’s right; I didn’t think it through. You’ve got your own things to worry about.’
‘I’dlike to decide if it’s a silly idea or not.’ Bella paused. ‘You were thinking maybe I could go over and help her for a while? Is that it? As I currently have nothing else to do and every reason to find some distraction from my current misery? Am I warm?’
Brian nodded. ‘Pretty much. But I’m sure you don’t want?—’
Bella sat up in her chair. ‘Actually, Dad, that sounds like a brilliant idea. Six weeks on Jersey might be just the thing. If nothing else, I can post lots of photos on my social media and make Sean think I’m having the most fantastic time and not thinking about him at all – that alone has got to be worth the cost of the flight. Do you have a phone number for Celestine? I could give her a call, talk it over to see what she thinks. Presumably she hasn’t asked anyone else yet?’
‘She hasn’t asked anyone at all,’ Brian said. ‘I suppose she assumes nobody has time. We only know about the accident because she still writes to your mum regularly.’
‘If you’d asked me twelve hours ago, I would have had Sean to persuade and we all know how that would have gone,’ Bella said. ‘But I don’t have to ask him now, so…’ She shrugged. ‘Why wouldn’t I go and help her? If she’ll have me, of course. I suppose she has room at that old house of hers? If it’s still the same house, I remember she had a few bedrooms, didn’t she? What was it called again…?’
‘Villa Rosa,’ Wendy said. ‘She still has it. She’d never give up that old place, even though it’s far too big for her. It’s been in the family for three generations, outlasted two world wars and Nazi occupation and all sorts, and I don’t doubt it will outlast us all. Are you sure going to Jersey to live with an old lady for six weeks is what you need right now?’
‘This is exactly what I need: some distance and time to plan my future. Who knows, maybe I’ll decide I really like working with flowers. I might decide to start up a flower stall of my own.’ Bella took a deep breath and pushed a smile across her face. ‘A world of possibilities has opened up in front of me. It might not be how I feel at this moment, but it’s the truth of my situation, so I ought to take advantage of that. I know one thing: I’m not going to let Sean dictate my life for a second longer. And I could make many worse starts than going off to Jersey to help Celestine. I haven’t seen her for years, but I remember from when we all used to holiday there, way back when, that I always really liked her and that Villa Rosa was beautiful, and Jersey is pretty and interesting, so it has to be a win-win.’
‘It feels like a very rash decision to me,’ Wendy said, ‘but I don’t suppose there’s any real harm in going over there, if only to help clear your head and give you some perspective.’
‘Exactly!’ Bella said. ‘It’s only six weeks, but that’s plenty of time to get my head straight.’
Wendy went into the living room and came back a minute later with a leather-bound book. She handed it to Bella.‘Celestine’s phone number is in there, once you’re ready to call her.’
Bella turned to the right page and got out her mobile, heart thumping but doing her best to hide that from her parents. She could lie to them that she was OK, that a world of possibilities had opened up as a result of Sean’s infidelities, that it was ultimately going to be a positive step for her to leave him, but she couldn’t lie to herself. She needed to go to Jersey – of that much she was sure, even though she didn’t know why she felt it so strongly – but life from this day on…that was a far less certain prospect.
CHAPTER THREE
Bella wasted no time. She didn’t see the point. A matter of days later, she stepped off the twin-propellered plane onto the tarmac at St Helier airport on the little Channel Island of Jersey and was immediately hit by a barrage of childhood memories. She had a vivid recollection of walking this same tarmac as a girl with her parents, a fortnight of family holiday time stretching ahead of them. It was always sunny in Jersey; there were flowers everywhere, vast clear skies and endless sweeps of golden sand, and ice creams that tasted rich and creamy and quite unlike anywhere else. These were the images she always called to mind whenever she thought of those holidays, and she was delighted to see that Jersey remained the way she remembered it.
But her excitement at returning was laced with a subtle melancholy for the loss of those innocent days. Back then her biggest worry had been whether the shop that sold buckets and spades in the tiny resort of St Rosa, where her aunt Celestine lived, would be closed by the time they got to it. She had far bigger problems now, and her stomach churned with a strange mix of defiance, doubt and trepidation as she pulled her suitcase towards the terminal building, the wheels rumbling over the tarmac as she hurried along.
The biggest problem she faced was money. For the last fifteen years, Sean had been the sole breadwinner in their marriage. He’d insisted that she give up her job and let him provide for her, and she’d gone along with it, settling into what he called the ‘easy life’. But in doing so she’d made it easy for him to manipulate and control her. Worse, it had given him all the licence he needed to behave however he wanted. She’d been a fool, but she was learning fast. That was good. What wasn’t so good was that she now had no access to the joint bank account that had been so readily available and so healthily funded. She’d drawn out what she could before he’d put a stop to it, reasoning to herself that it wasn’t stealing, merely an advance on any divorce settlement that might follow somewhere down the line. That money was now sitting in an account she’d opened for herself, but it wasn’t going to last forever. She might earn something from her great-aunt’s flower stall, but she doubted it would be all that much – if anything. There had been no discussion of wages, only an agreement Bella would help out in exchange for room and board, so there were no guarantees.
‘It’ll work out,’ she told herself, in the same way she’d done a dozen times since she’d driven away from her marital home. If only she could believe it for half a second, she might start to feel better.
