Second Chance by Sian James Page B

that. She was only wanting you to beg her to use her influence with one of the florists in town. I’m glad you didn’t. Power goes straight to Maggie’s head. I’ll get the flowers for you, no problem. John Parry who owns The Flower Basket in town was a boyfriend of mine years ago and there’s still a bit of interest left there, if you want to know the truth. He’ll want to work on his afternoon off when I tell him it’s for family. I’ll go straightaway now before he leaves the shop. No trouble at all. One large arrangement for the chapel and five small for the vestry, Maggie was saying. White with greenery. Was that her decision or yours? And what sort of flowers?’
    â€˜I’ll leave all the decisions to your friend.’
    â€˜You won’t regret it.’
    Edwina hurried back to her car, chest first, waving and smiling at me as though we were the greatest friends.
    I couldn’t think of anyone who’d want to give up an afternoon’s holiday to do me a favour. But there, Edwina is prettier and younger than I am; very rounded and dimpled and cuddlesome.
    I wondered whether the interest she’d mentioned was on her side as well as his. She was wearing a wedding ring, so perhaps only a few tender smiles would pass between them and an accidental grazing of hands as she helped him choose the flowers. I could smell the sweetness of lilies and freesias and hot-house roses in the closed shop, a heavy, almost decadent smell; forbidden love, so different from the fresh, true smell of garden flowers.
    Forbidden love, true love, and how should I my true love know from some other one?
    My first love affair was when I was nineteen. I think the boy in question was only twenty, but he seemed very worldly-wise and sophisticated. When he suggested we go away for a weekend together I didn’t think of refusing though I was nervous about it. He was considered very handsome. I can’t remember his face, but I remember that he was considered very handsome.
    He was English, his family from the Wirral, but they often spent their holidays in a North Wales beauty spot, Betws-y-Coed, and that’s where he decided we should go.
    He was amazed to discover that I’d never visited the famous waterfall, though my home was only about seventy miles away. (I didn’t tell him, but I hadn’t been to our nearest town, six miles away, until I was eleven.) We travelled on the TransCambria from Cardiff where we were at University, my bus fare and my share of the three days and nights away making a huge hole in that term’s grant. However, Handsome Boy assured me that it would be well worth it – and he didn’t mean the waterfall; he was at the age when he wanted sex every half hour. And that’s how we spent the first morning, missing breakfast, which I considered extremely foolish and wasteful. In the afternoon I insisted on leaving the hotel to see the famous Swallow Falls, but when I discovered how much it cost to view, I was persuaded against it. Handsome Lad knew how to get in from further up the hill: he and his brothers had done it several times. We’d wait until closing time, then see it by moonlight. For nothing.
    And I must say, it seemed the right and proper thing to do. Why, after all, should I pay to see a natural phenomenon in my own country?
    It was about ten o’clock before the moon rose and we went for the long walk up the hill, managing to crawl in under a fence and walk back through the larch woods to the waterfall which we could already hear crashing onto the rocks.
    It was worth the effort, worth the train fare, the cost of the hotel and the tedium of too much sex. It was my first waterfall; it was splendid as the Taj Mahal.
    Naturally, I simply had to stand on the platform in the dazzling, moonlit spray, and as I’d borrowed my room-mate’s new wool-and-cashmere dress for the weekend, promising to take the greatest care of it, I