‘Maybe you should,’ Sage said, because she was a stirrer from way back. Rowan poured herself another glass of wine from the bottle of red that was sitting on the kitchen island and raised her eyebrows at Will; unlike Sage, they remembered a time when Mary wasn’t so defiant. For the majority of their childhood, she’d never offered a contrary opinion and had kept her head down, stayed in the shadows. But a lot had changed since then.
‘Oh no, I’ve completely forgotten how to arrange flowers,’ Mary had protested when she, Will and Rowan returned to London when Will was twelve.
Shortly followed by, ‘I suppose I could serve in the shop. But all those people . . .’
Before too long, there was a slow and steady transformation. ‘I’m sure I could get the hang of using a computer. How hard can it be?’
Until the classic, ‘Ian from the hardware shop is nice . . . I’ll probably go out for a drink with him, but I’m not ready for anything more than friendship.’
‘Such a pretty girl. I don’t know whose dog you were before Will rescued you, but they didn’t deserve you,’ Mary was now saying to Blossom, who had jumped up, her paws on Mary’s aproned middle, as she got more pets.
Mary still disliked change and she took a while to warm to new people, yet Blossom had been accepted with the most token of protests, and if his mother wanted to give her some lamb and a couple of roast potatoes then Will knew there was no point in arguing. He would just have to make the necessary adjustments to her food intake and exercise regimen for the next forty-eight hours, to allow for the extra calories consumed. Also what Margot didn’t know wouldn’t kill her.
Just like that, he felt his phone in the back pocket of his jeans vibrate and before he even pulled it, he knew that it would be a message from Margot.
How’s Blossom doing after the handover? Has she settled down or is she missing me?
Honestly, that woman really needed to learn some emotional boundaries. Will tucked his phone away.
‘Message from one of your women?’ Sage asked with a smirk.
‘Haven’t you heard? He’s taken a vow of chastity,’ Rowan added with a matching smirk, which transformed into a frown as Sam and Harry, bored now that the adults were talking, began to kick a ball around the kitchen. ‘Take that outside and take the dog with you.’
‘Her name’s Blossom!’
‘Should they be unsupervised with her?’ Mary and Will asked collectively, but the boys had already piled out through the back door, Blossom hot on their heels.
Will walked over to the window in time to see Harry and Sam hurtling down the length of the long garden with the ball, Blossom following them close behind. She didn’t seem very ball-focused, but the previous week Will had pinged Margot a link to a long article warning of the dangers of giving dogs balls too often because it encouraged bad behaviour, and she’d messaged back tl;dr (Google had helped him decipher that as ‘too long; didn’t read’).
After dinner, when Rowan and Mary were a bottle of red wine down, Sage was in a relatively quiet food coma and the boys and Blossom were back in the garden, they had their weekly meeting.
It would have been nice to just have a family lunch and not talk shop, but talking shop always seemed easier with full bellies and a drink for anyone who needed it.
Will clutched his glass of ginger ale and waited for Mary to start things off as head of the family firm but she nodded at her son. ‘After you, Will. How’s it all going with the new accountants?’
Will gave them a rundown on the new software they were going to use, an app to be installed on all of their phones so they could scan invoices and receipts as soon as they got them. Once they’d paid off the fine for late filing of last year’s taxes, cash flow was looking quite healthy.
‘The events side is really busy, isn’t it, Rowan, even though wedding season is winding down?’ he said, pulling his sister into the conversation.
‘There’s a big influencer event this week with all these children from Instagram,’ Rowan said, as Sage bristled because she was one of those children from Instagram. ‘As well as doing the flowers, four big arrangements and fifty table settings so guests can take their flowers home, they want us to set up and run a flower-crown station. How do we do that?’
‘I can do that!’ Sage piped up. ‘I would be fantastic at doing that. I made flower crowns for my prom last summer, didn’t I? And I could ask Catriona and Anjali to help. They’re desperate to pick up some casual work.’
‘Great,’ Will said, because he had no knowledge of flower crowns, but he would be working out the going rate for a flower-crown station. ‘Good to know that you’ll be gainfully employed while you’re on your gap year.’
Will hadn’t meant to sound so pompous and big brotherly and he probably deserved Sage’s snort of derision, but he didn’t want Sage to idle away the year between school and university and then decide that she preferred the idling to getting a degree.
‘Exactly, this is just a gap year. You’re still going to university next October,’ Mary said resolutely, so Will didn’t feel quite so bad. ‘My little Sage doing a law degree. I can’t wait to see you in one of those funny barristers’ wigs.’
‘It will be years before my swag is ruined by a barristers’ wig and anyway, next October is a whole year away,’ Sage said and she shot an imploring look at Will, much like the imploring looks he got from Blossom when it was near to feeding time. They’d talked about Sage’s future a lot when he’d been giving her driving lessons the past summer. Sage, after accepting a deferred place at University College, London, was having serious second thoughts, but Will had been adamant that she should get her law degree done and dusted and then she could worry about what she wanted to be when she finally grew up. ‘That way, you’ll have the foundation stones for a great career.’
‘So, anyway, our Bouquet of the Week promotion seems to be going well?’ Will said to change the subject, which segued into a discussion about what kind of discount they could get for buying in bulk from their preferred supplier.
‘I’ll talk to them,’ Will promised, making a note on his iPad.
‘And I love that we’re posting videos on the website and Instagram to show the punters how to arrange their flowers,’ Rowan added, because as well as looking after the events side of the business, she was also a skilled Sage whisperer. ‘Even if it does mean having to look at Sage’s ugly mug.’
‘Your mug is uglier,’ Sage said, although it wasn’t. They looked like sisters, had inherited Mary’s complexion and her delicate features, but while Rowan positively glowed with Alpine-like goodness, Sage looked a little sharper, a little more ready to take on the world with the expectation that the world would give her exactly what she wanted. Less Heidi and more Hildebrand, a bossy German exchange student. Also, Sage currently had hair the colour of candyfloss.
Then it was Mary’s turn to talk, though her interests were more micro – the Shaws wanted something lovely for their granddaughter’s christening. ‘Can’t believe they’ve got a grandkid. I remember helping Mum and Dad with their wedding flowers,’ she said. ‘We’ve also got three funerals. They’re dropping like flies. One “nanna” and one “dad” in white chrysanths, then for the third one, they want us to make a packet of Silk Cut out of flowers.’