‘Hello,’ Fleur said smoothly. ‘What can I do for you?’
His eyes went to Cathy, who was now behind Fleur, desperately wishing she could look like she didn’t care that he was there but knowing that her face said anything but. She began to tidy away the ribbons, even though they hadn’t finished using them. Anything to save having to talk to him.
Jonas scanned the pre-made bouquets and picked one carelessly from its display pot. He handed it to Fleur.
‘I’ll take these.’
While Fleur wrapped them for him, he spoke again, and this time Cathy couldn’t ignore it.
‘I was sorry to hear about your mum,’ he said.
She looked up.
‘I should have said that when I was last here,’ he added.
‘I think you did,’ Cathy replied, trying but failing to smile.
‘I should have said it like I meant it. Afterwards I realised that I’d been insensitive. I was too busy thinking about getting home for my anniversary dinner but that was selfish – it wouldn’t have hurt to take thirty more seconds to say that I was really sorry, and that I know how hard it must have been on you.’
For a second she was back in the hallway of her home, her mum struggling for breath at the bottom of their stairs and nursing a twisted ankle, Cathy dressed to the nines and sobbing into the phone as she apologised to a clearly fuming Jonas that she was going to have to stand him up on what should have been their engagement celebration. Afterwards he’d said he was sorry for being angry and that he understood why she’d had to put her mum first, and he’d told her he was sorry for overreacting, and she’d wanted to believe him but she couldn’t – not quite. It had been the beginning of the end for them and they’d never really come back from that moment.
Cathy shook her head now to clear the unwanted memory. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It does.’
‘Well… thank you then.’
‘You look well,’ he said. ‘Really well.’
That was a lie, but she didn’t say so. She looked about as well as she had the first time he’d said it – which was dressed in her scruffy work clothes with a snot-green tabard and a greasy fringe completing the look.
‘You’re obviously doing OK,’ he continued.
Another lie, or was he just blind?
‘You too,’ she said. ‘Nice coat.’
Was it just her or were they going round in circles? Hadn’t they had a very similar conversation to this the last time he’d come to the stall? What did he really want? And why did Cathy have to feel as if there was any agenda at all? Why did she have to be so full of suspicion? She shook the thought. He was here as an old friend, and why would there be anything else in it? And while she appreciated the gesture, she wished he wouldn’t bother. She’d been fine without him for five years, and even if she hadn’t been, this was hardly going to help – even he must be able to see that.
‘Five pounds please,’ Fleur cut in, shoving the bouquet at Jonas with rather more force, Cathy thought, than she usually would.
‘Oh, right…’
He fumbled in his pocket for a moment before pulling out his wallet and handing the note over. Fleur took it and he took the flowers.
‘Thank you.’
‘You’re very welcome,’ she said. And added in a pointed tone: ‘Is there anything else we can do for you, sir? Or will that be all?’
‘Oh, yes… I guess… that’s all.’
‘Goodbye then, sir,’ Fleur said, still in that very deliberate tone that told him it was time to leave rather than asking him to. ‘Thank you for your custom.’
She might have added please call again, but Cathy knew that even her boss wasn’t so desperate for business that she’d put Cathy through that.
Jonas looked up at Cathy, and there was something in his eyes that she hadn’t seen for a long time. It was that look he’d sometimes get when he knew something was a lost cause but he wasn’t quite ready to let go of it, even though he knew he should. He’d worn it the night they’d split up. She’d probably worn it too, but still they’d split up. It had been inevitable, an outcome as irresistible as the earth turning, and neither of them would have been able to stop it no matter how much they might have wanted to.
‘It was good to see you again,’ he said.
Cathy nodded mutely. What could she say that wouldn’t be a lie? It wasn’t good to see him; it was a hard, exquisite sort of pain. She didn’t want to see him at all, and yet when he was there in front of her she couldn’t stop looking. He’d changed in the past five years, but he was still the man she’d once loved.
She kept her eyes fixed on his back as he walked away and out of the market, and only once he was gone did she allow herself a heaving breath of relief. Had she been anywhere else instead of with Fleur, she might even have allowed herself a few tears, but now wasn’t the time and this was definitely not the place.
‘Well,’ her boss said, turning to Cathy. ‘That was a bit funny, wasn’t it?’
‘Was it?’ Cathy said, trying to sound careless.
‘Why do you think he would come here again?’
‘He wanted flowers, I suppose.’
‘Hmm. And there are no other florists around here he could get them from?’
‘I suppose we have nice bunches… affordable, you know.’
‘Yes, because he really looked as if he was poverty-stricken so I guess price would be an issue for a man like that…’
Fleur held Cathy in a measured gaze, and Cathy eventually quailed under it. She shrugged.
‘I don’t know why he came here but I wish he wouldn’t.’
‘I wonder what his wife would say if she knew.’
Cathy stared at her. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, come on! You’d have to be blind not to see the man still cares for you.’
Cathy shook her head. ‘He might care for me but not in the way you think. I care for him too but only as someone I was once engaged to.’
Fleur went back to her bouquets, but the loaded silence of her non-reply was almost as unbearable as any reply might have been. What did she think of what she’d seen? What did she make of all this?
‘None of it matters now anyway,’ Cathy said at last, the silence forcing her to fill it with something that might make it weigh less heavily.
‘I’d say it does to you.’
‘Even if it did it wouldn’t change the fact that he’s married and we’ve both moved on. It’s just sentimentality, that’s all. For him too – that’s why he came back today.’
‘You just keep telling yourself that,’ Fleur said with a small smile.
Cathy tried to ignore it. Instead, she collected their mugs and headed for the kitchens so that she wouldn’t have to say anything at all, because, for the first time since Cathy had started working with her, she felt like telling her lovely boss to shut up and mind her own business.
Ten
Her hands were knotted together as she sat on a high stool at the worktop and waited, while her knees jigged a staccato rhythm as she tried to calm her nerves. She really wished she could sit still because it was kind of exhausting. Iris placed a mug of tea down in front of her.