Mimi, however, was not easily swayed. ‘You mean it’s early days yet and you don’t want to say too much about it,’ she stage-whispered with the smug air of one who knows better.
‘I mean there’s nothing to say too much about.’ Janey, beginning to realize that the more she protested, the more convinced Mimi would become that something delightfully illicit was going on, decided that this was a problem only Guy could sort out. Glancing once more at the poor, half-suffocated roses on the windowsill, she said suddenly, ‘Look, why don’t you find me a nice sharp knife?’
‘Help!’ Mimi burst out laughing. ‘Who are you thinking of using it on – me for asking too many questions? Or Guy, just to prove you aren’t madly in love with him?’
Janey grinned. ‘Your flowers. Let me do something to them before the rest of your guests arrive. And if you could lay your hands on some old newspapers and a couple more vases ...’
‘Amazing.’ Having rummaged in a drawer, Mimi handed her a well-used Sabatier boning knife. Eagerly, she grabbed the bowls of roses and lined them up in front of Janey. ‘The lengths some people will go to in order to get out of sampling my husband’s beloved elderflower champagne. I say,’ she added admiringly as Janey set to work with the knife, ‘you really know what you’re doing, don’t you!’
With deft fingers, Janey separated a dozen or so deep, creamy yellow Casanovas from a tangle of coppery pink Albertines, trimmed their stems and stripped them of their waterlogged lower leaves. ‘Plenty of practice,’ she said, with a brief smile. ‘I’m a florist.’
‘How marvellous,’ Mimi cried. ‘At last, a girlfriend of Guy’s who can actually do something besides flick her hair about and pose for a stupid camera.’
‘Except I’m not a girlfriend of Guy’s,’ Janey patiently reminded her.
‘Of course you aren’t, darling.’ Mimi, her silver earrings tinkling like sleighbells, shook her head and gurgled with laughter. ‘But just think of the advantages if the two of you should decide to get married! Guy could take the photographs, you’d organize the flowers ... how much more DIY can a bride and groom get?’
‘Goodness.’ Janey kept a straight face. ‘I hadn’t thought of it like that. We could get my brother the bishop to perform the ceremony, my sister Maxine could play 'Here comes the bride'
on her mouth organ and Josh and Ella could stab all the sausages on to little sticks ...’
Jack Margason, having evidently decided that in the immediate-impact stakes he couldn’t even begin to compete with his wife, wore a pale grey shirt and oatmeal trousers which exactly matched his pale grey hair and oatmeal skin. Tall and thin, with liquid, light brown eyes, an apologetic smile and a very long, perfectly straight nose, he reminded Janey of an Afghan hound.
And she wasn’t going to get away with it after all, she realized. He had brought her a drink.
‘You deserve one,’ he told her, ‘for doing justice to my poor, beloved roses. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.’
Janey, putting the finishing touches to the final arrangement of blush-pink Fritz Nobis and creamy Pascali, tweaked a couple of glossy leaves into position in order to hide the chipped rim of the terracotta bowl in which they stood. Stepping back, she smiled and accepted the glass he offered her. It was the infamous elderflower champagne, and it definitely had character.
Manfully she swallowed it.
‘Go on then,’ said Guy, having given her a ghost of a wink. ‘What’s the old bag been saying about me?’
‘Don’t flatter yourself.’The taste of old pea pods clung to Janey’s teeth. ‘She’s been far too busy. Organizing the honeymoon.’
‘The brazen hussy; she’s already married.’
‘Not her honeymoon.’ Janey had been so entertained by Mimi’s endless suppositions and fantasies that it hadn’t even occurred to her to be embarrassed. ‘Ours.’
‘Really?’ Guy’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Where are we going? Somewhere nice, I hope?’
Evidently finding nothing strange in the idea that less than a week after Serena’s departure Guy should have found himself a new future wife, Jack glanced with regret at the half-empty glass in his hand.
‘What a shame, I only have three bottles of elderflower left. But if you think you might be interested, Guy, I could let you have three cases of last year’s damson and crabapple. That would certainly make the wedding party go with a swing.’
By seven-thirty the house was overflowing with guests, an eclectic mixture of smart, arty and downright Bohemian types complete with children and dogs for added informality. Janey, proudly introduced by Mimi as ‘a whizz with flowers’, almost had to forcibly restrain her from adding, ‘She’s Guy’s new girlfriend but I’m not allowed to tell you because it’s all terribly hush-hush.’
What struck Janey about the assortment of guests was their friendliness. Mimi and Jack clearly had no time for the kind of people who might turn up their noses at terrible wine or gaze askance at a messy home.
Two or three of them she even knew slightly, through the shop, whilst others, on hearing about it, bombarded her with questions. There was always someone desperate to learn how a wilting yukka could be sprung back to life, exactly how to go about preserving beech leaves with glycerine, when and how to trim a bonsai .. .
She was in the middle of demonstrating the method of putting together a pot-et-fleur arrangement to the glamorous wife of a pig farmer when Guy reappeared at her side.
‘I’m thinking of setting up evening classes,’ Janey told him with a grin.
‘It looks to me as if you’ve already started.’ He showed her his watch. ‘Eight o’clock.
Definitely evening.’
‘Eight o’clock already?’The play started at eight thirty; he had come to tell her it was time to leave. Taney, feeling like a six-year-old at a birthday party, looked crestfallen.
‘We shouldn’t be late,’ said Guy. ‘Apart from anything else, I can’t stand being glared at when I’m trying to squeeze past all the people already in their seats.’
‘This play,’ she said in neutral tones. ‘Is it ... good?’
‘Oh, terrific. Riveting. Unmissable.’
