‘Ummm …’ Raven looked down at the notepad she’d been using to make notes in and began sketching something out with one of her coloured pencils as a flush crept onto her cheeks. ‘Sue,’ she said, eyes still glued to her notebook. ‘You know you have to ask people for the money, right? That it won’t just … you know … go into your bank account.’
Sue laughed a silly, girlish laugh. ‘Course I do!’ She laughed again, hoping it would mask the terror consuming her. Grow a spine or face bankruptcy. The choice was hers. ‘Course I do.’
Raven ripped the piece of paper out of her notebook and handed it to Sue.
‘Oh,’ Sue said, then sobbed, ‘A flower. No one’s ever given me flowers before except—Thank you, Raven. It’s a beautiful rose. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one this colour.’
‘Coral,’ said Raven.
‘Any particular reason you chose it?’ It really was quite an extraordinary rendition of a rose. Complete with dew drops. She leant down towards the paper, fully expecting to smell it.
Raven shrugged, still unable to meet Sue’s eye. ‘It stands for a couple of things. Friendship …’ her eyes lifted to meet Sue’s. ‘And sympathy.’
‘Oh. I see,’ said Sue, bursts of joy and pain colliding in her heart. Then she did what she always did when she had absolutely no idea how she’d get through another day. Turned, walked into the kitchen, and popped on the kettle.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
‘For Christ’s sake, Mother. How bloody long is this ride meant to be?’
‘Not long, darling. Just a couple more miles.’ Flo ground her legs round again, discreetly shifting the cycle up a gear. When would this interminable ride ever end?
‘I think we should turn around. This is too long for the children and Captain George will be exhausted by now.’
‘Nonsense! The children are loving it,’ Flo protested. ‘And George has plenty of life in him yet, don’t you, Captain?’ She gave him a smile then made a train noise for a reason she couldn’t entirely fathom, but matter and mind were having a bit of a tug of war for supremacy at the moment.
As pleasant as it was to see her daughter and grandchildren, Flo wished Stu hadn’t greased up everyone’s old bikes and sent them all out together. She’d done three rather long miles along the canal yesterday as a trial run on her new new bike and was feeling it. Not that she’d admit as much, but her bum was hurting far more than she’d anticipated and if she wasn’t mistaken her knees had made a rather peculiar crunching noise when she’d run upstairs to fetch a hot water bottle for seven-year-old Lily who had a cold which she would, no doubt, transfer to Stu, who didn’t seem to be able to resist his grandchildren’s various contagions in even the best of scenarios – i.e. – absence.
‘Is this bicycle working out well, then?’ Jennifer grunted as they rode up a rise that looked easy until they were peddling up it. ‘Dad told me about the racing bike debacle.’
‘He called it a debacle, did he?’ Flo tried and failed to avoid using her snippy voice. Was she not allowed to make mistakes now? She didn’t want to bring up the calamity that had been the handsfree scooter tour in Cancun, but he could be assured she would if cornered about this.
Jennifer made one of those noises indicating there would’ve been no need to call it a debacle, if it hadn’t been. Such a daddy’s girl.
Flo stuffed a bit of hair sticking to her forehead back under her ridiculous helmet, intensely annoyed that her husband had said anything whatsoever to Jennifer, a woman intent on taking a parental caretaker role decades earlier than necessity warranted.
‘Mum? Are you sure Captain George is up to this?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. I know that dog better than I know myself.’ A familiar raft of irritability clanked through her. Jennifer and Stu were always questioning her. Are you sure you checked this? What did the instructions say about that?
What her husband and her daughter failed to understand about her was that Flo was logical. Sensible, even. Down to earth. Being raised in an unheated house where neither parent was functioning at full capacity did that to a girl. Sure. She liked pretty things. She liked whimsy. She liked fun! But despite what anyone said, being a flight attendant took a lot more than an ability to smile and pour hot coffee at ten thousand feet. It took tenacity. Epic amounts of patience. And courage. She never talked about it, but the time she’d strapped into the emergency harness at the bottom of the plane so she could drop a smoking laptop battery out of the hatch and into the Pacific midway between Los Angeles and Hawaii had been one of the most exhilarating in her life. The harness had been so strong there’d been zero chance of being sucked out of the plane, but even so … that adrenaline rush had never been equalled. The passenger who’d owned the phone had been particularly irritating, so it had been a double pleasure. And there had been the time with the terrorist, of course. A bipolar man who’d forgotten to take his meds it turned out, but at the time they’d all thought he’d been a terrorist including Flo who, without even thinking, had leapt upon him and taken away his weapon. She generally left out the part about how it had been a Pez dispenser rather than a detonator, but either way, the passengers had been alright and the plane had landed safely in Houston
