Flowers for the Dead (7 page)

The sheer volume of people passing through Covent Garden greatly increases his chances of finding the love of his life, but there are other practical reasons why he likes to go there. Reasons Adam does not like to admit to himself but knows it is only sensible to take into consideration. The sad fact is his track record with women is very bad so far. They tend to hurt him and let him down badly. No matter what lovely things he does for them they seem unappreciative. Often, they showed a bewildering inability to be happy. When that happens he is always forced to act, to put his own needs aside, and to put the woman out of her misery.

But he has to think about himself a little, and the fact that he was never seen with any of his loves, that there was nothing connecting them in any way, meant that the police would never be able to track him down and arrest him for murder. It is unromantic to have to think in such a way at the start of a romance, but his broken heart has taught him to look after himself as well as the needs of others.

Murder. Such an ugly word, and so untrue. He is helping these women, like a noble physician would.

He smiles to himself, turns up the music on his headphones, and watches the crowds slide past his sunglasses as he hunts.

CHAPTER SEVEN

~ Enchanter’s Nightshade ~

Fascination

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO

Almost the second Adam stepped outside into the glorious June sunshine, he heard a loud, repetitive call immediately above his head and looked up. Ada put a hand on the child’s shoulder and looked too, pointing.

“See there, under the roof, where it meets at a point?” she asked. Adam nodded. “That’s a nest of sparrows. They’re what are making the noise. If you look carefully, you might just see the young peeking over the edge and looking down at us.”

At that very moment a face appeared, tweeting madly. Adam grinned in delight, and hugged his gran.

The sky was a brilliant blue, the bright green of the leaves standing out against it. The grass below was peppered with clover flowers, daisies and buttercups bursting forth. The odd butterfly flitted past, adding more splashes of colour.

Adam loved his gran’s garden. She lived in Moseley, a suburb of Birmingham, a long way away from his home in Colchester. It took three whole hours to get there; was so far that he would fall asleep on the journey, and still have time for lots of games of I-Spy and reading his favourite books.

Ada’s garden was big. Big enough to fit his own garden inside it twelve times or more. He could lose himself in the little walled garden on one side, or sit in one of the bank of greenhouses that sat at the bottom of the garden. They lay immediately before the special exit from the garden into private parkland Gran shared with a handful of other houses. Adam could climb up the big trees, or make hidey-holes in the spaces under bushes because he knew all the right places to push through the foliage.

Even in winter he could squirrel himself away indoors because the house had so many rooms. It was a wonderland of concealment for him.

Best of all, though, was the fact he did not actually feel the need to hide much when he was with Gran. His mum and dad would go into Birmingham city centre to shop or see the sights, or watch cricket at the nearby Edgbaston grounds, leaving him behind. That was the best time in the world, when it was just he and his gran. In winter she would read to him, but when the weather was nice she liked to do gardening. Adam would sit beside her like a faithful hound as she pruned and dug, always talking to him in a gentle voice, explaining everything.

“We just need to do a little weeding today,” she decided now. “Would you like to help?”

He nodded, and she handed him a trowel. Then she knelt on her special gardening cushion and grasped a green shot with her thick-gloved hand.

“This is a stinging nettle starting to come through,” she said. “If you see these you must carefully dig out every little bit of root, otherwise they are very clever, and will pop back up again.

“They survive the winter underground, storing up food in their roots. Then in spring, up they pop – even the tiniest bit of root left in the soil will mean a whole new plant can grow. So you must be careful and patient when digging up the roots; yanking them out won’t do.”

Adam nodded. “Like this?” he asked, and tenderly dug into the ground, slowly shaking free roots.

“Perfect. Well done! You’re a good boy, Adam.”

He basked in the glow of the compliment.

Side by side they worked in companionable silence after that. That was another thing Adam loved about his gran: she never teased him for not speaking. And when he did say something she actually listened and responded in kind. In front of most people, Adam felt his words bottling up in his throat. His brain became a confusion of feelings that he could not get out, and that made his head buzz painfully. It wasn’t like that with Gran. She understood him without his having to say a word. Being with her was the only time he ever really felt peace.

After just over half an hour, Ada sat up with a grimace. “My back,” she gasped. “I’ll have to stop now.”

Adam dutifully stood, held out his hands, and helped the delicate old lady to her feet again, knowing she would be stiff after being on her knees for so long.

“Thank you. You’re growing up to be a real gentleman,” she smiled approvingly as she straightened up, leaning on him slightly.

“I can carry on gardening,” he offered. “I’ll do over there, by the fence.” He pointed to a patch of long nettles and weeds, but Ada shook her head.

“That’s very kind of you, thank you, Adam. I always leave that patch though, even though it drives me wild not to have a completely tidy garden.”

Adam tilted his head, trying to understand. “Why do you leave them if you don’t like them?” he asked.

“Weeds are bad for gardening, but good for nature – lots of insects, butterflies and birds rely on them. Always be kind to nature, live and let live, and put others’ needs before your own.”

Ada was always saying things like that. “Put other’s needs before your own.” “Make someone happy and you will make yourself happy too.” And her particular favourite was: “Nothing bad can happen to you when you’re here, because the whole house is protected by a force field of love.” Those words were like a warm embrace to Adam – because they were true. His mother never did anything to him when he was at Granny’s.

It was Ada who had gently drummed into her son and now her grandson how to be a gentleman. Adam knew that ladies always went first, that he must open doors for them, and walk on the outside of the pavement nearest traffic in order to protect them. Such manners were important to Ada, and Adam enjoyed learning from her because she was a gentle teacher who always seemed so enthusiastic and encouraging of him.

Ada practised what she preached too. Her manners were impeccable; and this, Adam suspected, was the reason why his gran put up with his mother. He might only be six, but he had already grasped that the two women did not get on. Sometimes he would catch a glimpse between the pair of them that bordered on dislike; then there had been that row where Mother had ordered Ada from the house.

They put up with one another. Barely. Even when Sara was being nice there was a knife hidden beneath the words, and Adam could tell his gran noticed their cutting edge. She loved to praise the old woman’s home while surreptitiously criticising it. “What a cosy little room! If this place were mine I’d knock down that wall and really open up this room,” she would say. Or: “What interesting stuffed animals. Have you ever thought of asking a museum if they’d take them off your hands?”

Adam had not liked the stuffed animals and birds much either when he was really little, but now he was a big boy and over the years he had learned all about them from Ada. He loved them.

“My father’s father – that’s your great, great grandfather – he was interested in nature and went travelling,” Ada would tell him. “He brought these specimens back and preserved them himself. In those days travelling was more difficult, and it took months to get to some far-flung places. Imagine that, Adam, travelling for months to reach exotic places with all kinds of weird and wonderful creatures.

“So he captured as many as he could, killed them and stuffed them so that he could show people all the wonders he had seen himself. That way he could keep them with him forever and enjoy them for years and years to come.

“Even when he got very old and could no longer travel far, he was able to look at those animals and birds, and relive his past in his imagination.”

Then both she and Adam would look at the glossy feathers of a bird of paradise, or the incredible body of the duck-billed platypus, and see beauty rather than death.

Thinking about them now, as Adam pulled a deckchair out for his granny, a sudden question occurred to him and, unusual though it was for him, he blurted it out.

“Gran, I know about my great-great granddad and great granddad…but what about Granddaddy?”

Ada looked tired as she sank into the deckchair. There was a long silence, and Adam started to wonder if she was fighting a buzz in her head like he often had to.

“Sometimes grown ups make silly decisions,” she said finally. “Your father never met his father. But that is all right, because I loved him enough for two parents.”

Adam had never heard this story before. He went very still as he absorbed it. Ada reached out, took his hand and patted it.

“It’s all right, poppet,” she said again, seeming to be think carefully before her next words. “Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you can’t love someone enough to fix them – and I love your father so very, very much. And even though he isn’t around often, he loves you very, very much too.”

The sensitive child tried to understand, but it was all so complicated. Still, his little heart broke that bit more. Poor Daddy.

A joyous shrieking overhead broke the sombre mood. Ada squeezed Adam’s hand and smiled. “Swifts! See how they soar!”

The birds seemed to bring Adam’s gran out of her sadness. She leaned over and plucked a daisy from the grass, tucking it behind Adam’s ear. “Forgive an old lady for talking nonsense. You are as pure as that daisy, and I shouldn’t spoil you with sad tales. Did you know that flowers have meaning?”

Adam shook his head, the movement involving his whole body twisting from side to side.

“Would you like to know more about the language of flowers?”

The language of flowers? They could talk? The idea intrigued him, and he nodded vigorously.

“If you go to the big bookcase in the lounge, you will see the
Tales of Faerie and Myth
on one of the shelves. Beside that is a green book entitled
Floriography: The Language of Flowers
– it’s written in gold, and has lots of pictures of flowers embossed on the spine. Can you fetch it for me, please?”

He darted inside, with Ada calling after him: “Be careful, it’s very heavy.”

It was, but nowhere near as heavy as the fairy tale book. He was able to carry it, bending backwards with the effort and tottering only slightly as he exited through the French doors and re-entered the garden.

“People have used flowers as symbols for hundreds and hundreds of years, but it became particularly popular with Victorians,” Ada explained. “Social niceties meant it was sometimes hard for them to say what they wanted, especially when they loved someone, so they would say it with flowers instead.”

Adam did not always understand what his gran was telling him but he loved to hear her anyway. He always felt soothed. He went to sit cross-legged on the floor.

“Get another deckchair, dear, you’ll see better then,” insisted Gran.

Sat side-by-side, they pored over the thick, hard-backed book, and Adam learned about a whole new language that did not involve speech. He loved the idea.

***

PRESENT DAY

Rain trickles down the kitchen window, but in the distance Mike can see sunshine trying to break through the heavy black clouds. About time too. It’s the last week of August for goodness sake, the weather should be hot enough to crack flagstones, not wet enough for Arks.

Daisy has been climbing the walls with boredom at having to stay indoors all the time, and Mike feels like he is wasting the holiday time he has taken off to be with her. He had been envisaging days at Southend fun fair, all deafening noise, flashing lights, and thunderous rides; and peaceful paddling at Mersea Island in front of the pastel-coloured beach huts, building sandcastles in the pale sand, then visiting the seafront café and munching on chips so hot they made his eyes water. All the things they had done with Mags, back when they had been a proper family: mum, dad, daughter.

The famous seaside postcard line pops into his head and he smiles sadly. “Wish you were here, Mags,” he whispers.

“Daddy, I’m bored,” a voice announces behind him. “So I think we should build a tent, then I can put on a play for you while you sit inside it.”

He turns around very slowly, careful to arrange his features neutrally, as he learned to on a hostage negotiation course he had once attended many years ago. Daisy has her hands on her hips and looks like she will not be giving him an inch.  Sometimes a good negotiator has to know when to give in to demands. Well, why not? Daisy’s idea is better than any he has come up with, though it pains him to admit it

Two hours later, Mike is still sitting cross-legged on the floor, hunkered under a blanket he has rigged over the back of the sofa and a couple of chairs. His back aches from hunching over, and he’s fairly certain his legs are so dead he will fall over when he finally tries to stand again. Daisy is having a whale of a time though, so it’s worth it

She is dancing around the room, high kicking and twirling, dark blonde pigtails bobbing up and down, and a big smile on her face as she sings various songs from Frozen. If Mike ever went rogue he would be tempted to take out whoever wrote all those songs. Daisy adores them though, knows the words off by heart, and movements too, it seems. She has been attending dance classes since her mum died and it has really brought Mike’s quiet little girl out of her shell.

He cheers in all the right places, but genuine fear for the use of his legs makes him call things to a halt finally.

“Look at the time,” he cries, glancing at his watch. “Time for me to make us some food, then it’s bath and bed.”