Chapter THREE
Seeing Sylvia again was heavenly.
After the day I’d had – meeting with the most stroppy, awkward client I’d ever worked with in my entire career! – sitting down with Sylvia and her lovely friends honestly felt like relaxing into a big warm hug.
‘What’s the green room like?’
the girl called Maddy wanted to know.
I’d chuckled.
‘The green room? Well, there’s an awful lot of sitting around being bored, waiting to be called to do your bit. And for some reason, I always end up being lumbered with the biggest, most opinionated, most crashing bore ever, and having to listen to them bragging about themselves for hours.’
Everyone laughed at that and I relaxed even more, wriggling my shoulders and easing off my heels under the table.
My shoes had been torturing me all day. It was such a relief to slip them off!
I was .
‘comfortable trainers sort of girl’
at heart and always had been. But the high heels were something I’d grown used to over the years since the annual TV show had begun its remarkable eight-year run (and counting). They were part of my ‘image’.
It had been a shock when people started recognising me in the street. From then on, I wa.
‘florist to the stars Celia Dearlove’
and as my agent kept reminding me, I couldn’t afford to damage my career by letting my TV persona slip. Everyone knew how fleeting fame could be. You could be the newspapers’
darling one day, then disgraced and gone the next. I found the whole thing quite exhausting. But my career was my whole life and I had a mortgage to pay.
The best part of the day was getting home and locking the door on the world – and finally being able to relax.
‘It must be amazing to have had such success in your career,’
said the girl who Sylvia had introduced to me as Mick’s daughter-in-law.
‘You’re so good on that TV show.’
She was softly-spoken and she blushed a little when she spoke to me, and I warmed to her immediately.
I’d been shy myself when I was younger. I still was. I was just very good at hiding it these days.
I’d smiled at her.
‘Thank you, Fen. You know, floristry has been my whole life, ever since I started working in a florist’s shop in my early twenties, and I guess it still is. Flowers are my passion, and my passion has given me a comfortable living. But I think anyone who’s willing to put their whole focus into their career is likely to make a success of it.’
I’d shrugged ruefully.
‘That’s what I’ve done. But being married to the business certainly isn’t for everyone.’
Fen nodded.
‘I have three-year-old twins and my ability to focus on anything for more than five seconds seems to have completely vanished.’
‘Twins?’
I’d felt a big tug on my heart-strings.
‘Wow, lucky you.’
‘Thank you.’
Fen smiled.
‘I do feel lucky. The only time I don’t is when they both come racing into our room at some ridiculously early hour and start bouncing madly on the bed before we’re even awake. I love them to bits but I’m never going to be business woman of the year with those two around!’
‘You could make a range of energy drinks called “5am Toddler”,’
suggested Sylvia with a grin.
‘I bet they’d go down a storm.’
As everyone chuckled, I’d smiled fondly at my old friend. If anyone deserved some happiness late in life, it was Sylvia, and I couldn’t wait to get to work on the flowers for her fabulous Hallowe’en wedding . . .
Later, as I drove home, I’d sung along to a jolly song on the radio, for once not caring what the oncoming drivers might say if they recognised me.
Wasn’t that Celia Dearlove off the telly? She looked proper mad, singing away like that!
Sylvia and her friends at the café had made me feel so at ease with their chat and their eager questions about what it was like working on a TV show. Maddy had wanted to know, among other things, if it really was as glamorous to work in TV as it seemed to be – and I’d made her laugh by admitting right there and then that it definitely wasn’t. Quite the opposite, in fact.
The little warning voice in my head had berated me, of course, for being dangerously unguarded with my words.
You shouldn’t admit to things like that. Not unless you want to find yourself quoted in the newspapers and subsequently sacked from the programme!
Over the years I’d trained myself to listen to the warning voice and temper my conversations and behaviour accordingly. But for some reason, I’d felt so relaxed sitting there in that café, that for once, I’d found myself throwing caution to the wind.
These genuine, friendly people deserved the real me – not some weird, rather stern TV ‘version’
of me. I instinctively knew that I could trust them and that nothing ‘bad’
would happen to me if I was just myself for once . . .
*****
I was in my early twenties when I’d realised that creative floristry was what I wanted to do with my life.
And this realisation – that I could make people smile with my art – gave me the confidence I needed to push down my shyness and go out there and meet clients. Not having a family, I could be totally single-minded about my job, and I’d found myself progressing up the career ladder almost without realising it.
My career had become who I was, and when my agent told me I had the chance to be a judge on a new reality TV show, I’d found myself agreeing to it and not even questioning if the attendant ‘fame’
was something I even wanted.
Looking back, I agreed to it because actually, what else was there for me?
I was late forties by then, with no partner and no children depending on me.
I’d fallen deeply in love in my early twenties but it hadn’t worked out, and over the years that followed, no other man had seemed to measure up to him. So I’d accepted my fate, deciding that I was obviously meant to be single. And there was nothing wrong with that. Nothing at all.
Whenever I found my mind wandering to the man I’d lost and the children I’d longed for but never had, I’d give myself a stern talking to and tell myself how lucky I was in other respects. I had a great career, which kept me very busy and which some might envy, and I was incredibly fortunate to be living in a beautiful house with no money worries.
There was no reason for anyone to pity me. In fact, some might consider my situation incredibly freeing; having a family generally meant compromising, but I could follow my career path to the stars if I wanted to and there was nothing to stop me.
So that’s what I did.
I said yes to the TV show and became a household name, which was exciting and terrifying in equal measure. But people seemed to like me on the whole, which was encouraging. So I put on a show of being self-assured and confident and completely in control. I wouldn’t let the mask slip until I was safely home, door locked, with my hair scraped back in a scrunchie and eating dinner on a tray watching the soaps on TV.
I told myself I was happy. I’d been astoundingly successful in my chosen career and I should feel really proud of myself.
But recently, I’d become aware of a nugget of fear inside me. It kept tapping away, trying to get my attention, growing more insistent as the months passed.
If you ever gave up your fabulous career, it whispered, what would be left of you?
Who would you actually be?
Deep down, I suspected there would be a terrible emptiness.
But there was nothing I could do about that. So I used the rising panic to propel me swiftly on to the next meeting . . . the next client . . . the next big job . . . and the next glittering episode of the TV show . . .
And it seemed to be working.
Until that fateful meeting earlier this year on Sunnybrook High Street, when I’d begun to believe the impossible – that after all the years of living alone and telling myself it was what I wanted, my wildest dreams might be about to come true.
I’d kept my deepest desires locked away in a box for so long. But after that day spent with Mark – seeing him again and realising the feelings were still there, for me at least – I’d stupidly allowed myself to hope . . .
Only to have my dreams come crashing down once more.
Now I felt more vulnerable than ever. It had taken courage to unlock that box and allow myself to feel all those raw emotions again.
How was I ever going to get them back into that box?
Fen