The Floating Amsterdam Flower Shop (The Floating Shop #1)

Prologue

T he smell of the London underground in summer was not one Rosie liked to inhale.

However cheerful she tried to be– and she always aimed to look on the bright side– cheesy feet, body odour and whatever food someone had brought with them lingered in the hot, stuffy air, and she did her best not to breathe in too deeply.

Head down, Rosie swayed as the train surged around a bend in the line, hot air brushing her neck.

She was always grateful for her pixie cut in this sort of weather.

Not so much in the winter though. The man next to her rocked backwards, his armpit hitting her in the face.

‘Sorry,’ he mumbled as the shock sent her phone tumbling from her hand, and she tried her best to reach down and get it without showing anyone her knickers or taking up too much room.

‘No worries,’ she replied cheerfully. ‘It’s not damaged.’

But he’d already gone back to ignoring her. Rosie swiped again at the screen and returned to scrolling through Instagram.

Images of brightly coloured, dreamy destinations flashed past her eyes, and she longed to be anywhere but on this packed-out tube train inhaling someone’s unwashed hair.

An image of the Bloemenmarkt , the world’s only floating flower market, located in Amsterdam, filled the screen and her heart hummed.

Her evening flower course had come to an end now and ideas had already begun circulating as to what she could do with the skills she’d learned.

She could open her own business, or at least run a sideline alongside her dull design job.

Flowers had always been her passion and she couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of taking a course before.

Now she knew how to pick blooms that complemented each other and arrange them in ways that filled the recipient with joy, she was determined to find a way to make that her living.

Not before time either. She was nearly thirty and hadn’t yet found a career she could stick to.

She had no idea why. It was just that most jobs seemed so.

.. boring, and no matter how much she tried, the thought of a new job, a new start, a new opportunity, always excited her, pulling her in another direction.

But if she could find a career that involved flowers, she just knew she could make it work permanently.

That must be why she hadn’t managed to stick to anything for very long: her heart had simply lain elsewhere.

Out of the tube station, Rosie sucked in great lungfuls of fresh air (or at least the nearest you got to it in London) and walked through the local park admiring the flowers in bloom.

She knew the names of them now, thanks to the course and her mum.

Ignoring the stab of pain that always plunged into her heart when she thought of her, Rosie plonked herself on one of the benches, brushing her short hair back behind her ears.

Children were playing badminton, their parents sitting on a picnic blanket watching them closely, talking and laughing as they sipped from paper cups.

Rosie remembered days like this with her parents, when she and her sister were small, and she tried her best not to think about what day it was.

She returned to scrolling on her phone and watched a reel of an influencer spending a day in Amsterdam.

Something about the city had always appealed to her.

Not least because her mum had always wanted to visit the floating flower market but had never had the chance.

As a botanist, she’d loved everything to do with flowers and plants, taking Rosie and her sister to Kew Gardens more weekends than she could count.

She’d always shared pictures of the floating flower market, describing the tulips.

Flowers that meant perfect or deep love.

It had made her feel warm and snuggly, sat on her mum’s lap, hearing her talk about it.

Nature had been her mum’s passion, and it had always been Rosie’s too, though after her mum had died, she hadn’t allowed herself to indulge in it until recently.

She’d been too sc ared of the feelings of loss it would bring up, and though it had stirred her grief, the floristry course had also made her happy in a way she hadn’t been before.

Rosie watched as the video played on a continuous loop: people riding bikes, the famous canals.

The city looked spectacular, green and vibrant, the colourful houses lining the streets, the houseboats moored and rocking gently on the tide.

The food looked amazing too. Perhaps she should book a trip there?

The bad thing about changing jobs so often was that she hadn’t made many friends.

London could be a lonely place at times, but with her family nearby and an ever-positive attitude, Rosie had never let it affect her too much.

The good thing about not going out much was that she had a little money put by. She could afford it.

‘Hey, you.’ The bench shifted as Rosie’s sister sat down.

Rosie looked over and smiled. ‘Hey, Melody.’

Her sister’s singsong voice perfectly suited her name.

While her mum had been a botanist and insisted one of their daughters be called Rosie, after her favourite flower, their dad was a devout music fan, and Melody had been the compromise for their second child.

They’d both hated their names growing up, only beginning to love them after their mum had died.

‘You okay?’ her sister asked.

The sentence was left unfinished, neither saying the words that still, even after all these years, hurt.

The anniversary of their mum’s death stabbed at both their hearts.

Rosie had ignored it through the day, packaging it off into the little box of worry she tried not to pry into too often.

It had been almost twenty years and though the pain wasn’t as strong as it had been at the start, it still felt like there was a hole somewhere inside her.

A dark, empty space that would never again be filled.

She’d never quite identified where exactly it was, or how to fix it, and she lived in hope that it would simply shrink as the years passed. It never did.

‘Getting there. You?’ Rosie felt the hitch in her voice.

Melody looked over, her light blonde hair, the same shade as their mum’s had been, escaped from the band it had been pulled back into.

Her hands looked red and raw, made sore from where, as a nurse, she’d had to wash them repeatedly through her long, tiring shift.

‘I’ve been on all day so Ihaven’t thought about it.

Well, I’ve tried not to think about it. Haven’t been one hundred per cent successful. Have you called Dad?’

‘I spoke to him this morning, and we’ll see him this evening for dinner. Sometimes I think he copes better with it than we do.’

He always tried to be cheerful but had spoken openly about how much he missed his wife.

He’d always been like that. His honesty about his feelings, letting them know it was okay to be sad, had helped them adjust to the silent space her mum used to fill.

Rosie didn’t know how he did i t. She’d always struggled to speak of her mum, even now, especially to people who’d known her.

They sat in silence until her sister spoke.

‘She loved life so much, didn’t she? Making the most of every single day.

’ She shifted her body, turning to face her.

‘Do you remember that day it was raining and everyone else was staying in, so Mum got us dressed in raincoats and boots and we went stomping through the streets, splashing in the puddles? How old were we then? Eight? Nine?’

Rosie smiled at the memory, the bittersweetness of having loved and lost mixing like oil and water in her veins. ‘Something like that.’

Melody pressed her water bottle to her lips as Rosie looked at her phone.

Her algorithm had paused on an image of the flower market and, suddenly, an idea struck her as though she’d been hit by lightning.

She was done living life on a treadmill, every day the same, boring chores, the same dire job she didn’t like, let alone love.

She was done with it all. What she needed was something new.

Something to get her teeth into. Something that spoke to the thing she was passionate about. And now, she knew what that should be.

‘I’m going to move to Amsterdam,’ she declared loudly as though voicing her thoughts meant she was affirming them to the world, and she couldn’t back out.

Melody’s water sprayed out of her mouth onto the path in front of them, narrowly missing a suited and booted man on his way home from work.

‘Watch out!’ He sidestepped and Rosie repressed a giggle as her sister spluttered and coughed.

‘Sorry!’ she replied. ‘My bad. She wasn’t expecting me to say what I just said.’

The man glanced back over his shoulder like she was mad. Maybe she was.

Melody wiped furiously at the dribbles coating her chin. ‘No, I blimmin’ well wasn’t expecting you to say that!’

‘It makes sense, Mels. Trust me. I’m going to move to Amsterdam and open a flower shop on the Bloemenmarkt .’

‘The what what?’ Mostly recovered, Melody coughed again and tried once more to have a drink.

‘It’s the Dutch name for the floating flower market in Amsterdam.

It’s the only one in the world. It’ll be amazing.

I can just see it now, exactly how it will be.

’ She closed her eyes, picturing the brightly coloured flowers like they were an Instagram photo.

She’d live on a houseboat, or in a flat in one of the houses overlooking a canal.

She’d have friends and a social life and every day she’d work with flowers and plants.

Opening her eyes again, she sighed. ‘I’m so sick of letting life pass me by and I hate my job. Like... really hate it.’

‘More than waitressing at that Halloween-themed restaurant?’

‘Definitely. That fake blood got everywhere. Bits of me were stained pink for days. I’m not sure proper fake blood is supposed to do that.’

‘It’s not.’

‘I’m going to do it, Mels. I’m going to move and make something of myself. I’m nearly thirty– it’s about time I started thriving rather than just surviving.’

Melody’s perfectly arched eyebrows pulled together. ‘Have you been watching life coaches on Insta again?’

‘No,’ Rosie replied defensively, then paused and added: ‘Okay, maybe. But that doesn’t mean they’re wrong.’

‘Listen, I love you– you know I do– but this isn’t the first time you’ve come up with some kind of crazy scheme to change your life. You can be a little...’

‘Optimistic? Hopeful? Go-get-’em?’ She gave a jaunty pantomime air punch.

‘Impulsive. You don’t look before you leap and this is a big move, Rosie. It’s not switching jobs or changing flats; it’s moving to a new country, giving up the security you have here on a whim. And you don’t have a job to go to.’

‘Sometimes it’s good to follow your heart.’

Melody sighed. ‘You can’t make this sort of decision in five minutes, Rosie. You need to sort out a job first.’

‘I will. I’ll find one, and Amsterdam’s only a few hours away on the Eurostar. That’s less than travelling to... I don’t know... Scotland.’

‘What’s Scotland got to do with anything?’ Melody shook her head at the unexpected tangent. ‘Speaking of which, do you remember when you wanted to move to the Highlands and start a reindeer farm?’

‘Okay, that wasn’t one of my best ideas– I’ll admit it.’

‘You’d never even seen a reindeer in real life! And when I made you go and actually face one, you screamed as soon as it opened its mouth and you ran away! You have to think these things through, Rosie. You can’t just up and move countries.’

‘Why not? We can do anything if we put our minds to it.’

‘No, we can’t!’ She was getting cross now. Her voice was taking on that bossy nurse tone she used at work. ‘We– you– need money, somewhere to live, a job—’

‘Mum wanted us to be happy,’ Rosie countered cheerily.

She wasn’t going to be daunted because, unlike some of her other dubious life decisions, this felt right somehow.

‘And I’m not happy– not here. Not in the dead-end jobs I’ve been doing.

The only thing that’s made me happy was my floristry course and that’s finished now—’

‘But will Amsterdam make you happy?’ Melody pointed to the phone screen. ‘Moving away from everyone who knows and loves you.’

‘I’ll make new friends,’ she replied. ‘Everyone I know is married with kids and we hardly see each other. I don’t blame them; life moves on, but the few friends I have– or rather had– aren’t a reason to stay.

And like I said, I not that far away from you and Dad.

I’m not emigrating to Australia.’ Rosie turned to her sister, almost pleading.

‘I can’t explain it, Mels, but every time I look at that picture, I get this feeling in my bones– in my gut– that this is where I’m meant to be.

I need to make a change, and this is as good as any.

Better, in fact, because I love flowers.

I want to open a flower shop and where better than the only place in the world with a floating flower market? A floating. Flower. Market.’

‘What did you have for lunch? That feeling in your gut could just be indigestion.’

Rosie smiled indulgently. ‘Falafel, but it isn’t repeating on me. What I’m feeling is happy, excited, hopeful!’ She grabbed her sister’s arm with both hands. ‘Honestly, I can see it all now. Biking through the city, wandering the canals, eating stroopwafels and bitterballen .’

‘Bitter what?’

‘ Bitterballen . Deep-fried, crispy snack balls.’

‘Snack balls...?’ She pinched the bridge of her nose. Clearly it was all too much, today of all days. ‘Just think about it, Rosie-Roo, please?’

The use of her childhood nickname grounded her a little, but the idea had taken root. Somehow, she just knew she had to take this chance. She knew she had to do something other than work in passionless jobs, and scurry back to her flat above a shop.

Melody took Rosie’s silence as her signal to continue. ‘Sometimes you do things, and you can’t go back.’

Rosie turned once more to her sister. ‘Why would I want to?’

‘You do remember that time you moved to Yorkshire when you were in your Wuthering Heights era? You lasted three days.’

‘That’s because my cottage was a leaky old shack on the Yorkshire Moors. And it was haunted.’

‘Rosie—’

‘I’m doing this, Melody,’ she said a little more firmly. It was a tone of voice she didn’t use all that often with her sister, and Melody pulled back a little in surprise. ‘And it’s going to be great. Trust me. There has to be more out there and, if there is, I’m determined to find it.’