“Where you get this, Julie?” she asked me, and I told her that periodically someone left a bunch just like that that on my doorstep, probably an old boyfriend, that it was strange, but sort of nice.
Mrs. Morrison looked at me oddly.
“This more than ordinary flowers, look, I show you.”
She left the room and came back with a small book, “The Language of Flowers’ that I’d seen in all the bookstore bestseller lists a couple of years ago, at the height of the Victoriana and Edwardian literature revival. She pored through the book, and made some notes, then read to me what she’d written.
“Look at this, Julie, someone talking to you, need you to listen. Purple Hyacinth mean ‘I am sorry, please forgive me’, Orange Blossom mean ‘Eternal Love’, Primrose mean ‘I cannot live without you’ and fern mean ‘Secret bond of love’; someone talking to you, they shouting for your attention, who is it Julie, you know who this from now?”
My head was spinning, and I had to sit down or fall down. Mark! It had to be from Mark, who else? And why this way, why not just knock on my door?
Mrs. Morrison hugged me, held me close, spoke quickly, softly to me.
“Perhaps he got no other way to talk to you, something keeping him from you, perhaps he need you to know he still there, still need you. I hear about you and older brother, I not want to judge you, how can I? Perhaps brother have very good reason, perhaps he need you to hate him so you not go look for him. I remember when you little girl, the way brother look after you, watch you, I see even then how he feel about you, and when you hurt I see how much he hurt! No, he not let harm come to you, and he not leave you because he want to, he driven away by ac ngu ngoc me, stupid, evil mother, you think of that? I remember you mother, I still very angry with her for hurting you, you think she not capable of much evil? I know she capable, I see for myself what she do to you!”
My head was in even more of a whirl. In all the time I’d been breaking my heart over him, it had never occurred to me that he may have been warned-off me, that he was keeping his distance to protect me. A moment’s thought from Nia’s wise, wonderful, smart mother had encapsulated the reason for his disappearance. Wherever he was, it wasn’t far; the flowers proved that. What a smart, what a clever, what a unique way of talking to me!
Nia’s mum hadn’t finished.
“I think you need to keep hoping he come back to you, he keeping his distance for a reason, who knows, maybe reason go away, he come back. Your brother a good boy, he a lot like Jamie, he keep his heart open only for you, he not throw you away like that, be patient, maybe all will be well!”
Tears were running down my face now as I grieved all over again for him, for my lost boy, talking to me from a distance, not daring to come close, but risking… what? Just to drop a simple bouquet of flowers on my front step, to tell me he loved me the only way he could.
“Why didn’t he just write me a letter, tell me what was going on, let me know he was OK? Why was that so hard?”
Nia’s mum hugged me as I asked her what could be so terrible that he had to resort to such an elaborate, obscure code to keep his identity concealed, what was he so afraid of?
“Julie, your brother not stupid, if he is afraid to come near you, maybe he afraid for very good reason, and not taking any chances; maybe if he write to you, someone find out, or you let slip he contact you; maybe he not afraid for himself; maybe he afraid for you, so he keep away to keep you safe. It not easy for him, I think; he love you like you love him, maybe he as lonely as you because he not have you with him too.”
That had never occurred to me, and it only brought fresh tears as for some reason I pictured his poor sweet lonely face when he was a boy, always alone at home, crying in his room in the dead of night, no-one to care for him as he tried to cope, as he tried to be an adult because he wasn’t allowed be a little boy.
Shelagh meanwhile was grinning like a pumpkin, her smug ‘I told you!’ look on her face as her words from two years ago reverberated in my head:
“I’m also puzzled, no, worried by this whole Mark thing; 5 minutes after he’s swearing eternal undying love for you he’s looking right through you; something’s really wrong there, she’s done something, or said something, or made some kind of threat, I guarantee; Mark’s just not like that, something else is going on, something nasty, I’d bet on it, so I’m not going to judge him just yet, much as I love you, Jules.”
For the first time in two years, I allowed myself to hope; that my Mark was still there, waiting for me to find him, that my nightmare would be over, that I could erase this part of my life, because there were no memories I wanted from the last two years.
The hope I had from this conversation stayed with me. Now that I knew (or guessed) who was talking to me, I could believe that one day he would come back, and we could begin again. Mrs. Morrison saw this in me, and insisted I take her book, read through it, maybe leave him a message of my own, a suggestion Shelagh agreed with vocally!
But first, I would have to talk with David…
*
Seeing David again was heartbreaking; he deserved better than this. I met him in the small coffee shop around the corner from my office; neutral ground.
My last lucid memory of him was making love, then a hazy set of impressions, memories of Mark tangled up with images of him, and feelings I couldn’t define but which pressed at me nevertheless. David was his usual self, but there was a tense wariness about him, almost an unwillingness to touch me, especially when I leaned up to peck him on the cheek. He actually flinched when I kissed him; God, I must have really spooked him…
I started to apologise for panicking and throwing a king-sized freak-out at him, but he stopped me.
“Look Jules, we both know why we’re here, we both know it’s not going to work, and I despise this ‘we can still be friends’ break-up bullshit. I worked out what’s really going on in your head, and I wish you luck in working it out, I really do, because I know I’d only ever be second choice with you, that I’d never be anything else as long as you were still hung up on your… on Mark. Like Shelagh says, I won’t be Mr. Right, I’ll only ever be Mr. Right-Now, and that’s not good enough for me, I actually believe I deserve better than that. You’re a beautiful girl, a really lovely person, and I wish you every happiness, and I hope you find the man of your dreams one day; I just wish it could have been me. I’ll go now, I hate extended goodbyes.”