Trafika Europe 9/10 - UK in Europe

JoMazelis

he was jolted awake by a sudden noise. She knew how he conducted his transactions with the maker of the fabric flowers with hardly a word passing between them, how he was kind to the poor dark- haired woman and gave her coffee so that she might warm herself. He came out from behind the counter and lifted the container of flowers from the window, holding them aloft so that she could see them and acknowledge that those were the ones she had wanted. He went behind the counter again, as she knew he would. ‘I have no brown paper, so will newspaper do?’ he asked. Amanda nodded, sensing a lie.


Indeed later, once Amanda was back in her room, she looked down into Monsieur Arbot’s shop and saw clearly that he did have a roll of brown paper and that he used it freely with his other customers. But other dramas would play out first, as while Monsieur was tying a short loop of string around the stems of the bouquet, the door to the shop opened and the flower maker herself entered. It was the woman’s habit, Amanda knew, never to enter the shop when the florist had customers to attend to, but here shewas, hesitant and pale, her lips a strange unnatural bluish red, her hair lifeless and flat (reminding Amanda of a drowned rat she had once found by the side of a flooded sewer).

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