Flora's Lot by Katie Fforde (13 inch ebook reader TXT) 📕

Theconcert, the excuse for Flora's mother's visit, was tomorrow.Flora was beside herself with nerves, in spite of havinghad several private practice sessions with Moira, the unofficial head girl of thechoir.

‘If I mess up,' she explained to Moira,who had patiently bashed out the tunes ofall the music on the piano untilFlora knew them backwards, 'I'll ruin it for everyone.'

‘Youwon't mess up,' Moira had said, sounding a little bored with having torepeat herself. 'You know the music, justconcentrate, keep looking at James - he's the conductor, you know - andyou'll be fine.'

‘I think I just about know who Jamesis.'

‘Then you'll be fine! Enoughpanicking!’

*

Now Florawent into the garden to pick flowers for her mother'sbedroom. She was driving down from London thatevening and Flora wanted everything to be perfect for her.She had already found roses, lady's-mantle and mauvegeraniums for the sitting room and bathroom. Now shewanted something extra sweet and tiny for the little mantelpiece in the bedroom.

‘You'rejolly lucky I'm not making you all wear bows round your necks,' she said to the kittens, who had grown up enormously and were tearing round thehouse like motorbikes out ofcontrol. Flora wasn't looking forward toexplaining to Annabelle about the curtains. They weredefinitely taking on a hooked appearance from beingswarmed up and down so often. Could she convinceAnnabelle that the curtains had always had thatuncut-moquette look? The sofa she had protected with throws - alittle too late, but she could leave the throws and Annabelle might never takethem off.

She wadedthrough the kittens to get to the garden. 'I'll haveto find homes for you soon, those two of you who aren'tgoing to live with Uncle Geoffrey and Auntie Edie. Imight keep one.' She sighed. Charles had said he wanted the little black one, but hehadn't said anything about it recently.

As sheclimbed over the barricade she had erected to stop themgetting outside, she wondered if talking aloud to kittenswas on a par with talking to oneself on the guide-to-madnessscale. Definitely not, she decided, kittens were animate. Mind you, so was she.

Havingconstructed the most perfect tiny posy, using forget-me-nots,tiny branches of yellow lady's-mantle and whiteground elder, borage flowers, and a couple of spiresof purple linaria, she came back inside. She had beentempted to add the little white flowers of the goose-grasswhich was currently weaving a net over the gardenlike something out of a sci-fi movie, but had decided she hated the weed too much.Early that morning, Flora had attacked itwith a fork, winding it round andround the tines like spaghetti, but in parts of the garden it was stillthreatening to pin everything to the ground.

Now, sheput the posy in the milk jug from a doll's tea set.She had bought the set from a recent car-boot jaunt. Itwasn't complete, but it had only cost a couple of pounds;it was perfect for this purpose. Her mother would love it; she had a passion fortiny things.

In the kitchen, Flora had all themakings of a wonderful supper. Two bottlesof Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand,as recommended by the nice man in the off-licence,were in the fridge. To have with it, she had made lacy parmesan wafers, which had involved a lot of testing, they were so delicious. Smoked salmonon blinis with sour cream andpancetta were laid out on a verypretty platter, another car-boot find, and she had even sprinkled a few beads of lumpfish roe, inlieu of caviar, on the top, fordecorative effect. As a main course they were going to have aWilliam-inspired salad, enhanced with bitsand pieces from the garden, chicken breasts poached in white vermouth with alemon sauce, and accompanying it, incase it looked too much like dietfood, was potato salad with home-made mayonnaise sprinkled with chives. For pudding she had made a raspberry pavlova, using the egg whites fromthe mayonnaise and raspberries givento her by Geoffrey and Edie when theyheard her mother was coming. Everyone was looking forward to meeting her.

Restrainingthe kittens with difficulty, Flora climbed back outinto the garden. It was such a beautiful evening shethought it would be nice to eat at the little table and chairsCharles had brought her, when she first moved here. Itseemed a lifetime ago, and in a way it was - her life had changed so irrevocably since.

At lastFlora saw a car appearing along the lane and rushed outso she was there the moment her mother got her first foot out of the car.

‘Sorry,darling, I got a bit lost,' said her mother and crushed her daughter so tightly she couldn't breathe.

‘Mummy!'said Flora, reverting to a form of address she hadn'tused for years. 'It's so lovely to see you!' Flora hungon to her mother a little longer than she would have normally because she foundherself weeping a little, and didn't wanther mother to see. She wanted to bethe adult daughter one hundred per cent.

‘Letme take your bag. Oh, it's so nice having you here!’

HermioneStanza looked about her. 'Isn't this pretty! Darling, no wonder you're so happyhere.' She gave her daughtera quick glance and frowned a little.

Florahoped her mother couldn't tell she hadn't been sleepingproperly. She'd made such an effort to sound totallyenthusiastic about everything in her emails and phonecalls, she didn't want to reveal anything untoward whenface to face. After all, her vague, underlying unhappiness was totallyillogical. It wasn't fair to worry her mother with it when she couldn't doanything to help.

‘Comeon in. I've got a bottle of wine in the fridge. Goodness, this bag is heavy! What have you got in it?'

‘A bottleof vodka, some gin and sweet Martini so we can cobble together some Pimm's andsome lemonade, in case you didn't think to buy any. Oh and adessert wine - Muscat and Flora, because it had your nameon it.'

‘Oh Mum, you're a star!’

Hermione needed a guidedtour. She loved her bedroom, which Florahad made very pretty, and she adoredthe posy. She approved of the various unguents Flora had put in the bathroom, as well as the huge jug of cow-parsley that Flora put at the end of thebath.

‘And this ismy bedroom. And that's the cupboard