Sunny Garden

What sort of message do you want to send? the florist asks me at six o'clock, when I've finished my paperwork, persuaded Sylvia to give Lily back to me and gone down into the shopping centre as the last of today's flowers are being rationalised into as few buckets as possible for overnight storage. Who are you giving them to? Is there an occasion? Some flowers are better for some things than others. Like love, or an anniversary, or sympathy, or what? What kind of message have you got in mind?
    Um, it's just a sort of friendly thing, I tell her, thinking that, on the scale of options available, my message probably falls somewhere between 'sympathy' and 'what'. (p. 202-03)

    Okay. Well, give it to me. I'm going to choose, she says, and takes the menu. And it's going to be very spontaneous.
    But no weird bits of animals, all right? No feet, no noses, none of that.
    She picks Indian, and orders more than we could ever eat. Enough that we qualify for free home delivery, so we don't even have to go out to get it. And, without knowing it, she also happens to order things I regularly order. (p. 231)

    And that didn't work for any of the things I had ready to say to her. She cried and I said none of them. We went out, to the nearest pub to home, the RE. We listened to a band, bought a jug of beer and then another. It was Mel's idea to go there. It wasn't the usual kind of place she'd choose to go to, nothing like it. We'd both spent some time there when we were at uni, but never with each other. So it wasn't about reminiscing. (p. 243)

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Excerpts from Perfect Skin are © Nick Earls and are used with permission.

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Sunny Garden is designed, written and maintained by Liz Perkins, in cooperation with Nick Earls and Penguin Books. Any questions about Sunny Garden should be directed to Liz

All original contents are © Liz Perkins.