Read Online Flowers for the Dead by Barbara Copperthwaite - Free Book Online Page B

like she was particularly bothered about the décor, this was merely somewhere for her to escape from the rest of the world.
    Now though, she knows she must slowly start to rebuild her life. To live instead of exist. Briefly she wonders if she has the strength, but then she looks once more at that photograph and nods grimly. She will do it. She has to.
     
    ***
     
    Adam is waiting outside Oasis in Covent Garden. It’s one of his favourite places. He loves the anonymity of London, so different from his home in Birmingham, where people meet your eye, say hello and then, even worse, insist on engaging you in conversation. He likes that in London people avoid eye contact, and that everyone is hiding behind headphones so it is clear they do not want to speak.
    Covent Garden is a popular place for friends to meet up, though, and that is why Adam is there. He likes to stand at this spot, opposite the exit of the Tube station, watching everyone. Their eager faces as they scan the crowd for pals, the way their faces light up when they spot them, the hugging, the way people’s voices sound so eager, so animated, so full of life. They are happy.
    He wants someone to look at him like that, and this way he gets a tiny sliver of the action by proxy.
    Everyone assumes he is waiting too, and they are right, in a way he is. No one realises how long he has been lingering though, do not see how he can be there all day sometimes, because they move on so quickly. But not him, he carries on searching the crowd, looking, waiting, for that one person he will recognise instantly.
    They won’t recognise him, of course, because he is a stranger – at the moment he is a stranger. But all it takes is for someone to be stood up, that sadness to envelope them, and that is when he will choose them. He doesn’t like it if they get huffy and angry. He could never be with someone like that; they deserve to be stood up or treated badly if they have no manners. No, he waits for the ones who hang their head, who are enveloped in a cloud of sadness; he can see their shoulders drop as they finally give up looking at the crowds hopefully, checking their watch every couple of minutes. The way they walk away, trying desperately not to show their sadness, putting on a brave front while pretending that they have not been stood up at all.
    Poor souls, they are so unhappy - and that is why he chooses them. Because they deserve his friendship, they need someone to look out for them. He just wants to make them happy. No matter what it takes.
    Of course, there are times when he follows someone who is impossible to help purely for geographic reasons. He has taken a shine to women who have been on holiday from abroad, which is frustrating, but he knows he has to let them go. But more often than not he chooses British women. The really lovely thing about Covent Garden is that people come from all over the country, so he never knows where he might end up.
    He once fell for a girl from Inverness, and had to spend hours travelling to see her. Irene had been her name. The instant he thinks of her, lisiathus flowers spring to mind. Adam cannot look at lisianthus without thinking of her soft-as-petals skin; the warm brown tendrils around her neck when her hair was pulled into a ponytail, just as the flowers’ buds twisted delicately; or how she had betrayed him with another man, as the flower had warned him she would. The flower stood for ‘out-going’, and Irene certainly had been.
    He feels her soul stir restlessly inside him now, apologising and feeling ashamed of herself, and he takes a moment to soothe her before continuing to look around.
    The sheer volume of people passing through Covent Garden greatly increases his chances of finding the love of his life, but there are other practical reasons why he likes to go there. Reasons Adam does not like to admit to himself but knows it is only sensible to take into consideration. The sad fact is his track record with women is