Read Online The Geranium Girls by Alison Preston - Free Book Online

its scent.
    This was the first summer she had put some of the plants outside. She had thought they would be too vulnerable out there, but Beryl had talked her into it. “They’ll brighten the place up,” she’d said.
    “I kissed a guy I shouldn’t have kissed,” Beryl said, as she fluffed her hair about with the towel.
    Hermione laughed. “What are you, in grade seven? I fucked ninety-two guys I shouldn’ta fucked. But there’s nothing either of us can do about it. Let’s have a real drink.”
    She retrieved a bottle of Jack Daniel’s from a cupboard in her rolltop desk and poured them each a couple of inches.
    Beryl said, “I’m going to ask you what you’ll probably think is a stupid question.”
    “Shoot.”
    “Do you think it’s significant that I found Beatrice Fontaine and that I also know you and that she was a customer of yours?”
    “That’s not a stupid question,” Hermione said and took a long pull from her drink.
    “Damn. I was afraid you’d say that.”
    “I don’t know if it’s significant in the grand scheme of things, but it’s significant to me,” Herm said.
    “How?”
    “I don’t know yet.”
    “This guy I mentioned,” Beryl said, “the one I kissed too soon? He’s very big on connections between things being full of all kinds of meaning.”
    “He sounds interesting,” Herm said. “Maybe I could fuck him next.”
    Beryl smiled. “Yeah, he is interesting in an irritating sort of way. I quite like him.”
    “Maybe it’s okay that you kissed him already,” Hermione said gently.
    “I don’t know…a passionate kiss sort of knocks down a barrier, doesn’t it? Maybe that barrier shouldn’t have been knocked down yet. Or ever, even. It changes everything. I can’t believe it isn’t the same for him. He seems so…sensitive, with all his talk of connections.”
    “I think you might be exaggerating the importance of kissing,” said Hermione.
    “No. I’m not.”
    “Well, maybe his whole world has changed too.”
    “Are you making fun of me?”
    “No.”
    “A kiss shouldn’t take place only because it seems the thing to do at the time,” Beryl said. “It’s more important than that.”
    She came away from the shop feeling a little bit better and a little bit drunk. On the walk home she tried to organize her thoughts and couldn’t. Who cares? she thought, as she passed through Coronation Park. Who cares how organized I am if I feel better and my hair’s clean? Besides, Dhani sucked wasp poison out of my foot; it’s okay that I let myself go when we kissed.

Chapter 14
     
    Dhani spoke like a Canadian; he’d been here that long. This was a disappointment for Beryl. She wanted an accent to go along with his exotic beauty.
    On her deck with Dhani she could forget the mushroom girl and a lot of other things besides. She could almost imagine she was someone else, living in a foreign land sipping strong coffee.
    It was a quiet morning a week after their night in the park. The occasional car washed by on the drive and the crows shouted in one of their many voices. But that was streets away. It was peaceful here. Beryl was reminded of mornings when she was a kid. When she’d had chicken pox, or mumps, or some other childhood disease. It had been good to miss school, but eerily lonesome on her own outside the school walls.
    “So, the girl you found in the park?”
    Dhani didn’t look at Beryl when he spoke. He talked to the grand old willow tree that shaded most of the deck.
    “Beatrice Fontaine, you mean.”
    He looked at her now but didn’t speak.
    “Dhani, what is it? You look horrible. Please tell me this isn’t about the terrible mistake I made in letting us lie down too close to where I found her.”
    He couldn’t possibly know about the Hermione connection, could he?
    “No, Beryl,” he said. “No. I’m afraid we’re connected to her in more ways than one or two.”
    “What do you mean, Dhani? What are you talking about?”
    “I know someone who