The ribbon was pink.
Not the soft pink of the flowers, or the pale pink Bea had shown me on her phone. This was the pink of something you bought for a small child who wanted to be seen from space.
Bea held the roll under the workroom light.
“Maybe it's the lighting,” she said.
I switched the light off.
The ribbon stayed pink.
“Bad news,” I said.
She sighed, then laughed. “Put it back on. I'm not giving up yet.”
Bea had opened the florist's front door when we arrived. We worked in the room behind the shop, where she'd arranged to prepare her own wedding flowers between shop jobs. Buckets stood along the wall. The air smelled cool and green, and every surface had a pair of scissors on it except the one where she was looking for scissors.
I found a pair under a sheet of tissue and handed it over.
“Useful already,” she said.
“Wait till you see my invoice.”
We had brought the smaller stems from Mother's house. The main arrangements could stay in water until later in the week; today Bea wanted to sort the ribbon and make up a sample of the little flowers people would wear.
She went through a cupboard and emerged with a roll of cream ribbon.
“This will do.”
“Will Mum like it?”
“It's ribbon. She'll recover.”
Bea put the pink aside and drew a length of cream against a rose. It looked lovely. I told her so, and she glanced up with an expression that made me realise how carefully we'd been speaking to each other on the way here.
“You really think?”
“Yes. I don't say that about all ribbon.”
She cut three lengths and laid them on the table. “Then this is what we're using.”
We fell into work. She showed me how to hold the small stems together, wrap the bottom and hide the join. My first attempt looked like a rose wearing a bandage.
“Bit tighter,” she said.
“It's injured.”
“It's embarrassed. Try again.”
The second was better. She took it from me and turned it slowly, looking at all sides, before setting it beside hers.
“Good.”
“Don't sound so surprised.”
“I'm trying to be supportive.”
The bell over the front door rang. Bea went out to serve a customer, then returned and checked my work without rushing me. We worked at the long table with our elbows almost touching. For a while the only things I had to think about were stems, ribbon and keeping water away from my sleeve.
“Are you wearing one?” I asked.
“Not a buttonhole. I've got the small spray for my dress.”
She pointed to a little drawing propped against the cupboard. I had seen the dress in pictures, but suddenly I could imagine her in it here, close enough to touch.
“You'll pin that on for me,” she said. “And take the bouquet when we start. I'll need both hands.”
“You'll need both hands for what?”
She wiggled her ring finger.
“Right,” I said.
“I'd still like you beside me.”
I bent my head over the stems. I hadn't decided what to do with the picture of Bea putting a ring on Nate's hand. I couldn't take it out of the middle of everything else.
“I said I was staying.”
“I know. I wanted to ask.”
I finished the wrap and set it down.
“Then yes. I'll do it.”
She touched my shoulder briefly. “Thank you.”
I picked up a pin, felt a sharp sting and dropped it.
“Ow.”
Bea caught my hand. A bead of blood rose on my fingertip.
“We could have warned the flowers,” I said. “First wound of the wedding.”
“Come on.”
She took me to the little sink and turned on the tap. I rinsed the finger while she found a plaster in a drawer.
“You know where everything is,” I said.
“I've put most of it there.”
She dried my hand and wrapped the plaster carefully around the end of my finger. It was bigger than the wound deserved.
“Try to keep that dry.”
“In a room full of water.”
“Use the other nine.”
There was nobody watching her be kind. Nate wasn't there. Mother wasn't there. It was just Bea bending over my hand, smoothing the edge of the plaster with her thumb.
I wanted us to be all right.
We took our lunch on stools by the back door. Bea had bought sandwiches on the way, and mine had no tomato. She ate hers with one knee drawn up, crumbs dropping into the fold of her trousers.
“You always used to do that on your bedroom floor,” I said.
“Sit?”
“Feed the trousers.”
She brushed them. “I thought we'd agreed not to discuss my methods.”
“At your first flat, too. I helped put your table together and you still ate on the floor.”
“That table was awful.”
“It stood up. Eventually.”
“You put that leg on backwards.”
I could still picture it leaning while she tried to tighten a screw underneath. We had been delighted that Mother wasn't there to correct us. Bea had moved the month after Nate left. September. I had been sad about him, but she'd needed help, and carrying her boxes had got me out of my room.
“It's strange,” I said. “You moved out just after that summer. Now I'm moving into my own place just after your wedding.”
“Your own room,” she said. “No dreadful table yet.”
“Give me time.”
She smiled and picked a crumb off her knee.
“Was it hard? Paying for the flat at first?” I asked. “I keep thinking I've forgotten some enormous thing I'm going to need.”
“Mum helped with the rent. That made it easier.”
I nodded. I knew Mother had helped her get started. At the time I'd thought she had finally accepted Bea was twenty and allowed to live somewhere else.
“Mine comes with the job. I mainly need a decent pillow.”
“Don't buy a cheap one. You'll hate it every night.”
She said it so firmly that I laughed.
“Anything else?”
“Something nice to eat on your first evening. Otherwise you end up tired, sitting on a box, eating dry cereal.”
“Speaking from experience?”
“I was very independent. It was terrible.”
We finished the sandwiches, then went back to the table. Bea put the cream-ribbon buttonhole against my shirt to show me how it would sit.
“There,” she said. “Lovely.”
I looked down at the little rose.
She kept her hand against my shoulder for another second before taking it away.
I thought of standing beside her on Saturday. Of holding her bouquet when she needed both hands.
For the first time since Nate came through the kitchen door, I could picture helping her do it.