“Are you kidding? My family is a pain in the neck. Freddie has a girlfriend so now they’re sprawled on the sofa every night holding hands and gazing at each other, and Eric keeps teasing him so you can imagine how that pans out, and Kaitlin—well, I could go on. Let’s just say I envy you not having to share your space with anyone. You go home, and it’s just you.”

“Yes.” Flora watched as Julia placed the roses carefully, shaping the bouquet. “Just me.” This was the life she’d dreamed of living when she’d been sharing a house with her aunt. She had an apartment of her own. Small, lacking in charm, but all hers. She had friends. Her diary was filled with activities and invitations. She should be grateful and happy. She was lucky, lucky, lucky.

“When you go home at night everything in your apartment is exactly the way you left it. No one has moved stuff around, or buried it under piles of their own crap. You don’t have a dozen pairs of sneakers tripping you up when you walk through the door, no one banging on the door yelling ‘Mom!’ when you’re trying to use the bathroom, no one sprawled over every inch of the sofa.”

“No one bangs on my door, that’s true, and it’s just me on the sofa.” Flora removed a couple of stray leaves that Julia had missed. “Brilliant really, because I can stretch my legs out and flop like an octopus and no one complains.”

“I’m surrounded by chaos. You have blissful silence.”

“Blissful.”

“When you choose flowers for yourself, they’re always beautiful. If I’m lucky, Geoff sometimes buys me a bunch from the convenience store.”

But at least he’d bought her the flowers.

No one had ever bought Flora flowers. She spent her days producing stunning arrangements for other people, but was never the recipient.

“I read the other day that single women with no children are the happiest of anyone.”

“Mmm.” Who had they asked?

“You have the perfect life. Although I still want to fix you up with someone. You need a man.”

Flora was less convinced. All the men she’d dated had only been interested in one type of intimacy. And that was fine. More than fine on occasion, but it was like gorging on ice cream when your body was craving something nutritious and truly nourishing. Satisfying in the short term but offering no long-term sustenance.