Petals

one

"He loves me. He loves me not. He loves me. He loves me not," Annabelle Bradford repeated over and over again as she striped a deplorable daisy of its petals. "He loves me. He loves me not." The last petal drifted to the ground and she sighed, flopping back on the plaid wool blanket she had lain over the grass in the garden of her father's London townhouse.

"Who on Earth do I think I can fool?" she muttered to herself and tossed the daisy stem aside. "He doesn't even know I exist and he probably never will. He'll live his life out, marry a woman who looks like an angel and always says the right thing and she'll bear him as many children as he likes - not too many, so as not to seem uncivilized and not too few because she'll be an obedient wife who will always do her duty." She watched the clouds float along in the sky, mentally picking out shapes among them as she went on with her ranting prophecy.

"One day, when his children are all grown up and he's bouncing his youngest grandson on his knee, the butler will walk in and say, "The mail, My Lord." And he'll go through it, laughing over letters from his friend and reading his grandson some passage from one his daughter in Italy wrote and then he'll come across a cream coloured envelope with flowing words in red ink. He'll open it and, lo and behold, there will be an invitation informing him that some strange woman obsessed with flowers died and, as her last wish, asked that he attend her funeral.

"Yes, and he'll go, even though he'll think it's odd and strange and rather grotesque. He'll go out of respect for a woman's last request. It shall be open casket of course; Melanie would make it so because that's just the way she is. He'll look down at me and pretend he's saying some monumental goodbye to someone he knew very, very well, but really he'll be thinking how awful I look in whatever dress it is that Melanie shall pick out for me. Then he'll go home and tell his still beautiful wife about what a strange day's he's had and she'll say something perfect that will make him laugh and by the next week, he'll have forgotten all about it.

"Well, I won't have it!" Annabelle sat bolt upright on the blanket, blinked and cast a look about the garden to make sure no one had heard her sudden outburst. There was no one near.

"I won't have it," she repeated, more quietly this time. "I won't stand for living without him ever knowing I even exist. There must be something I can do so he'll at least have a clue who I am when he goes to my funeral."

She looked around her garden, recalling the meaning of each plant planted there as she did. Her eyes fell on the two clusters of bluebottles on either side of the door. Bluebottles. It certainly was a suitable message, but was it...too suited, perhaps? After all, she didn't want him to think of her at her funeral as 'that pitiful girl who sent me those bluebottles all those years ago.' Gnawing on her lip, Annabelle considered the idea.

What does it matter what he thinks of me after I'm dead? So long as he remembers me at all, I'll be happy.

Decidedly, she picked up her garden shears from where they lay beside her on the blanket and crossed over to the bluebottles. As she did this, she called out, "Jack! Jack! Where have you gotten off to now?"

"I'm 'ere, milady," panted a young boy as he jogged through the garden from the coach house. He was roughly twelve years of age, with a mess of sandy hair covered by an old hat. His face was dusty and his shirt, which Annabelle could have sworn was white just that morning, was covered in dirt.

She stood, holding a small posy of bluebottles in her hand, her shears in the other, and looked at him wearily. "Whatever shall I do with you, Jack?"

The boy blushed and grinned. "What would ye do without me, milady?" he countered.

Annabelle laughed and waved for him to follow her into the small shed at the side of the garden. "You'd better start tidying yourself up, Jack," she chided him. "You know Father and Mother don't approve of me having you here. Father will have you thrown back onto the streets if he finds the smallest excuse."