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kitchen from the garden, bursting with excitement, her tiny hands clutching yet more flowers to stick into the Oasis. “Later on I became a pretty moody teenager. My parents couldn’t handle it. Other people’s gloom and negativity makes them feel awkward and embarrassed. So, whenever I felt pissed off with the world, I’d go up to my room and arrange dried flowers. I found it comforting. I didn’t have the confidence to sell them, so I got my mum to donate them to local tag sales and bazaars. Then I got friendly with the local florist. She lent me books on flower arranging, and if I went in late on a Saturday afternoon, she would give me all the flowers that were past their prime. It wasn’t long before I realized I had a talent for flower arranging, just like my gran.” She stopped again, fearing she had been giving him the wrong impression. “Oh, God, you must think I was this sad, lonely weirdo with no social life, whospent all her spare time alone in her room arranging flowers. You should know that I did my fair share of going to parties, smoking dope and getting rat-assed on cheap cider.”
    He was smiling at her. “It’s OK. It didn’t occur to me you were a sad, lonely weirdo.”
    “Really?” She thought back to when she’d told Toby about spending hours on end in her room, arranging dried flowers, and how he’d said that had she been his child he would have carted her off to the nearest shrink.
    “With me it was diseases,” Dan said.
    She tilted her head to one side. “How do you mean?”
    “From the age of fifteen until I went to university, I used to spend nearly all my Saturday afternoons in the local library looking up illnesses and their symptoms. I had suddenly become aware of my own mortality and that it was possible to die of some pretty horrendous diseases. I decided that forewarned was forearmed.”
    “But you grew out of it?”
    “Eventually, but even when I was at university, the morbid curiosity lingered. I remember forming this band with some mates and insisting we call it Spastic Colon.”
    She burst out laughing. Afterward, they fell into silence.
    “So, how does it feel to be getting married?” he said eventually.
    “Exciting, but a bit scary,” she said, aware that concentrating on answering his questions really was easing her panic.
    “Why scary?”
    She shrugged. “Isn’t it normal to be scared before you get married? ’Til death do us part is such a long time.”
    “Even if you’ve found the right person?”
    She couldn’t work out why the question had pricked herand made her feel defensive. “Oh, I’ve absolutely found the right person,” she declared. “No doubt about that. Toby’s wonderful. He works hard. He’s solid, reliable. I know he’ll never let me down.” She paused. “God, I’ve made him sound like a Volvo. I mean, obviously there’s more to him than that. Far more. He’s handsome, clever, funny.”
    The lights started to flicker again. Abby felt her body tense.
    “There’s clearly a problem with the power supply,” he said.
    “Omigod. Please don’t tell me that means the elevator could go plummeting to the bottom of the elevator shaft.”
    “Abby, you have to calm down. The station staff will sort this out. They’re probably waiting for an engineer.” His eyes turned to the bottle of wine standing on the floor. “Look, why don’t I open this? A drop of alcohol might ease your nerves.”
    “OK,” she said. At this stage she was willing to try anything. “But how are you going to open the bottle?”
    He grinned. “Easy.” He put his hand into his jacket pocket and produced a Swiss Army knife. “Thirteenth-birthday present,” he said. “I’ve carried it with me ever since. You never know when you might need to scale a fish or take a stone out of a horse’s hoof.”
    She giggled. “Or open bottles of wine to calm crazy phobics trapped in elevators. Toby thinks I should have gotten over my phobia by now. He doesn’t say as