Sophia's Dilemma by Bowes K T

Author:Bowes, K T
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: romance, drama, murder, dating, relationships, friends, school, family, police, poverty, bullying, teen pregnancy, injury, abandonment, physical abuse, teen problems, single parenting
Publisher: K T Bowes

Chapter Seven

The next day, while the sun still rose and the birds twittered loudly in the overhead trees, Sophia sat in her car outside the front doors of the garden centre, an hour earlier than agreed. She daydreamed and tried not to torture herself with thoughts of Dane and Louise, jumping when Harold knocked on the driver’s window. There was an embarrassing moment as the window switch wouldn’t work because she took the keys out and as she tried to open the door to speak to him, she hit Harold in his large stomach. “I’m so sorry,” Sophia gushed, mortified at her terrible start.

“Na, it’s big enough. Don’t worry.” Harold patted his midriff with a good natured sparkle in his eyes. “Put your car round there, away from the customers.” He pointed to a small track at the back of the car park marked ‘Staff Only.’ Sophia nodded and fiddled with the keys. “Yeah,” he commented, “they can garden, but they can’t drive.”

Sophia had cause to be grateful later that day, when she watched a few of the most avid and knowledgeable gardeners struggle to get their laden vehicles out of the angled parking slots. Edgar would have been livid if she had dinged his SUV.

“She’s a darn good little worker,” Harold commented to one of the other staff as Sophia lugged bags of compost into the potting area. She was willing and affable, carefully potting the tiny seedlings into bigger trays, exactly as Harold showed her, working quietly in a corner away from the general melee. Mid-morning, he called her for a break over the loud speaker and on her way back to the office Sophia saw an older woman looking perplexed. She stared at a row of large and expensive palms, running delicate fingers over her chin and seeming a bit lost.

“Would you like me to get some help?” Sophia asked, fully intending to fetch Harold or one of the other assistants buzzing around. But the customer launched immediately into her problem and the girl nodded knowingly. “That’s exactly what my mum wanted to do,” she replied, remembering happier times. “She created a kind of native grove with a bench area and the birds loved it. She copied the design in someone else’s front garden and just changed it to fit out garden. The front of our house is very English but out the back is pure New Zealand, like a mixture of the two cultures. It’s a neat thing to do.”

The woman in her fifties exuded a hurried air that hovered delicately on a state of panic, threatening to pitch over at any second. Looking around her, Sophia noticed the other three assistants deliberately avoiding eye contact with her. “Er, look, I’ll write the address down of the garden Mum copied. It’s on River Road. If you like it, come back and I’ll get someone to help you choose the right plants.” Sophia handed the scrap of paper over, adorned with brown fingerprints, an approximate address hastily scribbled on it in pencil.

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