Traditional rose flash design

You will not believe what the florist did to the buttonholes. Mr Pargeter swore on his mother's grave that the red roses had come up from Kent that morning, but they were the colour of old brick and a dozen had their heads bent like they had been running. I spent the whole of Thursday at the kitchen table with a pot of wire and a box of ribbon, rebuilding them while Dad shouted at the telly about the tea urn.

By the time the vicar reached the part about love being patient, I had all twenty-six buttonholes laid out in a row on the vestry windowsill, and the light through the old glass made the petals look lit from inside. Each one had a bud of yellow silk at its heart, stitched the way Gran taught us, and a pair of dark green leaves with rust-red tips to hide the wire. Nobody could tell they had been mended. Gerald's mother cried over hers, which I took as a compliment.

The bride found me afterwards, out behind the hall with a cigarette I was not supposed to have, and asked how I knew the bud should be yellow. I told her it was the only bit of the rose that wasn't trying to hide. She laughed and said it was the most honest thing anyone had said to her all week, and then she pinned one to my own lapel without asking.

I still have the spare wire in my bag. Love, Pen