‘Right now?’ I look out at the empty strawberry patch. ‘Oh, plenty. It’s very crowded.’
‘And what are their plans?’
‘Plans?’
‘For the protest. What are they going to do next?’
‘I don’t know.’ I brace myself for the yelling that will inevitably follow, but I can’t tell him anything. It’s not for him to know.
‘You don’t know?’ He doesn’t sound as surprised as I expected. ‘I expect you were too busy being headbutted by a sheep to find out?’
I glance down at Baaabra, who’s still watching me judgementally.
‘I’m following @BeachBattleaxe,’ Harrison explains before I have time to question it. ‘Since you got there, the protest now has a website, and you’re its mascot being headbutted by a sheep. Being headbutted by a sheep was not on your agenda, Felicity!’
‘I didn’t ask to be headbutted by a flipping sheep,’ I snap. ‘Is being headbutted by a sheep on anyone’s agenda?’
‘You’re a gif on Twitter!’
‘I’m trying, okay? You told me to go undercover and I am. What more do you want?’
He’s quiet for a moment, probably surprised into silence by me snapping at him. There’s a first time for everything – both his silence and me saying boo to a curly-moustachioed goose. ‘I want results.’
‘And you’ll get them, but I need a bit longer.’
‘You’ve had a week and a half! This is not a free holiday, Felicity. Don’t think I’m paying you to have fun with a sheep.’
The line goes dead and I blink at the blank screen in my hand. That went about as well as I expected.
How the heck am I going to get out of this? There are only two options – walk away and go back to London, tell Harrison I couldn’t do it, and hope he lets me keep my job, or … Actually that’s it. That is the only option.
But it isn’t an option. Running away, never stopping to look back, leaving this place and these people behind. Losing touch with Ryan again, knowing he’s going to find out this terrible secret about me. Just like last time when he realised in the most embarrassing way possible that I’d been harbouring a gigantic crush on him for all the years we’d worked together. I ran away then, but I don’t want history to repeat itself. And I don’t want to leave. I don’t want this tree to be cut down, or the strawberry patch to be destroyed after it’s somehow survived all these years, or the quirky bunch of residents to lose their garden space and have a soulless hotel plonked in front of their windows. I don’t want this beautiful landscape to be defined by a modern architecture-style building sticking out like a strawberry in a bowl of sweetcorn. I want to help. Not because Harrison wants me to, but because I can’t bear the thought of not helping.
Baaabra Streisand is still watching me like she’s understood every word of this conversation and is severely condemning me.
‘I’m sorry, okay?’ I say to her. ‘I didn’t mean for this to happen.’
And then I realise I’m talking to a sheep. A sheep who intensely dislikes me.
She does the sheep version of a snort and walks around, hunting out the remains of my umbrella and starts shredding what’s left of the fabric, spitting out pieces of it with revulsion, like it somehow demonstrates how much she disapproves of me.
The conversation with Harrison makes me double my efforts with the website, and I hunker down, adding pages and hammering out descriptions so quickly that the laptop rocks under my fingers.
Harrison is not having this tree if it’s the last thing I do.
I get the website into a reasonable state with all forms and contact info working correctly, and even though it needs prettying up a bit, it will do. I open the emails Tonya sent last night with some names and details of the people behind some carvings, and dial the first number.
‘Hello, is that Edie?’ I introduce myself when she picks up and say Tonya passed on her name and thought she might be able to help.
‘Cutting it down?’ She squeals in horror when I explain what’s happening with the tree. ‘Good grief, I’m not having that! I’m mostly retired now, but I was a florist for forty years and I wouldn’t have even considered the industry if it wasn’t for that tree.’
Goose bumps break out across my skin again. ‘How come?’
‘When I was little, like all children in Lemmon Cove, I waited for the autumn to come so I could pick up the falling sycamore seeds and shout my wishes to the shore, and every year, I’d pick up broken branches of autumnal leaves to make flower displays for my mother. I liked watching my displays make people smile. When I was fired from my retail job unexpectedly, I was at a loss. I was twenty-nine, my husband had just left me, and I went back to stay with my elderly mum in Lemmon Cove. I visited the sycamore tree, picked up a seed and watched it spin off the cliff edge, and my wish was that I’d somehow know where to go with my life.’
What is it about this tree? My eyes are filling up as I listen to her talk, and I’ve already got a sixth sense about what she’s going to say.
‘While I was there, I picked up some autumn leaves and branches and as I stood in my mum’s kitchen arranging that autumn vase, I started wondering if there’d be any demand for a florist in the area. There were always lots of weddings in the summer and I mentioned the idea of setting up my own shop to my mum, and she realised there was an empty unit in town, and wrote me a cheque then and there for the deposit and first few months’ rent. I’m sure the tree had a hand in it. Well, a branch. Tree’s don’t really have hands, do they?’
I let out a wholly embarrassing sob and cover it by pretending to cough.
‘It’s all right – it always gets to me too. That tree has a way of touching people. It’s the unknown magic of it. We’re adults, we know it doesn’t really grant wishes and it’s not really magical, but it could be, couldn’t it? I never lose the sense of childhood wonder when I look up at it. There’s always a possibility that magic twinkles through its leaves.’
She puts into words what I’ve always thought. It was a fairy tale when I was young, and I loved it, but now, even though I know that magic and wish-granting trees don’t exist in the world, whenever I look up into its branches, I still get the fairy-tale feeling, and for a fleeting moment, I wonder … do they?
‘And nearly forty years later, I’ve had the best career I could ever have wished for,’ Edie continues. ‘I met my second husband through the shop. He was an event organiser for floral art competitions, and we were married for twenty glorious years before he passed away. I’ve supplied the Chelsea Flower Show and done arrangements for Buckingham Palace and fulfilled every dream I could never even have imagined all those years ago when I stood under that tree. My daughter runs the shop now, and my granddaughter helps out after school. She can’t wait to take over one day.’
‘That’s incredible,’ I murmur into the phone. The wind rustles the leaves again and I look up into the tree, convinced it can somehow hear me.
‘The day I opened, after a roaring first day, my mum and I went to visit the tree. We had a glass of champagne to toast the new beginning and I added my own carving – a little flower and the date 27/06/1983.’
‘I know where that is!’ I scramble to my feet and jump down from the tree while holding the phone between my ear and shoulder. Maybe I’m getting better at this because I’m quite impressed when neither me nor the phone end up in the sea, but then I instantly disprove the theory by falling over Baaabra and sending the phone sprawling onto the grass.
I grab it before she can eat it and shove it back against my ear.
‘It’s on the side facing the beach,’ Edie says.
‘I remember it. A little daisy. I always loved daisies and wondered what it meant.’
‘That’s rather wonderful. To know other people saw it. Somehow, a little part of me will always be in the world.’
The unspoken dread of the tree being cut down crackles over the line, and I swallow hard as I run my fingers across the trunk once more,
having looked at that particular carving many times before. ‘Found it!’
‘Is it really still there?’ She sighs with what sounds like happiness. ‘I always wondered. I was going to show my granddaughter a couple of years ago, but the land was so overgrown that we turned back.’
‘Bring her,’ I say instantly. ‘We’re clearing it. We have to share these stories and what this tree means to people in the area.’
‘I did the flowers for a wedding that took place there once.’
‘A wedding under the tree?’
She makes a noise of agreement. ‘I always kept in touch with the couple afterwards. I’ve got their phone number somewhere, shall I give them a ring?’
‘Oh, wow. Yes, please. That’s so romantic. That’s exactly the sort of thing we need.’
‘I’ll do anything I can to help. I might sound like a mad old bat, but I’ve always said that tree changed my life. I’ll call everyone I know. What was your website again?’
I give her the seaside-sycamore-tree.com address and tell her about the petition and the page where people can put in their own stories and upload photos, and she says she’s going to bring her granddaughter here as soon as she can.
It’s still raining by the time I hang up, and the chain rattles around behind me as I move, clinking with every step, but it’s surprisingly easy to forget after a while. The metal warms with body heat and the weight around my waist becomes like a well-worn belt.
Baaabra Streisand is following me as I walk around, and I’m glad there’s a strong barrier at the cliff edge, because she’s definitely waiting for her chance to off me. Or hoping I might have food in my pockets. I try to be brave and offer her my hand, but she turns her head away, like she knows exactly how much of a traitor I am now.
While I’m still alone out here, I take the opportunity to have another look for the carving Ryan did, because I’m half-convinced it never happened and want to prove it to myself. He hasn’t given any indication that he even remembers what happened under this tree, and if I could find that “Ry + Fee” in a heart shape, it might prove something.
I never believed the old legend that if a carving fades, the relationship is doomed, but it feels like a sign that I can’t find it. Maybe it faded or got carved over by someone else. Maybe he stood there and scrubbed it out as I ran away.
I glance up at the tree and the leaves shake, splattering me with raindrops. Maybe a sign that I’m wasting my time. What difference would it make if I found it? Do I want it to somehow prove I was right to kiss him? To explain what it was that made me think he wanted to be kissed? If Ryan has forgotten, I certainly don’t want to jog his memory. It’s better to let it be lost to time and the weather that batters the clifftop.
Talking to Edie has boosted my confidence and confirmed my feelings that there are many more people who would be up in arms about the hotel – we just have to find them. My fingers trail over the bark as I walk around the vast trunk, like I can somehow feel the amount of life this tree has seen. Every name, every date, every symbol is an emblem of a life that’s passed under these branches.
I jump back into the tree, leaving Baaabra Streisand looking up me dejectedly. Probably upset that her chances for murdering me are reduced by the fact sheep can’t climb trees.
The rain has dulled to a drizzle now as I look out at the empty strawberry patch, but the heavy grey clouds are making it feel much later in the day than it actually is, and I crack open my laptop again.
I lose track of time passing and I’m still tweaking the website hours later. Baaabra has shredded the remains of my umbrella and spat the pieces out all around the base of the tree, like she was trying to trap me in some sort of pentagram, and I had to gather them up and shove the wad of sheep-drool-covered fabric into my bag before they blew away and further polluted the ocean.
I look up when the gate rattles, and instead of saying hello like anyone else would, Ryan starts singing “Here Comes the Hotstepper”, the Nineties classic by Ini Kamoze, and I’m kind of impressed that his musical tastes haven’t got any more refined after all this time.
I can’t help laughing as I join in, effectively murdering the song. It was on one of the playlists he used to make us listen to at Sullivan’s Seeds, and we always duetted it, even though neither of us can sing.
We don’t stop the duet until he gets close enough for me to see his face in the early evening light.
‘Even after so many years, you never forget the pinnacle of Nineties music,’ he says, smiling widely.
It’s an unmistakable segue into a bout of “Never Forget” by Take That for us both, complete with the dance move of clapping and throwing your arms out on my part.
‘I debated going for “Return of the Mack”, but I’m not a “mack” whatever one of those is. Did anyone ever find out what a “mack” is and why it needed to return? Mind you, I’m not much of a hotstepper either, but hotstepper sounded better than drawing comparisons to a raincoat favoured by old ladies.’
I burst out laughing. ‘I don’t know what a hotstepper is either.’
He tilts his head to the side, screwing up one eye as he considers it. ‘Me neither, actually. Was all Nineties music about random made-up words that no one understands?’
‘Probably. There were songs about Peaches and Scrubs and MmmBop. Maybe the appeal is in no one having a clue what they’re about.’
He’s grinning a proud grin and holding something behind his back, which he pulls out as he approaches the tree. A paper bag dangles from his index finger. ‘I brought sustenance.’
My eyes fall on the logo. ‘No way! That place is still open?’
‘Same family. Recipe hasn’t changed in twenty years. I’m assuming you’re still vegetarian?’
I nod. I don’t know why it makes me smile so much. Twenty years ago, not eating meat wasn’t as popular as it is now, and Ryan and I were always the odd ones out at Sullivan’s Seeds. Vegetarian takeaway food wasn’t a big thing, but there was this restaurant further round the Gower coastline on the peninsula that did vegetarian fish and chips, and it was even better than the real thing. It was always my favourite place to eat. After I introduced him to their merits, he started getting food from there on special occasions. Birthdays, if something good happened, sometimes just if we were working late.
The bittersweet tang of him bringing in a bag just like that on the lunchtime of my last day – hours before The Kiss That Shall Not Be Mentioned.
The last time I ever ate their food.
He says hello to Baaabra Streisand and steps right up to the trunk, smiling up at me. I’m still a way up in the tree, but he’s tall enough that if he leans up and I lean down, I’m only a little bit above him.
‘I can’t believe you remembered.’ I shove my laptop aside and take the bag when he holds it up.
‘Are you serious? How can you possibly think I’d forget anything about you?’
It makes me go warm all over, even though there are some things I’d certainly hope he might have disremembered.
He pushes himself up on tiptoe, folds his arms against the curve of the trunk and rests his chin on them. ‘It’s nice in there, right? Like a treehouse crossed with a childhood den. Makes me feel like a kid again.’
‘Yeah. And with a bonus of homicidal sheep not being able to reach you.’
It’s his turn to burst out laughing, and I love the way his eyes still crinkle up – more crinkles than there used to be now, but the sight of his crow’s feet makes me smile, and I still want to reach across and smooth them out.
His laughing eyes meet mine and he wets his lips slowly with his tongue, making me swallow hard. His eyes are bright, and his stubble is dark and just the right level of tantalisingly prickly to make me imagine the feel of it against my skin.
‘God, I missed you.’ He pushes himself up and I don’t realise I’ve automatically moved towards him until our foreheads come within a millimetre of crashing, and my balance suddenly goes and I have to grip th
e tree trunk to avoid falling out.
‘It’s only been a few hours,’ I say quickly to distract from how close that was – both the kiss and ending up face first on the ground.
‘I didn’t mean today. Fee, I meant always.’ He pushes himself away from the tree and drags a hand through his dark hair, and the ends that are starting to curl over catch on his fingers. ‘We shouldn’t have lost touch, and I know it was my fault, and—’
‘Well, these things happen, don’t they?’ I say, breezier than the gale-force winds that were battering the cliff earlier.
He looks at me for a long moment, waiting, expecting me to say something more.
‘Baaabra Streisand hasn’t murdered you yet then?’ he says when I don’t. He makes his way around the tree and I hear his boots scraping against the trunk’s natural footrest to hoist himself up.
‘Not yet, but I think she wants to. She’s been plotting something all day.’
‘Probably how to snaffle out more strawberries.’ He pulls himself up into the tree easily, unlike the flaily mess I’ve made of it today with a sheep snapping at my heels.
Inside the bag are two hefty portions of chips and vegetarian fish, and I’m so touched that he remembered, that it’s a fight with myself not to well up as I get out the two packages. There’s no one in my life who knows what my favourite restaurant is now, never mind has remembered it from over a decade ago.
He sits cross-legged beside me and I plonk one of the white paper packages in his lap and start unwrapping my own, the rustling paper attracting Baaabra’s attention, who gets up and comes to the trunk, looking up at us with the sheep equivalent of puppy dog eyes, her furry nose sniffing the air with interest.
It smells like real fish and chips, and it’s liberally drizzled with vinegar and sea salt, complete with a little wooden fork, and steam rises into the night air as I dive in.
‘Thank you,’ I say around a mouthful of the most perfect crisp-on-the-outside and fluffy-on-the-inside chips.
He puts a chip between his teeth and grins around it. ‘You’re welcome.’
The Wishing Tree Beside the Shore: The perfect feel good romance to escape with this summer! Page 15