He always was the kind of guy who would never leave the office without bringing something back for me. Chocolate, a hot drink, a cream cake from a bakery he’d passed, or any other little thing he’d thought I’d like. The kind of guy who could take one look at me and know there was something wrong, who instinctively knew if I needed a hug, a cup of tea, a bar of chocolate, or all three.
He makes a noise of pleasure. ‘Oh, this is so good. It’s been years.’
‘Don’t you go there often? If I still lived here, I’d go there all the time.’
He stops mid-chip and looks up at me. ‘I couldn’t. Not after you … It wouldn’t have been right. It would’ve been like a betrayal or something to eat at your favourite restaurant without you. Besides, it was my favourite because it was your favourite. I loved getting takeaways from there with you. Without you, it would’ve made me miss you too much.’
I almost swallow my own tongue, never mind the whole mouthful of chips I was stuffing down.
His cheeks redden and he looks away, picking out a chip, testing it for coolness, and throwing it to the waiting sheep below.
I watch the trajectory as it lands, and Baaabra Streisand looks a lot less interested in it than she did moments ago. ‘Is there anything she won’t eat?’
‘She doesn’t eat much, really. However, she loves chewing things up for the sole purpose of destroying them. Tory leaflets are her favourite. Mr Barley collects them for her at election times.’
Her fussiness is proved when she plods over to the chip, considers it uninterestedly before eventually deigning to pick it up with her teeth and promptly spit it out again. She looks up and gives Ryan what can only be described as such a death glare that it makes me laugh out loud.
We’re quiet for a while as we eat and the tree is filled with noises of content. I hadn’t realised how hungry I was, and how happy something so simple makes me.
‘How’d it go today?’ I ask.
‘Really well.’ He half-stumbles over his words as they fall out in a rush, like he meant to tell me before. ‘Henrietta was having a good day. She knew who Godfrey was and cried because she’d missed him so much. It doesn’t happen often, but he couldn’t stop smiling all the way home. I’m really glad we went. Sorry we’ve been ages. He wanted to stay with her for as long as possible, then there were roadworks and his back gives him gip if he sits still for too long, so we stopped at the services for a leg stretch. Thanks for staying.’
‘It’s fine. It’s been fun.’ I tell him about Edie and the second phone call I made to a number Alys sent over – a man who had scattered his dog’s ashes here because his dog had always loved playing with falling sycamore seeds every autumn. He lives far away now, but wanted to sign the petition and pass it on to his friends and family.
By the time we finish, it’s late evening and the pink-tinged storm clouds are still hanging over the ocean and the mist is rolling in, making it seem darker than it would usually be at this time.
The chain is back around Ryan’s waist and he’s settled in for the night. I should be going home, but I can’t make myself move. The more time I spend with him, the worse this all gets, but he’s here and his leg is warm where it’s pressed against mine. My laptop battery ran out, so now we’re fiddling with the website on his, and he keeps leaning closer to show me things and I have to tilt my head so close that it could almost be resting on his shoulder, and it’s nice somehow. Every part of my brain is screaming at me to keep my distance from him, but every part of my heart is warm and fuzzy because he makes me feel special and important in a way that no one has in many years.
Every boyfriend I’ve ever had, and admittedly they’ve been few and far between, has ended up fizzling out like a candle in the rain. Over the years, even if I’ve liked someone, I’ve always held back. I know what happens when you throw yourself at a man, and it wasn’t a mistake I was going to make twice. I’ve never plucked up the courage to tell anyone I like them, and even in a relationship, I’ve always kept boyfriends at arm’s length. Never made the first move, never gone in for another kiss, never said an “I love you” first. I’m always terrified of being rejected again. One guy I dated told me I was hard work and closed-off as we broke up, and it’s probably accurate. What happened with Ryan made me second-guess every feeling I’ve ever had from then on, because if I can get it so wrong once, what’s to say I won’t again?
And then there’s the whole chef thing. I’m lying to him and he’s never going to forgive me when he finds out. I should get it over with, tell him now, make sure he knows that this has become so much more than my job, but when I glance at him, steeling myself to say something, he catches my eyes and a smile turns his mouth halfway up, and that enormous butterfly starts swishing around inside me, and I don’t say anything.
We’re both distracted by the noise of a door closing up at the care home, and the beam of torchlight as someone makes their way towards the tree.
‘Godfrey?’ Ryan calls, clearly possessing better old people recognition skills than me.
The old man stops and shines his torch onto us before angling it back down to illuminate the path in front of him, like headlights on a foggy morning. He’s holding something under his arm and tottering towards us, and Ryan shoves his laptop aside and clambers out of the tree, rushing around the trunk to help him.
The movement disturbs Baaabra Streisand from her chip-induced angry slumber and she climbs to her feet and trots after Ryan to see if Godfrey’s got anything she can shred.
‘I found something for you two young folks.’ Godfrey is holding onto Ryan’s arm as they approach. ‘I knew I had them somewhere. I spent half the journey today wondering where I’d put them.’
He has a stack of what look like documents in his hand, and when he’s safe on solid ground, he takes his hand off Ryan’s arm, splits the stack of papers in two, and hands one to Ryan and one up to me.
‘What are these?’ Ryan flicks through them, squinting in the low light.
‘Old strawberry plant catalogues,’ I say in delight as I leaf through them.
‘From my great-great-grandfather’s time in the late Victorian era all the way to the last one Henrietta and I ever had printed. Of course, printed flyers were already old-fashioned by then, but it was tradition and, no matter what young and modern folks say, I think the strength of a place like this is in tradition. Henrietta and I never wanted to modernise. We wanted it to invoke that sense of nostalgia in everyone who came here. There were always a lot of return visitors. People who grew up coming here would return years later with their own children. We were privileged to run it for long enough to witness that, and we wanted people to feel they were coming to the same strawberry patch, not one run by robots or something.’
The idea makes me giggle. Considering it closed in the late Noughties, robots hadn’t quite taken over the world by then.
I can feel Godfrey watching me as I flip through the pages. They’re old newspaper-style print with hand-drawn images of strawberries, and the defining features and benefits of each different variety. On the front is “Lemmon Cove’s finest seaside strawberry patch” like there had ever been more than one to compete with, and inside the cover of the stapled pages, is a map showing a layout of the strawberry patch and marking out which varieties grow in which area.
‘We used to put one together every spring to showcase what varieties would be available and send them out all along the Gower coast. We had stacks of them in the tourist information office, and gardening magazines used to slip one in with each copy. We used to supply the little shop in Lemmon Cove. Tourists used to come here and pick them fresh, and then get another punnet from the shop as they drove through the village on their way out.’
He pets Baaabra Streisand as he talks, and fishes a Glacier Mint out of his pocket, unwraps it, and holds it out on his fingers for her. Something else I haven’t seen since the Nineties. It really is like stepping into some kind of time warp when you come back here.
The sheep
takes it greedily and trots away, stopping to give a quick snort to Ryan – as if chastising him for giving her anything as distasteful as a chip. A sheep who turns down the best chips in South Wales but likes hard-boiled sweets. Just when I thought my hometown couldn’t have any more surprises in store.
‘These are amazing.’ I trace the outline of the hand-drawn strawberry on the page. ‘Can we hang on to these for a while? I’m sure there’s a story here somewhere.’
He reaches up to pat my hand. ‘For as long as you want.’ His hand-patting turns into a grasp as his fingers curl around mine. ‘Thank you, my dear, for letting your prince take me to see my Henrietta today.’
The idea of Ryan being a prince makes me grin, and when I look down at him, he’s blushing.
‘You’re a prince to all of us, lad.’ Godfrey lets go of my hand and reaches over to pinch Ryan’s left cheek and I have to bite the inside of mine to keep from falling out of the tree with laughter at how uncomfortable he looks.
Ryan’s eyes are twinkling when he looks at me again, and I can’t hide how much I’m smiling.
‘You’re welcome,’ I say to Godfrey. Ry was always uneasy taking compliments. ‘Ryan did the difficult part. I just sat here.’
‘It was your idea.’ Typical Ryan. Always giving credit to everyone else, unlike every boss I’ve had ever since.
‘Tonya has been showing everyone how busy you’ve been with the website you’ve put together. And everyone knows that Edie the florist is coming to visit, and we’ve had three new signatures from that man’s family.’ He looks between me up in the tree and Ryan standing next to him. ‘You two make a good team.’
‘That’s what I’ve always said,’ Ryan says. ‘She brought out the best in me. And sometimes it needed excavating from great depths.’
I tilt my head to the side at his self-deprecation. He struggled with confidence when he first took over Sullivan’s Seeds, because he was young and had no experience, but it grew as time went on. ‘It never took any finding. You were always perfect just the way you were.’ I cringe as I say it. Who do I think I am – Mark Darcy?
Ryan looks up and meets my eyes, and I blink at the sudden intensity in his. My mouth goes dry. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. I should not have said that. He didn’t need the reminder that I was head over heels for him all those years ago.
He wets his lips and swallows again. ‘You were—’
‘Henrietta had a good day?’ I interrupt him by asking Godfrey. I’m sure he’s only trying to be kind, but the last thing I need is an awkward “you were just a friend” speech.
Godfrey doesn’t detect the awkwardness between us as his face breaks into a toothy smile. ‘Yes. She’s lost in time most days. She thinks I’m a resident there and asks when her husband’s coming, but for brief snatches today, she knew who I was. She always used to love a cuddle, and most of the time nowadays, she thinks I’m a stranger so I can’t go near her, but today we sat on the sofa together and held hands. Every time I go there, I always wonder if it’s going to be the last time – if she’s ever going to recognise me again. We used to say we were all each other needed, and that everything would be all right as long as we had each other.’ He shakes a finger at us in turn. ‘You two young folks remember that. You never have as much time as you think.’
I swallow hard, his words making me well up again. ‘I wish more days were like today for you.’
‘Say it a bit louder, perhaps the wishing tree will hear.’ His eyes move up towards the branches and he stares at it for a moment. ‘Maybe it hears everything anyway.’
Ryan and I look at each other and glance up at it too.
Godfrey sighs and looks away. ‘Look at me getting all sappy. How about you two? You’re old friends but nothing more?’ His wiry eyebrows waggle.
‘I was never good enough for Fee,’ Ryan says before I can answer.
‘What? You were the best thing in my life.’ The surprise of hearing him say that makes me speak without thinking first.
‘I was?’ His head twitches like he’s taken aback.
‘Of course you were. Ry, I loved …’ My breath catches and I cut the sentence off in a very inconvenient place when he meets my eyes again.
Everything goes so still that I’m not sure he’s breathing, and I’m definitely not. My hand moves automatically like if I reached out, I could touch him, and it would be okay, like he was somehow mine to touch.
His Adam’s apple bobs again, and I need to swallow but my mouth has gone too dry to even consider it. Neither of us blinks as we hold each other’s gaze for a long, long moment. He wets his lips again and my eyes are drawn to his tongue as it slides across full lips, and …
Baaabra Streisand lets out a long, foghorn-esque fart.
‘… Working with you,’ I finish, more limply than a wet kipper, glad of the excuse to look away because I have to stop watching his mouth. Between that and my earlier comment, I couldn’t make myself sound any more smitten if I’d tried.
‘Well, there’s a way to ruin the moment,’ Godfrey says, thankfully easing the tension and making all three of us laugh.
Baaabra Streisand’s perfect comedy timing certainly comes in handy.
‘I’d best get back for my unimaginative, boring supper. Porridge, again.’ Godfrey makes a noise of distaste. ‘Maybe when we’ve saved the tree, you can put your skills to use in campaigning for a better menu at Seaview Heights. They’d definitely listen to a chef.’ He nods to me. ‘You know how to stir up a whole generation, Felicity.’
‘Fee always did know how to shake up a life.’ Ryan’s eyes meet mine again and I try a smile. It’s so strained that it probably looks like I’m going to bite him.
He hands his stack of the old strawberry leaflets up to me and undoes the chain around his waist and passes that up too, before turning to offer his arm to Godfrey. ‘I’ll walk you back.’
That weird mid-twilight is still hanging over us from the surrounding, almost-purple storm clouds over the ocean, and I watch as Godfrey slots his arm through Ryan’s and they make their way slowly back towards Seaview Heights.
What is it about a man who’s kind to animals and old people? Ryan was always the most respectful person, and that clearly hasn’t changed. He’s a real gentleman, something that’s seriously missing in my life lately.
Chapter 10
I have to tell him. It’s not right that I’m pretending to do a job that’s the opposite of what I actually do, but it’s even worse that he trusts me and doesn’t have seem to have an inclination of who I really am. What would he say if he knew I’m the person who was sent to bribe him?
I’m still thinking of the best way to broach the subject as he makes his way back towards the tree, covering the ground sure-footedly despite being sans torch, having safely returned Godfrey to his porridge and evening of board games in the living room.
He lifts a hand in greeting as he approaches, giving me a bright smile and a flash of flexing forearms that gives me something else entirely to be distracted by. He pats the trunk as he walks around the tree and pushes himself up again, once more making his bare forearms flex in the most delicious way.
‘Are you always working?’ He takes the couple of steps nearer to me in the space we’ve got between the branches.
I hadn’t bothered to fasten the chain this time and I hand it back to him and watch as he loops it around his waist and does up the catch. ‘We have to grab ideas as and when we can. We don’t have much time.’
‘Why not?’ He sits down cross-legged opposite me. ‘I’m in this for the long haul. My assistant can run the campsite for as long as needed, and I can do admin remotely. I’m quite happy to stay here indefinitely.’
‘It’s August, Ryan. Next month, the first frosts will start coming in. Winter comes sharply from September onwards. You can’t stay out here forever.’ I shake my head. ‘It’s not about that anyway. This isn’t your land …’
‘I know. I can’t afford to make an offer
on it. I tried.’
‘You did?’ I can’t hide how much that surprises me. I think about his expansion plans for self-contained holiday lets. Maybe I wasn’t that far off base if he’s already tried to buy this land.
‘I thought it might be the only way. It’s not about the money or the space. I’d do anything to save this tree and the garden for the residents, but I can’t compete with multinational companies.’
‘So what are you trying to do with this protest – drive down the price? Keep the tree, but park some tents around it? Free wish with every booking?’
‘You really don’t like me, do you?’ He quirks an eyebrow.
I know he’s joking, but the words make me go cold. I more than like him, even after so many years. ‘I didn’t mean it like that. Steffan has already delayed because of the protest, but the longer this goes on the more likely he is to want to get rid of it. And the more attention we gain, the more likely he is to get higher offers from more businesses.’
‘Maybe ones who would be on our side. Ones who would reach a compromise and see the value in this land as it is. We need you around to help us vet any offers that come in. You were always good at knowing who to trust when I wasn’t. How soon do you need to get back?’
‘I, er …’
‘Please don’t leave me yet, Fee. I was hoping you’d be back for good.’
It’s an open segue into another Take That song, but neither of us do it. It doesn’t feel like the time. Whoever thought there’d be a bad time for a Take That flashback? And it’s a good job I’m sitting down because the words make me feel light-headed and everything goes a bit fuzzy.
‘I have a job to get back to,’ I mumble. I need to tell him the truth, and my stomach rolls more than the choppy waves below.
‘How much longer can they spare you for? Can it be offset by the lower bill from the fire brigade without you there?’ He winks at me, and although he’s teasing, it makes me feel unwell again.
‘I’ve got annual leave stacked up,’ I mumble. Come on, Fliss. You have to tell him.
The Wishing Tree Beside the Shore: The perfect feel good romance to escape with this summer! Page 16