Even though the gathered residents have started filtering away, I realise we’ve still got our arms linked and untangle them quickly. When I step back, I stumble over a strawberry plant and his hand closes around my arm and keeps me upright, pulling me against him until I crash into his left side and his arm comes up around my shoulders, holding me there.
‘Aww, I’ve always said strawberries were a romantic fruit,’ Tonya says, amid the noise of another shutter click.
‘What would you consider an un-romantic fruit?’ Ryan asks without taking his arm from around my shoulders.
She thinks about it for a long moment, and instead of letting me go, his hand drifts up and down my arm.
‘Well, pineapples have a bit of a prick, don’t they?’
I meet Ryan’s eyes and we both burst into giggles.
Tonya looks annoyed at our immaturity. ‘They have prickly bits, and you have to cut them off when you cut through that tough old skin.’
‘I reckon quite a few people around here have prickly bits,’ Ryan says in my ear, making me howl with laughter.
He always had radar for saying the funniest things at the worst possible moments. His laughter is shaking through me too and his head is pressed against mine. ‘What are we even talking about?’ he says against my ear.
‘I don’t know.’
‘I think you two have been out in the sun too long,’ Tonya says. ‘Do you need to go and sit in the shade?’
I look up and meet his eyes and the sparkle of laughter in them makes that familiar feeling of butterflies flash through my body.
‘I think that would be a very good idea,’ he murmurs, wetting his lips like he has some kind of innuendo in mind.
I’ve totally lost track of this conversation, and I extract myself from Ryan’s arm, trying to work out how just one arm can enclose me in such a tight hug. His arms are incredible.
I manage to step away without falling over anything this time, pick up the garden fork and put some space between us. ‘I’ll start over here and we’ll meet in the middle. There’s no time to lose if we want to open by Saturday.’
Which is not exactly a lie, but I’ve been getting far too close to Ryan again, too many touches, too many hugs, and it can’t continue. I’m not staying here for much longer, and that’s without the whole aspect of not having told him what I really do for a living and having been lying to everyone since the moment I got here. He thinks we’re friends, but a friend would’ve told him the truth by now.
‘Excuse me?’ It’s that afternoon when an elderly man appears at the gate. ‘Is this where the sycamore tree protest is?’
It reminds me that we need to redo all the signs. Mr Barley found some pieces of plywood and is in the process of painting them up to put out on the road to advertise the strawberry patch reopening this weekend. Ryan’s started laying down the weed-proof fabric between plants and is trying to map out some sort of path for visitors to follow, because the random popping up of plants is the opposite of how they used to be in neat rows, and we’ve had to cut through all the runners so they don’t trip anyone up.
I stand up and lean on the fork I’m still using to twist out the last of the blackberry roots. ‘It is. How can we help?’
‘Only that tree helped me once, and I had a flyer through my door this morning saying what was happening to it, and I’d like to do my bit in return. What can I do?’
‘It helped you?’ I ask.
Ryan has left the roll of weed-proof fabric and is making his way up from the other end of the strawberry patch. He stands next to me and goes to shake the man’s hand but glances down at his muddy ones and thinks better of it.
‘I’m Ellis,’ the elderly gent says. ‘When I heard you were looking for stories about it, I wanted to share mine. That tree saved my life.’
Ryan’s eyes meet mine and we both shuffle closer to hear his story.
‘I was a sailor in the Royal Navy. It was a few years after the war when we had an accident. We were somewhere in the Bristol Channel, and we collided with something under the water, hard enough to crush the fuel tanks. There was an explosion. I was thrown from the ship, dazed and concussed. I came round floating in the water, not knowing where I was. I’d lost my hearing in the blast so everything was muffled, there was blood in my eyes and I could barely see anything. I knew drowning was a real danger if I expended my energy in struggling against the tide, so I floated on my back, but I didn’t know where I was or which way I was going, I could’ve been heading into a busy shipping lane or a riptide for all I knew, and I kept looking around for a landmark or something, and out of nowhere, the sycamore appeared on the horizon. I was who knows how many miles out that way.’ He points out to the sea beyond. ‘I’d seen it many times before in passing, knew it was on the coast of Wales, so I kept my eyes on it, knowing if I kept going towards it, I’d reach land.’
‘And you did?’
He points towards the cliff to our left. ‘By the time I got near there, the coastguard were combing the beaches for survivors. They said I was lucky to be alive, but I don’t think I would be if it wasn’t for the tree. I’d got all turned around in the accident. If that tree hadn’t have been on the horizon, I’d have headed further out to sea, and that could only have ended one way.’
‘There’s an anchor carved on the tree.’ Ryan holds a hand out towards it. ‘With the initials “E.M” and the words “January 1949 ~ Thank you.” That wasn’t you, was it?’
‘Gosh, is that still there?’ He looks at the tree in wonder, blinking watery eyes in the afternoon sunlight. ‘Yes, it was me. It was my anchor. I was in hospital for months, and when they finally let me out, I wanted to pay tribute to it in some way – to let it know what it had done for me.’
I don’t know what it is about hearing these tree stories, but I’ve got a lump in my throat and if he says much more, I’m going to burst into tears again. I look over at Ryan and he meets my eyes and gives me a tiny smile, and I have absolutely no doubt that he feels the same.
‘Would you like to see it again?’ Ryan offers to escort Ellis down there.
‘I would. I wondered if it would fade. Apparently they say only the carvings of the truest love stories stay, and mine wasn’t exactly a love story.’
‘A life story,’ Ryan says, his eyes on mine. ‘The most important kind there is.’
‘I’d like to stay and help, if there’s anything I can do,’ Ellis says as he goes to grip Ryan’s outstretched arm.
‘Tonya will sort you out with something.’ I point out the pink-haired lady who’s currently talking on the phone with a notebook in one hand doing such serious negotiating that I feel quite sorry for whoever’s on the other end.
Ellis thanks us both and walks with Ryan down to the tree. Baaabra Streisand, who is still sulking about not being able to snaffle any more strawberries, gets up from her dog basket like it’s an imposition on her time, but she simply must investigate whether he has any food about his person.
Once thoroughly investigated, Ellis strokes the sheep’s head as Ryan points out the carving, and then shows him up to the picnic table to keep Mr Barley on track with the signs he’s painting.
He walks back down to where I’m pretending to still be digging out blackberry roots and not watching his every move. His hands are still covered in rapidly drying mud, but he nudges me with his elbow. ‘Told you there was a story behind that anchor.’
I can see the emotion in his eyes, and the urge to give him a hug is too strong. ‘C’mere, you.’
‘I’m all muddy.’
‘So am I.’ I let my fork drop and hold my hands out in front of me. ‘No touching, I promise.’
He steps into my arms and ducks so my head fits on his shoulder. His arms come up around me and his elbows press into my back, holding his dirty hands away from my pale yellow T-shirt, and he somehow manages to bend double enough for his head to drop onto my shoulder too.
‘Thanks, Fee.’ He breathes the words against my
neck.
‘I didn’t do anything.’ I’m not a hundred per cent sure that the words come out because I’m lost in a flood of his warm body, tight hug, and cologne, but his arms tighten around me so I assume he’s heard something.
‘None of this would be happening without you.’ His lips press into my neck as he speaks, brushing against my skin, and I let my elbows press into his back too, warm through his vest top, and it’s a good job my hands are dirty or I’d not be able to stop myself sliding them over his muscular shoulders.
His lips find my neck again and his arms get even tighter when my knees go weak, and I can feel his smile against my skin, doing nothing to improve the situation.
Getting headbutted by a sheep is one thing, but Ryan Sullivan’s lips on my neck was definitely not on my agenda during this trip.
Chapter 12
It’s a couple of days later, and between us, Ryan and I are laying the fabric down on the paths between plants, and so far there’s been a lot of shouting of the Chuckle Brothers infamous quote when moving something long, a lot of giggling, and probably not enough weed fabric laying. The Seaview Heights residents are all occupied. Ellis has come back again and has taken over sign-making from Mr Barley and is painting signs that advertise the strawberry patch, Alys is making up words you can have in Scrabble on a game with her friend through her phone after correctly identifying a garlic mincer this morning, and Mr Barley has moved on from garden gnomes and is now making a Boris Johnson scarecrow to keep the birds away.
‘I don’t know why he insists on them always being naked,’ Tonya muses in the middle of setting up for the arrival of her grandson to film the campaign video. ‘We had an argument this morning over it being inappropriate with children visiting the patch, and he reluctantly agreed to put lingerie on it. I don’t understand why. Have you ever seen Boris Johnson in lingerie?’
‘I’m glad I’ve got cataracts,’ Morys says.
‘The gnomes were bad enough, but now he’s thinking of having the whole political party as scarecrows too.’
‘Not much different from the actual government then.’ Ryan gives me a wink.
‘Oh no, now he’s making a sign for the scarecrow telling the birds to do something unspeakable with their own beaks!’ Tonya rushes off towards his workstation, waving her fist and yelling, ‘For heaven’s sake, there could be children here!’
My phone beeps with a message and I let go of my half of the weed-proof fabric roll to look at it.
‘Oh my God, Ry, listen to this,’ I say as I read the message. ‘The mum of that boy from Cheryl’s class has sent me an email. It wasn’t just that he was conceived here. They’d been trying for a baby for over two years, and they’d had tests and seen specialists, but no doctor could pinpoint the problem. One day they were walking their dog along the coastal path and they made a wish on a sycamore seed for a child, and then she says they both got a tingling feeling at the back of their necks and knew that they should, y’know, do the deed there and then.’
‘It’s the dog I feel sorry for. I bet he didn’t know where to look.’
In what could have been a dignified and emotional moment, I let out an ugly snort of laughter, and Ryan grins at me. He was always abnormally proud of making me laugh at inopportune moments.
I’m trying to frown at him but it isn’t helping. ‘And it worked. She did a test a couple of weeks later and it was positive.’
He raises an eyebrow. ‘It’s a nice story, but it’s just coincidence. The tree didn’t give them a baby.’
‘I know. It might be a special old tree, but no tree can do that. They believe it did – that’s what matters. People believe in magic when they see this tree. That’s something everyone needs in this difficult world. That childlike wonder … That belief that when you throw a sycamore seed from the clifftop, in the long seconds it takes to spiral down, you believe a wish is going to come true – something that we’re all too old to believe in anymore.’
‘I’m not too old to believe in magic!’ Cynthia shouts from where she’s taken over arranging our marketing materials into organised piles.
A little while later, a fifty-something couple come into the strawberry patch holding hands. ‘We met through the tree. Can we share our story?’
Tonya is immediately on hand with a notebook and pen. Ryan and I are still fiddling around with weed-proof fabric and setting out paths. We’ve reached quite near to the entrance by now so we listen too.
‘When I was nineteen, I was being a big show-off and I fell out of the tree and broke my arm,’ the man says. ‘We met in the fracture clinic at the hospital.’
‘And I was eighteen,’ the woman continues. ‘My younger sister wanted to make a wish but there were no sycamore seeds on the ground so I climbed up to get her one, and when I jumped back out, I misjudged it and broke my ankle.’
I hold my finger out towards Ryan, jokingly scolding him. ‘This is why I keep telling you to be careful.’
He closes his hand around my pointing finger and folds it down gently. ‘You always did take better care of me than I took of myself.’
Instead of letting go like I expected, he lets our joined hands swing between us, jiggling mine around like he’s trying to get my attention even though he’s already got it. He doesn’t seem to want anything. He’s just sort of playing with our joined hands, and even though we’re both dirty from the digging and definitely shouldn’t be holding hands, I don’t attempt to extract my fingers.
‘While I was sitting in the waiting room at the hospital, this one—’ the woman juts her thumb towards her husband ‘—gorgeous lad with a broken arm that he was, sat down next to me, and started talking. And we both realised we’d had almost the exact same accident. Such a coincidence.’
‘We had a good chat in the waiting room, but that was it, we were called to our separate appointments. I’d been hoping to catch her on the way out, but she was in a wheelchair because of the ankle and her parents had wheeled her away before I came out – they thought I might be a bad influence, what with our penchant for falling out of trees. It had felt like serendipity that we’d both fallen out of the same tree, and I couldn’t stop thinking about her.’
‘I couldn’t stop thinking about him either. I was feeling sorry for myself and he’d made me laugh and forget about the ankle for a while. I’d been trying to delay leaving because I was hoping to catch him again too, but my parents were having none of it and rushed out of there.’
‘And then, like fate was playing a hand itself, when we went back two weeks later for our follow-up appointments while the injuries were still healing, lo and behold, there she was again.’
‘My uncle had taken me to the appointment instead of my parents that time, and he was quite happy to wait while we had a coffee in the hospital cafeteria.’
‘We discovered we only lived ten minutes apart, swapped phone numbers and chatted every night. I used the excuse of checking up on her injury.’ The man still has a proud smile, even so many years later. ‘Her parents couldn’t argue with that.’
‘We got married four years later, on the beach down there with the tree watching over us,’ she says.
‘The night before our wedding, obviously it’s tradition not to see each other, but we both snuck out and met here. We threw a sycamore seed from the cliff and shouted our wish to the sea. A long and happy marriage.’
‘So far so good,’ the wife adds. ‘Thirty years and counting.’
‘We put our names on the trunk that night too.’
They’re both looking at each other adoringly. Alys and Cynthia have gathered around like walking heart-eyes emojis, Tonya’s furiously scribbling their story down in her notebook, and Ffion’s making a heart shape with her two thumbs.
I glance up at Ryan. He’s watching, but he looks sceptical. Before, we talked about anything and everything, but we never really spoke about love or relationships. Whenever the topic bobbed near the surface, I’d avoid it like I’d avoid an angry wasp
on a summer’s day in case the mere mention of the word “love” would somehow clue him in that I was head over heels for him.
‘That’s sweet.’ I nod towards the couple who are now filling Tonya in on the ins and outs of their wedding day, complete with photos that the whole group are oohing and aahing over. Even some of the blokes have come over to have a look, although Mr Barley is busy making a child-friendly scarecrow sign telling birds to get lost … in definitely un-censored terms. He hasn’t quite worked out the difference between swearwords and non-swearwords yet, and he’s in for an almighty row when Tonya catches him.
‘Yeah. I guess some people are lucky in love.’
‘Aren’t you?’ I don’t even want to know, but I can’t stop myself asking.
He lets out a sarcastic burst of laughter. ‘I was lucky in a few things, like the campsite taking off the way it did, but love …’ His eyes are on mine and I feel like I can’t breathe. His fingers tighten around the hand he’s still holding. ‘No.’
We look at each other in silence for a long moment.
‘You?’ he croaks out. His voice is rough and low so as not to disturb the chatter of the group.
I know we’ve already established we’re both single now, but we haven’t mentioned how we got there. Like before, I’m still convinced that the mere mention of the “l” word will tip him off that I had a massive crush on him – not that kissing him didn’t do that anyway – and to be honest, I’m not sure how much I’m over the crush. Looking at him still does things to me. ‘No. Unlucky in everything. I’ve never been in love.’
‘Oh. Right.’ He lets go of my hand and steps away quickly, like he can sense the crush as I always thought he would. ‘No, me neither, obviously.’
The Wishing Tree Beside the Shore: The perfect feel good romance to escape with this summer! Page 19