And no matter how much I wish I could passive-aggressively follow his every move on Facebook, I never want to see him again. Not after the way things ended. That’s why I usually stay as far away from Lemmon Cove as land borders will allow – because running into him would be my worst nightmare.
It’s late when the train doors open, and I briefly wonder how thoroughly they check the trains and if I could stay here for the night and go back to London on the return trip tomorrow without anyone noticing. It’s a nice thought, but I force myself to get up and hoist my holdall bag up my arm and adjust my T-shirt. My sister texted ten minutes ago to say she’s waiting in the car park, and no matter how apprehensive I am about the idea of being in Lemmon Cove again and pretending to be a protestor, it will be nice to see her and Dad. It’s nearly four months since I last saw them at Easter.
Outside, the night air is warm but thankfully missing the humidity of London, and I spot Cheryl’s little blue car in the car park, the doors open and the lights on inside it. I go around to the passenger side and duck my head in. ‘Hi, Cher.’
She squeals and drops her phone in shock, and then squeals again in excitement and jumps out the car, sending her phone clattering onto the seat as she comes round the side to give me a hug. ‘I can’t believe you’re actually staying and not rushing off in a few hours. Dad’s so excited. He’s been out and got you a bed today; it’s all set up in my room.’
‘We’re sharing a room?’
‘Of course!’ She brushes bob-length blonde hair out of her eyes and the summer breeze scatters it across her face again. ‘I’ve got your old room and the spare room’s full. You didn’t give us enough notice to clear it out.’
‘Believe me, no one had enough notice for this,’ I mutter. Why am I surprised to be sharing a room with my little sister? I know she moved into my room when I left, and her smaller childhood bedroom became Dad’s spare room full of his half-finished craft projects and ill-advised gym equipment. ‘He didn’t have to go out and buy a bed though; I’d have taken the floor.’
‘You haven’t seen it yet. You might well prefer the floor.’ She laughs and stands back to run her eyes over me, just like Mum used to do to make sure I was wearing suitable clothing when leaving the house to go to the beach. ‘I love the hair.’
How much she sounds like our late mum makes me smile and step back to shrug out of her grip. She’s taller than me now, slim and curvy with bouncy hair and the bright eyes that only a twenty-year-old can have. I was twenty when I left Lemmon Cove. Twenty when I kissed Ryan Sullivan and lost the best thing in my life. Did I look like her? Did I have the enthusiasm and Energizer Bunny relentless energy? I remember feeling like my whole life was ahead of me. Now I’m thirty-five and wondering where it went.
I pull one of the blue ends of my hair over my shoulder and waggle it around in front of me. So far my attempt to be edgy and youthful by bleaching the ends of my dark hair and then dying them bright blue hasn’t even been noticed by anyone at work. I wanted to shake things up a bit after my last relationship fizzled out. I don’t even have break-ups anymore; I just seem to get into relationships that have no magic, no spark, and no hope of going anywhere beyond a few dates. They end with mutual agreement and pleasant partings and I can barely remember the guy’s name after a while.
Everything has felt boring lately. My days are the same; my evenings in front of Netflix are the same. My friends have their own lives, their own families, and I’m the odd one out because I don’t have a partner or children. I don’t have a significant other, because all my attempts at dating end in … not even disaster, just dull dates, with men who are nice enough but nothing special, none that I feel anything remotely like chemistry with.
‘You’re so cool. I wish my boss would let me do that.’ Cheryl works as a teaching assistant in the local primary school, and it’s been a long time since anyone thought I was “cool”. Maybe hanging out with my little sister for a few days won’t be so bad.
I look over at her as we pull out of the station and leave the city centre behind us. Cheryl was still a child when I left, and my presence in her life has been to send expensive birthday gifts each year and come home with a suitcase full of presents every Christmas and leave on the next train out. We text occasionally, usually when I ask her how Dad’s doing because I don’t trust him to tell me honestly when I speak to him on the phone, but we’re not exactly close. Not like I always imagined I’d be close with my sister. She doesn’t turn to me for advice and we don’t have girly days out shopping or giggle over hot guys. It’s been years since we did anything together.
The city buildings turn into coastal road with a vast expanse of beach on the left and seafront hotels on the right, and we pass a park with a lake and golf courses before we turn up into the green hills and mansion-like houses of the Gower villages. It’s dark outside and gardens are lit up with solar-powered strings of lights and paths brightened by stake lights. Most houses are shrouded by tall walls that hide their grandness from passing cars, and the road is lined with leafy trees and wildflower patches full of daisies, buttercups, and poppies.
Lemmon Cove is half an hour away from the city centre, and I can’t help looking over towards where Sullivan’s Seeds used to be, on the hills behind the village. A tiny little street that boasts a post office and corner shop, pub, bakery, and surf shop – it’s the last place of civilisation tourists pass through before reaching the empty dunes and sandy beaches of this stretch of the southern Gower coastline.
‘They built on it years ago.’
‘What?’ I jump as Cheryl speaks in the silence.
‘The old greenhouses where you used to work.’ She jerks her head in their direction without taking her eyes off the road. ‘The firm went into liquidation and the site was sold off years ago. There are houses on it now.’
‘Oh. Right.’ I knew that. I mean, I’d guessed as much. I’ve googled enough to know that Sullivan’s Seeds doesn’t still exist, and it shouldn’t make me so sad to hear confirmation of that. Or to think of houses crammed into the wide expanse of land that used to be home to Sullivan’s Seeds and Plant Nursery, acres of fields of crops, greenhouses where we grew experimental varieties of fruit and veg and forced flowers whatever the weather so they were always in season. It was far enough away from the sea that the coastal weather wouldn’t affect the crops, but near enough to have a sea view from the highest points – the hilltop where Ryan and I used to eat lunch on sunny days, looking out at the sea in front and the fields of crops, greenhouses, and polytunnels behind.
I don’t realise I’m smiling at the thought until I feel Cheryl’s eyes on me. I shake my head sharply to clear the thoughts away.
It’s good that Sullivan’s Seeds has gone. It means there’s no chance Ryan will still be here, running that huge patch of land, walking around in knee-high welly boots even in the height of summer that he somehow managed to make look sexy, singing some obscure Nineties song that no one but me had ever heard of.
I have to stop thinking about him. Being back here always puts him at the forefront of my mind, because these are the roads we used to walk together. This is where we spent so much time. When I’d accompany him on deliveries in his van for no reason at all, and it would always feel like bunking off work even though he was my boss, or he’d give me a lift home even though it was only ten minutes’ walk and in completely the opposite direction from where he lived.
‘Where’s this protest then?’ I ask in an attempt to distract myself. ‘I haven’t heard anything about it.’
‘Why would you hear anything about it? The Easter Bunny visits Lemmon Cove more often than you do and the Easter Bunny doesn’t exist.’
Ouch. For the first time, I can hear the sting in her voice. ‘I work in London, Cher …’ I start pathetically. It’s an excuse, I know it, but this is the first time I’ve ever realised she knows it too.
She doesn’t pursue it. She doesn’t need to. I’ve often thought that she and Dad mus
t feel abandoned, but she’s so bright and breezy until every so often, the mask slips and a hint of bitterness will sneak out. It makes me feel guilty for how little I come to visit.
‘It’s the old strawberry patch on the clifftop above the beach. Where the sycamore tree is? You must know the place. Dad says it was more your generation than mine. It closed before I was old enough to remember it.’
A chill goes down my spine.
‘Oh, that place.’ I laugh nonchalantly and wave a hand so dismissively to show that I’m not bothered at all that I nearly smack her in the face. I put my hands guiltily back on my lap. ‘Of course I’m not bothered.’ An edge of hysteria has crept into my voice.
‘I didn’t say you were bothered.’
‘Oh.’ No, she didn’t, did she? ‘That’s all right then. Because I’m not.’
Of all the places to haunt my dreams, it’s that place. The tree where I kissed him. Where I was certain he felt the same. After all the years of flirting and laughing and spending time together, all the easy touches, lingering hugs, and flirtatious smiles. I was so sure we were more than friends … I can still feel the imprint of his hands on my shoulders, pushing me away. I can hear his voice saying: ‘I can’t do this now, Fee …’
My foot getting caught in a strawberry runner and tripping me up as I ran away. Juicy berries squishing under the soles of my boots because I was in such a rush to get away that I couldn’t even stick to the paths … Making sure he wouldn’t have a chance to catch up with me and see how much I was dying of embarrassment after throwing myself at him and getting the worst rejection of my life.
I suddenly realise what she means. ‘That’s where they’re going to build a hotel?’
‘I guess.’
‘That’s a terrible place to put a hotel. What about the sycamore tree? It’s hundreds of years old; they can’t take it down. What about all the carvings? All the wishes?’
‘No one carves trees anymore, and it’s been years since anyone made a wish on that thing. The land is all overgrown and prickly now. No wonder they want rid of it.’
We’re not far from the old strawberry farm, and even though it’s dark and I can only see reflections in the passenger window, I look out to the left as we drive up the hedge-lined narrow lanes that give way to a beach car park, and set back from that, the large driveway of Seaview Heights care home. The rocky footpath down to Lemmon Cove beach starts here, and you pass the strawberry farm on the way down. Even in the dark, I can see the shadow of the huge tree’s branches waving in the distance, looming over the horizon.
‘Dad said we all used to go strawberry picking there when I was little …’ Cheryl says.
‘Yeah.’ The strawberry patch was one of my favourite places. ‘You used to love strawberries. Mum and Dad took us at least once a week in the summer months, and then we’d take the punnets we’d picked and go down to the beach to eat them. It’s been years since I thought of that.’
‘And now you have to go undercover like some kind of superspy?’ Cheryl’s clearly changing the subject, and I’m not going to push it because Lemmon Cove is crawling with memories I’d rather forget. I’m absolutely certain that no promotion is worth having to spend any extended amount of time here.
‘The name’s Kerr. Fliss Kerr.’ She dissolves into giggles at her own James Bond impression before I have a chance to answer the question.
‘It’s not exactly like that. I just have to earn the protesters’ trust and pretend to be on their side. As a local.’
She gives me a look that says a stegosaurus is more local to Lemmon Cove than I am. ‘You haven’t lived here for fifteen years.’
‘No, but as far as they’re concerned, I’m visiting you and Dad and heard about the protest so I’ve come to join in because I used to love that strawberry patch and can’t bear the thought of a big, ugly hotel being parked there.’ I hate the way the lies roll off my tongue. It sounds like something Harrison and his business-suited cronies would say. Deceitful and flippant, without a care or concern for who the protesters are or why they’re protesting. I rush to make it sound less underhanded. ‘And that bit’s not a lie – I did genuinely love that place when I was younger. And that tree. They can’t seriously be considering destroying the sycamore tree. They must be working around it and my boss has got it wrong. No one would actually cut down that beautiful old thing.’
The idea that they might not be working around it makes an uncomfortable sting bristle at the back of my neck, and not for the first time, I wonder how on earth I got into this. Not just the Lemmon Cove job, but working for Landoperty Developments in the first place. As the Joni Mitchell song goes, how many “paradises” has Harrison been responsible for seeking out and “paving over”? If I succeed in this, I’ll be doing the same thing. I think about the girl growing plants at Sullivan’s Seeds fifteen years ago. Cross-pollinating plants and flowers by hand to breed new varieties. Creating things, not destroying them. If she could see me now …
I shake my head to clear it. Again. My head has needed a lot of clearing since Harrison’s bright idea this afternoon. Was that really only a few hours ago? It feels like weeks have passed.
‘Do you know who’s leading the thing?’ I say, thinking the youngster could be around her age. If she knows him and can direct me straight to him, this could be over before it’s even begun. Before I’ve stayed long enough for my conscience to get the better of me.
‘Not a clue. People chained to trees and stuff isn’t my scene. All I know is from one of the little girls in my class – her grandma lives at the care home and has roped her into helping make their placards and banners. There’s a surprising amount of glitter for a protest.’
It makes me laugh and something inside softens at the adorable mental image of a young girl helping her grandma to make sparkly protest signs. ‘They’re not really chained to trees, are they?’
The car starts climbing the hills up towards our little house. Our little house. I tut at myself. Dad and Cheryl’s little house. It’s been many years since I was part of it.
‘It’s a peaceful protest, but yeah, as far as I know, they’re making sure the site is never unoccupied.’
It makes that coldness expand in my chest again. That was another one of Harrison’s instructions. He’s given me the number of a local contractor who I’m supposed to call to secure the site the second I’ve got the last old person cleared out of it, so his sidekicks can muscle in and throw barbed wire around to prevent them getting back in. It wouldn’t be the first time. I sigh and chew on my lip.
‘Don’t look so worried,’ she says. ‘I’m sure it’s not as bad as it sounds.’
I don’t say anything. It feels worse than it sounds, especially with how well I know the area and what kind of impact a shiny bells-and-whistles hotel is going to have on the landscape here.
Dad is waiting in the doorway with the outside light on when Cheryl pulls into the driveway and turns the engine off. I go to open the car door but her hand shoots out and grabs my wrist. ‘He doesn’t get out much these days. Maybe you can encourage him to get involved in something. He’s … disengaged and isolated. All he does is garden and I’m the only person he ever sees.’
She’s out the door and round the back getting my holdall out before I have a chance to question her. I sit in the darkened car and look around for a few moments, taking in the front garden with meticulously trimmed hedges, paving so clean it looks ultraviolet in the darkness, and flower borders full of a rainbow of flowers without a deadhead in sight. A world away from my concrete balcony in London, barely big enough to turn around on, and overlooking a busy main road.
Every year I buy some plant or another as a throwback to my previous life here; every year I imagine going out to pick ripe, red tomatoes or crisp green peppers from the pot on the balcony and coming in to make a homemade and healthy pasta dish for my adoring family. In reality, every plant I’ve put out there has died from a combination of pollution and me not being hom
e from work often enough to water it; I can’t cook to save my life and the last time I had any sort of pasta dish, it was a case of piercing the film and putting it in the microwave for five minutes; and my fantasy adoring family is … well, the neighbours watching TV in the adjoining flat or the children stampeding around like a herd of dinosaurs in the flat above probably don’t count, do they?
‘Good to see you, Fliss.’ Dad steps off the doorstep and comes over to wrap me in a tight hug, and I relish in it for a long moment. I can’t remember the last time I hugged someone – probably the last time I visited these two. The nickname makes something in my chest swell, the earlier coldness being replaced by warmth. It was Mum’s nickname for me, and no one but my family have ever used it.
‘How are you?’ I pull back and try to get a good look at him, concerned by Cher’s comment just now.
‘All the better for seeing you, m’dear. Both my girls home again. I’ve got your bed all set up in Cheryl’s room, and I’ve cleared out some of my wardrobe so you’ve got space to put your clothes, and there’s a free shelf in the bathroom for your toiletries. You’ve had a long journey; why don’t you go and have a shower and I’ll get some supper on?’
Same old Dad. Can never do enough for you. When Mum died, it was like he became both mother and father to us. I don’t have the heart to tell him I’m not planning on staying long enough to need bathroom shelf space and anywhere to hang my clothes.
I can’t get this protest sorted out and get back to London fast enough.
Chapter 3
I wake up feeling refreshed and ready to face the day.
Okay, that’s a lie. I wake up with my spine bent in ways I didn’t know it could bend, having got about two hours of fitful sleep in total, while the “bed” slowly deflated underneath me. It’s now half the size it was when I threw a duvet onto it last night, and it’s ten o’clock, which is two hours later than the usual time I have to dash out of my flat and face the demoralising crush of rush hour on the tube.
The Wishing Tree Beside the Shore: The perfect feel good romance to escape with this summer! Page 3
