I left my phone on Cheryl’s dressing table, and when I pick it up, there’s a text from Harrison telling me to do my best, and after I didn’t reply to that, there’s a voicemail telling me I’d better not be having a lie-in because I’ve got work to do.
I don’t think it counts as a lie-in if you’re still trying to get comfortable when the sun comes up. I send him a quick reply saying I’m purposely being late so as not to arouse suspicion, and can’t help wondering why he thinks I need reminding to do my best. Don’t I do my best every day?
Probably not, actually. Most days are a constant stream of reminding myself that pouring hot coffee down people’s necks is considered bad and hoping to get through the day relatively unscathed.
When I’ve had a shower, I throw on my best casual seaside visitor look of three-quarter-length trousers and a vest with lace roses on the straps. I need to look as un-businesslike as possible. Nothing can tip the protestors off about my real job.
Dad’s downstairs and he comes over to give me a hug. ‘You don’t look like you’re eating well enough.’
He forces me to sit at the kitchen table and puts a cup of tea and a slice of his homemade roasted peach pie in front of me.
I take this to mean that I look like I survive on shop-bought sandwiches and cereal for dinner every night, and that’s reflected in my wobbly waistline and complexion that would make a teenager cringe. But I’m not in work so I’m not making it worse by putting on make-up if I don’t have to. I’m just going to have to hope that the old folks’ eyesight is bad enough not to be able to make out every acne scar and red mark that may or may not erupt into a volcano-style spot.
Cheryl’s already gone to work. I know because she tripped over my feet where they were sticking over the edge of the “bed” as she got ready this morning, and I try to get Dad talking about what she said last night, but he constantly turns the conversation back to me and how I’m doing, and when I question him on the protest and who’s running it, he doesn’t know either.
It’s a ten-minute walk to the strawberry patch, and I try to persuade Dad to come with me, but he says something about needing to make a loaf of bread. It’s weird to step out of my dad’s house in the morning sunshine, like I’ve gone back in time fifteen years and I’m on my way to work at Sullivan’s Seeds. I did this every day for four years of my younger life, from the age of sixteen when I started to twenty when I left.
The sea air fills my lungs as I walk down the street, intermittent trees in dark green leaf for summer, birds pecking at red berries in the wild cherry trees that are interspersed with the hedgerows opposite, and I frighten off a flock of sparrows from a bird feeder as I walk past one of the neighbour’s gardens and out onto the main road. Even “main road” is a misleading term in these quiet Gower villages, as the cars are few and far between, and mostly full of families enjoying the summer holidays with bikes and colourful surfboards strapped to their roof racks as they head to the beaches further along the Welsh coastline.
The sycamore tree is on the horizon, a beacon visible for miles from its spot on the clifftop, overlooking the Lemmon Cove beach. Seaview Heights care home looms over the car park, and a big metal gate to the left lets me onto a wide cobblestone path that gently slopes towards the sea on the horizon, not giving any hint of the steep and rocky path that lies ahead. Only people with strong ankles and a high level of fitness attempt to reach the beautiful, unspoiled Lemmon Cove beach. The gate clangs as I close it behind me. There’s a slice of cardboard tied to it with “Save Our Garden” painted in big red letters, and someone’s attempted to draw a flower underneath it but it looks more like a cauliflower in the middle of a murder scene.
Ah ha, the campsite. To my left is a neatly cut hedgerow and I stand on tiptoes to see over the top to fields that stretch out for miles, some with tents pitched here and there, and further over there are campervans parked up on the lush green ground. No wonder the campsite owner is protesting. A luxury hotel across the path from his campsite is going to have a hugely detrimental effect on his business.
On the right-hand side, hidden from the coastal path by a hedge that’s so overgrown I can’t see over it, is the land that used to be the strawberry patch. I loved strawberries and I loved the seaside – what could be better than a pick-your-own strawberry patch on the way down to the beach? And with the sycamore tree on the edge overlooking the sea as well … I can’t imagine the number of hours I must’ve spent here.
There’s vague chatter and noise from behind the hedge so I walk further down the cobblestone path to a gap in the hedgerow that used to be smooth double wooden gates hooked open on summer days, a wide and welcoming entry to the strawberry patch and the sycamore tree, but now the space is filled by haphazard metal fencing, those temporary panels that builders put in place to keep people out of building sites.
A few of the care home residents are milling around in the garden area. There’s an old woman sitting on a bench, and one standing in front of her having a natter while she leans on a Zimmer frame. There’s a man walking around with a placard that reads “Make peas, not war”, but I can’t work out what pea puns have got to do with saving a strawberry patch. One old man is on his knees on a kneeling pad, doing something to a pair of garden gnomes, two men are sitting on the wall of what was once a raised flowerbed playing a board game, and one woman is sitting on a rickety-looking bench looking at her phone.
Something lets out an extended “baa”.
Another cardboard sign with “No Hotel Here” scrawled on it in brushstrokes of red paint is tied to the metal fencing, and the rusty panels are joined by a loose chain that’s hanging open. I shift one aside and squeeze through the gap, wondering what sort of protest this is if they’re sitting around playing board games. I’d expected to see them chanting and marching with their billboards and petitioning in the streets. I turn around to push the metal panel back into place, and when I turn back, there’s a walking stick pointed at my chest like a bayonet.
I gasp and take a step back in alarm, and every eye in the garden area has turned to me.
‘Who are you and what do you want?’ The man holding the walking stick brandishes it at me. God knows what he thinks he’s going to do with it. The rubber-capped end is coated in mud, so maybe stain me? He’s certainly not going to cause much bodily harm with it.
‘I’m Fel …’ My voice comes out squeaky and I have to swallow before I try again. ‘I’m here to join the protest. I’m Felicity. I’m visiting my dad and heard about what was going on, and I want to help.’ I give them the lie I’ve been practising all night, except in my head, I was self-assured and confident and my voice didn’t wobble at all.
The white bricks of Seaview Heights reflect the sun arching across the sky from the east. There’s a neat hedge surrounding the walkway around the building, and then it opens out onto this couple of acres of land that gently slopes towards the cliff edge and the humungous tree.
‘The thought of it being ruined by a hotel is unthinkable.’ That part isn’t a lie. What is Harrison thinking in trying to buy this land? What are the hotel company thinking in wanting to destroy this area? It might not look like it used to when it was a strawberry patch, but it’s got to be the best view in the south of Wales. Uninterrupted panoramic views, the sea stretching all the way along the horizon, endless dunes and craggy cliffs that form the borders between different Gower beaches, soft waves lapping at long stretches of golden sand many metres below us, and in the distance, the weather-beaten wooden remains of a ship’s hull, still buried beneath the sand from an eighteenth-century shipwreck.
The walking stick is removed from my chest and the old man leans on it as he takes a step back, and the woman who was sitting on the bench with her phone gets up, a head of baby-pink curls bobbing as she comes across. ‘Who’s your father? Do we know him?’
‘Dennis Kerr.’ Everyone in this village knows everyone. It’s the kind of place where if you’re lucky enough to live here, you d
on’t want to leave, so most of the residents have been here for decades.
‘Fliss! Dennis’s oldest daughter!’ A woman with curly greying hair approaches. ‘I remember you! Haven’t you aged! Oh, and you’ve grown into your boobies nicely! Congratulations!’
‘Ffion!’ I finally make the connection while simultaneously trying not to die of embarrassment and dissolve into a fit of giggles at proportionate boobs being something worthy of congratulations now. She used to run the ice cream van that stopped in the car park and I went to every day on my way home from the beach.
‘Oh, I am sorry, bach. I’m Morys.’ The man with the walking stick introduces himself. ‘Didn’t mean to startle you. We’re expecting someone from that awful property developer’s London office to come and try to buy us out. With the number of retweets our last message to the world got, Ryan thought it might be this week.’
Ryan. The name makes my blood run cold, but it’s a common name. In the fifteen years since I left, twenty-six Ryans could have moved to Lemmon Cove. There’s no way it can be the same Ryan.
The sycamore tree is on the lower left side of the garden area, a path to it has been cut through the brambles … or possibly chewed, because that’s where the baa-ing was coming from. A sheep is eating the vegetation at the base of the tree, next to a thick silver chain wound around the huge trunk. They weren’t joking when they said people were chained to trees. I just never realised it would be this tree.
I see a flash of grey T-shirt and dark hair as someone jumps out of the branches and lands on the ground, but I’m distracted by the care home residents coming over to introduce themselves.
‘I’m Tonya,’ the pink-haired woman says. Her phone is permanently in her hand as she waves her arm around, gesturing to each person and telling me their names. ‘That’s Cynthia with the Zimmer frame and Mr Barley is the one with the gnomes, and—’
And then it happens. A voice cuts through the air and the whole world stops.
‘Fee?’
If my blood ran cold before, now it turns to ice and stops running completely. There is only one person who has ever called me that. Back then, people at school and work called me Felicity, I was always Fliss to my family, but Ryan Sullivan called me Fee from the first time we met, and it stuck.
I don’t realise my eyes have closed, but when I open them again, he’s coming up the path from the tree towards me, and I force myself to blink again to make sure I’m not hallucinating.
It’s definitely him. Older and more rugged than he was fifteen years ago, but I’d know his voice from just one word. It’s a voice I’ve barely stopped thinking about for fifteen years.
I feel frozen in time as I turn towards him. I’ve pictured this moment so many times. What it would be like to see him again. How calm and composed and non-awkward I’d be. How we’d laugh about old times, and I’d congratulate him on his undoubtedly high-flying life and he’d tell me he always knew I’d go places and do great things in my career, and I wouldn’t be the gawky awkward teenager with too many spots and a blazing crush on him. In my fantasies, I’ve always lost a couple of stone, got glowy skin, non-frizzy hair, and chic clothes that fit perfectly, not gape at the hips and stretch so much to accommodate my boobs that the stitching is liable to burst apart at any moment.
In reality, my breath immediately leaves my lungs and my knees start shaking.
‘Fee, is that really you?’ He laughs a disbelieving but not unhappy-sounding laugh, picking up speed as he comes towards me. ‘I don’t believe it!’
‘Are you all right, dearie? You’ve gone all pale. Shall I fetch some water?’
I mumble something to the well-meaning lady, but Ryan has blazed through every thought and every molecule of my body. Something pulls me to him like a magnet, and I picture myself running down the path and into his arms, a moment of reunion akin to the lift at the end of Dirty Dancing.
What actually happens is my foot plunges into a pile of sheep poo, which squelches across my ballet flats, and one of the old ladies screams in horror.
At the exact same moment, the chain that’s secured to the tree at one end and around Ryan’s waist at the other reaches the end of its tether and yanks him backwards, causing the sheep to baa in annoyance.
‘I’m still as undignified as ever,’ he says with a bright grin in my direction, and I could be mistaken, but it looks like his hands are shaking as they fumble to undo the chain around his middle.
He couldn’t be nervous of seeing me as well, could he?
I don’t have time to think about it because I’m suddenly swamped by care home residents.
‘Oh dear, such messy animals.’ One lady bends down to slip my shoe from my foot, leaving me hopping around on one leg, while one of the men puts a hand on my elbow and guides me to the nearest bench, forcing me down onto a wooden slat covered by what looks suspiciously like bird poo. Honestly, within two minutes here, I’ve encountered more poo than anyone ever needs to encounter before half past ten in the morning.
The woman who took my shoe rushes back towards Seaview Heights with it held aloft, and another man appears seemingly from the bushes with a Pooper Scooper and comes to collect the offending clump of sheep poo.
‘Good for the hydrangeas!’ he tells me gleefully, rushing off with it held out in front of him like he’s won a prize.
Another man is pacing around in front of the bench on “Sheep poo watch” in case there are any more unspotted clusters lurking in the undergrowth.
I’ve never known sheep poo to cause so much excitement before.
Is this really happening? This is nothing like my fantasy. I look awful. I’m wishing I’d put on full-length trousers or shaved my legs this morning, because the combination of three-quarter-length trousers and my current look is more yeti than sultry. It’s the first day in years that I’ve left the house without make-up on, and the hot morning sun is making me glisten, and not in the good way. I can’t remember running a brush through my hair, I just scragged it back and tied it in a knot. I was trying to look beachy and casual, not like I was about to see the love of my life for the first time in fifteen years.
I mean, no, he’s not the love of my life, obviously. He was just a teenage crush. A flirtatious, fun highlight of my life for nearly four years, but it wasn’t love. Can it ever really be love if it isn’t reciprocated? And despite all signals to the contrary, it clearly wasn’t.
Just thinking about it makes me go even redder than I am anyway. Why is he here? What is he doing here? No matter how much I used to like him, I’d quite happily have never seen him again after the way I humiliated myself fifteen years ago. And now he’s here. Literally chained to a tree in the middle of this protest that I somehow have to infiltrate. It was a bad enough plan without Ryan Sullivan smack-bang in the centre of it.
Ryan’s untangled himself from the chain and is standing awkwardly at the edge of the people around the bench, shifting from one foot to the other like he used to when he was nervous.
He goes to say something, but the woman with pink hair plonks herself down next to me, not caring about the bird poo in the slightest. ‘Ooh, I like your hair.’ She reaches out to twirl a bit of the blue hair that’s sticking out from the knot at the back of my head. ‘Blue always comes out green for me.’
I can’t take my eyes off Ryan. The intense sunshine is making his forehead prickle with sweat, and we’re just sort of staring at each other in a daze. He used to sweat when he was nervous too. But it’s obviously just the sun – it’s not like he’d be nervous about seeing me again. He’s gorgeous and I’m a sheep-poo-ridden disaster. He didn’t humiliate himself and run away fifteen years ago. He hasn’t spent fifteen years thinking about me and subconsciously comparing every other relationship to what he had with me.
‘People say I’m too old for bright-coloured hair,’ Tonya is carrying on without waiting for an answer. ‘But I’m not having any of that. Age is nothing but a number, isn’t that right? I go into town to get it d
one every few weeks – the brighter the better to pee off the haters.’ She does something with her fingers that’s either a peace sign or some kind of gang overlord symbol.
Ryan’s chewing his lip and trying not to laugh, his eyes not leaving mine as I blink up at him, the sun stinging my eyes and making them water.
‘I can’t believe you’re here, Fee. I never thought I’d see you again,’ he says when Tonya stops talking about the various hair colours she’d had recently.
He takes a step closer, like he’s going to bend down to hug me, and I’m all of a dither. Do I get up and risk putting my bare foot down on this sheep-poo-covered ground? What about the bird poo I’ve probably sat in? I’m going to have to furtively make sure that hasn’t left any marks behind.
‘No!’ The woman returns with my now-clean shoe and a kneeling pad, which she throws onto the ground and kneels on in one swift movement, lifting my leg and slipping the shoe back onto my foot like it’s a glass slipper and I’m some sort of poo-ridden Cinderella.
‘Do you two know each other?’ Tonya looks between me and Ryan.
‘We used to work together,’ I say.
‘She was my greatest friend,’ Ryan says at the exact same moment.
‘I was?’ I say before I can think about it.
‘Good as new.’ The woman with the shoe declares before Ryan has a chance to answer, sitting back on her knees and looking satisfied with her work.
She gets up and she and Morys get their hands on my elbows and pull me to my feet, and the momentum propels me headfirst into Ryan.
His arms come up to steady me, wrapping tightly around my shoulders and pulling me to him, and I realise it’s a hug. He’s hugging me. Ryan’s hugs were always a force to be reckoned with, and the surrealness of this situation makes my brain sputter to a halt and hug him back, my hands rubbing over the smooth curves of well-defined shoulder muscles and a strong back through his grey T-shirt. I breathe in his still so familiar scent, a mix of sea air and some kind of earthy cologne.
The Wishing Tree Beside the Shore: The perfect feel good romance to escape with this summer! Page 4
