Page 10 of The Wishing Tree Beside the Shor
‘For as long as the site’s occupied, they can’t swoop in and steal it.’
‘What about at night?’ I remember several incidents where Harrison has sent men in to secure protest sites when the protesters drop their guard and go home at night.
‘I’m here all day, every day. Sleeping here, eating here, I go home for showers when one of this lot will cover for me.’
‘Sounds uncomfortable.’ I try not to show my surprise. When Harrison said people were chained to trees, I didn’t think he meant actuallylivingin the tree itself.
I look past him to where the sycamore tree sits on the cliff edge, so close to it that from here you’d imagine the roots to be coming out of the rocks themselves, but close up, it’s further from the edge than it looks, and surrounded by a sturdy barrier keeping everyone safe from going over.
‘We’re expecting someone to come and offer us blood money any time now,’ Ryan continues. ‘Those property developers have no morals. They think money solves everything, and they’ll do anything, no matter how morally corrupt, to get what they want without a second thought to the human cost involved.’
I gulp.
‘Like that tree could ever have a price.’ His face shows every emotion and none of them are good. ‘Three hundred years old, visible for miles across the sea, a guiding light that’s stood here since times so long ago that we can’t even imagine them. Not even Mr Barley, and he’s about the same age.’
From across the garden, the man who’s finished rearranging his gnomes and is now sitting on his kneeling pad sticks a finger up at Ryan with a grin.
I catch sight of his gnome arrangement and nearly do a double-take. The male gnome is painted to look like Boris Johnson and the female one is reaching across … Blimey, what is Theresa May’s hand doing downthere? And why does Boris look like he’s enjoying it so much?
‘Aw,’ Tonya sighs. ‘He’s already done that one but with Margaret Thatcher and Ed Miliband. We need more inventive gnome sex positions! Gnome sex positions, anyone?’ She claps her hands to get the attention of the group. ‘Suggestions on my Facebook page to get people talking!’ She turns back to us. ‘Anyhoo, I must go and photograph them. My Twitter followers will be waiting for today’s update.’ Tonya rushes across to the gnomes, and I can feel Ryan’s eyes on me.
‘Welcome to the land of fabulous mad old people.’ He leans down to whisper in my ear, making me jump with his sudden closeness. ‘You’ll get used to it. Gnome sex positions are a regular topic of conversation around these parts.’
Gnomes or not, talking about sex positions with Ryan is a bit too much for me and there’s a genuine possibility I might be about to spontaneously combust.
‘And I’m not sure that was the best choice of words. These people spend far too much time thinking about gnome parts.’
Either I’m delirious or it’s the most hilarious thing ever, and I let out a guffaw so loud that every eye in the vicinity swivels towards me, including the sheep’s. A guffaw, for God’s sake. Idon’tguffaw. I’ll be tittering and chortling next at this rate.
Ryan obviously takes pity on the guffawing fool and changes the subject.
‘Are your dad and sister okay?’
He’s still so nice. He was always the kindest, most caring guy. No matter what he had going on in his own life, he always checked to make sure my dad was okay after my mum died. Always kept boxes of Sullivan’s surplus fruit and veg to make sure he was eating well. Cheryl was still young when I knew him, and he’d always buy her toys and have more fun playing with them himself before he gave them to her. He was like an older brother, always looking out for us. I swallow back the lump in my throat. ‘They’re fine. Just well overdue a visit.’
‘Oh my God, Fee. There’s so much to talk about. I don’t know where to start.’ He runs a hand through his hair like he always used to – surprising that someone’s little habits don’t change over so many years, and surprising me by how natural the instinct is to reach out and grab his hand, like I always used to when he went to do it with compost-covered gardening gloves on.
My nails make crescent shapes in my palm as I force myself not to be so stupid. ‘So how are you? I didn’t think you’d still be—’
‘What’s this? What’s this?’ A lady with long champagne-blonde hair rushes down from the care home waving a phone around. ‘I lost the last round, I can’t lose this one too!’
She stops to show the phone to Tonya and Mr Barley as she passes them, and then she spots me and Ryan. ‘Ooh, young people, you might know!’
No matter what she’s talking about, it’s quite nice to be considered a young person. Generally that term stops when you creak your way out of bed every morning and feel too decrepit to shop in Primark.
The long-haired woman is out of breath by the time she reaches us and pushes her phone in front of us. ‘What is it?’
On the screen is a photograph of some household object, but she whisks the phone out of sight as the two men abandon their board game and come over and Cynthia on the Zimmer frame hobbles this way, and Tonya pulls Mr Barley up from his seat and they all gather round.
The woman must notice my look of bewilderment because she holds out a hand and shakes mine. ‘I’m Alys. I play “Guess the Gadget” with my friend in the next county over. We send each other photos of household objects and score points for each one we get right, and she’s beating me by nine points at the moment. I’m not letting her outfox me on this one too!’
The phone is passed between all of them and they chatter about what the mystery object onscreen could be. Eventually someone’s holding it under my nose again, and Ryan steps closer to see the screen over my shoulder, and his closeness once again makes something inside me sputter to a halt. If I was made of electrics, a circuit board would’ve definitely just fried.
I’m hyperaware of his presence. His tall frame behind me, six-foot-one of solid muscle, so close that I can feel the brush of the dark hairs covering his tanned arm against mine. It takes all I have to remember how to breathe. Of all the ways I thought this day might go, trying to identify household gadgets with Ryan Sullivan standing so close I can feel his body heat certainly wasn’t one of them.
‘Isn’t it a cherry pitter?’ I say, trying to focuseverythingonto the phone screen in front of me and not the warm body behind me.
‘Oh, yes, I think you’re onto something there.’ Tonya nods her head of pink curls.
