Page 5 of The Wishing Tree Beside the Shor
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. ‘Ilovethe 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 beennoticedby 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 must 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,thatplace.’ I laugh nonchalantly and wave a hand so dismissively to show that I’m not botheredat allthat 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.’
