Page 11 of The Wishing Tree Beside the Shor
‘Yes! It can’t be anything else!’ Alys claps her hands together. ‘Fantastic! Thanks, Felicity!’
I go red even though the ability to identify a cherry pitter isn’t exactly something impressive.
‘As I said,’ Ryan whispers into my ear. ‘The land of fabulous mad old folks.’
It makes me laugh again, especially when he steps back and the distance allows me to take a much-needed breath. I hadn’t realised I was so perilously close to passing out from lack of oxygen.
‘How long’s it been since you two saw each other?’ Ffion peers at both of us.
‘Fifteen years,’ we say in perfect unison, and our eyes meet over the sea of old people between us.
‘I didn’t think you’d ever come back,’ he says without dropping my gaze, a smile tilting his lips. ‘You must have such a glamorous life. Didn’t think I’d ever see a high-flying career girl from the big city back in this little village. What are you doing now?’
‘I’m a—’ Oh God, I can’t tell him. I can’t tell any of them. The one thing theycannotknow is where I work. They’ve made it quite clear what they think of companies like Landoperty Developments and how open they’d be to the idea of someone turning up and offering them a wodge of money in exchange for giving up the protest. Theycannotknow who I am or why I’m here.
Alys is texting her friend the answer to “Guess the Gadget”, but all the others are still surrounding us, and I’m squirming under their expectant gazes. They’re going to be suspicious if I don’t come up with something soon. It can’t feasibly take this long to remember what you supposedly do for a living and I look around desperately for inspiration.
One of the care home staff is making her way down from the building towards us, carrying a tray of cakes and cups of tea.
‘A chef!’ I say it so suddenly that I make myself jump, and two of the old folks glare at me in fright. One of the board game men takes his hearing aid out and gives it a whack.
Achef? What the heck am I thinking? Of all the fake careers I could possibly have chosen, why on earth did I say that one? I can’t cook for toffee. I definitely can’tcooktoffee. Does toffee even need cooking? Why have I gone off on a toffee-related tangent when these people are standing around thinking I’m a chef? The most complicated thing I can cook is a Pop Tart. And that usually ends up burnt.
‘Oooh, where do you work?’ Tonya asks.
‘A restaurant. In London.’
She looks at me expectantly, like that’s plainly not enough info.
‘It’s called Riscaldar.’ I remember a property my boss sold last year. ‘I’m kind of an assistant, a kitchen manager, a waitress … I do a bit of everything.’
Why didn’t I think this through? I spent so long last night practising everything I was going to say, but it didn’t once cross my mind that they’d ask about my job.
Ryan quirks an eyebrow up. ‘A sous chef?’
What theheckis a sous chef? ‘Er, yeah, one of them.’
He lowers that eyebrow and raises the other one. ‘You?You didn’t used to be able to make a piece of toast without needing the fire brigade on hand.’
‘That wasonetime! And it wasn’t my fault that a passer-by saw smoke coming out the window and called 999! And the blame was half yours for distracting me!’
‘You’d set the timer knob for ten minutes. A block of ice would’ve charcoaled in that time.’
‘I’m not sure ice quite works like that when you heat it up.’
He grins. ‘Well, you’re the chef – you’d know.’
Tonya’s looking at her phone and making impressed noises. ‘Ooh, it says that rich and famous people eat there. Who’s the most famous person you’ve ever met?’
Oh God, did she have to google it? ‘Oh, I don’t really—’
‘Holy moly, those prices! It’s a good job they display them on the website or people would be having heart attacks all over the place when the bill came.’ She hands the phone around to show everyone. ‘It lookssofancy. Who knew a girl from Lemmon Cove had done so well?’
They give me a round of applause. They seriously give me a round of applause for working in a posh restaurant I’ve never even been to. All I did was sort out Harrison’s paperwork when he sold it.
It won’t be the disaster it seems to be, I tell myself. All I have to do is find this youngster and all this will be over. It’s not like I’m going to have any reason to prove my occupation. It’s a couple of days and then I’m out of here again, because I can already feel the need to put as much distance as possible between me and Ryan Sullivan.
‘Seriously, how’d you get into that?’ he asks.
