Page 17 of The Wishing Tree Beside the Shor
If I’m going to stay, I need to get something better than this to sleep on. I’m listing to the side, the bed threatening to tip me out altogether and I take it as a sign.
‘I’m going for a walk.’ I roll out and land on my knees on the bedroom carpet.
‘And would this walk happen to take you past the strawberry patch?’
‘No.’ I sigh. ‘Maybe. I can’t stop thinking about him being out there at night, Cher. He must be freezing.’
‘It’s August.’
‘It still gets cold at night.’
‘It’s twenty-something degrees! It’s warmer tonight than most of spring!’
‘Well, he might be hungry. Ryan was always a night owl and it’s barely midnight. I doubt he’ll be asleep. And there are a ton of leftovers – I could take some and walk past, and if he is asleep then I’ll leave them so he’s got something to wake up to.’
‘You keep telling yourself that,’ she mutters. ‘Just do it quietly because I’ve got to get up for work in the morning.’
I change my pyjamas for a pair of joggers and a T-shirt and creep down to the kitchen. I load some leftover pasta salad into a Tupperware container and clip the lid on, and cut a slice of the chocolate cake Dad had made when I got back earlier and then rethink it and cut another slice, put them both in a tin, throw in two forks and make a flask of tea, put the whole lot into a backpack and hoist it over my shoulder. There’s a torch on the table in the hallway and I grab it as I sneak out the door.
It’s sensible to get up and do something when you can’t sleep, I tell myself. Fresh air is good for you. And if Ihappento stroll past the strawberry patch …
I do, of course, head straight there, at such a pace that I’m out of breath by the time I reach the beach car park and let myself in the gate to the footpath. There’s the glow of what looks like a lantern from the direction of the tree, but I don’t want to shout out and wake everyone up, including the care home residents and Ryan if heisasleep, so I undo the metal chain and push a steel fence panel aside, wincing at every clang in the silence of the night.
‘Who’s there? Don’t come in! I’m armed!’ Ryan’s voice from the tree makes me jump.
‘It’s me, Ry,’ I answer. ‘Are you really armed?’
‘Fee?’ He sounds confused. ‘And no, of course not, but you never know who’s going to walk in here and throw their weight around. There’snothingI wouldn’t put past those heartless companies. Stay there, I’ll come and get you. It’s hazardous in the dark. Well, it’s hazardous in daylight; it’s even worse in the dark.’
I hear the rustle of branches and the thunk as he jumps down from the tree, and there’s the murmur of his voice reassuring Baaabra Streisand, and I shine my torch down the path to see him coming towards me, the chain rattling as he moves, carrying a glowing lantern.
‘Hey.’ He lifts his hand to his eyes to block the beam of my torch. ‘What are you doing here so late?’
‘Couldn’t sleep,’ I say honestly. ‘Kept thinking about you on your own out here.’
‘I’m not on my own.’
My heart jumps into my throat. He said he wasn’t married and something about spinsters. He didn’t actually say he didn’t have a girlfriend. I’ve probably interrupted a romantic cosy summer night sleepover in a tree. ‘Oh, I’ll go. I didn’t—’
I’ve already started backing away when he interrupts me. ‘Baaabra Streisand’s here too.’
‘Oh, right!’ The relief makes me start laughing. ‘Of course she is. I, er, just thought I’d wander past, see if you needed anything. Thought you might be cold. I brought tea.’ If in doubt, always fall back on tea – the Great British answer for everything. ‘Have you eaten?’
‘Not since earlier, but Ilovethe sound of a chef asking me that. Makes me wonder what’s in that bag.’ He nods to the backpack over my shoulder, and I cringe at the idea of him thinking I’m a chef. ‘C’mon, come and sit with me. Catch up. It’s been too long.’
Has he forgotten that I saw him a few hours ago? I think he means more than that though and it makes my heart pound faster. His voice is deep and he’s speaking quietly given the time of night. Without realising it, I’ve drifted closer to him and he holds his hand out.
I automatically slip mine into his as he turns and leads us back towards the tree, holding his lantern up to light the way, and I turn the beam of my torch towards the uneven ground in front of my feet to be extra sure of no more sheep poo incidents.
When we reach the clear area surrounding the tree, my torchlight falls onto the sheep, who is now lying on one of those huge dog bed cushions. She looks up uninterestedly and puts her head back down.
Ryan tugs me around the tree to a spot between branches on the lower left side. ‘It’s taken a bit of trial and error and bumps on the head, but this is the access point.’ He lets go of my hand and holds the lantern to the trunk so I can see where he taps the bark. ‘See this dent? Put your right foot here and use it as a foothold to push yourself up, and then you can use this branch to pull yourself the rest of the way.’ He reaches a long arm up and pats a branch above his head, seemingly forgetting that not all of us are six-foot-one.
He hands me the lantern and, within seconds, he’s on his knees in the big dip of the tree trunk and leaning over the side, holding his hand out. I pass him up the lantern and then my backpack, and hold the torch between my teeth.
Clambering up here has the potential to go horribly wrong and end with me flailing about in the water metres below. I do what Ryan said and position my foot in the dented part of the bark and use the foothold to launch myself upwards, and he grabs my hand and hauls me into the tree.
It’s a huge, almost-flat space where the trunk splits off in different directions, leaving a wide dip in the middle. The wood is smooth and silky; the bark worn away from so many years of children climbing it. Ryan hangs his lantern from a branch above, giving us just enough light to see.
