Page 25 of The Wishing Tree Beside the Shor
I smile at the mocking indignation in his voice and the playfulness in his eyes as he waggles his eyebrows at me.
‘A million per cent the best boss I’ve ever had,’ I tell Tonya.
‘You were the best employee I’ve ever had,’ he says quietly and then hesitates. ‘And the best friend.’
I momentarily forget how to breathe. Ryan was never like a boss to me, but to hear him say it too …
‘Wait, wait, wait.’ I snap back to reality. ‘This has all gone too far. I said I wanted to help, not be your—’
‘Well, you can help by being our campaign manager, can’t you?’ Tonya claps me on the arm. ‘There, that’s all settled.’
Harrison’s angry face appears in my head. When he said “infiltrate the protest and gain their trust” I don’t think he meant take over the running of it.
‘What’s our first task, boss?’ Cynthia shouts.
Oh God.
‘Want me to show you the ropes on your first day?’ Ryan gives me a wink that has no right to make me feel as fluttery as it does.
I remember showinghimthe ropes onhisfirst day at Sullivan’s Seeds. He’d bumbled in on a typically dripping summer day, late and panting for breath from rushing, wearing welly boots he’d clearly bought that morning because they still had a tag in the back of them and he was limping from blisters within an hour, and realised he’d left the keys to the office in the car and had to go back to get them, while four drenched gruff farmers swore at him and told him his father would never make mistakes like that. I liked him from the moment I walked in on him singing “Sunshine After the Rain” to a bed of bedraggled plants that afternoon. I’m not sure random Nineties music has ever been responsible for an instant connection before, but it was one of my favourite songs and no one else thought Nineties music was cool.
Like he can tell what I’m thinking, he’s come closer again and I find myself comforted by him being nearby, stepping back into his space while I try to think of something to say to the waiting residents.
‘People will care about this tree,’ I say eventually. ‘There must be hundreds of people who are responsible for some of those carvings on the trunk. Does anyone know of anyone else who used to come here regularly, or carved something into the bark? Any of the other residents? Any of your friends?’
They all start chattering amongst themselves, and I look up at the tree. It must have so many stories to share, and there must be so many people who’d want to know them. I feel myself pulled towards it like it’s a magnet.
‘Morning, Baaabra Streisand,’ I say as the sheep gives me an annoyed look for interrupting her grass munching. She takes an inquisitive step towards me, and I stand still to see if she’s going to attack. Her furry white nose starts twitching towards my pockets, like she might be expecting food, and when I turn one out to show her only my phone, she gives an annoyed baa and goes back to the munching.
When it seems safe to turn my back, I walk around the tree, glad of the shade from the branches even this early in the morning. I reach my fingers out and run them over the trunk. The pinkish-grey bark would be as smooth as it is on the higher branches if it wasn’t for the thousands of carvings wallpapering the trunk. They cover every inch – from the tips of the lowest branches to the points where the roots spider out and burrow into the earth.
I had no idea until last night that my mum and dad’s names were on here somewhere. As my fingers trail along each dip in the bark, it’s not really their names I’m searching for. Somewhere on here is the “Ry + Fee” he carved in a love heart. Ithasto still be here. For as much as I’ve tried to put that day out of my mind, I can remember every second of it. How he gave me a lift home from Sullivan’s Seeds and stopped here because it was my last day and he said he didn’t want it to end. How we walked down to the tree hand in hand. It was early autumn, the beginning of September, too early for the seeds to be falling, but the very tips of the leaves on the higher branches had started to yellow. He’d jumped up into the tree and grabbed two helicopter seeds and insisted we throw them off the cliff and make a wish. We’d closed our eyes and on Ryan’s low count of three, thrown our sycamore seeds off the edge, made a wish, and opened our eyes to watch them plummet directly to the sand below, far too wet and heavy to spin that early in the season. We’d laughed. He’d pulled me closer, and I’d been sure he was about to kiss me.
I was twenty, far too old to believe in sycamore wishes, but the wish I’d made on that seed was that he’d like me inthatway.
And I was so sure he did. But instead of kissing me, he’d bypassed me and started running a hand over the trunk until he found an empty space, pulled out the Swiss Army Knife that always hung on his keyring, and crouched down to carve our names, encasing them in a heart shape. I took it as a sign, and when he stood back up, I had that now-or-never feeling. I was leaving the next morning. I had to know if the years of flirtation, jokes, excuses to spend time together, and the looks he kept giving me had meant something to him like they had to me.
While he was putting the keyring back into his pocket, I’d slipped my hand around the back of his neck and pulled his head down, using the grip to push myself up too, until our lips had smashed together.
At first, he didn’t respond. He didn’t kiss me back. And then his hands were on my shoulders, pushing me away. ‘I can’t do this now, Fee …’ He’d spoken to the ground, too horrified to look me in the eyes. Cold realisation slowly dawned on me and I stumbled away from him. I’d gone from now-or-never to fight-or-flight. I had to get away. He’d called after me. A kind of hoarse ‘Fee …’ but I hadn’t stuck around. I didn’t want to hear his polite reasoning that we were just friends and he didn’t feel likethatabout me. I’d gathered that much.
Despite the sun, goose bumps prickle my skin at the memory of that day. Unequivocally the most embarrassing moment of my life. The stupidest thing I’ve ever done. And I’ve done many stupid things since. Had so many embarrassing moments that you could say I was on a one-woman mission to somehow embarrass myself so much that it erases the memory of that one awful moment with Ryan Sullivan, but nothing has. Yet.
‘You always did have a way with words,’ Ryan says softly, and I wonder how I can have been so distracted that I didn’t even hear the clang of the chain as he moved or the crunch of his footsteps over the sun-roasted ground.
He smiles when I look up and meet his eyes. There’s always been something about his smile and the way it makes dimples appear right at the corners of his mouth, which have some kind of hypnotic effect, I’m sure.
And then I realise I’m bent double looking for the spot where he carved our names. I can’t remember where it is – not exactly. It was around this side, the left of the tree, and it must be near the bottom because he’d crouched to carve it. But the trunk is so wide and there aresomany carvings that it’s impossible to pick out just one.
‘Looking for your mum and dad’s name?’ He says like he can read my mind.
‘Yeah.’ It’s a lie that’s not entirely untrue. ‘It’d be nice to find it, but there are so many. It might be impossible.’
My mum and dad’s name being on here is a good enough excuse to carry on looking. Maybe he’s completely forgotten aboutourcarving. If it’s even still here. Maybe the “Ry + Fee” is gone. Faded, like local legend says it will if the relationship isn’t meant to be, and it’s safe to say that Ryan and I definitely weren’t.
His arms are folded across his chest as he stands back and looks up at the tree. The tarpaulin to keep the rain off is flapping in the sea breeze, and I’m struggling to tear my eyes away from him. He’s got a wide and flat nose, and stubble that’s scruffier than it was yesterday. Up close, I can see the first odd grey hairs at the edges of his jaw. I force myself to look away and continue rubbing my hand over so many indentations in the bark.
‘Makes you feel small, doesn’t it?’ Ryan’s voice is quiet. His strong Welsh accent gives the words a soft lilt and he drops the middle letters of “doesn’t” so it sounds more like “dun’t”. His voice always did something to me.
