Page 34 of The Wishing Tree Beside the Shor
He nods. ‘Okay, well, it bears repeating. I love it. I wouldn’t have thought they’d let you have bright hair in a fancy restaurant like that. It looked very upmarket from what Tonya showed me.’
‘Oh, it’s … freethinking.’ I grasp onto a word at random. I’m not even a hundred per cent sure what freethinking means. ‘And it’s not like it’s too obvious. It’s kind of hidden.’ I wave a hand vaguely towards my hair. It’s not much lighter than black anyway and the blue ends sort of melt into it. It does nothing to ease the guilt about him thinking I work somewhere I don’t though.
He reaches out like he’s going to stroke it and then pulls back quickly. ‘Sorry. There was a llama.’
‘A llama?’
‘Yeah. Because that looked suspiciously like I was going to touch your hair, and I wasn’t. I was batting away a llama.’
‘Right.’ I push my laptop bag safely to one side and sit cross-legged beside him, my knee pressing against his.
‘Good morning.’ He meets my eyes with a smile.
‘You’ve already said that,’ I say, even though every time I look into his eyes, I’m not sure if it’s morning or three Thursdays ago in the Mayan calendar.
We’re both silent for a while. Sitting in this tree feels magical. The rain patters down on the tarpaulin above our heads, a thick protective canopy, and the drips that land bounce off the taut waterproof material. The tree protects us from the worst of the elements and makes it feel like sitting in a cave high above the ground but without the shut-in feeling. The wind on the edge of a sea cliff is strong, but in this little nook of the huge tree, it’s almost non-existent, apart from the occasional gusts that dodge the branches and blow through.
‘Can I say something that’s going to sound really stupid but you have to promise not to laugh at me?’ I blurt out before I have a chance to rethink it. Ryan was always someone who would listen to anything without prejudice or judgement.
‘Anything.’
‘Do you think the tree knows we’re trying to help it?’
I think he’s going to laugh at me for being so daft, but he reaches out a hand and runs it over the line where the smooth worn-away wood meets the cracked bark creeping up the trunk. ‘I’ve said that from the very beginning. As soon as I got here, I felt like it was welcoming me, inviting me, protecting me.’
The wind whispers through the branches and the leaves above us rustle, sending a flood of raindrops bouncing against the tarpaulin, almost like it’s answering the question too.
‘And yes, youarethe first person I’ve said that to, and no, Iwon’tever forgive you if you repeat it.’
I laugh. ‘You can trust me with your tree-hugging secrets, Ry.’
His knee presses harder against my knee and he leans over to nudge his shoulder against mine. ‘I know. Could always trust you with anything.’
The cold shiver that goes down my spine has nothing to do with the drizzly dampness of the day and everything to do with the deceit of why I’m here. ‘You too.’ I swallow hard. ‘Most bosses don’t treat employees like you did.’
‘You were never an employee, Fee. You were my right-hand man. Woman. Oh God, I’ve just called you a man.’ He drops his head into his hands and shakes it.
It makes me giggle. His rambling is still just as charming.
‘Sorry. I just meant you were the heart and soul of Sullivan’s Seeds. It fell apart without you.’
It makes my breath catch in my throat. I don’t think anyone’s ever considered me the heart and soul of anything before, and it melts my heart to think that Ryan ever thought that, and makes me feel about two seconds away from tears. This feels too raw, too serious. ‘Without me, it started poisoning people with toxic squashes, didn’t it?’
‘Not intentionally, I assure you.’ He lets out a peal of laughter. ‘Oh, speaking of unintentional things, when Baaabra attacked us yesterday, Tonya was recording video and she’s put it online. So now about three thousand people have seen us being knocked over by a sheep. If there’s anything more stereotypically Welsh than that, I don’t know what it is. Aren’t you glad you came back?’
Actually I am. Kind of. I think. ‘See, that’s what we need to harness. If she can get those kind of views with a daft video, think of how many we could get to know about the tree.’ I steadfastly ignore the idea of a few thousand people seeing me flailing about on top of Ryan. Concentrate on the positive, not the negative.
I reach over and flick at the pages of the sketchbooks in his lap. ‘What are these?’
‘I’ve been playing with your ideas about the sycamore leaves. Look, I thought we could hand these out to kids to colour in and hang in their windows, and then these ones, we could laminate and tie onto trees and bushes right across the Gower area.’ He hands me a sheet full of sketches of sycamore leaves. ‘Which ones do you think are best?’
‘All of them,’ I say. Ryan always had a talent for doodling. He drew the Sullivan’s Seeds logo that appeared on all our seed packages and plant labels, and was always doodling little swashes on price tickets and signboards.
There are seven variations of a sycamore leaf sketched onto the scrap bit of paper, and I point at one in the upper left corner. ‘This one would be best for colouring in with all the lines and veins, and then this one would be simpler for tying onto trees and spreading across Gower because there’s more space to put the website address.’ I let my finger drift across the page. ‘These are amazing.’
If I didn’t know better, I’d say he’s blushing when I glance up at him, and I have to shake myself from the urge to reach over and touch his face. The old ’uns are rubbing off on me – I’ll be pinching his cheeks like a doting granny next. ‘I was talking to Cheryl last night. Her class are going on a nature walk next week and they’ll put a flyer through the door of every house they pass. I bet they’d love to get involved with tying laminated leaves onto bushes too …’
‘That’s not child labour, is it?’
