Page 3 of The Wishing Tree Beside the Shor
‘What? What village? What protestors? What land?’ I can feel myself starting to panic. I cannotgo back there. I haven’t been back there, not properly, for fifteen years.
Harrison raises an eyebrow at how much attention I’ve been paying to this project. I knew he was looking at land for a hotel company in Wales, but Wales is a big place. How was I supposed to know he was looking at land on the South Wales Gower coastline where I grew up?
‘This is a real “in” for us. A game changer for that lot in there …’ He starts pacing up and down, clicking his fingers as he formulates a plan that I already know I’m not going to like. ‘You’re exactly what we need. You have family there, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’ I can’t deny it, and I’m impressed that he’s remembered me mentioning going to visit family on days off. ‘My dad and little sister. But I don’t see them often. It’s alongway, and—’
‘Then it’ll be a wonderful chance to visit, won’t it?’
‘I’m not going to—’
I’d be fired if I cut people off as much as he does.
‘This is exactly what we need,’ he continues. ‘This protest is getting out of hand. We need someone to go in and pour water on the flames, and who better than you? You’re one ofthem. A local. You’ve got a family connection to the area.’
‘I have no connection whatsoever to—’
‘You can earn their trust from the inside out. Find out what their plans are. Gently persuade them that their time would be better spent playing bingo and doing jigsaw puzzles while eating prunes and having blue rinses or whatever it is old people like to do.’
‘What?’ I say again. I really am failing to grasp what he’s getting at.
‘Care home residents, Felicity. Those men in there are all set to buy a big chunk of land in Lemmon Cove, on the clifftops above the beach, but the grounds currently belong to a care home. It’s all overgrown and no one’s used it for years, but as soon as the owner decided to sell it, the residents took it upon themselves to object and suddenly it’s this all-important garden for them even though no one’s set a house-slippered foot out there since the days when woolly mammoths were roaming it.’
‘Right,’ I say slowly. There are a few care homes in Lemmon Cove that overlook the beach. That doesn’t narrow it down.
‘They’re all out there with their placards every day. They’re playing the environment card, but they’re being stirred up by some youngster who owns a nearby campsite, so there’s clearly an ulterior motive because a campsite would be impacted by a state-of-the-art hotel across the road. No more slumming it in tents for all the tourists who visit the area. This youngster is using his adorable team of old biddies to save his own business. It’s exploitation.’
Campsite? Since when is there a campsite in Lemmon Cove? And Harrison is not one to lecture on exploitation – he’s a cut-throat businessman who will exploit every opportunity he can.
‘One of the old biddy protestors has discovered how to use Twitter for their cause … Well, she hasn’t really discovered how to use it because she keeps tweeting random things that aren’t supposed to be tweets, like that time Ed Balls tried to do a search for his own name and it became known as Ed Balls Day. She keeps posting photos of the bottom of a Zimmer frame and blurry ground where she’s accidentally pressed the camera button and tweeting things like “What do you do with a courgette?” and “What IS a courgette?” and “Is a courgette the same as a zucchini?”’
‘So it’s all very vegetable-based then?’
‘You can laugh, but the public are falling in love with this technically challenged old bat. Her tweets are getting more and more likes and retweets, and it’s only a matter of time until she goes completely viral and the national news agencies pick up the story, and our clients don’t want to be known as the heartless hotel magnates who threw a load of old biddies out of their garden.’
‘Why are they doing it then? Some of those care homes don’t have much garden space at all. The paths down to the beaches are too steep for the residents, so the garden is the only way they can enjoy the view. You can’t plonk a hotel outside their windows.’
‘That’s for the owner to decide, and the owner’s decided that no one’s using the land and he wants a chunk of money for it. There’s untapped tourist potential because there’s nowhere in the area for civilised people to stay – a campsite doesn’t count – and now all these old folks are rioting and it’s gaining traction. Not the sort of publicity we want getting out, you know?’
‘You’ve dealt with protestors before. You usually just get the police in.’
‘Local police are in their pockets, I reckon. They’ve given an excuse about not having a legal right to turf them out when some of the protestors are chained to trees.’
I snort at the idea of anything so lively happening in Lemmon Cove, but I quickly realise he’s not joking. ‘They’re chained to trees?’
‘There’s some old tree that they’re up in arms about losing.’ He waves a dismissive hand.
‘It’s not on the strawberry patch, is it?’
‘How should I know?’
‘Is it a sycamore tree? Where wishes are made?’ I try to ignore the sinking feeling in my stomach. No one would even contemplate fellingthattree, but the old strawberry patchisright behind a care home on a clifftop …
His brow furrows. ‘Why would anyone make wishes on a sycamore tree?’
‘It’s a local legend. All the kids used to rush there in the autumn for the falling sycamore seeds. It’s said that if you make a wish and throw one over the cliff and it makes it to the sea, your wish will come true.’
He looks at me like I’m a few slices short of a full loaf. ‘Honestly, Felicity, I sent you out for my laundry, not to have a few gins down the pub. Don’t mention wishing trees out loud – we’ll be a laughing stock. Now, this protest has been going on for a couple of weeks, and they’re showing no signs of giving up. The youngster has got them all stirred up, and that’s exactly where you come in. We need to deliver this sale quickly and quietly. You’ll go there as one of them. Infiltrate this protest as a local. Pretend to be on their side and earn their trust, and find out what it’s going to take to get them to give up. Everyone has a price – we just need to find it.’
