Page 69 of The Wishing Tree Beside the Shor
‘It’s late enough to leave the tree. And I think Steffan’s wavering. He came to talk to me about long-term sharing my car park yesterday – he wouldn’t have done that unless he was seriously considering keeping the strawberry patch open. I suspect he liked that box of cash from opening day, and that agreement we got from the Lemmon Cove shop owner for fifty punnets a week starting next spring.’ Ryan unhooks the chain from around him and disentangles Baaabra Streisand’s lead to slip the handle over his wrist, and picks up the torch. He holds his other hand out to me. ‘C’mon. Just down to the beach for a sheep-walk.’
‘That sounds like a ewe-phemism.’
He laughs as Baaabra Streisand rushes ahead of him, yanking us both through the open strawberry patch gate.
We head downwards in silence, our joined hands swinging between us. I thought the walk down might be harder for the second time in one day, but with my hand in Ryan’s, I can forget everything until we’re nearly at the bottom.
‘Ahh, the easy part.’
His hand falls out of mine as we reach the wide-open sand dunes at the end of the narrow path, a steep incline down to the beach. He lets out a whoop and dashes off and I follow.
It’s physically impossible not to half-run, half-slip, and half-slide down a sand dune, and I end up doing a combination of all three and somehow managing not to break any bones. Ryan reaches the bottom long before I do and turns around with open arms, waiting for me to barrel straight into them, like he always used to.
His arms wrap around me and stop the momentum of running headfirst down such a steep hill, encircling me tightly and rocking us both from one foot to the other as he buries his face in my hair.
I willhatethis dune when we have to walk back up it, but for now, I like it very much.
‘Always hoped I’d get to do that again one day,’ he says into my hair.
Why does he have to keep saying the perfect thing? The right thing? The thing that makes those butterflies take off again?
Instead of letting go, his arms tighten and he turns his head to the side, tilting us back with one foot so we’re looking up at the tree above us, a shadow against the night sky, and I know we’re both thinking the same thing.
‘What if we fail?’ he whispers.
‘We won’t – because of you.’
‘Because ofyou, Fee. I was getting nowhere until you came along. Just a guy chained to a tree. With a sheep.’ He squeezes me and I remember saying something similar to him a few weeks ago. ‘You brought the place back to life. Like you always did at Sullivan’s Seeds. I always used to say the plants were sad on your days off and only perked up when you were in.’
It once again makes my knees feel weak. ‘We should string some fairy lights around the tree. Especially in the winter when all its leaves have dropped and it’s a skeleton of branches. It would still be a destination then. Somewhere people wanted to visit. Late night picnics at the strawberry patch could be another thing to look into, or picnics on the beach … The perfect date on a moonlit winter night. It would look pretty decorated for Christmas too. Multicoloured lights, sprigs of holly and mistletoe, those oversized baubles hanging from its bare branches …’
It makes us both realise I won’t still be here in the winter, and the sadness pervades. His arms drop from around me, and his hand trails down my arm, across my T-shirt sleeve until his fingers slot between mine.
I swallow hard. ‘Ryan, I …’
‘Yeah, I know.’ He squeezes my hand gently. ‘Your life isn’t here anymore.’
‘It’s not that. I want …’ Iloveit here. I want to stay, but how can I? I want to talk about it with him, see if he thinks there’d be a future for us if I moved back, but it can’t begin with him thinking my life is so different to what it is.
I don’t know how to end that sentence, and he doesn’t push me for an answer.
We turn around to follow Baaabra Streisand as she trots across the sand. She keeps picking up a shell, tossing it away, and then running after it, and I can’t help laughing. Whoever knew sheep made such good pets?
The beach is empty tonight in contrast to how busy it was this morning. It’s pitch black apart from the light of a small crescent moon, and the tide is out, making the sand seem endless as we walk towards the cliff in the distance with a castle ruin on it. The retreating tide has washed away the footprints of the day, and apart from the set of hoof prints we’re following, it’s like we’re the only people who have ever been here.
‘You ever wonder how many break-ups it’s been responsible for?’ His voice is no more than a whisper but it sounds loud in the silence of the night, and it takes me a moment to realise he’s talking about the tree.
‘With the carvings fading legend,’ he continues. ‘How many people visited and seen their carving has faded and took it to mean their other half wouldn’t be true or whatever nonsense they used to spout in Victorian times, and not just that it wasn’t deep enough or it’d been battered by the weather or carved over by someone else. The Tree of Inadvertent Break-Ups.’
‘Aw, that’s so cynical.’ I glance up at him but he looks away this time. ‘You used to believe in magic and sycamore wishes more than anyone. What happened?’
He does a long shrug, lifting my arm too as he moves his shoulder. ‘Stopped believing in happy endings, I guess.’
‘Seriously, Ry,’ I say slowly because I’m not sure I want to know. I should have asked him straight away, but it didn’t seem like the right moment to push him on it, and the thought of him hiding this secret when I thought we shared everything makes me feel uneasy. ‘What happened with the woman you told me about the other day?’
‘I went along with what my father wanted. I ended up engaged to her.’
He mentioned something about it the other day, but to hear him actually say it so straightforwardly … I stop in shock and the movement yanks my hand out of his.
