Page 8 of The Wishing Tree Beside the Shor
‘Fliss! Dennis’s oldest daughter!’ A woman with curly greying hair approaches. ‘I remember you! Haven’t you aged! Oh, and you’ve grown into your boobies nicely! Congratulations!’
‘Ffion!’ I finally make the connection while simultaneously trying not to die of embarrassment and dissolve into a fit of giggles at proportionate boobs being something worthy of congratulations now. She used to run the ice cream van that stopped in the car park and I went to every day on my way home from the beach.
‘Oh, I am sorry,bach. I’m Morys.’ The man with the walking stick introduces himself. ‘Didn’t mean to startle you. We’re expecting someone from that awful property developer’s London office to come and try to buy us out. With the number of retweets our last message to the world got, Ryan thought it might be this week.’
Ryan. The name makes my blood run cold, but it’s a common name. In the fifteen years since I left, twenty-six Ryans could have moved to Lemmon Cove. There’s no way it can be the same Ryan.
The sycamore tree is on the lower left side of the garden area, a path to it has been cut through the brambles … or possibly chewed, because that’s where the baa-ing was coming from. A sheep is eating the vegetation at the base of the tree, next to a thick silver chain wound around the huge trunk. They weren’t joking when they said people were chained to trees. I just never realised it would bethistree.
I see a flash of grey T-shirt and dark hair as someone jumps out of the branches and lands on the ground, but I’m distracted by the care home residents coming over to introduce themselves.
‘I’m Tonya,’ the pink-haired woman says. Her phone is permanently in her hand as she waves her arm around, gesturing to each person and telling me their names. ‘That’s Cynthia with the Zimmer frame and Mr Barley is the one with the gnomes, and—’
And then it happens. A voice cuts through the air and the whole world stops.
‘Fee?’
If my blood ran cold before, now it turns to ice and stops running completely. There is only one person who hasevercalled me that. Back then, people at school and work called me Felicity, I was always Fliss to my family, but Ryan Sullivan called me Fee from the first time we met, and it stuck.
I don’t realise my eyes have closed, but when I open them again, he’s coming up the path from the tree towards me, and I force myself to blink again to make sure I’m not hallucinating.
It’s definitely him. Older and more rugged than he was fifteen years ago, but I’d know his voice from just one word. It’s a voice I’ve barely stopped thinking about for fifteen years.
I feel frozen in time as I turn towards him. I’ve pictured this moment so many times. What it would be like to see him again. How calm and composed andnon-awkward I’d be. How we’d laugh about old times, and I’d congratulate him on his undoubtedly high-flying life and he’d tell me he always knew I’d go places and do great things in my career, and I wouldn’t be the gawky awkward teenager with too many spots and a blazing crush on him. In my fantasies, I’ve always lost a couple of stone, got glowy skin, non-frizzy hair, and chic clothes that fit perfectly, not gape at the hips and stretch so much to accommodate my boobs that the stitching is liable to burst apart at any moment.
In reality, my breath immediately leaves my lungs and my knees start shaking.
‘Fee, is that really you?’ He laughs a disbelieving but not unhappy-sounding laugh, picking up speed as he comes towards me. ‘I don’t believe it!’
‘Are you all right, dearie? You’ve gone all pale. Shall I fetch some water?’
I mumble something to the well-meaning lady, but Ryan has blazed through every thought and every molecule of my body. Something pulls me to him like a magnet, and I picture myself running down the path and into his arms, a moment of reunion akin to the lift at the end ofDirty Dancing.
What actually happens is my foot plunges into a pile of sheep poo, which squelches across my ballet flats, and one of the old ladies screams in horror.
At the exact same moment, the chain that’s secured to the tree at one end and around Ryan’s waist at the other reaches the end of its tether and yanks him backwards, causing the sheep to baa in annoyance.
‘I’m still as undignified as ever,’ he says with a bright grin in my direction, and I could be mistaken, but it looks like his hands are shaking as they fumble to undo the chain around his middle.
He couldn’t be nervous of seeing me as well, could he?
I don’t have time to think about it because I’m suddenly swamped by care home residents.
‘Oh dear, such messy animals.’ One lady bends down to slip my shoe from my foot, leaving me hopping around on one leg, while one of the men puts a hand on my elbow and guides me to the nearest bench, forcing me down onto a wooden slat covered by what looks suspiciously like bird poo. Honestly, within two minutes here, I’ve encountered more poo than anyone ever needs to encounter before half past ten in the morning.
The woman who took my shoe rushes back towards Seaview Heights with it held aloft, and another man appears seemingly from the bushes with a Pooper Scooper and comes to collect the offending clump of sheep poo.
‘Good for the hydrangeas!’ he tells me gleefully, rushing off with it held out in front of him like he’s won a prize.
Another man is pacing around in front of the bench on “Sheep poo watch” in case there are any more unspotted clusters lurking in the undergrowth.
I’ve never known sheep poo to cause so much excitement before.
Is this really happening? This is nothing like my fantasy. I look awful. I’m wishing I’d put on full-length trousersorshaved my legs this morning, because the combination of three-quarter-length trousers and my current look is more yeti than sultry. It’s the first day in years that I’ve left the house without make-up on, and the hot morning sun is making me glisten, andnotin the good way. I can’t remember running a brush through my hair, I just scragged it back and tied it in a knot. I was trying to look beachy and casual, not like I was about to see the love of my life for the first time in fifteen years.
I mean, no, he’s not the love of my life, obviously. He was just a teenage crush. A flirtatious, fun highlight of my life for nearly four years, but it wasn’t love. Can it ever really be love if it isn’t reciprocated? And despite all signals to the contrary, it clearly wasn’t.
Just thinking about it makes me go even redder than I am anyway.Whyis he here? What is he doing here? No matter how much Iusedto like him, I’d quite happily have never seen him again after the way I humiliated myself fifteen years ago. And now he’s here. Literally chained to a tree in the middle of this protest that I somehow have to infiltrate. It was a bad enough planwithoutRyan Sullivan smack-bang in the centre of it.
