‘Why don’t you go and see him?’ Cheryl says without me saying a word. It’s only ten p.m. but she’s getting ready for bed because she gets up early for summer school and I’ve always been a night owl. Sharing a room is not ideal.
I’m standing at the bedroom window, watching a hedgehog pottering around in next door’s garden, and I turn around to look at her. ‘The hedgehog?’
She laughs, knowing full well I’m winding her up and the “him” in question isn’t wildlife-related.
‘Because I made the mistake of getting too close to Ryan Sullivan before. It didn’t end well that time, and I’m not going to give history a chance to repeat itself. There’s nothing between us.’
‘Then someone needs to tell him that. I was there when you walked into the strawberry patch the other day and he literally illuminated when he saw you. He excused himself mid-conversation and sprinted across to you.’
‘He’s being polite.’
‘He’s just invited you on a date!’
‘It’s not a date.’ I say it so firmly that I’m trying to convince myself more than her. ‘It’s just for the strawberry patch. The publicity.’
She rolls her eyes. ‘Fliss, what happened between you two?’
I’ve never told her. I’ve never told anyone. The only people who know are me and Ryan. ‘Something that’s never going to get a chance to happen again.’ I sigh. ‘I shouldn’t be spending more time with him. I should be … leaving.’
‘Is that still on the cards then?’
I look over my shoulder at her. ‘I have to go back. I have a job, a flat, a …’ I was going to say “life” but I don’t have much of a life in London at all. It’s certainly not something to miss.
‘I know, but you seem so happy here. And Dad’s been so much happier since you arrived.’
‘That’s Cynthia, not me.’
‘Yeah, but you’ve got him involved in the strawberry patch. I didn’t know how to push him out of his comfort zone, but you did. I think he feels “whole” with both of us here. It’s the closest we ever get to Mum now. When all of three of us are together. He’s been talking about clearing out the spare room so you’d have your own space, and it’s been nice having you around. I didn’t realise how much I miss my big sister when you’re away.’
I can’t stop myself going over and giving her a hug. It’s been nice to be here too. It’s been a long while since I shared a house with my family and I had visions of it being the stuff of nightmares, but it’s been warm and homely and it feels like I’ve never been away.
The thoughts are making tears threaten to fill my eyes again, so I extract myself from the hug. ‘Maybe I will go and see him …’
‘The hedgehog?’
She laughs when I hit her with a pillow.
After I say goodbye to Dad, who’s busy doing a video call with Cynthia even though her camera is pointing at the floor and his is showcasing a particularly interesting spot of the ceiling, so maybe being equally inept at technology is a sign of romantic compatibility. The hedgehog in question scurries across the path when I step out onto the pavement and it makes me smile. I can’t remember the last time I saw a hedgehog.
‘It’s just me, Ry,’ I call out quietly when I reach the strawberry patch.
He turns his industrial-sized torch towards me, illuminating the path between strawberry plants as I head towards the tree. ‘You disappear for fifteen years and now I get to see you both day and night? Can we flip it and have the next fifteen years like this?’
I ignore him. They’re just words. They don’t mean anything. They can’t mean anything.
Baaabra Streisand is sleeping beside the tree trunk, and I push myself up on tiptoes to see what Ryan’s doing.
He’s sitting cross-legged in the tree using a little knife to do … something … to a strawberry. ‘What are you up to?’
‘Aw, you’ve caught me red-handed. I was trying to carve strawberries into roses and present you with a bouquet of them tomorrow.’
‘That’s romantic.’ The words are out before I can stop them.
‘Yes, it is.’ He meets my eyes and holds my gaze unwaveringly.
My legs feel so unsteady that I have to drop down off my tiptoes, and after a few moments, he shakes himself and looks away.
‘Godfrey showed me how to do it. He used to make them for Henrietta.’ He puts down the one he’s working on and picks up another, and leans forward so I can see what he’s doing. ‘If you carve four thin strips here, you can peel them back to look like petals.’ He does that around the widest part of the strawberry and then moves up to the narrower part and does the same in between the “petals” below so they overlap. ‘And then you do it again at the narrow part, and then criss-cross the tip, and voila.’ He hands me the mutilated fruit that really does look like a rose, his fingers hovering over mine as I take it carefully because it’s so delicate.
I can’t help smiling at the idea of a guy who would put in the effort to do that. The last time someone bought me flowers, they were mostly dead from the supermarket clearance bucket and still had the “reduced to 10p” sticker on them, and I later discovered were out of guilt for cheating on me. ‘Beautiful.’
‘The benefits of befriending a man who sold strawberries for forty years. I was going to do a whole load and put them on skewers and wrap them in pretty paper like a real bouquet, but now you’ve caught me, I’ll have to think of something else.’
‘You don’t have to do anything romantic for me …’ I trail off, automatically pushing myself up on tiptoes again as he leans further down.
His fingers are still around mine where mine are around the strawberry and they tighten so much, the fruit is in real danger of being crushed.
‘Fee …’ His eyes close and my name comes out as a breath, his hand coming up to brush my arm, trailing up and across my shoulder. He leans so close that our foreheads are millimetres away from touching, and …
He overbalances and has to grab a branch to stop himself falling headfirst out of the tree.
‘No. No, of course not.’ He yanks his hand away and scrambles backwards, and I step away, my heart pounding and my breath coming in such short, sharp pants that I could’ve just ran a marathon. Except not, obviously, because me and running don’t mix.
‘Sorry if I overstepped the mark earlier with the whole date thing. The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. As is tradition whenever I’m around you.’
‘Of course. I get it, Ry, you didn’t mean it like that.’
He looks confused. ‘I meant it like that, I just didn’t mean to ask you in front of everyone.’
In that moment, something snaps inside of me. ‘All right, I’ve had enough. What are you playing at? All the touches, the hugs, the hand-holding, and now you’re asking me on a date too? You’re doing exactly what you did before. No one can correctly interpret these mixed messages. I got it wrong before and I’m not going to get it wrong again!’
He looks taken aback by my sudden outburst, and I take a step back in surprise because I didn’t realise I was going to say that.
‘Oh, come on, Fee. Seriously? Don’t you know how I feel about you?’
‘No!’ I snap. ‘No, Ryan, I don’t. I showed you how I felt fifteen years ago and you clearly didn’t return it then—’
‘You think I didn’t feel the same.’ He says it more to himself than to me, shaking his head. It’s not really a question at all. ‘There were two reasons I didn’t kiss you back, and believe me, that wasn’t one of them.’
I take a deep breath and steel myself to ask something I should’ve asked years ago. ‘Then what was?’
‘There was someone else.’
‘What?’ It comes out sharper and louder than I intended it to, but I’ve spent years imagining potential answers to that question and that was not one of the possible responses.
‘That came out wrong,’ he says quickly. ‘Not someone else in that way. It was to do with my father’s business. There was this girl. My father had gone into business with her father … I was supposed to marry her.’
While I’m still trying to get my head around that, he scrambles out of the tree and reappears from behind the trunk. ‘It was to cement the ties of the business. There was an assumption on my shoulders that she and I would get married and continue running their business together, and then pass it on for generations to come.’
I thought I was shocked into silence, but I take a step away from him when he comes closer. ‘You were seeing someone else at that time?’
‘No! God, no. Nothing like that. I barely knew her. We’d played together a few times when we were children and that’s it. My father had always made comments about it, but I’d taken them jokingly; I’d never thought it was something they’d actually expect us to go through with, but when he had that heart attack, it changed things. He had to hand the business over to me sooner than he’d planned. Her dad had invested a large sum of money into the company, and working with me wasn’t what he’d signed up for. He didn’t like how young I was. Everyone knew I didn’t have my father’s business head. They thought that marrying his sensible, business-minded daughter would “sort me out” and make me into an adult. And I was obviously never, ever going to do that, but my dad was so ill, and the guilt was piling up on me. I couldn’t tell him, Fee, not then.’
‘You make it sound like you were supposed to have an arranged marriage!’
‘You know who my father was. He was a huge name around here, and there was an expectation on me to carry on the business. He wanted me to do that with his business partner’s daughter, and what I wanted didn’t matter.’
‘You didn’t tell me,’ I say as he takes another step towards me. ‘We were so close, Ry. We told each other everything. Or so I thought …’
‘I thought you’d hate me. I was scared it would look like I was leading you on, but all I wanted was you, Fee.’
I can’t take all of this in. I know that what he’s just said should register in a monumental way, but it’s like I’m floating above, hearing it but not really present.
‘It wasn’t that big a deal before, not until my father realised I was head over heels for you and that didn’t fit with his plans. The pressure from him amped up. And then if I’d tried to explain it to you, I thought I’d lose you as a friend. And then that night under the tree … My heart soared when you kissed me and then sank because there was this thing I hadn’t told you about. It felt like I was betraying you and his expectation of me. I wasn’t “free” to be in love with you, Fee.’
‘That’s why you “couldn’t do this now”?’
He nods and reaches his hand out. ‘I thought I could deal with it without you ever having to know. It hadn’t mattered before, but when I met you … This vague, jokey thing suddenly did matter. I thought I’d tell him when he was stronger, but he never got stronger. When you said you were leaving … I couldn’t hold you back. I reasoned that it would give me a chance to sort the situation out. I thought I’d deal with it while you were away and then when you came back I’d be able to explain everything, but the years went by and you never came back, and … I couldn’t just randomly call you years later and go: “Hey, you know that situation I couldn’t tell you about all those years ago? Guess what, I finally handled it. Marry me now, yes?” You’d have had a life by then. I thought you’d have met someone, and you’d be happy and I couldn’t blaze in and ruin that.’
Something about his outstretched hand is impossible to ignore, and I slide mine into it and give his fingers a squeeze.
I often feel so jaded and cynical that nothing shocks me anymore, but this certainly has. I had no idea Ryan had this going on in his life. I knew about his father, and I knew how much Ryan didn’t fit in with the expectations on him, but this is the first time I’ve realised there was a reason he didn’t kiss me back that night. ‘What happened? Did you sort it out?’
‘Eventually. It only took me five years and an engagement.’
‘What?’ I yank my hand out of his. ‘You actually went through with it?’
‘No. I stopped it before it went that far. You don’t understand how ill my father got, Fee. It was the only thing that made him happy. I honestly thought refusing would kill him.’ He shoves a hand through his hair and sighs, his eyes lingering on mine before he eventually looks away and walks around the tree, going to stand by the barrier and look out at the sea.
I’m lost with how I should feel. I’m hurt that Ryan had this thing in his life that I didn’t know about. It changes the friendship I always thought we had. ‘You should have told me. You didn’t have to deal with that alone. I could have helped.’
I avoid Baaabra’s snoring form and walk around the tree to lean on the barrier next to Ryan.
‘Then I’d have had to tell you how I felt about you. And that was the second reason …’ He lifts his head and looks me directly in the eyes. ‘You deserved better than me.’
The sentence takes the wind right out of my sails. ‘What?’
‘This is a prime example of why. I wasn’t brave enough to stand up to my father. You deserved someone stronger than me, someone who didn’t have all the family baggage that I had. Someone who would put you first. And at that time, I couldn’t do that. And believe me, I’ve regretted it for every moment of my life since then because you left thinking I didn’t feel the same, and that wasn’t true, but I reasoned with myself that it was for the best, because you deserved a chance to go out and live your dreams and see the world, and if I’d kissed you back and explained everything, it might’ve made you stay, and that wasn’t what you wanted.’
‘What about you, Ry? You wanted to travel. You wanted to see the world. You wanted to live in a bustling city, and go on holiday to New York, and drive around France in a campervan, and walk on the beach in Bali, and eat dinner at the top of the Tokyo Tower—’
‘Exactly. And I knew I never would. When we talked about where we wanted to go, showed each other photos of all these amazing destinations, they were possibilities for you. They were only pipe dreams for me. I knew I’d be stuck here. I was destined to take over the family business, to live here in Lemmon Cove, nowhere else. I couldn’t hold you back. When my father had that heart attack, it changed everything. I was barely in my twenties, and it catapulted me to the head of his company – something I hadn’t intended to become until much later in my life, not until after I’d had a chance to live it. I’ve never once regretted taking over Sullivan’s Seeds because it led to meeting you, but it happening so young, so unexpectedly … It changed all of my plans for the future. Of all people, you know how much I was out of my depth.’
‘But that was your own lack of confidence. That was not how I saw you. Yeah, you’d been thrust into a business you knew nothing about, but you faced the challenge head-on. You learnt. You were innovative and ambitious. You breathed life into a stuffy old company. You made every day better. When it really mattered, you had a backbone of steel. The gruff old farmers who’d been growing for your father for years and were set in their ways … They were awful to you, and you took everything good-naturedly, but when it came down to it, you stood up to them kindly and firmly and left them with no doubt that they would be doing things your way from then on.’
‘And then you had to make me a cup of tea to calm down because I was shaking so much.’
I grin at the memory. ‘But you did it anyway. You were exceptional, Ryan. I wished I could be more like you.’
The sarcastic, disbelieving laugh he lets out cuts through me like a physical pain. Maybe it was more about his lack of confidence than he let on. On the surface, Ryan was funny and buoyant, but I was the only person who saw when he was hesitant and unsure, who understood that he rambled to cover nerves, sang stupid Nineties songs as a distraction or did stupid dances to wake himself up when he was knackered after being up working until all hours or unable to sleep for worrying about his father’s health.
‘You must think I’m stupid for never leaving. Even after I lost the business, I had to stay here and pick up the pieces. It went under because of me. I was too young, too inexperienced; I made bad business decisions and it caught up with me.’
‘The cucurbitacin poisoning was no one’s fault. No one knows how that happens or how to prevent it.’
He shakes his head. ‘That’s just one thing, Fee. One failure in a long line of failures I was responsible for. Wrong investments, bad suppliers, unreliable buyers. I couldn’t wreck the family business and then swan off into to the sunset. My family had no income. It was my responsibility to fix the mess I’d made. The one thing I couldn’t fix was us – the mess I’d made of losing you.’
‘You could’ve got in touch. No matter how many years had gone by. I thought I’d read you so wrongly. I was so sure we were more than friends.’
‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Fee. I was trying to do what I thought was right in the wrong way.’ He drops his head down onto his arms. ‘God, of course we were more than friends. I could barely keep my hands off you. How many times daily did I find an excuse for a hug? I dragged you to every business meeting possible because I hated being away from you. You were the highlight of every single day. I nearly kissed you so many times.’
‘I nearly kissed you so many times! And that one night, it was a now-or-never moment, and I thought I’d regret it forever if I let it pass …’ I say to the sea instead of looking at him.
He doesn’t lift his head and his words are muffled through his arms. ‘You deserved someone who could give you the world, and I couldn’t.’
‘How could you ever think that?’ I know I shouldn’t touch him, but he’s right there, his head is still bowed onto his arms, and my fingers reach out and stroke through his dark hair. ‘You were the best thing in my life. You made every single day better just by existing. You might not have had confidence in yourself, but I thought you were the best thing in the world.’
He shudders as my nails brush through his hair and I go to pull my hand away, but his shoots out and grabs it as he lifts his head and turns to look at me. ‘You were going off on this big adventure. You were excited. You’d been talking about it for weeks. A flat in London. All the places this fancy new job would send you. The shops you’d go to, the things you’d buy with your new salary that was a hell of a lot higher than I could afford at Sullivan’s.’
‘Yeah, I wanted an adventure, but it came at a price – the cost of leaving you. All I really wanted was for you to tell me you felt the same. That would’ve been the best adventure I could’ve asked for. I left because I thought you were going to leave, and I was so scared of being left behind and seeing you go. It would’ve broken my heart, so I broke my own heart to protect myself.’
‘I’m sorry, Fee.’ His lips move against my skin as he keeps holding my hand against his mouth, his stubble scratching with every movement. ‘We should have had this conversation many, many years ago.’
He glances up at me, almost to gauge my reaction because he looks unsure about whether I’m going to wallop him or not, and then he pushes himself upright and uses his hold on my hand to tug me closer.
My other hand is gripping the top of the metal barrier fence, my knuckles white, and his grip is so tight that my fingers zip with pins and needles when he finally releases my hand.
‘Can I do something I should’ve done fifteen years ago?’ His voice is a breathy whisper, and I nod almost imperceptibly because I can sense what’s coming seconds before he surges forward and kisses me. A kiss that’s a million times different from the last time we were here.
I can’t help the whimper when his mouth finally touches mine.
A shiver of electricity goes through me. This is what I always imagined kissing Ryan would be like.
It’s both hot and heavy and soft and gentle. A kiss that’s been trying to burst forth for many, many years. My hands are in his hair, on his neck, clawing into his shoulders. He’s cupping my face with one hand, his other splayed out on my lower back, supporting me, even though I’m leaning heavier and heavier against him until eventually he sinks down to his knees, dragging me with him because I can’t tear my mouth away from his yet, not until we tumble over onto the grass. He lands with a huff and I let out a squeak. His arms tighten around me like a vice, holding me safely against him, and then pulling me tighter and tighter, splaying his hands out wider, like he can’t touch enough of me, until I can push myself up on one elbow and look down at him. I brush my fingers through his hair, stroke his face, and he pushes himself up until he can fit his lips against mine again, and I lose track of time as we lie there, snogging in the grass.
When I’m breathless and panting and can’t think straight, he says, ‘That was worth waiting for.’
And it makes me laugh so hard that I might actually be hysterical, even though he’s absolutely right – it was worth waiting for. ‘Next time, can we wait about fifteen seconds instead of fifteen years?’
‘Fifteen seconds is too long.’ He surges up to kiss me again, and then lets out a long breath and drops his head back against the grass and runs a hand over his face, looking dazed, possibly oxygen-deprived, and like he can’t get his head around this turn of events.
I’m not sure I can either.
Maybe our wishing tree really does answer wishes.
And I’m so happy that I can almost forget there’s still something I haven’t told him.