The Wishing Tree Beside the Shore
About the Author
JAIMIE ADMANS is a 35-year-old English-sounding Welsh girl with an awkward-to-spell name. She lives in South Wales and enjoys writing, gardening, watching horror movies, and drinking tea, although she’s seriously considering marrying her coffee machine. She loves autumn and winter, and singing songs from musicals despite the fact she’s got the voice of a dying hyena. She hates spiders, hot weather, and cheese & onion crisps. She spends far too much time on Twitter and owns too many pairs of boots.
She will never have time to read all the books she wants to read.
Find out more on www.jaimieadmans.com or find her on Twitter @be_the_spark
Also by Jaimie Admans
The Château of Happily-Ever-Afters
The Little Wedding Island
It’s a Wonderful Night
The Little Vintage Carousel by the Sea
Snowflakes at the Little Christmas Tree Farm
The Little Bookshop of Love Stories
The Little Christmas Shop on Nutcracker Lane
The Wishing Tree Beside the Shore
JAIMIE ADMANS
HQ
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
HarperCollinsPublishers
1st Floor, Watermarque Building, Ringsend Road
Dublin 4, Ireland
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2021
Copyright © Jaimie Admans 2021
Jaimie Admans asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008466916
E-book Edition © May 2021 ISBN: 9780008466909
Version: 2021-04-23
Table of Contents
Cover
About the Author
Also by Jaimie Admans
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Extract
Acknowledgements
Letter to the reader
Dear Reader …
Keep Reading …
About the Publisher
For Marie Landry.
This book wouldn’t exist without you, for so many reasons.
Thank you for being a light in the darkness every day.
Caru chi!
Chapter 1
How can one man have so much dry-cleaning?
I hold the array of garment bags above my head as I step out of the tube train and go in the direction of the escalators. The platform is crammed even in the middle of the day and I can’t see where I’m going, so I’ve got a fair fifty-fifty chance of making it to the escalators or tumbling onto the tracks, which really would be the cherry on top of what was supposed to be my lunch break but has actually been spent arguing with a dry-cleaner who couldn’t grasp that a sequinned evening dress was not the designer suit my boss made me drop off last week and took half an hour to find the correct dry-cleaning while I leaned against a washing machine and stuffed my sandwich down my throat amid looks dirtier than the laundry from customers and the tonsil-clenching acrid dust cloud from multiple sprinklings of laundry powder.
Even while trying to keep the bottoms of the garment bags off the floor, I tread on one and yank it taut, accidentally tripping over it and stumbling into a grumpy-looking man who turns and growls – actually growls – at me. I mumble an apology and try to fold the bags over my arm as I finally make it to the escalator and grip the side gratefully. The growling man is on the step above me and he turns around to give me another glare and I involuntarily take a step back and accidentally tread on someone’s toe. As I turn around to apologise profusely, the garment bags slip and get caught between the moving stairs, causing the entire escalator to let out a loud grinding noise as it hits the zip and judders to a halt with such a jarring screech of metal-on-metal that it’s almost as loud as the collective groan that goes up from the other passengers around me. I shrink into the side, trying to protect my boss’s trapped dry-cleaning, until the station staff finally close off the escalator and an engineer comes to cut the garment bags loose and repair the escalator while muttering about idiots trying to carry too much.
It feels like hours later when I finally emerge into the afternoon sunshine and hurry down the busy street towards the grey and foreboding office block, managing to keep the garment bags off the floor and only bump into a record number of people. Once I get into the building and through the foyer, I eye the lifts to take me up to the fourteenth floor but quickly think better of it. The way my day is going, there’s absolutely no way it won’t get stuck. The stairs it is.
I regret the decision by the time I’ve made it up two flights, never mind the next twelve. It’s early August and the London heat is stifling. By the time I eventually crawl out of the stairwell, sweat is dripping down my face and there are wet patches under both arms, which makes me extra glad I wore a lilac shirt today. I’ve produced enough moisture that each plastic garment bag is stuck to me like someone’s liberally coated them in Pritt Stick.
I daren’t look at my watch. I’m going to be so lat—
‘Felicity!’
I know that tone in my boss’s bellow. I am late.
Conference room three, I repeat over and over in my head. My boss has got an important meeting this afternoon and being late will be another notch on the ever-increasing list of ways I’ve annoyed him lately. I keep my head down and pick up my pace as I hurry down the hallway, throw open the door of the conference room, tread on the bottom of a garment bag and trip myself up. I go careening into the room and land with a splat on top of the plastic and skid along like I’m on a homemade water slide.
‘Ah, there you are.’ My boss, Harrison, appears in the doorway behind me, looking down disdainfully while twirling his curly moustache around a pen. ‘I was waiting for you in the office but I see you’ve decided to barrel straight in. How nice of you to make time for work in your busy schedule.’
Harrison strides into the room, sidestepping me so expertly that it seems like flailing around on the floor is a regular occurrence.
‘Sorry, gents.’ He addresses the group of business-suited men around the long table, who are looking down at me with sneers on their haughty faces.
At least they can’t tell how embarrassed I am because my face is already red with heat and dripping with sweat as I pant to get my breath back and push myself upright.
Harrison uses his pen to point to a chair behind him like he’s training a dog to go round an obstacle course. I consider wagging my tail and offering him my paw, but the group of businessmen look like they’re in no mood for jokes.
I stumble to my feet and sink gratefully into the hard plastic chair, and after all the effort of keeping the garment bags smooth and straight, I drop them to the floor and kick them underneath, like if I can somehow hide them, all the embarrassment they’ve caused will go away.
I don’t even know why I’m here. It’s not like I bring anything to these meetings. Well, apart from the tea and coffee. That’s my job – sit at the edge of the room, take notes of anything my boss might need to remember, and also magically divine exactly what sort of things he might need to remember and usually get it wrong. I also refill anyone’s water glass when it looks a bit empty, and offer refreshments if there’s a lull in conversation or if a PowerPoint presentation stalls. A monkey could do my job, but a monkey would consider itself better qualified.
There’s something intimidating about the office being full of businessmen wearing suits that cost more than my yearly rent, with their smooth, slick hair that’s never so much as a breath out of place and the overpowering smell of their eye-wateringly expensive cologne – both eye-watering and expensive. I can’t tell the difference between the seven men sitting around the table – they could be the same man cloned. They’ve all got the same beady eyes, like they’re constantly looking out for the next money-making opportunity. People like me may as well not exist. As far as they’re concerned, despite my unmissable entrance, Harrison is the only person who’s walked into the room.
Which is probably a good thing considering I’m still so hot that I must be glowing, and not in a good way. In a sticky way, my face is so red that I feel like a lighthouse with a pulsing light on top, warning ships to stay away.
Despite being told to sit down like a naughty dog that’s just rolled in something nasty, I’m grateful to have a chance to rub the sweat out of my eyes and take a few minutes to try to regain some composure. I like that term. “Regain” makes it sound like I ever had any in the first place.
I have no idea what the meeting is about and I’ve forgotten who it’s with, but it’s some very important client in the property development business, and this meeting is to secure a site that will be the first of many if it goes well. It’s one in a long line of meetings that are duller than actual dishwater – a regular occurrence when you work in the property acquisitions department of Landoperty Developments. We source land with development potential for big businesses who want to expand. Businesses come to us saying what they want to open and my boss finds a good area for them; alternatively my boss finds areas with untapped potential – like a busy tourist area that doesn’t have a café or a bar – we acquire it and then pitch it to businesses who might be interested in opening there. Usually they snap my boss’s hand off in their rush to accept and there’s often a bidding war over who gets to buy the space.
Something’s gone wrong with this one though. Harrison keeps muttering something about protesters and has groaned every time he’s looked at his computer in the last couple of weeks. I don’t blame protesters for protesting. We see so many beautiful, natural areas, and it always seems wrong to buy them up and sell them off to the highest bidder. I don’t know how I ended up in this job. It’s been four years since I started here, and still the only promotion I’ve ever had is being given a bigger desk.
I was hoping to work my way up from being an assistant – to prove my worth, and maybe one day, get projects of my own and get to travel the UK to scout locations for clients. I’d get to go out to sites in the beautiful Scottish Highlands or the Cornish coast and oversee sales of land and development. I picture myself striding along a beach with a clipboard and a hard hat … I don’t know why I picture either of those things because everyone uses tablets instead of clipboards these days, and our firm is out of the picture long before any construction begins so there’d be no need for a hard hat, but it’s a nice fantasy. It makes me feel like I could be important one day, and it’s more interesting than listening to my boss drone on about protestors.
There’s a little side table beside me, and the intern responsible for filling the drinks has thought to put out a box of tissues, so I surreptitiously reach over to grab one and try to mop my forehead, which is still prickling with sweat. I can feel it sliding down my spine and pooling at the base of my back. I’m going to stick to this chair if I try to get up. I make a squelching noise as I reach across, and the businessman nearest to me looks up. I freeze like a wild rabbit when you put the outside light on, like if I stay still, he somehow won’t notice me. It’s completely normal for assistants to sit in on meetings while striking a pose with a tissue in their hand as sweat drips casually down their face. He gives me the kind of look he’d give a bluebottle buzzing around the fruit bowl and looks back at the folder on the table in front of him.
Sweat chooses that moment to drip into my eyes, and I suck in a breath as it stings, causing the businessman to frown in my direction again. The bluebottle would probably be less annoying. At least he could squirt a fly with Raid. He can’t do that to me. With a bit of luck, anyway. I didn’t think this day could get much worse but a quick blast of Raid would certainly finish the job.
They must think I’m so unfit. Despite the smog and oppressive heat in the city today, the two fans at the other end of the room are not plugged in, and the sun is hitting the glass windows and turning everything inside into such a roasting greenhouse that we could grow coconuts and oranges indoors if we were so inclined, but not one of them looks hot or sweaty or uncomfortable in the slightest, and those wool-silk suits are heavy.
I mop my forehead yet again and while my boss is still going on about protestors and no one’s looking at me, I undo a button that’s stretching apart over my boobs and slip my hand inside my shirt, trying to reach across to an armpit to mop those as well.
And then one of the businessmen mentions “Lemmon Cove”. The words break through the overheated haze in my brain. Lemmon Cove is a place I try to think about as little as possible. Its name doesn’t belong in a London business meeting. One of the main reasons I live here is because it’s about as far as you can physically get from Lemmon Cove without crossing the channel.
‘That’s my hometown.’
Not only have I interrupted a Very Important Businessman, but I’ve got one arm behind my head and the other through the gap in my shirt, trying to mop up the opposite armpit with a disintegrating tissue. I am clearly the image of professionalism and poise.
Usually when I say something stupid, I know it was stupid before the words have finished leaving my mouth, but this time it takes a good few seconds for my brain to catch up. Seven pairs of smarmy eyes turning sharply in my direction also tips me off.
‘You’re from Lemmon Cove?’ One of the businessmen leans forward.
‘Er … yes?’ I sound decidedly unsure. This seems like something I might need to backpedal on fairly soon.
‘That’s fantastic.’
‘It is?’ No one has been this interested in anything I’ve had to say for years. It doesn’t feel fantastic. And from the predatory way one of them has started licking his lips, I think that backpedalling should start right about now.
I also really wish I’d been paying attention and had a clue what I was interrupting before I interrupted it. ‘Well, not really, I’ve been living here for as long as I can remember … Lemmon Cove was a long time ago. I almost never go back there at all now …’
I may as well be on mute. I don’t think any of them has heard a word since “hometown”.
‘Well, this changes things.’ One of them bangs his hand on the table. ‘Why didn’t you tell us you had an “inside man”, Harrison?’ He glances at me. ‘Apologies, an inside woman.’
‘I’m not an in—’
Harrison’s head whips round so fast that I’m sure the first thing on my afternoon to-do list will be to make him an appointment with a chiropractor to fix his neck. I know his “shut up, Felicity” look well enough to stop talking. Why couldn’t this meeting have been the one I chose to pay attention in? Why didn’t I think blurting out that Lemmon Cove was my hometown might be a bad idea? And what on earth is all this about protestors? Protestors in Lemmon Cove? Last time I checked, the population of Lemmon Cove is tiny and they don’t admit anyone under the age of ninety. Preferably older.
‘This is brilliant, Harrison.’ One of the businessmen sips his coffee and raises the cup in a toast.
‘Innovative,’ another one says.
‘Sneaky and underhanded,’ another one adds. ‘Just the sort of people we like to deal with.’
I think that must be sarcasm, but the look on his face is completely serious.
Brilliant, innovative, sneaky, underhanded … All words that have never been associated with me before. What is going on here?
Harrison is trying to give me a conspiratorial wink over his shoulder. Or he needs that chiropractor more urgently than I thought. ‘I was about to introduce you to my assistant, Felicity Kerr … when she’s finished groping herself.’
As if my cheeks could get any redder. I’d completely forgotten my hand was still under one armpit and I go to yank my arm out of my shirt, but it gets caught and as I pull to free it, a button pings off and skitters across the room, leaving my shirt gaping open, showing my bra. It’s not even a good bra. It’s a comfortable old bra that had seen better days many moons ago, but it’s not easy to find a comfortable bra so I tend to hang on to them until the last thread frays, and this one doesn’t have many threads left.
I clear my throat, smooth my hair down and hunch my shoulders, trying to close the bra-level gap in my shirt buttons without overtly holding it closed and drawing more attention. These businessmen do not need any more reasons to look at me when their menacing eyes are already making my armpits prickle with more sweat.
I get the feeling Harrison is delaying while he tries to formulate a plan. There’s something panicked in his eyes that says my interruption has caught him completely off-guard.
‘My secret weapon,’ he states eventually.
I am no one’s secret weapon.
‘When I implied that I could acquire this land for you, gentlemen, I had of course hoped we wouldn’t need the assistance of Felicity, but these protestors aren’t giving up, so I thought now was the time to bring in our undercover man. Er, woman.’
I’ve got to give him points for improvisation because until a few minutes ago, he didn’t have the foggiest idea where I came from. He could probably have narrowed it down to somewhere in Wales, because even he is observant enough to notice my Welsh accent.
The businessmen clap. For me. The most one of Harrison’s businessmen has ever done for me before is condescendingly ask if I’d like to get myself a cup of water when I coughed in a meeting once.
Why didn’t I pay attention to this meeting before now? “Undercover man” sounds suspiciously like someone might expect me to go back there. To Lemmon Cove. The only time I go there is to see my father and sister at Christmas and special occasions, and those visits are planned with military accuracy. I get a late-night train down, spend never more than a day with my family, and leave that night, always under the cover of darkness, so there’s never a chance of running into him.
Ryan Sullivan. The guy I was in love with. The guy who broke my heart. The guy who might not even still live there. Who probably doesn’t still live there. The guy I never want to see again to find out.
I’m going to be honest and tell them I don’t know what they’re on about, but Harrison holds up a preventative hand. ‘Felicity, a word outside, please. As you were so late today, we didn’t have time to reiterate our plan. Excuse us, gents.’ With two swift finger jerks, he indicates for me to follow him into the hallway and the chair makes squelching noises as I unstick my body from it, silently seething at being yet again blamed for causing a gap in some fictional idea he’s made up on the spot.
‘This is brilliant, Felicity.’ The door closes with a click behind him and he ushers me along the corridor, away from any chance of being overheard. ‘I wish you’d mentioned it before.’
‘Mentioned what? Being from Lemmon Cove? Since when are you interested in where I’m from?’
‘I’m not, unless you happen to be from a village where I’ve promised those chaps the acquisition of a plot of land, and my plans have been scuppered by protestors.’
‘What? What village? What protestors? What land?’ I can feel myself starting to panic. I can not go 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 a long way, 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 of them. 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.’