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.’

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 felling that tree, but the old strawberry patch is right 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.’

Harrison’s answer to every problem is to throw money at it, and if that doesn’t work, throw larger amounts of money at it. ‘I can’t do that. I don’t want to go back there. I haven’t been home in fifteen years.’

‘You go to visit your father occasionally, don’t you? I distinctly remember you saying that was how you’d spent a holiday once.’

‘Yeah, but not … properly.’

‘I’m going to level with you, Felicity. This is a huge client for us and we couldn’t risk them going elsewhere, so I’ve taken a leap of faith and indicated I have this land for them, but I don’t yet have a signed agreement from the owner. It looked straightforward. I never expected it to go wrong like this. The care home owner has got cold feet with all the protestors and is dillydallying about signing, but if we can stop the protest quickly, he’ll soon be back on our side. This is no time for your silly family disputes. You are going to Lemmon Cove, you are going to go undercover as a protestor, you are going to find out what it’s going to cost to shut these people up, and this is not a request.’

‘You can’t—’ I start, my voice rising with indignation.

He rolls his eyes. ‘This is a chance for you to move on from being my assistant and start to head up your own projects. If we deliver on this without problems for the client, they’ve got their eye on several other spots around the UK and they’re going to be coming to us for all of them. We’re going to be busy, so it’ll be time for me to get a new assistant and for you to oversee your own project, have your own office …’

An office would be nice. Right now I have a desk in the corner of his office and if he wants to take a private call, I get sent out into the corridor to twiddle my thumbs until he’s finished, and then yelled at for wasting time. A project would be nice. Something of my own. Seeing the potential in different spaces and selling that to a client … It’s what I’ve wanted since I started here. I’d love to show him that I’m capable of more than making tea.

‘So you’ll do it then?’

I don’t know why he phrases it as a question when it’s clearly an instruction. He threatens to have me replaced at least once a week. I live in London; I can’t afford to be fired for refusing this.

Maybe it won’t be that bad. I’ve got an idea of where the care homes are, and they’re a good few miles away from Sullivan’s Seeds where I used to work with Ryan Sullivan; also I know the company went into liquidation years ago. The chances of him still living there are slim to none. I always get jittery when I think about going home, but I’ve gone back for visits and never seen him around, and this could be a much easier job than it sounds. A youngster who owns a campsite could be easy to sway. Harrison hasn’t given me a budget yet, but he’s usually pretty generous when it comes to removing obstacles. A chunk of money, even the promise of a spot of land elsewhere. It shouldn’t be difficult to offer enough to put an end to the protest. I could be in and out within a day; no different from family visits.

Harrison takes my quiet overthinking as an agreement. It wasn’t, but I also know I have no options if I want to keep my job, and I haven’t been collecting his dry-cleaning and polishing his shoes for the last four years just to give up now. This is an opportunity I thought would never happen – a chance to prove that I can be a reliable and valued member of the team, capable of more than non-work-related errands and wiping down tables and refilling water jugs.

This is what I’ve always hoped for. I’ve always wanted to travel for work. I left Lemmon Cove all those years ago for an opportunity in a job that involved travel and when that fell through, I ended up in a series of dead-end admin jobs until I landed here, with promises of training and promotions and working my way up the corporate ladder. So far, none of them have come true, but this could finally be my chance.

‘There we go. Now you’re all up to speed.’ Harrison pats me patronisingly on the shoulder like this was the plan all along. ‘I have total faith in you, Felicity. You’ll get this sorted in a jiffy.’

He has more faith in me than I have in myself. And he’s been exceptionally good at hiding it up until now. Generally he doesn’t trust my ability to open a bottle of milk for his morning tea. ‘And if I do this, I’ll get my own projects? My own office?’ I prompt, determined that if I have to face going back to Lemmon Cove, I’m doing it for a good reason.

‘If you succeed, this client is a big firm with unlimited money and a budget to build several hotels in unspoiled spots around the country.’ He gives me a lion-like smile. ‘And if you fail, our firm will have lost their biggest client and we’ll all hold you personally responsible.’

Nothing like that for a bit of motivation.

‘Go on.’ He shoos me away. ‘No time to lose.’

‘But the meeting …’ I point towards the room we came out of, a finger hanging limply in mid-air. I might have agreed, but I expected a few days to worry about it first. I mean, to plan, obviously. To prepare. There’s nothing to worry about, but I didn’t think he expected me to go now. What does he think I’m going to do? Jump on the train today?

‘You can claim your train fare back on expenses,’ he says, making me sure he has an ability to read minds. He also has a look that says “why are you still here?” ‘I’ll explain all to the lads in the meeting. They were impressed by our brilliant plan, don’t you think? I must give myself a pat on the back for such quick thinking.’

He reaches around and pats the back of his own shoulder. People don’t actually do that, do they?

‘Have fun, Felicity. Wear some … daffodils or leeks or whatever it is you Welsh people like. Dragons? Sheep? I’ll have your office ready by the time you get back.’

An office of my own. A job that feels like a “real” job. Colleagues who see me as an equal. It would be so nice …

And all I have to do is deceive a few old people and offer some youngster a chunk of money. Harrison makes it sound business-like and sensible, but it sounds like underhanded and deceitful bribery when I say it.

It’s business, I tell myself as I walk back to my desk. I am a professional. If Harrison really is going to let me head up my own projects, I’m going to have to get used to things like this. Making deals and thwarting protestors and overcoming obstacles. I’ve got to start somewhere. Maybe this is exactly what I was supposed to do with my life and I just need the opportunity to become a shrewd businesswoman who zips up and down the country for work, carries a briefcase, never has a hair out of place, and always manages to walk in high heels. Maybe she’s inside me somewhere and I need the right opportunity to find out. Maybe I was cut out for this shrewd businesswoman lifestyle and this’ll turn out to be a piece of cake … A shrewd businesswoman who doesn’t get distracted by thoughts of cake, obviously.

What could possibly go wrong?

Chapter 2

Why does my heart start pounding as the train gets closer to the South Wales coast? There is no way Ryan Sullivan still lives here. There is no way I’m going to accidentally run into him. He was ambitious; he wanted to travel and see the world. His family company is long gone from the area. He wouldn’t have stayed here.

I wipe sweaty palms on my jeans as the announcement of reaching the end of the line comes over the tannoy and I gather up my bags. I had no idea what to bring, no idea how long I’m likely to be staying, so I shoved some summery clothes into a holdall bag along with toiletries and overnight essentials.

I don’t do well with things I have no time to prepare for … I don’t do particularly well with things I do have time to prepare for, but today has been a real flailing around in the deep end moment. At first I was glad that I didn’t have time to overthink it, but I’ve been exceptionally grateful for the four-hour train journey that my brain has spent inventing all the hypothetical things that could possibly go wrong, and having one final stalk of Ryan Sullivan on Facebook, but – like all the other times I’ve checked – he doesn’t exist on social media. I thought everyone had an account on at least one platform, and while there are millions of Ryan Sullivans online, none of them are that one. I know because I’ve stalked all their profiles over the years. But wherever he is now, he clearly doesn’t do the internet. Which is useful, in a way, because I’m not a regular Facebook stalker and it’s only once in a while that I decide to check if he’s got a Facebook account yet, but what would I do if he was actually on there? I’d like to say I’d send him a friend request and a bright and breezy message asking if he remembered me, but if I sent him a message, he’d know I’d been stalking him. He’d know I still thought about him often enough to seek him out online, so I’d probably just lurk and follow his every post and never comment or do anything to let him know I was watching.

And then I’d inevitably end up accidentally hitting a “like” button and he’d see it before I could undo it, and then he’d know that even though fifteen years have passed since I last saw him, when I’m lonely, or at the end of yet another break-up, I still think of him and wish I’d never kissed him. Maybe we’d still be friends if I hadn’t.

And no matter how much I wish I could passive-aggressively follow his every move on Facebook, I never want to see him again. Not after the way things ended. That’s why I usually stay as far away from Lemmon Cove as land borders will allow – because running into him would be my worst nightmare.

It’s late when the train doors open, and I briefly wonder how thoroughly they check the trains and if I could stay here for the night and go back to London on the return trip tomorrow without anyone noticing. It’s a nice thought, but I force myself to get up and hoist my holdall bag up my arm and adjust my T-shirt. My sister texted ten minutes ago to say she’s waiting in the car park, and no matter how apprehensive I am about the idea of being in Lemmon Cove again and pretending to be a protestor, it will be nice to see her and Dad. It’s nearly four months since I last saw them at Easter.

Outside, the night air is warm but thankfully missing the humidity of London, and I spot Cheryl’s little blue car in the car park, the doors open and the lights on inside it. I go around to the passenger side and duck my head in. ‘Hi, Cher.’

She squeals and drops her phone in shock, and then squeals again in excitement and jumps out the car, sending her phone clattering onto the seat as she comes round the side to give me a hug. ‘I can’t believe you’re actually staying and not rushing off in a few hours. Dad’s so excited. He’s been out and got you a bed today; it’s all set up in my room.’

‘We’re sharing a room?’

‘Of course!’ She brushes bob-length blonde hair out of her eyes and the summer breeze scatters it across her face again. ‘I’ve got your old room and the spare room’s full. You didn’t give us enough notice to clear it out.’

‘Believe me, no one had enough notice for this,’ I mutter. Why am I surprised to be sharing a room with my little sister? I know she moved into my room when I left, and her smaller childhood bedroom became Dad’s spare room full of his half-finished craft projects and ill-advised gym equipment. ‘He didn’t have to go out and buy a bed though; I’d have taken the floor.’

‘You haven’t seen it yet. You might well prefer the floor.’ She laughs and stands back to run her eyes over me, just like Mum used to do to make sure I was wearing suitable clothing when leaving the house to go to the beach. ‘I love the hair.’

How much she sounds like our late mum makes me smile and step back to shrug out of her grip. She’s taller than me now, slim and curvy with bouncy hair and the bright eyes that only a twenty-year-old can have. I was twenty when I left Lemmon Cove. Twenty when I kissed Ryan Sullivan and lost the best thing in my life. Did I look like her? Did I have the enthusiasm and Energizer Bunny relentless energy? I remember feeling like my whole life was ahead of me. Now I’m thirty-five and wondering where it went.

I pull one of the blue ends of my hair over my shoulder and waggle it around in front of me. So far my attempt to be edgy and youthful by bleaching the ends of my dark hair and then dying them bright blue hasn’t even been noticed by anyone at work. I wanted to shake things up a bit after my last relationship fizzled out. I don’t even have break-ups anymore; I just seem to get into relationships that have no magic, no spark, and no hope of going anywhere beyond a few dates. They end with mutual agreement and pleasant partings and I can barely remember the guy’s name after a while.

Everything has felt boring lately. My days are the same; my evenings in front of Netflix are the same. My friends have their own lives, their own families, and I’m the odd one out because I don’t have a partner or children. I don’t have a significant other, because all my attempts at dating end in … not even disaster, just dull dates, with men who are nice enough but nothing special, none that I feel anything remotely like chemistry with.

‘You’re so cool. I wish my boss would let me do that.’ Cheryl works as a teaching assistant in the local primary school, and it’s been a long time since anyone thought I was “cool”. Maybe hanging out with my little sister for a few days won’t be so bad.

I look over at her as we pull out of the station and leave the city centre behind us. Cheryl was still a child when I left, and my presence in her life has been to send expensive birthday gifts each year and come home with a suitcase full of presents every Christmas and leave on the next train out. We text occasionally, usually when I ask her how Dad’s doing because I don’t trust him to tell me honestly when I speak to him on the phone, but we’re not exactly close. Not like I always imagined I’d be close with my sister. She doesn’t turn to me for advice and we don’t have girly days out shopping or giggle over hot guys. It’s been years since we did anything together.

The city buildings turn into coastal road with a vast expanse of beach on the left and seafront hotels on the right, and we pass a park with a lake and golf courses before we turn up into the green hills and mansion-like houses of the Gower villages. It’s dark outside and gardens are lit up with solar-powered strings of lights and paths brightened by stake lights. Most houses are shrouded by tall walls that hide their grandness from passing cars, and the road is lined with leafy trees and wildflower patches full of daisies, buttercups, and poppies.

Lemmon Cove is half an hour away from the city centre, and I can’t help looking over towards where Sullivan’s Seeds used to be, on the hills behind the village. A tiny little street that boasts a post office and corner shop, pub, bakery, and surf shop – it’s the last place of civilisation tourists pass through before reaching the empty dunes and sandy beaches of this stretch of the southern Gower coastline.

‘They built on it years ago.’

‘What?’ I jump as Cheryl speaks in the silence.

‘The old greenhouses where you used to work.’ She jerks her head in their direction without taking her eyes off the road. ‘The firm went into liquidation and the site was sold off years ago. There are houses on it now.’

‘Oh. Right.’ I knew that. I mean, I’d guessed as much. I’ve googled enough to know that Sullivan’s Seeds doesn’t still exist, and it shouldn’t make me so sad to hear confirmation of that. Or to think of houses crammed into the wide expanse of land that used to be home to Sullivan’s Seeds and Plant Nursery, acres of fields of crops, greenhouses where we grew experimental varieties of fruit and veg and forced flowers whatever the weather so they were always in season. It was far enough away from the sea that the coastal weather wouldn’t affect the crops, but near enough to have a sea view from the highest points – the hilltop where Ryan and I used to eat lunch on sunny days, looking out at the sea in front and the fields of crops, greenhouses, and polytunnels behind.

I don’t realise I’m smiling at the thought until I feel Cheryl’s eyes on me. I shake my head sharply to clear thoughts away.

It’s good that Sullivan’s Seeds has gone. It means there’s no chance Ryan will still be here, running that huge patch of land, walking around in knee-high welly boots even in the height of summer that he somehow managed to make look sexy, singing some obscure Nineties song that no one but me had ever heard of.

I have to stop thinking about him. Being back here always puts him at the forefront of my mind, because these are the roads we used to walk together. This is where we spent so much time. When I’d accompany him on deliveries in his van for no reason at all, and it would always feel like bunking off work even though he was my boss, or he’d give me a lift home even though it was only ten minutes’ walk and in completely the opposite direction from where he lived.

‘Where’s this protest then?’ I ask in an attempt to distract myself. ‘I haven’t heard anything about it.’

‘Why would you hear anything about it? The Easter Bunny visits Lemmon Cove more often than you do and the Easter Bunny doesn’t exist.’

Ouch. For the first time, I can hear the sting in her voice. ‘I work in London, Cher …’ I start pathetically. It’s an excuse, I know it, but this is the first time I’ve ever realised she knows it too.

She doesn’t pursue it. She doesn’t need to. I’ve often thought that she and Dad must feel abandoned, but she’s so bright and breezy until every so often, the mask slips and a hint of bitterness will sneak out. It makes me feel guilty for how little I come to visit.

‘It’s the old strawberry patch on the clifftop above the beach. Where the sycamore tree is? You must know the place. Dad says it was more your generation than mine. It closed before I was old enough to remember it.’

A chill goes down my spine.

‘Oh, that place.’ I laugh nonchalantly and wave a hand so dismissively to show that I’m not bothered at all that I nearly smack her in the face. I put my hands guiltily back on my lap. ‘Of course I’m not bothered.’ An edge of hysteria has crept into my voice.

‘I didn’t say you were bothered.’

‘Oh.’ No, she didn’t, did she? ‘That’s all right then. Because I’m not.’

Of all the places to haunt my dreams, it’s that place. The tree where I kissed him. Where I was certain he felt the same. After all the years of flirting and laughing and spending time together, all the easy touches, lingering hugs, and flirtatious smiles. I was so sure we were more than friends … I can still feel the imprint of his hands on my shoulders, pushing me away. I can hear his voice saying: ‘I can’t do this now, Fee …’

My foot getting caught in a strawberry runner and tripping me up as I ran away. Juicy berries squishing under the soles of my boots because I was in such a rush to get away that I couldn’t even stick to the paths … Making sure he wouldn’t have a chance to catch up with me and see how much I was dying of embarrassment after throwing myself at him and getting the worst rejection of my life.

I suddenly realise what she means. ‘That’s where they’re going to build a hotel?’

‘I guess.’

‘That’s a terrible place to put a hotel. What about the sycamore tree? It’s hundreds of years old; they can’t take it down. What about all the carvings? All the wishes?’

‘No one carves trees anymore, and it’s been years since anyone made a wish on that thing. The land is all overgrown and prickly now. No wonder they want rid of it.’

We’re not far from the old strawberry farm, and even though it’s dark and I can only see reflections in the passenger window, I look out to the left as we drive up the hedge-lined narrow lanes that give way to a beach car park, and set back from that, the large driveway of Seaview Heights care home. The rocky footpath down to Lemmon Cove beach starts here, and you pass the strawberry farm on the way down. Even in the dark, I can see the shadow of the huge tree’s branches waving in the distance, looming over the horizon.

‘Dad said we all used to go strawberry picking there when I was little …’ Cheryl says.

‘Yeah.’ The strawberry patch was one of my favourite places. ‘You used to love strawberries. Mum and Dad took us at least once a week in the summer months, and then we’d take the punnets we’d picked and go down to the beach to eat them. It’s been years since I thought of that.’

‘And now you have to go undercover like some kind of superspy?’ Cheryl’s clearly changing the subject, and I’m not going to push it because Lemmon Cove is crawling with memories I’d rather forget. I’m absolutely certain that no promotion is worth having to spend any extended amount of time here.

‘The name’s Kerr. Fliss Kerr.’ She dissolves into giggles at her own James Bond impression before I have a chance to answer the question.

‘It’s not exactly like that. I just have to earn the protesters’ trust and pretend to be on their side. As a local.’

She gives me a look that says a stegosaurus is more local to Lemmon Cove than I am. ‘You haven’t lived here for fifteen years.’

‘No, but as far as they’re concerned, I’m visiting you and Dad and heard about the protest so I’ve come to join in because I used to love that strawberry patch and can’t bear the thought of a big, ugly hotel being parked there.’ I hate the way the lies roll off my tongue. It sounds like something Harrison and his business-suited cronies would say. Deceitful and flippant, without a care or concern for who the protesters are or why they’re protesting. I rush to make it sound less underhanded. ‘And that bit’s not a lie – I did genuinely love that place when I was younger. And that tree. They can’t seriously be considering destroying the sycamore tree. They must be working around it and my boss has got it wrong. No one would actually cut down that beautiful old thing.’

The idea that they might not be working around it makes an uncomfortable sting bristle at the back of my neck, and not for the first time, I wonder how on earth I got into this. Not just the Lemmon Cove job, but working for Landoperty Developments in the first place. As the Joni Mitchell song goes, how many “paradises” has Harrison been responsible for seeking out and “paving over”? If I succeed in this, I’ll be doing the same thing. I think about the girl growing plants at Sullivan’s Seeds fifteen years ago. Cross-pollinating plants and flowers by hand to breed new varieties. Creating things, not destroying them. If she could see me now …

I shake my head to clear it. Again. My head has needed a lot of clearing since Harrison’s bright idea this afternoon. Was that really only a few hours ago? It feels like weeks have passed.

‘Do you know who’s leading the thing?’ I say, thinking the youngster could be around her age. If she knows him and can direct me straight to him, this could be over before it’s even begun. Before I’ve stayed long enough for my conscience to get the better of me.

‘Not a clue. People chained to trees and stuff isn’t my scene. All I know is from one of the little girls in my class – her grandma lives at the care home and has roped her into helping make their placards and banners. There’s a surprising amount of glitter for a protest.’

It makes me laugh and something inside softens at the adorable mental image of a young girl helping her grandma to make sparkly protest signs. ‘They’re not really chained to trees, are they?’

The car starts climbing the hills up towards our little house. Our little house. I tut at myself. Dad and Cheryl’s little house. It’s been many years since I was part of it.

‘It’s a peaceful protest, but yeah, as far as I know, they’re making sure the site is never unoccupied.’

It makes that coldness expand in my chest again. That was another one of Harrison’s instructions. He’s given me the number of a local contractor who I’m supposed to call to secure the site the second I’ve got the last old person cleared out of it, so his sidekicks can muscle in and throw barbed wire around to prevent them getting back in. It wouldn’t be the first time. I sigh and chew on my lip.

‘Don’t look so worried,’ she says. ‘I’m sure it’s not as bad as it sounds.’

I don’t say anything. It feels worse than it sounds, especially with how well I know the area and what kind of impact a shiny bells-and-whistles hotel is going to have on the landscape here.

Dad is waiting in the doorway with the outside light on when Cheryl pulls into the driveway and turns the engine off. I go to open the car door but her hand shoots out and grabs my wrist. ‘He doesn’t get out much these days. Maybe you can encourage him to get involved in something. He’s … disengaged and isolated. All he does is garden and I’m the only person he ever sees.’

She’s out the door and round the back getting my holdall out before I have a chance to question her. I sit in the darkened car and look around for a few moments, taking in the front garden with meticulously trimmed hedges, paving so clean it looks ultraviolet in the darkness, and flower borders full of a rainbow of flowers without a deadhead in sight. A world away from my concrete balcony in London, barely big enough to turn around on, and overlooking a busy main road.

Every year I buy some plant or another as a throwback to my previous life here; every year I imagine going out to pick ripe, red tomatoes or crisp green peppers from the pot on the balcony and coming in to make a homemade and healthy pasta dish for my adoring family. In reality, every plant I’ve put out there has died from a combination of pollution and me not being home from work often enough to water it; I can’t cook to save my life and the last time I had any sort of pasta dish, it was a case of piercing the film and putting it in the microwave for five minutes; and my fantasy adoring family is … well, the neighbours watching TV in the adjoining flat or the children stampeding around like a herd of dinosaurs in the flat above probably don’t count, do they?

‘Good to see you, Fliss.’ Dad steps off the doorstep and comes over to wrap me in a tight hug, and I relish in it for a long moment. I can’t remember the last time I hugged someone – probably the last time I visited these two. The nickname makes something in my chest swell, the earlier coldness being replaced by warmth. It was Mum’s nickname for me, and no one but my family have ever used it.

‘How are you?’ I pull back and try to get a good look at him, concerned by Cher’s comment just now.

‘All the better for seeing you, m’dear. Both my girls home again. I’ve got your bed all set up in Cheryl’s room, and I’ve cleared out some of my wardrobe so you’ve got space to put your clothes, and there’s a free shelf in the bathroom for your toiletries. You’ve had a long journey; why don’t you go and have a shower and I’ll get some supper on?’

Same old Dad. Can never do enough for you. When Mum died, it was like he became both mother and father to us. I don’t have the heart to tell him I’m not planning on staying long enough to need bathroom shelf space and anywhere to hang my clothes.

I can’t get this protest sorted out and get back to London fast enough.

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