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‘I wish that too,’ said Jonah.
Shay’s focus fell on his hands, large and square and she remembered how gentle they were when they touched her.
‘I was a bit of a mess as well,’ he carried on. ‘I tried to come and see you but your mum wouldn’t let me. I know she was just being protective but I was desperate to talk to you. I wrote notes for you that she said she’d pass on?’ It was a question, not a statement. He was asking if she’d got them. Shay shook her head slowly. More buried secrets winkled out.
‘I was heartbroken when you left. One minute you were living here, the next minute the house was empty and no one knew where you’d gone. And I mean heartbroken. You hadn’t done anything wrong and I told everyone that, even though calling a dead boy’s mother a liar didn’t go down well in certain quarters. Not that I cared.’
‘I didn’t lie, Jonah. I never said any of the things to Denny that Ella Smith accused me of. He was upset and it wasn’t because you and I were together, I know it wasn’t.’
‘I found your mum and dad on the internet years ago; the electoral roll. I wrote you a letter saying how much I was still missing you and please get in touch with me. If you didn’t reply, I’d take that as your answer that you really didn’t want to talk to me and I’d leave well alone.’
The letter that her mum said she’d received. It was fromJonah then. A letter that fate had timed to arrive just before her wedding. She wouldn’t have ignored it – and everything would have changed.Oh, Mum.She’d tried too hard to protect her daughter.
‘I didn’t get that either,’ said Shay.
Jonah drained his cup and stood to go.
‘Well, whatever finally led you back here did so for a reason,’ he said.
Shay only hoped that was true.
Chapter 33
On Saturday morning, Shay went up to the florist on the High Street and bought a bunch of the brightest flowers they had and a pot vase. While she waited for Jonah to arrive, she cut and arranged them and filled up a bottle of water to take with her.
He was on time; she was aware how quickly her feet closed the distance between her cottage and his car.
‘They’re lovely,’ he said, as she got in; he held the vase for her while she clipped herself in.
‘I didn’t want to go empty-handed.’
‘Me neither.’ Jonah nudged his head towards the back seat. ‘I always take my tools and tidy things up for him.’
Shay was touched by that. ‘Do you go there often?’
‘About every six weeks from spring to autumn. I sometimes find flowers put there but no one does any maintenance.’
Except you.It was kind of him to do that, testament to the deep and caring friendship they’d shared.
They headed up the hill that led to the church and its pretty graveyard and also to Millspring Wood.
‘Jonah, can I see where the tree was first?’ she asked him.
‘Yes of course,’ he said and indicated right.
They parked up at the bottom of the small dirt road where late-night snoggers used to go for privacy in the dark. It was an odd feeling seeing the woods again, through the eyes of adults who saw only trees and not adventure.
‘You okay there?’ asked Jonah, reaching to steady her as she stumbled over a knobbly root sticking out from the ground.
‘We must have been as sure-footed as goats in our youth,’ laughed Shay, picking her way carefully across the forest floor.
‘We just knew it so well, didn’t we,’ said Jonah. ‘Give me your hand.’
His fingers folded around hers and the warmth of them travelled all the way to the centre of her. She had a flashback to the first time he had held her hand, lying on top of their sleeping bags in the wood, looking at the stars through the dark lacework of branches. She thought she was going to spontaneously combust from joy.
It had been many years and yet she still knew the way. Her feet remembered to side-step this tree and turn right at that one. Then they were at the clearing and the hewn stump of their tree that was all that remained of it.
‘Someone, I presume the council, moved the trunk away,’ Jonah remarked.
