Chapter Twenty Seven
‘I made a mistake,’ Josh repeated, his words ricocheting among the tall trees and dragging me back to the present. ‘I said something that wasn’t true because I was stupid and petty and scared of losing your friendship.’
‘So you did the one thing that was practically guaranteed to make that happen? That row was savage, Josh. The things we said . . .’
Josh ran his hand through his hair, clearly exasperated that I wasn’t dropping the topic the way he wanted me to.
‘I don’t remember half of what was said back then. It was all a long time ago. What I do know is that telling someone you love them when you don’t mean it and they’re about to marry someone else is a sure-fire way to ruin a friendship. And that’s what I’m sorry for.’
He lifted his head and there was a rueful look in his eyes.
‘I talked a lot of shit back then. I really thought you’d have forgotten it all by now.’
I thought of all the middle-of-the-night sleepless moments when his words had played like a recording on repeat in my head. I shook my head sadly.
‘I knew from the outset Adam was the right man for you. He was ready to be a husband, a partner for life. He was ready to be a dad, and we both know that’s something I never wanted.’ He gave a humourless laugh. ‘That at least hasn’t changed.’
It felt like a vault door was finally opening up, when suddenly a sound I hadn’t heard for three days echoed in the clearing. My mobile phone had just pinged back to life. My hand dove into the back pocket of my jeans and I pulled it out. Sure enough, in the top corner of the screen there was finally a symbol.
‘We’re back online!’ I cried, so delighted you’d be forgiven for thinking I’d personally invented the internet.
‘That’s great,’ Josh said, although he didn’t look anywhere near as pleased as I was.
Although I couldn’t hide the excitement that tiny sound had ignited, I was sorry it had come when it did, interrupting one of the most illuminating conversations we’d had since my arrival.
I clicked into my messages. There were a couple from Mum and Dad, and several from Raegan. But before I could open any of them the signal vanished.
‘Damn. We’ve lost it again.’
‘It’ll come back,’ Josh said, sounding unbothered. ‘They’re probably still fixing the mast.’
I held out my phone as though he needed to view it for evidence. ‘But I had signal. It was right there.’ I sounded as crushed as I felt.
‘The trees probably aren’t helping,’ he explained, ‘and we’re in a bit of a hollow here. You need height to pick up the signal when it’s this weak,’ he said, his eyes going skyward.
A sudden shiver went through me. ‘I hope you’re not suggesting scaling one of these pines, because my tree-climbing days are most definitely behind me. Yours too, I hope.’
Josh seemed to be wrestling with a decision, but with a resigned sigh he made up his mind. ‘There might be a solution, but it’s about a fifteen-minute hike from here over rougher terrain.’
‘I could do it . . . with your help,’ I said, surprised how ready I was to trust him again. We really had come a very long way in a few short days.
‘Okay,’ he said, holding out his hand. Without hesitation I placed my own within it. Through the wool of our gloves his fingers briefly squeezed mine in the way they used to in another lifetime. I squeezed back.
The forest was growing denser, the pine trees giving way to mighty behemoth oaks and sky-scraping sycamores.
‘Not much further,’ Josh said. It was colder here in the thickest part of the forest where the wintery rays of sunlight were unable to penetrate. I snuggled deeper into Adam’s coat and was rewarded with a sudden and unexpected draught of his aftershave. It felt like he was sending me a message, but I had no idea if it was encouraging me onwards or urging me to retreat.
‘Here we are,’ Josh announced, directing the comment over his left shoulder, for the path had narrowed so much we were now having to walk in single file. Fletcher, who’d dashed on ahead, darted back through the trees, bouncing delightedly between us.
Josh stepped to one side, and I saw we had reached yet another clearing, although compared to the previous ones, this was no more than a large gap in the trees. It was shadowy here, with the ring of oaks blocking out the daylight. At first glance all I noticed were the stumps of several trees, presumably felled by Josh. As my eyes adjusted better to the filtered light, I saw that in the very centre was one enormous tree, its trunk so wide my arms would only have reached halfway around it if I’d been in the mood for a spot of tree hugging. But as my focus sharpened, I saw that encircling the oak was a floating spiral staircase, its treads individually notched into the massive trunk.
My eyes travelled step by step up the staircase until they came to a platform set about six yards above the forest floor, upon which sat a treehouse, so perfect it looked like something out of a fairy tale. There was no disguising my smile as I took in the mini cabin in the sky, with its glazed windows and pitched roof that hung over a narrow wraparound balcony.
‘It’s a treehouse. You built a treehouse,’ I exclaimed in delight, as though he might possibly have forgotten it was here.
‘I did,’ Josh said, his voice a curious mixture of pride and humility.
I was silent for several moments, taking in the construction above me, while my brain was busy superimposing the sketch he’d drawn on the back cover of my Maths exercise book two decades before. It was hard to be certain, but to me the two seemed to be a perfect match.
‘Can we go up there?’ I asked eagerly, my frown deepening when I noticed that the first step of the spiral staircase was about four feet above ground level.
‘ We can’t, but I can. If you give me your phone, I’ll climb up and see if I can get better signal from up there.’
‘No way,’ I said determinedly, shoving my phone deeper into my pocket in case he had any plans of taking it from me.
‘Lily, the steps aren’t safe. I haven’t built the handrail yet, and the lowest tread is four feet from the ground. You’d never get up there.’ He had already approached the bottom step and had his arms braced on its wooden surface as he prepared to haul himself up.
‘What? So boys can climb trees and girls can’t?’ The words sounded awfully familiar, as well they might, for I had a feeling we’d had this exact same conversation about twenty years ago.
Josh paused, his weight still on his arms, as though about to exit a swimming pool. ‘What is it about scaling trees that makes you regress to a stroppy teenager?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said stubbornly, dropping the crutch to the ground and walking towards the tree. ‘But it’s the same thing that transforms you back to a juvenile delinquent.’
There was a long moment of silence as our teenage selves tried to outstare each other through adult eyes. I’m not sure who burst out laughing first. It might have been a photo finish.
‘This is ridiculous,’ Josh said, getting to his feet on the first step of the spiral staircase and reaching down to offer me his hand. ‘If you fall and break your neck, I’m going to have to bury your body in the forest and deny you were ever here.’
‘Sounds like a solid plan,’ I said.
Josh’s hand clasped mine firmly. I was about to remind him I was no longer a skinny eleven-year-old who weighed next to nothing, when he hoisted me through the air as though I was.
‘Wow,’ I said, seriously impressed with his strength.
‘You can compliment me on my gym skills when you’re back on the ground in one piece,’ he growled, almost as fiercely as Fletcher did at the postman. ‘For now, just concentrate on where you’re putting your feet, and don’t take your hand off the tree trunk.’ His voice brooked no opportunity to inject any levity into the situation. He was deadly serious, and a quick glance at his worried features told me he was already regretting having allowed himself to be goaded into letting me climb up to the treehouse.
‘Stay,’ Josh told Fletcher, who was whining dejectedly as he saw us ascending further up the tree.
Adam’s dog obediently dropped to his belly and watched us disappear into the leafy branches.
The climb was neither steep nor particularly arduous. If the handrail had been in place, it would have been a doddle. But my heart was still pounding like a kettle drum in my chest. It didn’t help having Josh’s right hand firmly planted on my backside.
‘You do realise that’s even more pervy than showing off your bits this morning,’ I told him, feeling the warmth of his palm against my right buttock. I knew he was laughing from the tremor that travelled through his hand and vibrated against me.
‘Just concentrate on climbing,’ he said tersely, as though I wasn’t perfectly aware that he was grinning like a Cheshire cat.
With a sigh of relief I didn’t bother trying to hide, I arrived on the platform and stepped away from his hand. Josh arrived beside me and reached for the handle of the glazed double doors.
‘Don’t you keep this place locked?’ I asked, as the door swung open and I stepped inside the treehouse, before every thought in my head was swept aside by a tidal wave of memories.
‘One day, I am going to live in a treehouse,’ I said, tipping out the last two pieces of gum into my hand and tossing one to Josh, who was lying beside me on the platform his foster father had built in the sycamore tree in their garden.
If we were on ground level, Josh would probably have attempted to catch it in his mouth, but with no walls around us, fifteen feet above Janette’s neatly tended rose bushes, that wasn’t such a good idea.
‘It will have windows on every side, and maybe even a skylight so I can lie on the floor and look up at the stars at night. And there’ll be a balcony that goes all the way around.’
‘No furniture in it, then?’ Josh teased, his smile warm as he positioned himself on one elbow and looked down at me. My teenage heart skittered in my chest, and for the hundredth time I wished I was prettier, with longer eyelashes, and that I had proper boobs like the rest of the girls in my class. Not that it mattered that I was a late developer, because I didn’t think Josh thought of me as a girl at all. Which really sucked, because for the last two years, he was the only boy I’d thought about.
‘No. It won’t need furniture. Well, maybe there could be a couch in the corner.’ I waved an arm towards the space at the edge of the platform. ‘Oh yes. It could have a big grey furry throw on it. And the floor would have shaggy sheepskin rugs everywhere. And there’d be gingham curtains at the windows. Red and white ones.’
‘I don’t even know what gingham is,’ fifteen-year-old Josh told me.
I guess somewhere along the line he must have found out, because as my eyes travelled the treehouse, they passed a comfortable-looking sofa with a grey throw draped over it and cheery, red-checked curtains at the windows.
‘You built it,’ I said in wonder, walking further into the room, being careful to avoid stepping on the sheepskin rugs with my damp boots. ‘You built my treehouse.’
Josh frowned so deeply his eyebrows formed a solid line.
‘I built a treehouse. What makes you think it’s yours?’
‘Because this is my treehouse,’ I said, my hand sweeping around the room. ‘This building, the way you’ve constructed it, even the way you’ve decorated it . . . it’s exactly the way I described.’
Josh was looking at me as though I was crazy. ‘I truly have no idea what you’re talking about. I built this place as a prototype because I was thinking of branching out into making bespoke treehouses. There’s a big market for them.’
It was a measure of how tense the situation had suddenly grown that neither of us went for the easy quip about ‘branching out’ into treehouses.
‘But everything you’ve done is exactly the way I described it years ago.’ I pointed to each item as though they were exhibits. ‘You have the furry throw over the couch – a grey one,’ I said with extra emphasis. ‘And there are sheepskin rugs on the floor and red gingham curtains. You’ve even put in the skylight I said I wanted.’
Josh sighed deeply, and I wondered if the real reason for his reluctance to let me climb the stairs was because he hadn’t wanted me to see this recreation of my childhood fantasy.
‘I hate to break it to you, Lily, but you don’t own the copyright on throws, rugs or curtains.’
‘But . . . but you’ve done it exactly how I dreamt it would be. Why would you do that?’
‘I don’t know, maybe it’s just a coincidence,’ he said, so emphatically that for the first time I began to doubt myself. ‘Or maybe you kept banging on about how a treehouse should look that you subconsciously brainwashed me into the choices I made when I decked the place out.’
There was something in his words that sort of rang true. I’d seen TV shows where illusionists demonstrated the power of persuasion through subliminal messaging. Was that what had happened here? Possibly. Because anything else would open up an entirely different can of worms.
Why would a man who claimed to have no feelings for you, build your dream treehouse in the middle of a forest you were never meant to visit?