Wishes Under The Willow Tree: The feel-good book of 2018. Phaedra Patrick

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      ‘It’s true. Less trouble for everyone, huh?’ She pressed her chin down towards her chest.

      Benedict wasn’t sure what to say and he looked at the photo again. ‘You said that your parents split up? Where is your mother?’

      ‘Oh, Mom met someone else. He’s a bit of a dork, but okay really. I don’t wanna talk about it.’ She peered through her curtains of hair. ‘I want to find out more about my other family. What happened to my grandparents?’ Gemma asked. ‘I mean, my dad told me, but will you tell me too?’

      Benedict took a deep breath and let his hands drop into his lap. He swallowed and it hurt his throat. He hadn’t shared this story for a long time and he still found it painful. However, Gemma should know her family history.

      ‘They went to buy gemstones, overseas,’ he said. ‘Me and Charlie sometimes went along but Charlie got it into his head that the school football team couldn’t win an important match without him, so we stayed behind.’ Benedict closed his eyes, remembering. ‘I was half watching the news on TV at teatime, while Charlie played football outside. The report was about a tsunami in Sri Lanka. I didn’t have the sound turned on, but I watched these huge grey waves sweeping houses and cars away, as if they were twigs in a river. People were running and screaming, clutching children to their chests. The sea even swilled around houses inland, reaching their second-storey windows. Mum and Dad were out there, and I just knew that things weren’t okay.’

      A lump formed in his throat and he gulped it away. He pushed his hand into his hair and stopped talking, unable to continue for a while. ‘Charlie was only ten.’

      Gemma sat still, listening.

      Benedict looked down at the floorboards, watching as a spider scuttled towards his knee. ‘I made Charlie his supper and tried not to worry,’ he continued. ‘But then, the next morning, one of my parents’ business associates phoned the house. They said that Joseph and Jenny Stone had drowned. They were identified from documents in their rucksacks.’

      ‘Oh God, Uncle Ben.’ Gemma clasped her hands to her mouth. She shifted around the chest and sat next to him, the top of her arm pressing against his. ‘That sucks.’

      ‘The worst thing was telling Charlie,’ Benedict said. ‘He probably thought I was getting him up for breakfast. Instead, I told him that both his parents were dead. He cried out and I can still hear the sound.’ He shook his head, as if to get rid of the noise. ‘I felt numb and I can’t remember anything else of that day, except me and Charlie huddled together on the sofa. We just stared into space.

      ‘After that, friends and distant relatives offered help but they couldn’t bring up two orphaned brothers. I took charge of everything.’

      ‘You became, like, my dad’s parent?’

      ‘Yes, sort of. Our parents’ rucksacks arrived back at the house a few weeks later. They were all white and crusty from sand and seawater. There was a small bag full of gemstones in the front pocket of my mother’s rucksack. They’re the ones you brought with you.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘They died looking for pretty coloured pieces of rock.’

      He felt Gemma’s fingers creep on top of his, and tightly hold the back of his hand.

      ‘So now you know what happened,’ he said.

      ‘And why don’t you and Dad speak? You sounded so close, when you were younger. You went through a lot together. What happened?’

      Benedict shrugged. ‘Your dad found a different life, in America, with your mum.’ He could make it sound so simple.

      ‘But why would he want to move away and never come back? Why couldn’t he visit or something? He could have brought me to meet you.’

      There was nothing that Benedict could say, without thinking back to what had happened between him and Charlie to break their friendship and family bond. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, tight-lipped. ‘Why did you come here from America?’

      He felt her fingers tense and she pulled her hand away from his.

      ‘I told you. I came here for an adventure,’ she said frostily. ‘Not to escape or anything.’

      ‘Escape?’ Benedict frowned. ‘Who said anything about that?’

      Gemma shuffled away from him, back into her own space on the opposite side of the chest. ‘You’re twisting my words, Uncle Ben.’

      ‘I’m only asking you a question. What do you mean by escape?’

      ‘Nothing. I picked the wrong word, that’s all. Stop prying.’

      ‘I’m not.’

      ‘You are.’

      ‘You barged into my shop and listened in while I was trying to reconcile with my wife,’ Benedict said, exasperated. ‘That’s what I call prying.’

      ‘Like you were doing such a great job there.’

      ‘You didn’t give me much opportunity.’

      ‘Your great master plan to get her back is to do, well, zero.’ She rolled her eyes.

      ‘Unlike Operation WEB, or whatever it is you called it?’

      Gemma’s lips twitched into a small smile and, oddly, he found one too. It sounded so ridiculous.

      ‘Yep, like that,’ she said. ‘Now can we look in this freakin’ chest?’

      Benedict was relieved to stop arguing. He placed the key in the lock and turned it. Together, they heaved the lid open. He caught his breath, unprepared for the wave of emotion that hit him as he saw the green-handled pliers his mother used to use and his father’s rusty hacksaw. There was a battered wooden mallet and a roll of wire.

      He stared and a memory came into his head, as vivid as the day it happened. His mother sat by the window in the dining room, the sunlight in her hair. She laughed as she heated and made delicate curls of silver wire. She always laughed – at birds hopping around the garden, if she burned their dinner, at her sons and their antics. As time went by, he recalled less and less of what his parents and Charlie looked like. He could look at photographs, but they were two-dimensional, a moment frozen in time.

      ‘You’re quiet,’ Gemma said. ‘Say something.’

      He delved inside the chest, scooped up a handful of gemstones and held them out on the flat of his palm. Most were already polished and cut to shape, smooth or with their facets glinting. Others were dull. They looked like ordinary stones dug out of the ground, their potential not yet unleashed. Some had holes drilled through them, ready to hang in the gem tree. For a moment, Benedict wished he could be small again. Innocent. ‘You’re right. It’s a treasure chest,’ he said.

      Gemma reached out and touched the gems. ‘Cool. Can you use these in your jewellery?’

      ‘Stone Jewellery has survived for long enough without gemstones.’ He shook them back into the chest. Next, he pulled out a large ball of tissue paper. It looked like a cheerleader’s pompom. This was something he hadn’t seen for a long time.

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