you know that.’
‘You’re a good catch, Sam, and she’d have to be a fool not to want a future with you. The only fool I can see right now is you. What if she could make you happy?’
‘But I don’t want her kind of happy!’ said Sam as he stabbed at a carrot and immediately turned it to mush. ‘I’m not sure I want happy at all. And yes, I am a fool; a fool for getting involved with her in the first place. It would have been better if I’d just been left in peace.’
Selina had been nibbling at her dinner as if oblivious to Sam’s growing agitation, but when she looked up there was a glint in her eye. ‘You’ve got no chance of that, I’m afraid.’
The comment made Sam smile. ‘Ah, but I can always close my door and ignore you,’ he said but then reconsidered his answer. ‘Actually, no I can’t do that either, can I? But you’re different, Selina. You don’t want anything from me. OK, that’s wrong too.’ Sam was almost laughing now. ‘Yes, you play on my good nature, use my body for your own purposes—’
‘And don’t forget my friends.’
‘Yes, let’s not forget the services I provide to half the octogenarians in Liverpool!’
‘Pat’s only seventy-five,’ she protested.
Exasperated, Sam held aloft his knife and fork in submission. ‘Look, I am willing to accept that we’ve become the weirdest couple in Liverpool but we still live alone, Selina. You’ve chosen your way of life and I’ve chosen mine. I thought going out with Anna was the right thing to do, proving to myself that I’ve still got a pulse, but I never wanted to give up my old way of life completely. The problem is, it’s all about satisfying my needs, not Anna’s. I should have thought about her and what she might want – what she does want from our relationship.’
‘For the record, I didn’t choose my lifestyle,’ Selina reminded him.
Sam dropped his head in shame. Of course it hadn’t been Selina’s choice to live what would have been an otherwise lonely existence for the last fifty years if it weren’t for the good friends around her. She certainly hadn’t chosen to be involved in a car accident that would see her lose both her husband and her unborn child. At only thirty-one she had buried them both, along with her ability to ever carry another child. ‘Sorry, that was a stupid thing to say.’
‘I’m not going to be around forever, Sam, and whilst I have a long list of friends who would happily take my place in your life, that isn’t the answer either. You may think you can go it alone, but you can’t. It isn’t in your nature.’
‘You’re not going anywhere and neither am I,’ Sam said.
Selina folded her arms as she faced Sam’s stubbornness head on. ‘Do you like Anna?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘If you weren’t so worried about not being able to live up to her expectations, would you still want to carry on seeing her?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘That’s settled then. If you can’t have Anna on your conscience, then put her on mine. I’m telling you to carry on seeing her, Sam. And that’s an order,’ she said and before he could continue the argument, added, ‘Now, is that it or is there anything else playing on your mind?’
Shocked at the swift resolution of his relationship woes, in Selina’s mind at least, Sam was too stunned to reply.
‘What else, Sam?’
He shrugged. There was something, or to be precise someone; a little girl who had sneaked into his heart. ‘Remember the trouble my Wishing Tree got me into?’ he said. ‘Well, I think I’ve managed to grant one wee girl her wish.’
‘Not the one who wanted a job for her dad?’
Sam laughed. ‘Well, I haven’t been handing out PlayStations, if that’s what you were thinking!’
At last he was starting to relax and tucked into his dinner with an appetite he had thought was beyond him. By the time he cleared his plate, he had explained to Selina all about meeting Finn and how he had already put in a good word with Jack.
Stretching back against his chair to give his expanded girth some room, Sam picked up a paper napkin from the table. It was crisp white tissue paper and perfectly square, ideal for origami and his fingers worked their magic with barely a conscious thought. ‘I’ll give Jack another ring tomorrow just to make sure he hasn’t forgotten,’ he explained. ‘He was a little bit worse for wear when I mentioned it, but he seemed keen enough to take my recommendation.’
‘But you don’t even know this Finn person,’ Selina warned. ‘How can you recommend someone for a job when you have no idea if he’s a good worker or even a decent bloke for that matter?’
Anna had been voicing her doubts as well, but Sam couldn’t be dissuaded. ‘I’d like to think I’m a good judge of character and I wouldn’t have asked Jack if I thought I was landing him with a shirker. Besides, the work’s only general labour and it’s not even permanent but at least it’s a job.’
‘Which satisfies the wish.’
Selina had been the only other person to actually read Jasmine’s note and there was a look of delight on her face that removed any remaining doubt Sam might have had. ‘Sometimes all a person needs is a step on the first rung of the ladder. It’s for Finn to make of it what he can.’
‘Another one for your collection?’ Selina was looking at the crane Sam had brought to life from a simple paper napkin. ‘You must have hundreds of them by now.’
Sam folded its wings back up and slipped it into his pocket where it would remain until he returned back upstairs to add it to his collection. At the last count, there were six hundred of the things in the shoebox. ‘There’s an ancient Japanese myth that if you make a thousand then you’ll have your wish granted,’ he told her.
Selina had seen him make countless birds in her time, but he had never before explained himself and he wasn’t sure why he chose to do so now. He had told the same story to a young girl many years ago. She would have been a little older than Jasmine at the time and a lot less gullible, but if she had doubted him then she hadn’t let it show and they had started on the project of making one thousand cranes together. He felt compelled to carry on although he had no idea what he would do when he reached the magical number. ‘And before you say it, no I don’t have a wish. All the mumbo jumbo in the world couldn’t give me the one thing I want. What’s broken can’t be unbroken, and while there are many things I will never come to terms with, that’s not one of them.’
‘Fair enough,’ she said.
There was a lull in the conversation until Sam broke the spell. ‘So where’s this beer you promised?’
Selina produced two cans of Guinness from the fridge and poured them into glasses.
‘You’re pushing the boat out, aren’t you? Isn’t smart-price bitter good enough for you these days?’
‘I didn’t buy them. They’re off Pat.’
Sam caught the look Selina was trying to hide and asked, ‘What’s
