Page 15 of Once Upon a Thyme
This wasridiculous.
I rearranged the soapwort to give myself something to do. I could hide in here, pretend that manning the shop was important enough to keep myself out of the way.
‘Tallie!’ Zeb was waving from outside. I could see him, broken into fragments by the wobbly old glass which had probably been in the window since before the First World War. ‘You’re wanted!’
Oh bugger. I tried to pretend extreme busyness, but Zeb kept waving.
‘All right, what’s the matter?’ I emerged to Zeb fidgeting on the gravel of the yard while men unspooled cables and erected a lighting system that could have illuminated a stadium. The sun was shining and I had no idea why they would need fifty million watts of competition for it.
‘Simon wants to talk to you about where they can set up. They’re looking at a static piece with the band playing and then shots of them walking around. Or something. He’ll explain it to you, but I thought you’d be the one to know where they’d do least damage.’
There was no sarcasm or apology in his tone. He sounded friendly, open and professional, even though he was standing slightly hunched and with his hair flopping into one eye.
‘SonowI’m in charge?’ I asked.
One eyebrow raised and vanished into the lock of hair now threatening to obscure his vision. ‘If you can spare the time.’
Nowthatwas sarcastic. I felt better immediately. Zeb unsettled me. He was a constant reminder that my mother still had an involvement in my business. I didn’t want to like him because I didn’t entirely know where his loyalty lay, and when he was being slightly unpleasant to me everything felt better. I could dislike him with reason.
‘I’d better come and talk to Simon then, before you let them stomp all over the new fennel beds.’
I came out of the shop and almost walked directly into Mika, who was carrying something across the yard from the minibus.
‘Hey, steady there!’ He put out a hand to catch me as I tried to stop dead, failed, and slithered on the loose gravel. ‘Slow down, you’ll do yourself an injury.’
His hand was on my shoulder, half supporting me and half preventing me from crashing into him. He wore silver rings on every finger, smelled of musky scent and peppermint and his expression was of dark concern. I was instantly fifteen again. I could see Zeb, behind Mika’s shoulder, giving me a look built entirely of evils.
‘I… err… no, sorry, I mean, I… sorry, I was just…’ I blushed, performed a move that was somewhere between a curtsy and a weak-kneed ‘gathering of self’, and dashed across the yard. Away from Zeb and his pointed statements about my work, but most of all away from Mika and his inordinate amount of sex appeal.
He’d actuallytouched me! I regressed further, from fifteen to about twelve, when I’d had an all-encompassing crush on a TV gardener, for which I blamed Granny’s addiction to his weekly programme. I’d had pictures of him in my room, spent the money I earned from weeding and planting and bringing on seedlings for Granny on his books, and endured my mother’s comments about his way of dressing and his accent with only the occasional bite-back on his behalf.
It was like that, only worse, because Mika was right here in front of me. Well, behind me now, as I fled through the gate and towards where the stolid figure of Simon was perching on the edge of the pond, looking uncomfortable.
‘You needed to talk to me?’ I panted on arrival, hoping that my cheeks had cooled sufficiently for me not to compete with the brilliant scarlet of the poppies which had self-seeded amongst the artemisia, and which were waving their bright flags of petal recklessly in the breeze.
‘Just wondering where is off-limits, and whether we could set up here in front of the pond for the static shots? We’ve decided to start filming today, while the weather is good, striking whilst the iron is hot and all that. Have the band playing with the garden behind them?’ Simon waved a hand, indicating the pond and the half of the garden that lay towards the shop.
‘Of course. Maybe facing this way?’ I inched myself around so that I had my back to the road. ‘Then the backdrop is the garden and the wall out to the fields beyond, rather than the shop, which might get busy later? I thought you were only looking the place over today, so I haven’t closed up.’And please pay extra for the disruption,I didn’t add.
Simon nodded slowly. ‘Yeah. That would be good.’ Then he looked down at his feet, patting the mossy side of the pond as though distracting himself. ‘It’s a really lovely setting you’ve got here. Have you owned Drycott for long?’
At least talking to Simon meant I wasn’t having to contend with Zeb, or tiptoe around Mika. He was nice and normal and not at all intimidating. He looked a little as though he should be wearing steel-rimmed glasses and standing behind a double bass in a jazz band.
‘It was my grandparents’ business,’ I said, sitting beside him and trailing a hand in the water. ‘They bought it when it was the local coal distribution yard and turned it into this. Grandad died before I was born and Granny carried on – it was more of a market garden back then of course. She moved into herbs later. My mum grew up here, in the cottage and only moved out to the village when she got married and had me. Then… then things happened, we moved back here to help Granny, Mum took over the business when Granny died, and I bought her out four years ago, so now it’s mine.’
‘Nice.’ Simon was still looking at his feet, scuffing little piles of gravel into heaps with his trainered toes. ‘It’s a beautiful setting.’
He was clearly making conversation because he wasn’t even looking at the ‘beautiful setting’, unless he had some kind of visual obsession with pea shingle and the wispy feathers of chamomile which grew over the edges of its bed to smooth the periphery of the path with fragrant greenery.
‘I like it,’ I said. ‘Mind you, it’s a bit less lovely in the winter months. We have some hardy plants and we try to make sure there’s year-round interest, but it’s hard in January when there’s a couple of feet of snow on the ground.’
‘How do you keep ticking over?’
I had no idea why Simon was so interested in the business. He was here to film, so it’s here-and-now attractiveness was more of a concern, surely? ‘We sell dried herbs and bouquets, and we have playgroups and toddler groups on educational visits and to play with the animals. We do birthday parties too.’
This had been a recent innovation and I was quite proud of it. I was even considering a Shetland pony, for diversification, although I’d had one as a child and it had bitten, kicked and been very reluctant to be ridden, so I was still thinking it over. Big Pig was enough of a challenge for now.
Simon was nodding, still seemingly lost in his own thoughts. ‘That’s good,’ he said vaguely. Then his eyes snapped up from the ground and he turned to look at me with an intensity that was startling. ‘You seem happy. Are you happy here?’
