Page 4 of Once Upon a Thyme
He plays the washboard, the sensible part of my mind said. Thewashboard. But the non-sensible part of my mind, the part that was busy reacting to the knowing eyes and the high cheekbones, was shouting louder. This man was beautiful and he was talking tome.
‘Amazing,’ said the amazing man, and then the whole troupe, followed by Simon, set off for a wander around the perimeter walls, exclaiming and touching and sniffing, hems scraping gravel as they went and depositing little backwashes of grit in their wake.
‘What iswrongwith you?’ Zeb said.
I tore my eyes away from the passage of the group and turned to him. ‘Me? What’s wrong withme?You’ve been here five minutes, I haven’t even filled the forms in yet, and you’re coming over all Earl of Grantham? You are here to do some part-time weeding and you think you can tell me…’ I tailed off. Zeb was shaking his head.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, hustling me by the elbow until we stood in the shelter of the Malva sylvestris. ‘I told you a bit of a fib earlier. I’m not here for a part-time job.’
Some of the generalised irritation I’d been working up towards my mother evaporated. For once, this didn’t look as though I could quietly lay blame at her door. ‘Which is just as well because, as I told you, I didn’t advertise one.’ Zeb continued to stare at me as though it was supposed to be obvious why he’d come and I just wasn’t getting it. ‘Okay. So, whyareyou here, and if it’s anything to do with HMRC I can tell you now that my tax returns are regular and squeaky clean.’
Zeb, with his floppy, half-spiked hair, who did not look like anyone the tax office would send on an investigation, gave me a pursed-lips look. ‘That remains to be seen,’ he said darkly. ‘No. I actually run a business consultancy agency. Still quite small but I’m picking up business, and some of the business I picked up… is yours.’
My mind was freewheeling. Over in the car park I could see more cars pouring in and I felt a momentary lift of the spirits until I noted that all the occupants were training their attention on the band members, now standing at the junction of the radiating paths where a small bog garden was green and lush. It was also full of froglets, but they didn’t seem to have noticed these, because there was a certain amount of posing going on.
I took a deep breath. ‘My mother,’ I said flatly.
‘I don’t know about that. But I’ve been hired for a month by a Mrs Amanda Fisher to raise the profile and turnover of the business.’
I stared over to where The Goshawk Traderswere being stalked around the garden by a mob of phone-wielding people, and wondered whether my mother had influence in surprising spheres.
‘And this sort of thing is exactly what you should be going for!’ Zeb continued. ‘Opening up to a wider marketing opportunity.’
Above us the mallow shook its leaves in a shiver of breeze. There was a sudden puff of scent, carried on the same breeze, from the lavender and thyme which were flowering nearby. A soft scent, one which carried memory: of helping my grandmother to cut herbs, the smell of the sheets on my bed rinsed in lavender water to help me sleep…
‘I bought her out,’ I said. ‘She still draws a small amount of money from the business, but overall it’s mine. She doesn’t get a say in the marketing or anything else for that matter.’
‘None of that is anything to do with me.’ Zeb raised his head to watch the tight knot of people moving slowly along the paths. One or two had taken their attention away from the band to look at the herbs. ‘But whatismy concern is maximising your returns from this right now.’
‘They don’t want herbs! Everyone has just rolled in to see the – whatever they call themselves. It’s hardly a huge sales opportunity, is it, unless you can conjure up about a hundred copies of whatever their last album is called for the shop.’
‘Oh, good idea.’ Zeb pulled his phone out and made a note. ‘But ofcoursethis is a sales opportunity! You’ve got people through the door, that’s the hard part. Now your job is to make them want to buy herbs.’ He looked at my face. ‘Isn’t it? You haven’t got a secret team of red-hot salespeople over there already?’
‘It’s just me and Ollie,’ I muttered. He was right, of course he was.
‘Oh dear.’ Zeb made another note. ‘It’s worse than I thought. No sales assistance at all.’
We stood and looked at the band and Simon, who were gazing around at the layout and at the bunch of people following them at a small distance, phones outstretched, in silence for a moment.
‘So you lied to me,’ I said, watching with irritation as one of the women stripped flower heads from the foxgloves thoughtlessly with her fingers.
‘I wanted a chance to see your set-up.’
‘By lying. You could have justsaid.’
‘I like to get a feel for businesses first. No point wading in with tips for improvement if you’re already doing everything you can. I need to meet the workforce, see what’s feasible for you, so it made sense to come in and work for a bit.’ He sounded as though he were quoting from a manual. ‘This’ – he motioned towards the crowd in the middle of my garden – ‘has just precipitated matters somewhat. And, to be fair, you didn’t really ask, you pretty much accepted my story which was a touch on the thin side, to be honest.’
My mother. Mybloodymother. Interfering again with a business that was nothing to do with her, other than her receiving a percentage of the profits, which was what we’d agreed when I’d bought her out. ‘Just to keep my bank balance propped up, Natalie, darling,’ she’d drawled. ‘I need a little bit extra, you know that. You know how my health is, these days, I have so little…’
‘I don’t want marketing advice,’ I said, sounding surprisingly firm. ‘The business is ticking over nicely. I don’t care what my mother said, or how she got you to agree to this, but I don’t need you. Please go away.’
Overhead, the swifts shrieked as they played non-contact tag through the air. I could see Mika, taller than the rest of his bandmates, trailing a hand through the lemon balm bed and bending to sniff the resultant citrussy puff. He really was incredibly good looking, with his dark flop of hair and those intense eyes. It was a shame about the washboard.
Mika looked towards where Zeb and I were standing amid the falling mallow blossoms, almost as though we were trying to blend into the background. Even from two acres away I could feel his eyes on me. I didn’t know whether it was best to turn away and pretend not to see him or keep looking in his direction but pretend not to beableto see him.
It was too late to do either. He grinned broadly and made an open-handed gesture, a kind of ‘it’s not up to me’ movement that somehow managed to hint that if ithadbeen up to him, the group would even now be setting up equipment and paying me large amounts of money.
‘I suppose,’ I added grudgingly, ‘it would be a good earning opportunity if they filmed here.’
