Page 48 of Once Upon a Thyme
I looked past him, out of the window into the green twilight that was gathering at the base of the tall herbs. Scuds of cloud peppered the horizon. The weather was changing. ‘I am afraid of her,’ I said softly. ‘I love her, I resent her and I’m afraid of her.’
Zeb’s hand came up and closed over mine. ‘I know.’ His voice was as soft as my words had been. ‘You had a hell of a childhood and you never know where you stand with her. It’s enough to unsettle anyone.’
‘I had a lovely childhood,’ I said, still softly. ‘I had Granny and Mum looking after me, and I had all this.’ I was full of memories of making petal perfume by putting roses in water, until Granny taught me how to distil, of rolling in damp grass and watching the enormous stems towering overhead – I must have been very small then.
‘You’ve been appeasing her since you were tiny.’ Zeb sounded more normal now. ‘I used to be a chef. Believe me when I say I know all about appeasing. When the head chef has thrown a cleaver at your head for making a lumpy sauce, you learn appeasement as fast as you learn how to get the lumps out.’
‘Maybe that’s it.’ I stretched my hand under his. ‘Maybe I’ve been getting the lumps out all my life.’
He jerked his head sideways. ‘I’m not sure the metaphor covers everything,’ he said. ‘But you’ve been living under your mother, certainly.’ A pause. ‘Actually, I’m not surethatworks either. But we both know what we mean.’
‘I was afraid she wouldn’t love me.’ I practically whispered the words. ‘I’d lost my dad and she’d go and lock herself in her room for days. If I lost her as well I’d got nothing.’ Suddenly my eyes were full of tears. ‘I was afraid she wouldn’t love me any more if I didn’t behave perfectly, and then she’d leave me too.’
‘Oh, Tallie.’ There was a hitch in Zeb’s voice and the warmth that I felt sometimes when I looked at him flooded through me again.Was this love?I tried to examine how I felt. It reminded me of the feeling when I opened the curtains and looked out over the garden, or when I fed Big Pig and she was being amenable to having her ears scratched. I thought of my mother, and the warmth had hooks in it.
‘I really like you, Zeb,’ I said suddenly. ‘I don’t think I understand you, but I like you.’
‘Good.’ He sounded robust, as though he wanted to discourage any further tears. ‘Because I’m not sure I understand myself. I’ve been looking for something all my life. I thought cooking was it, then I thought that maybe helping businesses might give me what I was looking for. But it turns out that what I really want in life is a bucket, a scoop of pig feed, trotters and squeaking.’ He dipped his head so that he could look in my face. ‘Which is weird and a little bit sad, if you think about it.’
‘It’s not sad.’ I surprised myself with my ferocity, which made me jerk my head up so sharply that I almost bounced my forehead off Zeb’s nose. ‘It’s reallynot.’
We were eye to eye now. My cheeks were stiffening with the drying tears, but I barely felt that because they were becoming warm under the weight of his close attention to my face. His eyes were the deep brown of very good chocolate, but somewhere inside them I could see tiny flecks of green and it was intriguing enough that I couldn’t look away.
Those eyes flicked from mine, down to my mouth and back up again. ‘Tallie,’ he said, and my name swirled against my skin. We were both standing now, the table width between us but not separating us as we leaned in closer and closer until our mouths met. It was a brief kiss, hardly more than an affirmation of a later intent, but it made the heat rush from my cheeks to everywhere else so suddenly that my head swam.
This could be something.The thought flashed through my mind at the same speed as the hot blood flashed through my body. Then we’d moved apart and I was standing, blinking, slightly shocked. When Mika had kissed me it had felt like a demonstration. As though he’d been showing off to someone – Tessa, probably – how attractive he was, how he could kiss anyone. I’d let him and it hadn’t entirely been my choice. But kissing Zeb had felt like a mutual decision.
Zeb was smiling at me, still across the table, big eyes and a bit goofy, but now his lanky uncertainty had more of an edge of assuredness to it. ‘Well,’ he said, and then cleared his throat. ‘Well.’
‘Yes.’
A silence fell. A leaf dropped from one of the basil plants over in the corner. They needed watering. I didn’t move.
‘We could…’ I began.
‘Perhaps later.’
‘You don’t know what I was going to say.’ We were keeping our eyes on one another, both seemingly to stop the other from evaporating. I worried that if I blinked, this wonderful man would vanish and never have been. Then I realised that the death of my father and his absence from my life was making me think this way, and turned to the kettle. ‘Tea?’
All that reading I’d done for research hadn’t done me any favours. I still subliminally worried that anyone I had feelings for would leave me.
‘Mmm.’ I heard Zeb sit down again, the grind of the chair legs on the brick floor. It didn’t annoy me now like it had done before. It was audible proof that he was here.
‘So, what did you think I was going to suggest?’
He coughed. ‘Doesn’t matter. That’s Simon arriving now and I don’t think you’d want anything we did to be interrupted, would you?’
I glanced up. He was right. The sporty little car was parked over by the shop and Simon was checking his reflection in the wing mirror, smoothing a hand over his hair and tugging at his jacket collar. I didn’t know why he was bothering, just for a meeting about financing our barn, but perhaps Simon had a ‘thing’ about always looking well groomed. He had to deal with the daily competition with the band members, who would look sensational wearing bedsheets and bin liners, after all.
‘Bugger. I’d better get another mug out. I’ll have Ollie’s; he won’t notice if I wash it properly.’
I started preparing the tea mugs, while Zeb went to the door to meet Simon who was retying his ponytail and looking awkward.
‘Is it all right if I… oh, hello, Zeb. Didn’t know you were going to be here. I thought you’d have gone home by now. Er.’
‘Zeb is part of Drycott,’ I said confidently, realising that I really meant it. ‘So it’s only right that he’s here.’
Simon stepped down into the kitchen. ‘Yes, I just meant… I need to talk toyou, Tallie, and you might not want Zeb listening in.’
