Page 5 of Once Upon a Thyme
Zeb flicked me a look I saw out of the corner of my eye. I hoped he couldn’t tell that I was watching Mika walk along the final path, only half my mind on the empty patch where Ollie had recently dug out some parsley that had bolted. The seed heads were hanging in my kitchen now with paper bags collecting the falling seed, and we’d meant to fill the gap with more mint, but hadn’t got around to it yet.
‘You’re fired,’ I said, almost dreamily to Zeb, and then wandered off across to the shop to serve any potential customers that might result from this incursion. It was just incidental that it would give me a better view of the band –Mika especially, my treacherous brain whispered – getting back on their bus.
3
The cottage was quiet. That was one thing you could say about it. It was also tiny, inconveniently laid out, prone to leaks and ridiculously creaky in high winds. But definitely quiet. Particularly after dark, when the gates were locked and I could sit in my kitchen alone, smelling the summer scents of the herbs beyond the open door, and listening to the scuffle in the beams above that I was very afraid might be mice.
I sat in the battered old armchair that had been Granny’s, slumped over my knees with my head in my hands. I was supposed to be working, supposed to be filling in forms and checking out seed catalogues, but my laptop was on the floor beside the chair, its screen blank.
I kept coming back to Mother. Thinking she could hire me a marketing person without even mentioning it to me. I knew what she’d say though. ‘Oh, Natalie, you know I’d love to be more involved with the business, but my health won’t let me, so I thought I could help you out this way!’
There was no point in even raising it with her. No point in asking anything, or telling her that the business was mine now, that she had no right to interfere, even if she thought she was being helpful. There was absolutely no point. She’d laugh, brush me off, ask me to make her a cup of tea or pop to the shop for her. She’d avoid, deny, only talk about superficial things all the way through a conversation until I lost the desire to find answers. Or she’d be upset, seemingly appalled at my treachery at not wanting her help, and she’d take to her bed for a fortnight.
I rocked forwards over my knees a bit further. ‘Granny, what do Ido?’ I said aloud. As usual, the shade of my grandmother remained silent on the subject, unless she was making her views known through the furtive rustling of rodent feet along the beams, and I couldn’t decipher anything meaningful from that, other than that I probably ought to put the biscuits in tins rather than leave the packets on the worktop.
A car rattled along the lane past the gardens, slowed, and began the half-turn in through the gateway, arrested when it came up against the locked main gate. Well, what did they expect? It was half past nine and dark; how many pick-your-own herb places would still be open at this time of night? And how desperate would you have to be for a bunch of rosemary for your Sunday roast lamb to come all the way down our lane at this time of night?
I continued to stare, unfocused, at my knees. The evening air was doing its job of ironing out the stresses of the day with wind-borne wafts from the lavender bed undercut with the astringent smell from the fennel which hadn’t recovered from the earlier pig attack and was going to need patching up. Tomorrow. I could do it tomorrow. Today was over and all that remained was a hot shower and to tip into my bed in the little back room upstairs. Yes. As soon as I could muster the energy, I’d get up and go to bed.
As I tried to persuade myself to get out of the chair and head upstairs, there was a rattle at the gate. Thieves? I jerked my head up. The shop was locked up, the till empty, and the hefty padlocks around the place were normally enough to deter casual snatchers. Unless someone wasreallydesperateto gussy up their roast, nobody would come over the gate among the herbs, not in the dark.
But someone was. That sound was the weight of a person climbing the gate into the garden. One advantage of having grown up here was knowing every individual squeak and jingle it could make, andthatnoise was very definitely the gate dipping on its hinges as someone climbed up, followed by the squeal of rusty iron as the gate rebounded. They’d come right over. Any second now – yes, there was the slight crunch of the gravel beneath footsteps. There was no way to approach the cottage silently, unless you came directly over the herbs and that was asking for a broken ankle and some embarrassing questions when you were found face down and groaning in the sage bed.
I stood up and threw the switch by the back door. Instantly, the whole garden was flooded with enough light to read small print by. Every flower head stood stark against the darkness, every leaf arrested as though the light was glue, sticking them to the night. Big Pig snorted, her sleep disturbed up in the barn, and some of the guinea pigs squeaked hopefully, in case this had been a sudden dawn.
In the middle of the garden, one leg raised in the act of picking his way forward, was Zebedee McAuley-Wilson. He’d thrown his arm up over his eyes to shield his vision from the blinding levels of light and was also fixed in place by the sudden illumination. He looked like a scarecrow that couldn’t look a rook in the eye.
I stood by the open door and watched him cautiously drop his arm, blink a few times, and then, adjusting to the light levels, see me.
‘Can you turn it off?’
‘I can, but I’m not going to,’ I replied, folding my arms in what I hoped was a matter-of-fact way. I didn’t go quite so far as to lean nonchalantly against the door behind me though, I wasn’t quite that good an actor and my heart was still pounding at the sight of someone in the garden after dark.
‘Okay.’ Cautiously, because he was presumably still blinded by the floodlights, Zeb began to pick his way forwards, squinting down at his feet and blinking ferociously. I waited until he’d got all the way before I turned off the light and watched him shake his head and screw up his eyes, adjusting back to the more normal level of light from the kitchen bulb.
He stopped when he got to the door. ‘May I come in?’
‘What for?’
He looked past me into the kitchen. ‘To talk about what we do next.’
I reached out and pulled the door closed, so its solidity was at my back. ‘There is no “next”. I fired you, remember?’
He’d been gone when I’d returned from selling a few bunches of herbs to some guilty-looking customers who’d obviously only turned up to see The Goshawk Traders. At least they’d bought something; the band had just got back onto the bus and gone. My eager eyes had sought out Mika, but he didn’t look back at me as they drove away. He’d been involved in conversation with someone I couldn’t see and I’d been flustered and overheated and forgotten the price of the sprayed angelica heads. But at least the contrast had been nice and quiet, and, once Ollie had been persuaded out from the compost corner, it had been a pleasant remainder of the day.
‘You can’t fire me. You didn’t employ me.’
‘But I don’t want you here.’
‘Then I suggest you tell that to the person whodidemploy me? Your mother, I think you said?’
I looked over at the distant outlines of the ivy that clambered enthusiastically over the far wall and muttered that she wouldn’t listen.
‘She’s paying me, you know. For a month’s worth of marketing advice,’ Zeb went on.
‘More fool her,’ I replied tartly.
‘No, I just meant, if she’s paying me, then where’s the harm in letting me stay on? You might not want me, but I could be useful.’
