Page 14 of Once Upon a Thyme
‘I’m sure she’ll forgive you.’ I nodded towards the barn. ‘And you can throw some of the ruined parsley cuttings in for the rabbits and guinea pigs; Ollie left it all piled near the shed.’
I didn’t give him a chance to demur any further, and took myself off to start filling the buckets. We were going to keep the shop open, even though the gardens themselves were closed. There was plenty of stock and people would just have to be cheated of the chance to cut their own herbs for a week; we needed the income.
Mallow and vervain, melissa and verbena, tall fronds of each stood fragrant and floral, their smudgy green foliage attractive against the bright silver of the buckets and the mellow old stone of the converted stable. I was very pleased with the effect as I tied each bundle into loose bunches with agricultural twine, so that they sprawled louchely in their containers, like drunken old men in a club. Over in the barn I could hear Big Pig starting her day with a good snorting honk in Zeb’s direction, the rattle of the feed bin lid and the whistle-squeak of the guinea pigs, alert to the fact that their food would be next.
It was all rather lovely. Zeb was doing my bidding, the band would soon be here to start filming and both I and my herbs were looking their best. The weather was good and my mother… well, she’d been visited yesterday. I’d be able to admire Mika from afar while I manned the shop and generally tried to stop people trampling over newly established plant beds.
Today was going to be a good day and it wasn’t often that I could think that. I was far more used to getting out of bed and staring out of my window across the neatly portioned acres wondering what would go wrong.
On occasion, I had even caught myself thinking that taking over Drycott had been a mistake. After Granny had died, when my mother had been in overall charge, I’d had the benefit of her buffering me from the worst of the effects of seasonal dips in sales. She had the knack of never seeming to worry about anything, and, I’d been able to concentrate on digging and planting and working out what was likely to be the most profitable seeds to put in for next year. Now Drycott was all mine, and so was the worry.
But nothing could go wrong today. I leaned against the warm stone blocks of the shopfront and felt the second-hand warmth seep into my bones. A brief concern about hubris made itself known. Something couldalwaysgo wrong, there was never a day that passed without a minor catastrophe, but I bit my lip and squashed the feeling that doom was only ever minutes away. No. It would all be lovely. Of course it would.
I watched Zeb conscientiously double-checking the bolts on the barn gates as he came out with his bucket swinging, and bit my lip again. He would know I was watching. Even he wouldn’t be daft enough to fail to fasten those gates when he was the only person who could be blamed for letting Big Pig escape, and while I was actually staring at him. Would he?
I watched him put the bucket back and stand, scanning the garden.Would he?Perhaps Zeb didn’t want this job as much as he pretended; perhaps he was sabotaging things in order to be fired? He could say goodbye to any references that didn’t contain the wordsruined the business,but maybe he had reasons of his own for not wanting to continue. I didn’t, after all, know very much about Zeb McAuley-Wilson, other than that he’d changed career and seemed diligent about his new one. I should really think about that.
On the other hand, I thought, as Zeb stared around again, I knew more about him than I wanted to. He’d changed his entire life. Lost his wife to divorce because of an over-demanding job, moved to a small flat – over a takeaway, if I remembered rightly – in Pickering. But I didn’t know how hefeltabout anything. That mobile, large-eyed face didn’t give much away, other than a general sense of anxiety and a desire to make the best of things that made me feel slightly guilty. He seemed nice: pleasant, kind, and he was good with the animals despite his lack of experience.
Behind me came the sound of vehicles on the road beyond the gate, the heavy growl of big engines rolling carefully down the gradient and the whine of brakes being judiciously applied. Why was I wasting time thinking about Zeb and his general air of sad disappointment in life, when Mika… when the band were about to arrive? I leaped to open the main gates – they were early, it was barely eight o’clock and I’d wanted to sweep the yard and finish cutting more herbs before they arrived, but here they were, two large lorries and the minibus pulling into the car park.
I had also wanted to park them at the far end, against the fencing to the garden to allow more room for passing customers to pull straight in, but they all arranged themselves by the entrance. They filled the entire car park, leaving barely a corridor, so any passing trade would have to drive between the two lorries to get in, which was almost guaranteed to put off any casual customers. I snarled inwardly. I hadn’t realised that ‘filming a video’ would involve an entire team and quite so much heavy equipment. The shop could stay open for now, but we’d have to close completely when actual filming started. Then the minibus drew up next to the door of the shop and I hurried to look busy and engaged in case Mika was looking out of the window. The buckets got another rearrangement and the herbs an unnecessary amount of fluffing and sorting, so I was crouching over the willowy spikes of the vervain as the band came slowly down the steps. Simon jumped from the driver’s seat, and I watched him land on the gravel, wince and lean quickly against the side of the bus with a quick glance at the band members to see if they had noticed his less-than-athletic exit. He needn’t have worried, they all seemed preoccupied with the task of getting out of the bus, talking amongst themselves over shoulders and shaking skirts and re-lacing boots.
There was Mika, last off the bus, resplendent in a wine-coloured jacket and bow tie, skinny black jeans and knee-high Dr Marten boots. He looked exotic, with his dark hair blowing in the newly risen breeze, bright eyes sparking with mischief and his stubbled cheeks highlighting slanted cheekbones. I found myself staring, peeping from between the spires of herb stems like a mortal watching the arrival of the gods from Mount Olympus.
‘I’ve fed the pig.’ Zeb’s voice, prosaic in tone and content, made me swing around and nearly tip my display into a riot of broken stalks and puddles.
‘Oh! You made me jump.’ I excused myself for my overblown response. I hadn’t heard him coming, so bound up in staring at Mika that even the crunch of Zeb’s arrival over the gravel hadn’t registered.
‘Well,’ Zeb said dryly, ‘I do work here. For now. Would you like me to liaise with Simon while they sort out what they’re doing and you keep an eye on… the shop?’
He meant Mika and he meant me to know he meant Mika. He’d even angled his eyebrows in such a way that his sarcasm was evident on his face, which was a neat trick.
‘I need to know where they want to film, so that I can make sure there’s no damage to the herbs,’ I said defensively, as though I’d really been checking out the band’s disembarkation in case they’d been about to trample merrily through the herb beds. ‘Thisismy business.’
‘Well done,’ Zeb said, still dry and sarcastic. ‘I’m glad you can remember that when it’s appropriate.’
‘Youdon’t have to be here at all,’ I hissed, annoyance finally getting the upper hand.
‘And if I hadn’t been, they wouldn’t be filming here. You had to leave during the vital meeting, remember?Iset this up with Simon, while you attended to your mother.’
I opened my mouth to spit a well-crafted reply, but couldn’t think of one. He was absolutely right. Left to my own devices, I’d have blown the opportunity. Wouldn’t I? Or would I have ignored my mother’s pleas and sorted details with Simon, while my phone blew up with accusatory messages?
I knew the answer to that, of course I did. I would have gone to the chemist, shrugged my shoulders at the lost chance to have a famous band filming in my garden, and plodded along on passing trade and the occasional advert that we could afford in the local paper.
I was my mother’s daughter. She and I both knew it.
‘Well, all right. But make sure they keep to the paths.’ I looked away from my precarious bouquets and back over to the band, who were milling around and talking to the team of men that the lorries had brought, while Simon manhandled instrument cases out of the minibus.
‘Will do, boss.’ Zeb stepped smartly away. I narrowed my eyes in his direction, which brought Mika back into my eyeline again. God, he was gorgeous. The other three male band members, one in a plain white T-shirt and artfully torn jeans, one in dungaree overalls and the other in a pair of harem pants so loose as to almost be a skirt, faded into insignificance beside Mika. All their careful facial hair and assorted dreadlocks were mere background to Mika’s slow smile and elegant movement.
I shook my head and went to unlock the shop. This was ridiculous.Iwas ridiculous. Until the other day I hadn’t even heard of The Goshawk Traders.I had nothing in common with any of them, other than an apparent desire to be around herbs and knowing what a washboard was, and Mika was nothing more to me than a pleasant backdrop for a few hours. He was a passing distraction, that was all.
Nothing in this world would drag from me the admission that I had looked him up online, read all the articles I could find and checked out all his pictures. I knew that he was the same age as me, his star sign was Aquarius, he’d been born in Sussex, had a younger brother and parents who were classically trained musicians. He’d dated a famous pop star, featured in a lifestyle magazine in his tastefully decorated London home, and had given long, impassioned interviews on the state of the world and how humans could best help themselves and their environment.
I didn’t know why I’d read the articles which had only left me feeling more inadequate and even more in awe of the man. When I’d thought he was just an attractive member of a band I’d never heard of, admiring him from a distance had been doable. Now I knew his parents’ names, the name of his dog and what colour his kitchen was, professional detachment was a lot harder. Even though I knew those articles were carefully curated for their readership, the knowledge gave me a strange sense of second-hand intimacy, almost as though I personally had been invited into his converted chapel home to admire the monk’s bench seating and the double height glass window in the bedroom.
When I looked over at where the band were now sorting themselves out, taking instruments out and checking them over, and Mika glanced up, saw me looking and gave me a big grin and a small wave with a viola bow, I found myself staggering, weak-kneed, back into the shelter of the shop.
