Page 13 of Once Upon a Thyme
‘I think,’ he said after we’d been standing mired in our lack of conversation for a while, ‘that we ought to have a chat.’
I panicked and snatched the bucket of valerian from him, the heads swinging from side to side as though they were trying to keep track of who was speaking. ‘No, it’s all good. I’ll tell Mother that she can’t interrupt meetings and I won’t go over when we’re busy anyway.’ I spoke very fast, heading off his questions at the pass. ‘She just likes to feel she’s still involved, I think, I mean, she doesn’t have much else in her life apart from me and Drycott and she wasn’t really keen to hand it over to me but…’
His expression had switched to a raised-eyebrow impatience for me to stop talking which stifled my justifications.
‘I meant, we need to talk about what Simon wants to do next week and how we’re going to manage things,’ he said, rather too evenly for my liking.
‘Oh.’
‘He’s had some good ideas, but we really should discuss them tomorrow morning, before he arrives.’
‘Oh.’
‘Your mother…’ He stopped and turned away, seemingly to watch the feather of birch branches that traced their way across the far fence, swept in a passing breeze. ‘Your mother is your problem.’
Great. As if I didn’t know that. ‘I see,’ I said, meaninglessly.
‘I’m off now. I sent Ollie home early too, so you might want to close up and get the place tidy for tomorrow. I think Simon is bringing the band over to plan out the video?’
He made it a question. Why had he made it a question? Presumably he wasn’t questioning the absent Simon as to why it was necessary for The Goshawk Tradersto personally be on site, when they’d have a team of professionals who would script, set up equipment and work out shooting angles. Unless–I felt my collar tighten and become hot as a wash of embarrassment crept up the back of my neck – unless he’d seen my reaction to Mika and knew how much I’d anticipated his return.
My mouth flapped.
‘Er,’ I said, a feature of a lot of my conversations with Zeb.
He raised an eyebrow, turned smartly and walked over to his car. ‘Tomorrow, then,’ he said, getting in with a cheery, and to me dismissive, wave of his hand. He folded himself into the driver’s seat and drove off with no further acknowledgement of my presence and I threw the bucket of valerian onto the gravel.
‘Bastard,’ I said. ‘The utter turd.’
Swifts shrieked through the air above me and the pig snorted a reminder that it was feeding time in the barn. Everything else was silent. Even the herbs were still now, the breeze blown off to somewhere where its gentle passing would be remarked on with words like zephyr and caress, rather than followed by someone with string who muttered about having to stake the mallow. I sighed and began picking up the sprawled valerian, whose pale stems now feathered across the gravel like exhausted brides.
‘This ismybusiness,’ I muttered, vindictively ramming the flower stems into the bucket so hard that they buckled. ‘Zebedee can just boing off and do one.’
The bitter tinge of mint gave my words an extra edge and, pleased with myself for managing to get angry, I set about my garden work.
6
I dressed carefully the next morning. I’d got up early to allow myself time for a bath and to wash and plait my hair, turn out a clean white linen shirt and some slightly better-fitting jeans than my usual work ones.Mika’s coming over. The thought gave me a pleasant buzz through my body, a little burst of energy that was unusual at this time in the morning, when the sun was barely clambering over the wall and the dew still lay its pearls along the feathery edges of the yarrow.
While I didn’t allow myself to consider that Mika would do any more than smile my way, that was more than I could usually expect from a day. I had to take my little hints of pleasure where and when I could, and the thought of a handsome musician smiling in my direction gave me a warmth in my stomach that even tea couldn’t compete with. I carefully ignored the mental image of Mika playing the washboard, replacing it with a more romantic vision of a viola tucked under his firm chin and those sparkling eyes smiling and long fingers drawing low, soulful music from a skilfully wielded bow over strings.
It was a pretty picture. And, as my love life resided entirely in my head these days, it kept me going sufficiently to take all the potted herbs that had added ambience yesterday back outside where I ranged them against the cottage wall. It was supposed to give the area the look as though the cottage had grown up amongst the plants, ethereal and other-worldly, but actually gave it more of a medieval peasant vibe. I rearranged the pots to leave the path free and was surprised by the arrival of Zeb, who must have climbed the gate without my hearing him.
‘Good morning,’ I trilled with the incipient arrival of Mika making me cheerful.
Zeb eyed me suspiciously. ‘You look…’ He stopped and was obviously raking carefully through his vocabulary. ‘Clean,’ he finished.
‘Making a good impression for when the band arrive,’ I said, perkily. ‘Could you go and feed the pig, please?’
Zeb’s mouth twisted. ‘Can’t you do it? I have a difficult relationship with the pig. She tries to knock me over.’
I became a little less buoyant. ‘She tries to knockeveryoneover, you aren’t special. And I’m clean, as you so charmingly pointed out. Plus, you’re an employee, I’m the boss, so you are on trough duty for today.’ His obvious reluctance made me add, ‘And I have to go and cut some herbs for the buckets by the shop, before we have to close off the gardens.’
‘I could do that?’ His nervous glances towards the barn made me wonder if he knew I suspected him of being the one to leave the gates open on purpose. Was he assessing his chances of getting away with it again, when there was clearly only him and me here?
‘You don’t know what we need. And anyway, as you said yourself, you don’t know much about herbs apart from having been a chef.’
‘Which is not making me an ideal carer for Big Pig either,’ he pointed out. ‘She’s just a collection of animated chops and rashers as far as I am concerned.’
