Page 20 of Once Upon a Thyme
Mika tossed his head so that his dark curls spiralled around his head, and gave me a half-smile from brilliant eyes. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘I’ll introduce you to the band properly.’
To my astonishment, he scooped up my hand and held it easily and loosely in his, tugging me gently forward until I stepped away from the rose and onto the gravel next to him. ‘They don’t bite,’ he said, grinning in a way that made the word ‘wolfish’ spring into my mind, to be dismissed under a flurry of ‘sexy twinkling, wow, tall, hot, leggy, stylish,famous’ which was fighting to the forefront of my brain. ‘Well, I can’t vouch for Loke, but the others are fine.’ Another grin, and a single raised eyebrow with the grin on that side rising alongside it; the resulting quirked expression took the perfection from his face and made him look arrestingly normal.
‘Guys.’ He addressed his fellow band members, who were grouped around the pond like a bunch of very convincing statuary. ‘This is Tallie.’
As though they should know who I was. As though they should care.
A chorus of rather lacklustre ‘hellos’ followed. Mika still had hold of my hand and was now draped alongside me, so close that I could feel the rhythm of his breath against my arm. ‘Tallie, this is Will.’
Will was the tall man in the tight T-shirt and black jeans, lots of piercings and a beard that you could have lost a Viking in. His arms were a mass of swirly tribal tattoos and he had a nose ring which reminded me that we’d meant to ring the pig and never got round to it.
‘Vinnie and Genevra.’
This was the man in dungaree type overalls and a tie-dyed shirt and the girl in swirly skirts, who were sitting together, her on his knee. They waved.
‘Loke. C’mon, man, give us a smile!’
Loke, who owned the dreadlocks and a beard that didn’t really suit his round face, rolled his eyes with a hopeless kind of attitude as though he wanted to be a million miles away, and threw me a sheepish grin.
‘And Tessa.’
Tessa was blonde and beautiful. All the band were beautiful in their own ways, but she was classically attractive, tall and slender with legs in washed-white jeans and a top that looked as though it was made of lots of layers of gauze laid over each other. She nodded, absorbed in tuning her guitar as it lay in her lap like an affectionate cat.
‘That’s us. The Goshawk Traders. Just a bunch of ordinary people who got lucky.’ Mika looked down at me and I noticed his eyes were a pale brown, almost yellow colour. I gave him a small smile and didn’t let on that I’d read up on the band and knew that they had met at a prestigious music school – there was nothing ordinary about any of them, they had all been selected for their places in that school because they were musically gifted.
I also didn’t let on how much I knew about Mika. There was something in his confident air that made me think he would assume that I already knew all about him. I didn’t want to think of him as arrogant enough to believe that I would have looked him up, so I kept quiet.
I wondered what my mother would say if she could see me. She wouldn’t have known who The Goshawk Traders were, obviously. I conveniently forgot that I had never heard of The Goshawk Traderseither until Simon had pitched up.
Then the familiar feeling of guilt at leaving her alone in her house, at letting Zeb go to her instead of going myself simply so I couldhang out with a famous band overwhelmed me. I ought to have gone. I might not havewantedto, but I should have. I was her daughter.
‘Could you excuse me, please?’ I said, overcome with politeness right out of a 1950’s etiquette handbook. ‘There’s a phone call I need to make.’
I backed away slowly as though the band were a dangerous animal that might fly for my throat. Mika seemed reluctant to let go of my hand and I had to tug at his arm before he would release my fingers.
‘Come back after,’ he suggested. ‘We’ll be playing soon.’
‘I will. I just need…’ And I fled with a Cinderella flourish, back along the gravel path to the dark coolness of the shop, where I draped myself, panting, over the counter, to the consternation of a pair of customers who had arrived while I’d been with the band.
I sold some herbs to them and it calmed me down. This, after all, was my area of expertise, advising on the herbs to use in any situation. These two had bought a new house and wanted to smudge it with sage before moving in, and needed to knowwhichsage and in what form. We had a pleasant chat about houses and atmospheres, I sold them some sage sticks and they went away happy.
Then I remembered, with that familiar pang of guilt, that I’d meant to call my mother.
‘Hi, Mum! Did Zeb find you all right?’
A clinking sort of pause, then, ‘Oh, yes, darling, he’s here now, we’re having a lovely cup of tea and putting the world to rights.’
But, I thought,you were feeling too ill to get up and make yourself some food, and now you’re sitting having a cup of tea with Zeb…
‘That’s nice,’ I managed.
‘Yes.’ Another pause. More clinking. ‘He says he told you that I brought him in to do some PR for the business. I hope you don’t mind.’ Not a question. I didn’t know what to say to this without annoying her.
‘He did.’ Well, he had. It was an incontrovertible fact, nothing she could pick the bones out of to wrangle me over.
‘It was meant to be a surprise.’
Ah. Right. She was going to frame it as ‘doing me a favour’. That was fine, I knew how to approach it now, what angle to take.
