Page 47 of Once Upon a Thyme
Zeb hesitated, halfway to walking down the path to the cottage. His foot stammered over the gravel. ‘You’re doing it again, and there’s no need to do it with me.’
‘What?’
‘You don’t want to talk. I’m not suggesting an in-depth conversation about our respective upbringings, I only want to lay out the ideas for taking the animal side of the business forward. You know, because you’re employing me to do it.’
I felt stupid. Had it really come to this – that I would avoid the merest hint of talking about anything? Perhaps I’d been more shaken by my mother’s expressed wish to sell the business than I thought, if I didn’t even want to chat to Zeb about the future.
‘No, of course, you’re right. Let’s go inside and discuss plans.’
‘That’s better.’ He sounded cheerily back to being my business consultant now. ‘I’ll put the kettle on. I’m parched. D’you think a little café might be a good idea next to the shop? There’s room, if we partition off the back end, where you store all those baskets, we could put an upper room in the new barn for storage.’
It felt odd, having someone to go over plans with. Ollie was great, he’d talk herbs all day and have wonderful ideas about new varieties and planting schemes, but he had absolutely no interest in anything else, and would wander off if I started throwing business ideas at him. Zeb waskeen.I could see how he had made a good chef, putting new things together in combinations I would never have thought of. He was good at ideas. I found that once he began to lay out his thoughts on what we could do and his opinions on the best way to go forward, it made my creative side tingle with potential. This could work. That encouraged me to come out with some thoughts of my own and before I knew it we were drinking tea, drawing designs on the back of a tax demand envelope, and laughing. We laughed a lot, and it made me realise how little I’d had to laugh about lately. I was relaxing with Zeb, uncoiling that desperate hard spiral that kept me running, like clockwork winding down to a final tick. He was funny, that concerned Time Lord face opening up into a smile that was so genuine and engaging that it made me smile back. The tense knot between my shoulder blades softened when I reached out to hold our sketch and encountered his hand on the way.
The touch stopped me. It was as though the feel of his skin against mine brought me back to reality. ‘What do I do about Mum?’ I asked.
His grin died. ‘What do you want to do about her? I have to warn you that I won’t be party to anything illegal.’ His eyes still held the echo of the smile. ‘But I might offer to hold the pillow,’ he muttered, and I didn’t think I’d been meant to hear that.
‘Why on earth does she want me to sell up? And even if I do, she’s not entitled to any of the money.’
‘But she could persuade you to give her some. If she needed it.’ Zeb let go of the envelope and his fingers fell away from mine. ‘Couldn’t she?’
‘No. Well, maybe.’
‘So the question isn’t so much why does she want you to sell, as what does she need money for.’
I thought of my mother in her frowsty room, old make-up caked onto the surface of the dressing table. Old clothes hanging in the wardrobe. The state of the garden. ‘I have no idea. She doesn’t seem to spend much.’
‘Tallie…’ My name was almost a sigh. ‘No. Never mind. It’s not my business. Do you ever look in her cupboards?’
It was such an odd question that it made me pull a face. ‘How strange! Why would I? I check that she’s got food, that the fridge isn’t empty, that’s all. I’m not going to start ransacking her storage, if that’s what you mean.’ I narrowed my eyes. ‘Is there something you’re not telling me, Zeb?’
‘I don’t think it’s me you should be asking that question.’ He looked almost sad now, a hint of similarity with Simon’s expression earlier in the afternoon. ‘But you don’t ask your mother anything and it’s ruining your life.’
I laughed, but it wasn’t the same laughter as before. This laugh was harder and curled up at the edges. ‘No it’s not.’
‘Simon told me you seemed upset. You think that people are keeping things from you?’
‘Don’t bring Simon into this, it’s nothing to do with him. I only wanted to know which one of them was fibbing about deciding to come in and look around. Nothing big. He got a wee bit evasive and I decided it wasn’t worth stirring things up for such a stupid reason, that’s all. Maybe neither of them can remember whose idea it was. Why should they, after all?And,and I cannot stress this enough, it was your idea to find out. For the advertising,’ I added, with a flourish that may as well have had ‘ta dah!’ printed on it.
‘True.’ Zeb nodded. ‘Maybe we should both ask him in a bit, when he’s over to talk to you. I could stay and referee.’
The thought struck me then that I had always intended that Zeb should be here when Simon came. But I’d just thought it, as if asking him would be too much. What had I been going to do if he’d got up to leave – fling myself across the doorway and block his exit?
I needed to learn to use my words. ‘I’d like it if you stayed,’ I said, cautiously. The world didn’t end.
‘There. That didn’t hurt, did it?’ Zeb said cheerfully. ‘I’m not your mother, Tallie. You can ask me things, you can ask me to do things, I’m not going to treat you the way she does. If you say something to upset me, I’ll just tell you and give you chance to put it right, not sulk as though it’s an international sport and I’m in training for the Olympics.’
‘She doesn’t…’
‘Yes, she does.’
‘All right, maybe she does.’ I looked at him and lowered my voice, until it was just audible. ‘Can we really make something work with us?’
Zeb leaned in until he was only centimetres away from me. I could feel his breath against my face. ‘If we want to, why not? But that’s an important question, I’m glad you felt you could ask it.’
Unexpected laughter bubbled up again in my throat. ‘It is, isn’t it? Wow, maybe I’m improving.’
‘Or maybe you’re just not afraid of me.’
