Page 49 of Once Upon a Thyme
There was a moment of chill down my spine.What the hell?All I could think was that perhaps Mika had said something to Simon about me and I was about to be taken to task over my unwarranted assumptions about him?
I shook my head. Mika would have shrugged me off by now as the small distraction I had been. He’d probably even forgotten my name.
‘Unless you’re about to declare your undying love for me and propose that we emigrate immediately, I won’t mind Zeb being here,’ I said, aware that I sounded stiff and formal. ‘And actually, if youaregoing to, I think I might need him.’
‘Not quite, but you might want to sit down.’
‘Just a second.’ I poured three mugs of tea, put the milk in its bottle on the table, which my mother would have told me was the height of bad manners – didn’t I have a milk jug? – and then sat down beside Zeb, letting Simon have my half of the table. ‘There. All right, Simon, what have you come to talk about?’
Simon took a deep breath and adjusted his hair again. ‘Tallie,’ he began, and his voice sounded falsetto, so he cleared his throat and tried again. ‘Oh, this is difficult. You wanted to know why we chose to film here.’ He stopped again.
I looked at Zeb and Zeb looked at me. I felt as dumbfounded as he seemed. ‘Sorry, Simon, you’re just going to have to come out with it, I’m afraid,’ I said, silently hoping that it reallywasn’tanything to do with Mika.
Another deep breath, and Simon seemed to take a run at it. He licked his lips, fixed his eyes firmly on the unremarkable surface of the kitchen table and said, ‘I brought the band here. I wanted to see… I was curious about how… while we were in the area. I used to know this place very well. Tallie, I’m your dad.’
15
There was the kind of silence you could have hammered horseshoes on. The air felt suddenly thick and I seized the handle of my mug to steady myself. ‘No you’re not,’ I said.
There was more silence, the three of us frozen into a tableau like the final scene of a play, waiting for the curtain to come down. Finally Simon moved; he inched a hand across the table and touched my wrist. ‘I am,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’
I leaped to my feet, freed by his touch from the odd stasis that had held me. ‘No, you’renot!’ My chair dragged and I hated the noise all over again. ‘My dad died in an accident trying to get to my first birthday party! He’s been dead for twenty-eight years!’ I noticed the note of hysteria in my voice and stopped speaking, took a deep breath and also noticed that my eyes were burning. ‘Didn’t he?’ This was a plea, aimed towards Zeb, who was looking from Simon to me and back again.
‘Tallie.’ Zeb touched my arm. ‘Let’s just listen to Simon, all right?’ He smiled. ‘If it’s totally barking then I promise I’ll chase him out with the broom, I’ve had plenty of experience at that.’
This attempt at humour burst the bubble I’d been in and I flopped back to my seat again, shaking my head. ‘This is nuts,’ I said. ‘You must be mistaken, Simon. There’s just no way you can be my dad, he’s been dead for years.’
But,whispered a tiny breeze from the window,you’ve no proof of that at all, have you? Only the word of two women who never let you ask anything about it.
Simon’s face relaxed a little. ‘I’m sorry, Tallie,’ he repeated. ‘It’s true. I should never have let it come to this and I’m really, really sorry.’
The breath I took felt like my first breath ever. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Start talking. It’s about time somebody said something about my parentage, although I warn you, if you mention anything wacky or UFO related I will invoke Zeb and the broom.’
‘Er.’ Simon looked from me to Zeb again. I had no idea why. Was he just giving his eyes something to do, apart from resting on me? Did he notwantto look at me? ‘UFO related?’
‘The onlypossibleexplanation you could come up with for not being in contact for twenty-eight years would involve being beamed up and carried off into outer space,’ I said. ‘Twenty. Eight. Years. And I’ve been here, findable, at Drycott, all that time.’
Simon gave a shamefaced half-smile. ‘No. No aliens. I honestly have no idea where to start. I’ve rehearsed this so many times, gone over and over it in my head, but in real life it’s nothing like I imagined.’
‘Howdidyou imagine that an announcement like that would go?’ I asked, acidly.
‘How about starting at the beginning?’ Zeb suggested. ‘It might help.’
Simon sighed. He looked older now and that daft ponytail was coming untied again. I wanted to get up and give him an elastic band. I wanted to take away his tea mug and tell him to go, to never speak of this again.I wanted none of this to be happening.I wasn’t entirely sure that I wasn’t going to be sicktoo, there was a ferocious burning weight in my stomach as though half a pound of hot lead had replaced the tea.
‘Okay. Okay.’ Simon took a gulp of tea. It had clearly been too hot because his eyes watered for a moment. ‘What were you told about me – about your father, Tallie?’
I wished he wouldn’t keep using my name. It was beginning to sound possessive. ‘Nothing,’ I said, almost sulkily. ‘Tall, nice, played the guitar. Oh, and I can’t stress this enough,dead.’
I also wished my heart would stop slamming itself against my ribcage like Big Pig trying to rattle her gate open. It was distracting and made me feel even sicker.
‘And that’sall?’ Simon widened his eyes. ‘Wow. They weren’t kidding, were they?’
‘And who’sthey?’ I snapped.
‘Your mother and your grandmother. When they told me to keep away and that they’d bring you up without me. I didn’t realise that they were going to erase me from your history quite so thoroughly.’
The last bit of sunlight squeezed itself between the flopping leaves of the indoor herbs on the sill and bathed us all in a queasy light. I didn’t need its help, I already felt green. Between my heart going as though I were heading for a cardiac arrest and the tea refusing to go down my throat, I could have thrown up there and then. But I managed the words, ‘I think you had better tell me,’ with a degree of assuredness.
