Page 36 of Home Grown Talent
Regan was genuinely awful—grasping and boring as hell. Not that the details mattered. Mason’s job had always been to tell Frieda exactly how terrible Kurt’s latest girlfriend was and all the ways in which Frieda was superior. After Kurt had walked out, it was Mason’s exaggerated description of the woman he’d shacked up with that had first brought a smile back to Frieda’s face. He’d been doing it ever since.
Luckily, this time, he was saved by the bell. Or, rather, by the doorbell.
“Oh, those girls!” Frieda exclaimed, getting up from the table and going to the entry phone. “They never remember their keys.”
A few moments later, Harmony and Melody burst into the flat in a riot of colour and noise, phones in hand and Mel talking a mile a minute.
“Mum, we’re going to Brooke’s house. Her dad’s going to—Mase!” she squealed, and he just managed to get up from the table before she barrelled into him, her frizzy red hair soft beneath his chin.
“I didn’t know you were coming,” she said, squeezing him tight around the waist. “Mum, why didn’t you say?”
After hugging his sister, Mason pulled back and nodded to Harmony. Taller and quieter than her sister, Harmony—Min, for short—was always less effusive than Mel, just giving him a lift of her chin from the kitchen door.
“Hey Min,” he said fondly. “How’s it going?”
“Terrible.”
He smiled. “Great.”
A slight smile curled one corner of her lips, and she went back to her phone.
“Girls,” Frieda said happily, “your brother’s going to pay for your French trip. So, you don’t need to worry now. You can definitely go.”
“Really?” Mel said, beaming at him. “Ohmygod, thank you so much.”
“No thanks needed. We’ve got to get you parlez-vous-ing with the best of them, right?”
Mel snorted, but Harmony looked up at him from beneath a fall of sleek blonde hair so like his own. “Why can’t Dad pay?” she said. “It’s, like, literally his job?”
Frieda frowned, flustered, and threw a helpless look at Mason. “Now, Min, don’t be—”
“I offered to pay,” Mason cut in quickly. “I want to. You know how I love making you guys do even more schoolwork. So come on,” he sat back down at the table and patted the chair next to him, “tell me about your trip. Where are you going? And don’t say ‘France’...”
CHAPTER NINE
Owen
Over the next few weeks, it seemed like Owen had endless calls and meetings with the RPP team.
The three days of filming were going to be roughly three weeks apart. RPP was arranging for the hard landscaping to be done before they started—clearing the ground, creating raised beds and putting up a small greenhouse in the corner. On the first day, they’d film Owen and Mason preparing the soil and doing some sowing and planting. Owen had planned out a mix of vegetables, herbs and flowers, since Misty was keen to get some produce back to the studio to use in the cooking section of the show. The second day of filming would capture progress and cover tending and maintenance work, and the third would show off the results of their efforts and hopefully include some harvesting of produce.
At this early stage, it wasn’t entirely clear how the content would be sliced up into the weekly slots. Misty said it would depend on what the footage looked like—what worked, what didn’t and how it dovetailed with the other content they were scheduling. The format of the show meant that they were making content decisions right up to the day before broadcast.
As well as the pre-recorded slots, Misty wanted Owen and Mason to come into the studio for at least one live appearance.
“Maybe we’ll do more if you go down well with the viewers,” she’d said with a smirk. Owen found it difficult to believe the audience could get that excited by gardening basics, even if Mason did flirt with him, but what did he know?
When Owen had asked if the live appearances would count as one of the eight slots he had agreed to, Misty pointed out that the contract—which he’d blithely signed without the benefit of any legal advice, something Lewis had chewed his ear off about later—obliged him to do whatever additional promotional appearances RPP might ‘reasonably request’.
Lesson learned, if a little too late.
During those initial planning weeks, it wasn’t easy to meet all his commitments. Even with RPP being flexible about scheduling calls and meetings, his working day was extended by a couple of hours most days, and, between the Weekend Wellness stuff and catching up on paperwork for the business, he was now working most of his weekends too.
There was one positive coming out of it, though: getting to know Mason. Even, amazingly, becoming friends with Mason. Because Mason wasn’t actually the shallow ‘shameless self-promoter’ that Owen had had him pegged as. Yes, he spent a lot of time working on his social media profile and thinking about what his thousands of followers thought of his every move, but that wasn’t—as Owen had so uncharitably assumed—because Mason was a self-obsessed narcissist. It was just… part of his job, a part he took seriously. And one on one? Away from other people, Mason was softer, sweeter, surprisingly thoughtful. As the weeks passed, it began to feel to Owen that their initial camaraderie was deepening into something that felt like a real, lasting friendship.
When Owen had, early on and a little diffidently, asked Mason if he wanted to help with planning what they’d actually plant, Mason’s enthusiastic response had taken him aback. They’d spent several evenings poring over Owen’s gardening books to reach their final list, and when Mason had emailed him a whole set of detailed notes afterwards, setting out how different herbs and vegetables could be incorporated into other slots on cooking, pickling and preserving, Owen had been stunned by how much work Mason had put into it.
“This is amazing,” he’d said as he scrolled through the notes on his phone over a quick coffee they’d grabbed one lunchtime. "How do you know so much about this stuff?”