Page 12 of Once Upon a Thyme

‘I’ve fed the pig.’ Zeb’s voice, prosaic in tone and content, made me swing around and nearly tip my display into a riot of broken stalks and puddles.

‘Oh! You made me jump.’ I excused myself for my overblown response. I hadn’t heard him coming, so bound up in staring at Mika that even the crunch of Zeb’s arrival over the gravel hadn’t registered.

‘Well,’ Zeb said dryly, ‘I do work here. For now. Would you like me to liaise with Simon while they sort out what they’re doing and you keep an eye on… the shop?’

He meant Mika and he meant me to know he meant Mika. He’d even angled his eyebrows in such a way that his sarcasm was evident on his face, which was a neat trick.

‘I need to know where they want to film, so that I can make sure there’s no damage to the herbs,’ I said defensively, as though I’d really been checking out the band’s disembarkation in case they’d been about to trample merrily through the herb beds. ‘This is my business.’

‘Well done,’ Zeb said, still dry and sarcastic. ‘I’m glad you can remember that when it’s appropriate.’

‘ You don’t have to be here at all,’ I hissed, annoyance finally getting the upper hand.

‘And if I hadn’t been, they wouldn’t be filming here. You had to leave during the vital meeting, remember? I set this up with Simon, while you attended to your mother.’

I opened my mouth to spit a well-crafted reply, but couldn’t think of one. He was absolutely right. Left to my own devices, I’d have blown the opportunity. Wouldn’t I? Or would I have ignored my mother’s pleas and sorted details with Simon, while my phone blew up with accusatory messages?

I knew the answer to that, of course I did. I would have gone to the chemist, shrugged my shoulders at the lost chance to have a famous band filming in my garden, and plodded along on passing trade and the occasional advert that we could afford in the local paper.

I was my mother’s daughter. She and I both knew it.

‘Well, all right. But make sure they keep to the paths.’ I looked away from my precarious bouquets and back over to the band, who were milling around and talking to the team of men that the lorries had brought, while Simon manhandled instrument cases out of the minibus.

‘Will do, boss.’ Zeb stepped smartly away.

I narrowed my eyes in his direction, which brought Mika back into my eyeline again.

God, he was gorgeous. The other three male band members, one in a plain white T-shirt and artfully torn jeans, one in dungaree overalls and the other in a pair of harem pants so loose as to almost be a skirt, faded into insignificance beside Mika.

All their careful facial hair and assorted dreadlocks were mere background to Mika’s slow smile and elegant movement.

I shook my head and went to unlock the shop.

This was ridiculous. I was ridiculous. Until the other day I hadn’t even heard of The Goshawk Traders .

I had nothing in common with any of them, other than an apparent desire to be around herbs and knowing what a washboard was, and Mika was nothing more to me than a pleasant backdrop for a few hours.

He was a passing distraction, that was all.

Nothing in this world would drag from me the admission that I had looked him up online, read all the articles I could find and checked out all his pictures.

I knew that he was the same age as me, his star sign was Aquarius, he’d been born in Sussex, had a younger brother and parents who were classically trained musicians.

He’d dated a famous pop star, featured in a lifestyle magazine in his tastefully decorated London home, and had given long, impassioned interviews on the state of the world and how humans could best help themselves and their environment.

I didn’t know why I’d read the articles which had only left me feeling more inadequate and even more in awe of the man.

When I’d thought he was just an attractive member of a band I’d never heard of, admiring him from a distance had been doable.

Now I knew his parents’ names, the name of his dog and what colour his kitchen was, professional detachment was a lot harder.

Even though I knew those articles were carefully curated for their readership, the knowledge gave me a strange sense of second-hand intimacy, almost as though I personally had been invited into his converted chapel home to admire the monk’s bench seating and the double height glass window in the bedroom.

When I looked over at where the band were now sorting themselves out, taking instruments out and checking them over, and Mika glanced up, saw me looking and gave me a big grin and a small wave with a viola bow, I found myself staggering, weak-kneed, back into the shelter of the shop.

This was ridiculous .

I rearranged the soapwort to give myself something to do. I could hide in here, pretend that manning the shop was important enough to keep myself out of the way.

‘Tallie!’ Zeb was waving from outside. I could see him, broken into fragments by the wobbly old glass which had probably been in the window since before the First World War. ‘You’re wanted!’

Oh bugger. I tried to pretend extreme busyness, but Zeb kept waving.

‘All right, what’s the matter?’ I emerged to Zeb fidgeting on the gravel of the yard while men unspooled cables and erected a lighting system that could have illuminated a stadium. The sun was shining and I had no idea why they would need fifty million watts of competition for it.

‘Simon wants to talk to you about where they can set up. They’re looking at a static piece with the band playing and then shots of them walking around. Or something. He’ll explain it to you, but I thought you’d be the one to know where they’d do least damage.’

There was no sarcasm or apology in his tone. He sounded friendly, open and professional, even though he was standing slightly hunched and with his hair flopping into one eye.

‘So now I’m in charge?’ I asked.

One eyebrow raised and vanished into the lock of hair now threatening to obscure his vision. ‘If you can spare the time.’

Now that was sarcastic. I felt better immediately.

Zeb unsettled me. He was a constant reminder that my mother still had an involvement in my business.

I didn’t want to like him because I didn’t entirely know where his loyalty lay, and when he was being slightly unpleasant to me everything felt better. I could dislike him with reason.

‘I’d better come and talk to Simon then, before you let them stomp all over the new fennel beds.’

I came out of the shop and almost walked directly into Mika, who was carrying something across the yard from the minibus.

‘Hey, steady there!’ He put out a hand to catch me as I tried to stop dead, failed, and slithered on the loose gravel. ‘Slow down, you’ll do yourself an injury.’

His hand was on my shoulder, half supporting me and half preventing me from crashing into him.

He wore silver rings on every finger, smelled of musky scent and peppermint and his expression was of dark concern.

I was instantly fifteen again. I could see Zeb, behind Mika’s shoulder, giving me a look built entirely of evils.

‘I… err… no, sorry, I mean, I… sorry, I was just…’ I blushed, performed a move that was somewhere between a curtsy and a weak-kneed ‘gathering of self’, and dashed across the yard.

Away from Zeb and his pointed statements about my work, but most of all away from Mika and his inordinate amount of sex appeal.

He’d actually touched me ! I regressed further, from fifteen to about twelve, when I’d had an all-encompassing crush on a TV gardener, for which I blamed Granny’s addiction to his weekly programme.

I’d had pictures of him in my room, spent the money I earned from weeding and planting and bringing on seedlings for Granny on his books, and endured my mother’s comments about his way of dressing and his accent with only the occasional bite-back on his behalf.

It was like that, only worse, because Mika was right here in front of me. Well, behind me now, as I fled through the gate and towards where the stolid figure of Simon was perching on the edge of the pond, looking uncomfortable.

‘You needed to talk to me?’ I panted on arrival, hoping that my cheeks had cooled sufficiently for me not to compete with the brilliant scarlet of the poppies which had self-seeded amongst the artemisia, and which were waving their bright flags of petal recklessly in the breeze.

‘Just wondering where is off-limits, and whether we could set up here in front of the pond for the static shots? We’ve decided to start filming today, while the weather is good, striking whilst the iron is hot and all that.

Have the band playing with the garden behind them?

’ Simon waved a hand, indicating the pond and the half of the garden that lay towards the shop.

‘Of course. Maybe facing this way?’ I inched myself around so that I had my back to the road.

‘Then the backdrop is the garden and the wall out to the fields beyond, rather than the shop, which might get busy later? I thought you were only looking the place over today, so I haven’t closed up.

’ And please pay extra for the disruption, I didn’t add.

Simon nodded slowly. ‘Yeah. That would be good.’ Then he looked down at his feet, patting the mossy side of the pond as though distracting himself. ‘It’s a really lovely setting you’ve got here. Have you owned Drycott for long?’

At least talking to Simon meant I wasn’t having to contend with Zeb, or tiptoe around Mika. He was nice and normal and not at all intimidating. He looked a little as though he should be wearing steel-rimmed glasses and standing behind a double bass in a jazz band.