Page 15 of Once Upon a Thyme
It felt wrong to be standing behind him at my full height while he was obviously undergoing some conflict, so I went over to sit next to him on the pleasantly warm stone of the shop step.
This squeezed us together in the doorway, our shoulders touching, but it was infinitely preferable to towering over him.
‘Like I said, sounds personal. Anything you want to tell me?’
There was a pause. He seemed to be thinking.
‘Guy I worked with,’ Zeb said, eventually, still indistinct through hands and hair.
‘We trained together. He was very… I don’t know how you’d describe it.
Personable? Good looking? And pushy, very pushy.
He had money behind him, wealthy dad and money seems to equal confidence.
Got himself a job working for a TV chef and now he’s got his own programme on Sunday morning TV, cooking for the masses.
’ The hands lowered and Zeb looked at me sideways. ‘Wanker.’
‘Ah, professional jealousy. That’s always a good one.’ I smiled. Zeb’s sudden flash of anger made me sympathetic. I’d felt the same way myself when more successful and high-profile herb farms featured in the glossy magazines. ‘Was that when you decided to stop cheffing?’
Zeb breathed a deep sigh that rocked his entire body.
‘Partly. Seeing him popping up every week and my wife asking me why I didn’t do that – make a fortune being a celebrity while I explained that he had a team of people behind him making him look good, that it was all fake and not really what being a chef ought to be like – I started to realise that she really didn’t have the faintest idea.
’ Another sigh. ‘That she didn’t really know me at all. ’
A burst of sudden laughter rose from the garden and I looked between the parked vehicles and through the fence to see the band laughing among themselves, Mika in the centre looking pleased with himself.
They all held their instruments casually as though they were extensions of their bodies.
One of the girls was sitting on the edge of the pond, Simon I could see behind the lights, waving a hand.
Getting The Goshawk Traders into a position to start filming looked like trying to bottle clouds.
In my pocket my phone beeped a text. It would be my mother, stuck in the era of texting. I’d only just got her to stop phoning me every time a thought crossed her mind. I pulled the phone out and looked at my screen.
Natalie, darling, would you pop over? I’m feeling quite dreadful and not up to cooking, could you perhaps make me a sandwich?
There was a horrible contraction somewhere near my heart. She needed me. But here I was, watching Mika – who had ‘noticed’ me – and supervising the filming to prevent anything dreadful happening.
‘Your mother again?’ Zeb looked down at my phone screen too. Normally I would have felt annoyed, spied on, but for some reason this time I didn’t.
‘Yes.’ I held out the phone so he could read the message.
‘And you don’t want to go?’ He pushed gently at my hand, turning the phone back away and onto my lap. I saw him look towards the band.
‘I don’t want to, no. But she’s not well.’
‘Well enough to feel hungry, evidently.’ Zeb raised an eyebrow.
‘She doesn’t eat much.’ I could hear the apologetic tone in my own voice, the justification dripping like lemon juice from every syllable, sour and tongue-shrivelling.
‘I could go.’
I stared at him. ‘But… but you don’t know her.’
Zeb gave me another hair-bouncing smile. ‘We’ve met. Over Zoom, when she recruited me. Maybe it’s time I met her in person and told her that I’m only staying for the month on sufferance?’
‘But she wants a sandwich,’ I said weakly.
‘I’m a bloody chef, I think I can knock up a cheese and pickle without too much trauma. Besides…’ He stopped so suddenly that the unsaid words made a little gulp in his throat, as though he was swallowing them rather than letting them out.
‘Besides, what?’ I asked, when it became evident that he wasn’t going to finish under his own steam.
‘Besides, it might be good for her to know that you can’t always drop everything and run when she calls,’ Zeb muttered, leaning forward so he was talking to his outstretched knees. ‘I can talk up how important it is that you’re here, keeping an eye on what’s going on.’
‘You wouldn’t mind?’
It might have been my imagination, but Zeb seemed to look from his jeaned legs up out across to where Mika was holding court, making the rest of the band laugh uproariously again.
It was only a flick of a look, and he might really have been checking to see where Simon was, or that Big Pig hadn’t chanced another excursion across the borders, but to me it seemed he was looking at Mika.
‘No problem,’ Zeb said. ‘It doesn’t really need two of us to sit here and ogle them, does it? ’
‘I’m not ogling,’ I said, offended.
‘Of course you’re not.’ Zeb started to get to his feet. ‘Anyway. Would you like me to go and make your mother a sandwich? It might be best if you text her back and warn her that I’m coming though, otherwise I’m just a random strange bloke turning up at her door.’
‘You aren’t random and strange,’ I said, without thinking.
Zeb paused, halfway up the door frame, looking down on me where I still sat on the step. ‘Thank you,’ he said quietly. ‘There was me thinking you thought I was…’
‘She’s already met you on Zoom,’ I finished and his mouth dropped from the half-smile it had been wearing to look as though it had caught on his teeth.
‘Oh, yes. Right.’
‘I’m texting her now.’
‘Okay. I’ll head over. Which house am I aiming for?’
I had my head bent over the screen; it was hard to see the letters in this flame of white light. ‘The first house next to the stream. The stepping stones cross right to her front garden gate.’
Zeb hesitated for a moment, but I was too busy sending the text to ask if he wanted anything else, then he was gone. I heard his car start and the spit of gravel as he turned out onto the lane.
I waited until he was safely out of sight. Then I got up to go and ogle the band and see how the filming was going.