Page 25 of Once Upon a Thyme

‘That’s very… I mean…’ Flustered, I tried to fork up a piece of something from the curry sauce, but it turned out not to be a piece of chicken as I’d expected, but something soft which fell apart on impact and left me scraping around to try to regather it.

‘There really isn’t anything “happening” here, you know, Zeb.

I’m trying to keep the business together, that’s all. ’

‘I’m not good at communicating.’ He stood up so suddenly that I was almost sure I heard the surprised squeak of a startled mouse, chair sliding back from the table to give him room to start pacing.

‘Another complaint from my wife and I seem to have got worse, side effect of a job where you poke through people’s finances when they don’t want you to.

I thought it would be useful, come in to businesses and tell them what to do – but it turns out that nobody wants you there except for management.

Everyone on the floor is already doing what they can and what they’re told.

No one has the authority to change anything except the top bods, and they don’t really care, except for profitability, when sometimes that’s not what it’s about. ’

He stopped talking and looked at me, his hair flopping with curtailed movement.

‘Well you just managed to communicate all that without a problem,’ I said tartly.

‘It isn’t what I thought it would be.’ Zeb leaned against the door, restlessly.

I wondered if he was allergic to the additives in the curry or something, because he was decidedly twitchy.

‘I want to help people sort themselves out, but I’m beginning to realise that I need something more creative.

I loved that, with the cooking, being able to dream up new dishes, new ingredients, and I thought I could translate it into showing people new ways to run their businesses.

Turns out that everyone just wants more money for doing the same old stuff.

’ He sighed. ‘I’m not cut out for this. I hate the whole “reduce expenses, advertise more”, which is all my job really comes down to. ’

‘Again, not entirely sure why you are telling me this.’ I watched him carefully. There was a fidgety impatience about him which made me wonder whether he might be about to launch into a meaningless tirade, start telling me that the moon landings were a hoax.

‘To be honest, neither am I.’

Zeb came and sat down again and we ate some more of the random collection of food items in near silence. Eventually, because he was still looking anxious, I asked, ‘So, what would be your dream job? If you could do anything in the world?’

His chewing slowed, and he looked thoughtfully into the curry, as though he could read his future in the bobbing chicken lumps and the orange sauce. ‘Good question,’ he said slowly.

‘I thought so, yes.’

I began collecting the empty containers from the table to make more room, stacking them to one side to rinse out, and consolidating the leftovers onto a plate. The battered sausage rolled, solitary and unwanted, into the remaining rice.

‘I don’t know.’

Zeb’s quiet answer made me look at him. He’d put his fork down and was staring across the kitchen, through the brightly lit circle that was the table and our plates full of food, through me, and on into the formless darkness of the far corners, as though he’d been asked to calculate the square root of forever.

‘I don’t know. I’ve been looking all my life. And that’s terrifying.’

I sat down again. ‘I’ve never had a choice,’ I said.

‘I was born to take over from Mum, who was always going to take over from Granny. I was an absolute nightmare at school, as I told you – I didn’t need qualifications and careers days made me want to hide in the toilets.

As long as you can tell parsley from hemlock, you’re good in this job. ’

Zeb’s attention snapped back to my face, and he smiled. ‘You and I are coming at things from the opposite direction, aren’t we?’ He picked up another popadom and broke off a section.

‘As long as we aren’t about to collide over my accounts.

’ I sounded brisk. Thinking about school, about my lack of interest in anything despite what my teachers had called ‘an obvious ability’, made me feel slightly guilty.

I’d always been so sure of my future – take over Drycott and run it until I retired – I’d never even bothered to try.

What might I have done with my life if I hadn’t walked into the family firm?

What might I have wanted to do, where might I have wanted to go?

It was uncomfortable to think that I might have had an alternative future.

‘I like Big Pig,’ Zeb said, again seemingly apropos of nothing. ‘And the small pigs.’

‘Well, she hasn’t eaten you yet, so I’m assuming the feeling is mutual.’

‘I mean, maybe I could work with animals? I don’t mind shovelling and feeding and all that, and it’s nice to feel wanted by something that doesn’t shout at you and is mildly affectionate.

And the work is necessary unlike cooking for people who don’t care, or trying to feign enthusiasm for raising profiles, again, for people who don’t care.

And, of course, there’s no shouting. The shouting has really put me off most jobs, to be honest.’

‘You clearly haven’t been on the wrong side of a bucket when Big Pig is hungry,’ I muttered.

‘So, yes. I think I might like to work with animals.’ Zeb poked at some yellow bits on his plate.

‘Maybe you could take me on here to expand the small animal side of things? We could extend the barn, buy a piece of the field behind, turn it into an alternative income stream for winter – the car park is already there and the visitor facilities – and the animals could eat any leftover herbs. Plus the manure is good for the land, and you could pen chickens or pigs on unused sections to turn the ground over and fertilise it.’

My mouth dropped open and I felt my eyes widen. ‘What the hell are you doing thinking about expanding the pets?’ I asked when I’d regained control of my lower jaw. ‘That is outside your remit, surely. My mother would go spare.’

‘She took me on to maximise the turnover. Taking on some more animals, turning the barn into a proper pets’ corner could be useful in those down months when the garden is bare.’

I stared at him. ‘It is a proper pets’ corner,’ I said.

Zeb forked up another mouthful of curry and chewed, but looked as though his mind were elsewhere.

‘But the animals keep escaping,’ he said reasonably.

‘What would happen if they escaped one night and vanished? Plus it’s not very accessible for children with disabilities.

You have to climb over that little fence to get in with the guinea pigs; it would be better if you could open the whole pen up. ’

I carried on staring. My spine had begun to prickle and my scalp was tightening. It was him. He was letting the animals out to try to get me to make a more permanent structure, to change their accommodation. Why? To teach me a lesson? ‘No,’ I said.

‘Why not? I mean, I haven’t looked at the books yet, but you can’t be doing more than just ticking over in the off season, and that will be – what? October to March? Six months of no real earnings.’

‘We sell dried herbs and posies. We sell herb arrangements for interior décor,’ I said sulkily and wished I’d turned off the computer. Our off-season earnings were, indeed, woeful, and he’d find that out the second he flipped to the winter pages of the spreadsheets.

‘So, turn the barn into a proper animal enclosure. You could rescue some more cute squeaky things, advertise it as a real experience, employ someone to be in charge. We’d have to look into the additional insurance of course. Big Pig could do someone a proper menace if she wanted to.’

‘I’ve got insurance.’ I sounded so sulky now that I was only a whisker away from stomping up the stairs shouting ‘You’re not my mother!’ and slamming some doors.

Zeb put down his fork and picked up his plate. ‘Right. I need to go through these figures for a bit now. Do you want me to wash up first?’

I couldn’t speak. The irritation I felt at his presumption had gone beyond just making my hair itch now. I wanted to hurl the plates at his head, stab him with the forks and I’d even have a go at causing bodily injury with the leftover naan bread if I stayed here.

‘I’m going out,’ I said, trying to sound cool and professional and not half an inch away from killing him with the comestibles. ‘To check on the garden.’

‘Fine, you do that.’ Unconcerned, Zeb started to clear the table. ‘That curry wasn’t bad, actually. I’d have left out the coriander though.’

No, I couldn’t stay in here. Despite the warm glow from the lamps and the appealingly domestic smell of food and whatever aftershave it was that Zeb was wearing that had the scent of the sea about it, I was not going to wait while he discovered that he was absolutely right about us needing to make more money in winter.

I didn’t think I could take his smug tap of the screen and turning to me to make that smiling-not-smiling face that I just knew he’d do.

The tosser.

I satisfied myself by jerking the door closed behind me as I went out.

It caught, as it always did, on the tiles and refused to slam, but it made a wonderfully punctuating squeal as friction and speed of closure dragged it shut.

Then I stood in the night beyond the illumination from the windows, and breathed.