Page 33 of Once Upon a Thyme

‘Then we’ve no need to worry, have we?’ Zeb said lightly.

I didn’t even bother with the stepping stones.

Instead, I splashed my way through the calf deep water of the little beck running down outside the houses to join the main river just before the bridge.

The water was cold, the weed draped my jeans and there was something about the eddy and curl of its movement against my legs that made me feel better.

‘No. No, we don’t. She can’t sell, she’s only got a tiny percentage interest.’ My feet sloshed as I stepped out of the water. ‘Unless she can guilt me into it, and my mother is very, very good at guilt.’

Here came the anger again. I’d opened that secret trunk and, like Pandora’s box, I’d released something that had been better contained.

There was nobody else about in the village.

Away along the street I could see the corner shop, its awning still pulled across to shade the goods in the window from the relentless sun.

I should pop in there and pick up some bits, Mum would have used all the milk I’d bought her yesterday.

She always said it wasn’t as nice as the farm shop and that they’d once sold her some out of date Battenberg so she preferred me to go elsewhere, but it was handy for last minute bits and pieces.

Then I looked at the distance. It was less than a couple of hundred metres, along a fully paved lane. There was rarely any traffic. Mum could get herself to the shop if she wanted something.

I walked on.

‘Guilt I’m practically an expert in.’ Zeb was just behind me. ‘Having had all my imperfections and shortcomings listed for me as my marriage imploded, I’ve got a degree in handling guilt.’

I half smiled. We’d got that much in common, Zeb and I. His guilt over not being present enough in his marriage, and mine – actually, why did I feel guilty?

‘So it’s the money.’ Zeb caught up and fell into step beside me, seemingly not disturbed by the fact that my wet shoes and jeans were spraying water with every step. ‘She needs the money. I wonder why?’

I stopped on the bridge and turned to him.

‘Zeb,’ I said, keeping my voice as level as I could.

‘I don’t even know what my own father looked like.

I don’t know why I was brought up at Drycott instead of in the village.

I have nothing to go on except little hints and Granny’s mutterings.

We are not a family that talks, as you may have gathered. ’

His face twitched in something that might have been a suppressed smile.

‘You’re not, are you?’ he said. ‘It’s great.

You don’t shout random commands at me which is very refreshing.

You ask me to do something, then just let me get on and do it.

You expect me to get on and do it, as though any kind of refusal doesn’t cross your mind.

It’s just one of the reasons I’m enjoying working with you. ’

Beneath us, deep in the river, there was the plop of a fish jumping. Zeb and I were facing one another on the summit of the bridge, surrounded by ancient stone and the smell of moving water. He reached out a hand and touched the rip in my shirt sleeve. ‘You’re bleeding,’ he said.

I ignored that. My pulse was thrumming in my head. I must still be in shock, I reasoned to myself. I’m not selling the gardens.

‘Oh, and if you’re thinking that I’m just wanting a place to stay and all that entails, I can assure you that I came out of the divorce with some money.

’ Zeb’s voice seemed a long way away now.

All that was real was the sunlight, the water and this feeling that all my nerves were too close to the surface.

‘We had a surprising amount of equity in the house. I’m not trying to get my feet under the table. ’

His words weren’t making sense. I was here, feeling everything so acutely: the warmth of the road coming up through my wet shoes, the sun etching the stone, the apple-pie smell of willow herb from the riverbank. The anger had gone again now, to be replaced by confusion. Why was he still talking?

‘Zeb,’ I said, looking up at his face. ‘I really like you.’

He swallowed. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Well, the feeling, as you may have gathered, is mutual.’

We stared at one another for a moment, silently acknowledging what we had said and how important it might be. ‘I’m glad,’ I said quietly. ‘It makes all this’ – I waved to indicate the house behind us – ‘less embarrassing.’

‘No need to be embarrassed, Tallie.’ Zeb looked away and into the water below us. ‘You aren’t responsible for the way your mother feels.’

‘Thank you. I know that, really. But I’ve had nearly thirty years of being made to feel that I am.

Which is why my life is such a mess – I have absolutely no idea what’s going on here, why my mother has suddenly decided to sell her family home and business, why she thinks I ought to go and live somewhere a long way away.

It’s come out of nowhere and I don’t know what I should feel. I need help, I think.’

Cautiously, as though he was afraid that I might jump over the bridge to get away, Zeb took my hand. ‘You’re not used to asking for help, are you, Tallie?’

‘Nope.’

‘Then I’m flattered that you feel you can ask me.’

I glanced sideways at him. ‘There isn’t anyone else,’ I said, and then bit my lips together. ‘Sorry. Sorry. That was uncalled for. I’m just not used to this talking thing.’

Now he laughed. ‘Clearly.’

But he kept holding my hand. ‘I’m starting to feel things that I’ve been ignoring for years and I really have no idea what to do. Or why my mother has pulled selling Drycott out of a hat as an idea.’

‘Perhaps you should ask her,’ Zeb said gently.

I did not protest at the hand-holding. It felt nice to have someone else on my side in all this. ‘I can’t. In my family you don’t ask questions like that. You don’t ask questions at all.’

Zeb tugged my hand until I came in closer.

‘That’s what they taught you. But you’ve never wondered why?

I mean, I’m pretty shocking at communication, but you and your mother, you could give lessons to an order of Trappist monks when it comes to the “not talking” thing.

I never properly learned to talk to people because my parents were always so busy, we didn’t do the family meals around the table talking about our day thing.

Mum was out in the evenings – she was a music tutor, getting pupils through their exams – and Dad was out all day and working when he was home.

I used to sit with a book in the corner wondering if they’d notice if I wasn’t even there. ’

‘That’s very…’

‘And when I got married I realised that other people want me to talk about how I feel, about what’s going on in my head, and I don’t know how to.’ He tightened his grip on my fingers until I was almost pressed against him. ‘But you, Tallie, you’re like a specialist at not talking about things.’

He was tall and when he moved he blocked the reflections of light on water that were spearing my vision.

But most important of all, he was here .

He was calm and he was sensible. He wasn’t Mika, all over-excitement and raising my hopes of there being something between us only to dash them with his flightiness and exuberance.

Mika wasn’t real. What I felt for Mika was just the crush that anyone would feel for a star which had unexpectedly appeared in their bleak sky. Zeb was real .

I moved in closer, of my own volition now. ‘Zeb,’ I whispered. ‘Maybe we could learn to talk to each other.’

He gave a tiny smile and the hand not holding mine came up, fingers brushing at my hair while his dark eyes smiled into mine. ‘We can try,’ he said. ‘I guess we just go with it and see what happens.’

‘You and me, is it… I mean, could we… is it a thing?’

‘I’m not Mika,’ he said solemnly. ‘I’ve never played a washboard in my life.’

‘To be honest, I’m not even sure that Mika is Mika.

’ I was enjoying this. Physical contact with no pressure, as though Zeb just wanted to be here, talking to me, and could have stayed here until dark.

‘I get the feeling that he’s a bit too used to being attractive and having any woman he wants.

Oh, and I’m glad. About the washboard thing.

I was never sure how I felt about a man who played the washboard. He’s not for the likes of me.’

‘Could I be for the likes of you? Do you think?’

I looked up at him. A hank of fringe was dangling over one eye and his head was cocked at an opposing slant.

‘Can we see?’ I whispered. ‘Take some time and just – see? I’m not used to being allowed to feel things.

I’ve been sitting on emotional baggage for years and I need to find out how it all works. ’

Zeb smiled and gave a twitch of his head that made his hair bob about. ‘Not an unequivocal “no”, that’s good.’ He sounded diffident, but then Zeb generally sounded diffident. ‘And you’re not throwing things, which is even better. I think you need someone on your side in all of this.’

I bridled a bit out of habit. ‘People are on my side,’ I said, somewhat haughtily. ‘My mother, Ollie, um… other people.’

‘Your mother wants you to sell Drycott,’ he pointed out. ‘And I don’t think you can really bring Ollie into this.’

I deflated. ‘I suppose not. I’m not convinced that Mum is serious. She’s just throwing ideas about, she does that sometimes.’

‘Hm, I’m not so sure.’ Zeb looked back over the river towards the house. ‘She sounded pretty determined to me. Maybe she’s got financial worries? I mean, how is she affording to keep that place?’

‘Like I said, I assume Dad had insurance policies that paid out on his death.’

‘Hmm,’ Zeb said again. ‘But that was, what, nearly thirty years ago? And she owns the house, so that will have taken a lump sum. She must have bills; where is the money for those coming from? Unless your dad was a billionaire.’

I found I was looking too now, at the mossy-roofed old house beyond the grassed-in gateway with the thorns preventing entry as though my mother was some kind of latter-day Sleeping Beauty. ‘He was a guitarist in a local band,’ I said. ‘I don’t think they are noted for being rich.’

‘ The Goshawk Traders aren’t doing too badly,’ Zeb observed, managing to sound only slightly sarcastic. ‘The lovely Mika is hardly scratching round for a fiver to buy lunch.’ He sighed now. ‘There’s just something. I can feel it. Too many things not said. Not allowed to be said.’

I thought about the band, milling around the garden. About their decision to film in the garden because Mika… hang on. Hang on a second…

‘Simon said that Mika wanted to film because he liked the look of the place as they were driving past,’ I said slowly.

‘Yep. Bit odd, but why not, it’s pretty and off the beaten?—’

‘But Mika said it was Simon’s idea.’ I still spoke carefully.

All those years of being told not to ask questions, all those years of upset and silence and the unspoken censure if I dared to voice any of my concerns, hung heavy in the back of my head.

It was as if the fear of repercussions made it too much trouble to even start to prod any doubts into life.

‘Maybe they got muddled. Maybe it was one of those group decisions, where everyone has a say.’ Zeb was looking at me with a concerned crease between his eyes.

‘You said I should ask questions.’ I rounded on him and he was forced to take a step back, brushing against the stone of the bridge wall and raising a little cloud of lichen and moss dust. Behind him, the sun slunk lower, dodging down between the hills as though it wanted no part of my sudden desire for knowledge. ‘So don’t shoot them down when I do.’

‘I meant questions about things that matter. Like how come your mother, with no visible means of support, owns a fabulous semi-detached cottage with a stream at the end of the garden and yet does nothing in the way of upkeep? Why you have no pictures of your father? That sort of question. Not “who decided the band should film here?” That wasn’t the sort of thing I had in mind. ’

I eyed him sternly. ‘Look. I have to start being assertive somewhere.’ I probed around the thought of asking Mum about my father; about her decision to move home to live with her mother when Dad had clearly left her enough money to live on.

Other questions loomed too in the background – what had my father been like?

Kind, musical, tall was all I knew. Why would it have hurt Mum so badly to have told me more about him?

I understood there’d been grief, but it all happened twenty-eight years ago, surely feelings must have been down to a quiet sadness and nostalgia by now.

But that was all too much. For now I could only deal with the small questions. How come the band decided to film with us?

‘You’ve got a point though. We never did get a proper answer from them, did we?

’ Zeb had moved away from me now, as though satisfied that we’d come to a conclusion about us and were now onto other things.

‘Driving past, like the area – but why Drycott ? Why a herb garden? We need to know why they chose us so we can capitalise on that.’

‘Let’s go back.’ I started walking, gravity accelerating my footsteps as we sloped down from the high point of the bridge.

Behind us the water rushed on and a duck quacked into the otherwise silent air.

‘If the band have finished filming then I need to tidy everything up and get ready to open again tomorrow.’

‘Plus, I need to look into building regulations, if Simon is serious about paying for a new barn.’

Zeb strode along beside me, our lengthening shadows thrown into the hedge by the slowly setting sun, which was creeping down behind the hills as though reluctant to leave us.

I flicked the occasional glance at him as we walked.

He was still something of an unknown quantity, but he was nice.

He was here and he wanted to see if we could have anything more in the way of a relationship other than grouchy boss and unwanted employee.

I didn’t know yet. Maybe we could, it was too early to tell, but the sight of him sloping along, pulling stems from the verge to put between his teeth and keeping up an inconsequential chatter, made me think that we just might.