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Page 34 of Once Upon a Thyme

It took a week or two for the business to get back to normal.

I struggled the A frames back out onto the roadside, turned the sign to OPEN and threw wide the gate from the car park to the garden, then waited.

Ollie came back, pedalling his bike furiously through the gate and propping it carefully against the fence to return to weeding and cutting and turning the compost as though he’d never had an unexpected few days off.

The weather continued fine and bright. I put the irrigation system back through the garden and made some more herb bouquets while manning the shop.

We had customers. Zeb made telephone calls, hovering at a distance as though almost afraid that our conversation of declared interest in one another had never taken place.

Questions. It all came down to questions.

Why hadn’t I pushed to find out more about my father?

Why had Mum and Granny never talked about him?

Why had they squashed the urge to ask anything out of me?

It had become almost pathological now, I thought, tying up the yarrow, now beginning to break down into plate-like flowers as the season drew towards its close.

Granny would snap and avoid me if I asked too much. Mum would take to her bed, becoming immobile and unapproachable. But why ? ‘Seriously, why?’ I asked a patch of dying chive flowers. ‘Why couldn’t they have just told me what Dad was like? Why did they have to treat it as a national secret?’

I also missed having the band around. Watching their glamorous posing around my little garden had given my life a borrowed shine, which had vanished with their departure.

I didn’t miss Mika at all, although I did look forward to seeing his and Tessa’s wedding as a multi-page spread in whatever gossip magazine had bought the rights.

I could experience a little frisson of second-hand acquaintance – ‘I know these people’, and enjoy her choice of designer wedding dress and their, no doubt, off the wall venue.

I missed the background chat and laughter though, and the energy that had come from all the people running around and I missed the music bursting from speakers at random moments.

It had been fun. It had also taught me how much I appreciated peace and quiet.

Late one afternoon, as I was walking the OPEN signs back into the shop and watching a flock of yellowhammers forming and re-forming in the hedgerow, like small mobile flowers opening and vanishing, Simon swept into the car park in his smart convertible.

I leaned against the top of my board and watched him park carefully, flip down a mirror and check his appearance, then get out of the car.

‘Hello,’ I said, making him jump.

‘Oh! Er, hello, Tallie. I… err… I came to… is Zeb about?’

Start asking those questions, Tallie. ‘Yes, he’s up in the barn with Big Pig. Simon…?’

‘Mmmm?’

‘You know you said that it was Mika’s idea to come here to film?

Well, Mika said…’ Simon’s expression was baffled and I found that I couldn’t put the rest of the question into words.

It had been a simple question so that we could understand what had attracted the band to Drycott.

Not something that should have provoked the evasive look that Simon had acquired.

The fear crept over me, cold and hard as a frozen blanket. Don’t ask. Never question. I had absolutely no reason to expect Simon to give me the silent treatment or to behave as though mortally offended by an innocent remark. Yet here I was, almost cowering. ‘Never mind. Doesn’t matter.’

I turned away and began shoving the board towards the shop doorway.

‘Mika told you it was my idea,’ Simon said, surprising me.

‘No. Yes. Well… we only want to know because then we can advertise better,’ I blurted.

‘Whether you already knew about us or saw the sign or… something.’ I tailed off now.

That scrunched look had deepened and had become almost a cringe.

‘I mean, it doesn’t matter, never mind, it was just a thought. Let’s go and find Zeb.’

I abandoned my A frame and began a brisk trot along the path, high stepping over the lemon balm which had flung itself full length along the gravel to form a fragrant carpet. Aversion therapy, wasn’t that what they called it? Zeb was right, I had been trained not to ask questions.

My mother had trained me into obedience, in the same way as you’d train a dog – no, nobody would train a dog by withdrawing any affection or attention until it behaved, that would be cruel.

She had trained me in a way that you wouldn’t train a dog.

The thought made that unaccustomed anger boil up again.

I stopped and turned around so quickly that Simon walked into me.

‘People are avoiding telling me things, I think,’ I said, fast and breathless. ‘I don’t know why.’

Simon’s face went a peculiar colour like all the blood in his skin fell back inside him, leaving him a waxy-yellow.

It made me feel sick and guilty as it dawned on me that there was more to the ‘Mika/Simon deciding to film here’ than I could have known.

‘Er,’ he said, looking around as though he wanted to sprint for escape.

To my relief, Zeb appeared. He smelled of pig and had hay in his hair but his fortuitous arrival made him almost godlike in my eyes. ‘Zeb! Simon’s come to talk to you,’ I said, very, very quickly, to prevent other questions I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer to escaping.

‘Oh. Hi, Simon.’ Zeb wiped his hands down his jeans and I felt again that frisson of attraction. An attraction that gave me a buzz of warmth when I thought about it.

I left the two of them to discuss barns and money and wandered off to do some weeding. There were self-sown seedlings popping up all over the place, where the irrigation system and undergrowth made conditions suitably humid, and I needed to tidy them up before my careful planting system ran riot.

While I weeded I could think. My hands could carry out the actions without the involvement of my brain, and I went straight back to thinking about Simon’s face when I’d mentioned the difference of opinion between him and Mika over who had noticed Drycott first and decided to drop in.

Then that almost corpse-like expression he’d gained when I said I thought people were keeping things from me.

What had brought that on? Simon and I had very little interaction apart from general chit-chat, so it must be something to do with Mika . But what?

Over at the pond the sun was seeding itself, tiny reflections coming to the surface and breaking into ripples as the froglets dived at my approach.

It made me smile, the thought of all those baby frogs leaping like synchronised swimmers and I felt such a fierce attachment to the garden in that moment that I knew I’d never sell.

Not to make my mother happy. Not to move to somewhere ‘by the sea’. The knowledge gave me peace but that was swiftly followed by the heavy dread. The weight in my stomach that pulled all my joy down with it, knowing that Mum was going to be upset with me.

‘Right.’ Zeb appeared as though he’d sprung through the earth and grown alongside me. ‘Simon’s going to come back in a while, once we’ve finished closing up. He wants to talk to you.’

‘Oh?’ I straightened up, hands full of couch grass. ‘What about?’

‘Plans, I think,’ Zeb said, vaguely. ‘We’ve talked money and the barn extension. I expect he wants to know what you’ve got in mind.’

‘But he talked to you!’

Zeb gave me a very direct look. ‘This is your garden, Tallie.’

‘Well, yes, I just meant…’

‘…so he’s coming to see what sort of ideas you might have.’

I looked around. Over in the barn, Big Pig was trying out the new catch on her pen, but the string was holding and her attempts to break free weren’t working, to her obvious frustration. Her thwarted snorts were audible from the other side of the garden. ‘New gates, for a start.’

‘Goes without saying. I’ve already raised the issue of proper pig containment.’ Zeb had his hands in his pockets which made his arms look longer, as though he were out of proportion. ‘And a really nice handwashing station for the toddlers, low level sink and everything.’

‘You’ve thought it all through, then? The petting farm idea?’

‘Yep. Let’s go inside and we can talk it over.’ He gave me a nudge. ‘And have tea. I really need tea. Big Pig was a bit combative over the bucket just now.’

I shrugged. ‘No need. You know what you’re doing. I don’t need chapter and verse.’

Zeb hesitated, halfway to walking down the path to the cottage. His foot stammered over the gravel. ‘You’re doing it again, and there’s no need to do it with me.’

‘What?’

‘You don’t want to talk. I’m not suggesting an in-depth conversation about our respective upbringings, I only want to lay out the ideas for taking the animal side of the business forward. You know, because you’re employing me to do it.’

I felt stupid. Had it really come to this – that I would avoid the merest hint of talking about anything? Perhaps I’d been more shaken by my mother’s expressed wish to sell the business than I thought, if I didn’t even want to chat to Zeb about the future.

‘No, of course, you’re right. Let’s go inside and discuss plans.’

‘That’s better.’ He sounded cheerily back to being my business consultant now.

‘I’ll put the kettle on. I’m parched. D’you think a little café might be a good idea next to the shop?

There’s room, if we partition off the back end, where you store all those baskets, we could put an upper room in the new barn for storage. ’