Page 35 of Once Upon a Thyme

It felt odd, having someone to go over plans with.

Ollie was great, he’d talk herbs all day and have wonderful ideas about new varieties and planting schemes, but he had absolutely no interest in anything else, and would wander off if I started throwing business ideas at him.

Zeb was keen. I could see how he had made a good chef, putting new things together in combinations I would never have thought of.

He was good at ideas. I found that once he began to lay out his thoughts on what we could do and his opinions on the best way to go forward, it made my creative side tingle with potential.

This could work. That encouraged me to come out with some thoughts of my own and before I knew it we were drinking tea, drawing designs on the back of a tax demand envelope, and laughing.

We laughed a lot, and it made me realise how little I’d had to laugh about lately.

I was relaxing with Zeb, uncoiling that desperate hard spiral that kept me running, like clockwork winding down to a final tick.

He was funny, that concerned Time Lord face opening up into a smile that was so genuine and engaging that it made me smile back.

The tense knot between my shoulder blades softened when I reached out to hold our sketch and encountered his hand on the way.

The touch stopped me. It was as though the feel of his skin against mine brought me back to reality. ‘What do I do about Mum?’ I asked.

His grin died. ‘What do you want to do about her? I have to warn you that I won’t be party to anything illegal.’ His eyes still held the echo of the smile. ‘But I might offer to hold the pillow,’ he muttered, and I didn’t think I’d been meant to hear that.

‘Why on earth does she want me to sell up? And even if I do, she’s not entitled to any of the money.’

‘But she could persuade you to give her some. If she needed it.’ Zeb let go of the envelope and his fingers fell away from mine. ‘Couldn’t she?’

‘No. Well, maybe.’

‘So the question isn’t so much why does she want you to sell, as what does she need money for.’

I thought of my mother in her frowsty room, old make-up caked onto the surface of the dressing table. Old clothes hanging in the wardrobe. The state of the garden. ‘I have no idea. She doesn’t seem to spend much.’

‘Tallie…’ My name was almost a sigh. ‘No. Never mind. It’s not my business. Do you ever look in her cupboards?’

It was such an odd question that it made me pull a face. ‘How strange! Why would I? I check that she’s got food, that the fridge isn’t empty, that’s all. I’m not going to start ransacking her storage, if that’s what you mean.’ I narrowed my eyes. ‘Is there something you’re not telling me, Zeb?’

‘I don’t think it’s me you should be asking that question.’ He looked almost sad now, a hint of similarity with Simon’s expression earlier in the afternoon. ‘But you don’t ask your mother anything and it’s ruining your life.’

I laughed, but it wasn’t the same laughter as before. This laugh was harder and curled up at the edges. ‘No it’s not.’

‘Simon told me you seemed upset. You think that people are keeping things from you?’

‘Don’t bring Simon into this, it’s nothing to do with him.

I only wanted to know which one of them was fibbing about deciding to come in and look around.

Nothing big. He got a wee bit evasive and I decided it wasn’t worth stirring things up for such a stupid reason, that’s all.

Maybe neither of them can remember whose idea it was.

Why should they, after all? And, and I cannot stress this enough, it was your idea to find out.

For the advertising,’ I added, with a flourish that may as well have had ‘ta dah!’ printed on it.

‘True.’ Zeb nodded. ‘Maybe we should both ask him in a bit, when he’s over to talk to you. I could stay and referee.’

The thought struck me then that I had always intended that Zeb should be here when Simon came. But I’d just thought it, as if asking him would be too much. What had I been going to do if he’d got up to leave – fling myself across the doorway and block his exit?

I needed to learn to use my words. ‘I’d like it if you stayed,’ I said, cautiously. The world didn’t end.

‘There. That didn’t hurt, did it?’ Zeb said cheerfully.

‘I’m not your mother, Tallie. You can ask me things, you can ask me to do things, I’m not going to treat you the way she does.

If you say something to upset me, I’ll just tell you and give you chance to put it right, not sulk as though it’s an international sport and I’m in training for the Olympics. ’

‘She doesn’t…’

‘Yes, she does.’

‘All right, maybe she does.’ I looked at him and lowered my voice, until it was just audible. ‘Can we really make something work with us?’

Zeb leaned in until he was only centimetres away from me. I could feel his breath against my face. ‘If we want to, why not? But that’s an important question, I’m glad you felt you could ask it.’

Unexpected laughter bubbled up again in my throat. ‘It is, isn’t it? Wow, maybe I’m improving.’

‘Or maybe you’re just not afraid of me.’

I looked past him, out of the window into the green twilight that was gathering at the base of the tall herbs. Scuds of cloud peppered the horizon. The weather was changing. ‘I am afraid of her,’ I said softly. ‘I love her, I resent her and I’m afraid of her.’

Zeb’s hand came up and closed over mine. ‘I know.’ His voice was as soft as my words had been. ‘You had a hell of a childhood and you never know where you stand with her. It’s enough to unsettle anyone.’

‘I had a lovely childhood,’ I said, still softly.

‘I had Granny and Mum looking after me, and I had all this.’ I was full of memories of making petal perfume by putting roses in water, until Granny taught me how to distil, of rolling in damp grass and watching the enormous stems towering overhead – I must have been very small then.

‘You’ve been appeasing her since you were tiny.’ Zeb sounded more normal now. ‘I used to be a chef. Believe me when I say I know all about appeasing. When the head chef has thrown a cleaver at your head for making a lumpy sauce, you learn appeasement as fast as you learn how to get the lumps out.’

‘Maybe that’s it.’ I stretched my hand under his. ‘Maybe I’ve been getting the lumps out all my life.’

He jerked his head sideways. ‘I’m not sure the metaphor covers everything,’ he said. ‘But you’ve been living under your mother, certainly.’ A pause. ‘Actually, I’m not sure that works either. But we both know what we mean.’

‘I was afraid she wouldn’t love me.’ I practically whispered the words.

‘I’d lost my dad and she’d go and lock herself in her room for days.

If I lost her as well I’d got nothing.’ Suddenly my eyes were full of tears.

‘I was afraid she wouldn’t love me any more if I didn’t behave perfectly, and then she’d leave me too. ’

‘Oh, Tallie.’ There was a hitch in Zeb’s voice and the warmth that I felt sometimes when I looked at him flooded through me again.

Was this love? I tried to examine how I felt.

It reminded me of the feeling when I opened the curtains and looked out over the garden, or when I fed Big Pig and she was being amenable to having her ears scratched.

I thought of my mother, and the warmth had hooks in it.

‘I really like you, Zeb,’ I said suddenly. ‘I don’t think I understand you, but I like you.’

‘Good.’ He sounded robust, as though he wanted to discourage any further tears.

‘Because I’m not sure I understand myself.

I’ve been looking for something all my life.

I thought cooking was it, then I thought that maybe helping businesses might give me what I was looking for.

But it turns out that what I really want in life is a bucket, a scoop of pig feed, trotters and squeaking.

’ He dipped his head so that he could look in my face.

‘Which is weird and a little bit sad, if you think about it.’

‘It’s not sad.’ I surprised myself with my ferocity, which made me jerk my head up so sharply that I almost bounced my forehead off Zeb’s nose. ‘It’s really not .’

We were eye to eye now. My cheeks were stiffening with the drying tears, but I barely felt that because they were becoming warm under the weight of his close attention to my face.

His eyes were the deep brown of very good chocolate, but somewhere inside them I could see tiny flecks of green and it was intriguing enough that I couldn’t look away.

Those eyes flicked from mine, down to my mouth and back up again.

‘Tallie,’ he said, and my name swirled against my skin.

We were both standing now, the table width between us but not separating us as we leaned in closer and closer until our mouths met.

It was a brief kiss, hardly more than an affirmation of a later intent, but it made the heat rush from my cheeks to everywhere else so suddenly that my head swam.

This could be something. The thought flashed through my mind at the same speed as the hot blood flashed through my body.

Then we’d moved apart and I was standing, blinking, slightly shocked.

When Mika had kissed me it had felt like a demonstration.

As though he’d been showing off to someone – Tessa, probably – how attractive he was, how he could kiss anyone.

I’d let him and it hadn’t entirely been my choice.

But kissing Zeb had felt like a mutual decision.

Zeb was smiling at me, still across the table, big eyes and a bit goofy, but now his lanky uncertainty had more of an edge of assuredness to it. ‘Well,’ he said, and then cleared his throat. ‘Well.’

‘Yes.’

A silence fell. A leaf dropped from one of the basil plants over in the corner. They needed watering. I didn’t move.

‘We could…’ I began.

‘Perhaps later.’

‘You don’t know what I was going to say.

’ We were keeping our eyes on one another, both seemingly to stop the other from evaporating.

I worried that if I blinked, this wonderful man would vanish and never have been.

Then I realised that the death of my father and his absence from my life was making me think this way, and turned to the kettle. ‘Tea?’

All that reading I’d done for research hadn’t done me any favours. I still subliminally worried that anyone I had feelings for would leave me.

‘Mmm.’ I heard Zeb sit down again, the grind of the chair legs on the brick floor. It didn’t annoy me now like it had done before. It was audible proof that he was here.

‘So, what did you think I was going to suggest?’

He coughed. ‘Doesn’t matter. That’s Simon arriving now and I don’t think you’d want anything we did to be interrupted, would you?’

I glanced up. He was right. The sporty little car was parked over by the shop and Simon was checking his reflection in the wing mirror, smoothing a hand over his hair and tugging at his jacket collar.

I didn’t know why he was bothering, just for a meeting about financing our barn, but perhaps Simon had a ‘thing’ about always looking well groomed.

He had to deal with the daily competition with the band members, who would look sensational wearing bedsheets and bin liners, after all.

‘Bugger. I’d better get another mug out. I’ll have Ollie’s; he won’t notice if I wash it properly.’

I started preparing the tea mugs, while Zeb went to the door to meet Simon who was retying his ponytail and looking awkward.

‘Is it all right if I… oh, hello, Zeb. Didn’t know you were going to be here. I thought you’d have gone home by now. Er.’

‘Zeb is part of Drycott,’ I said confidently, realising that I really meant it. ‘So it’s only right that he’s here.’

Simon stepped down into the kitchen. ‘Yes, I just meant… I need to talk to you , Tallie, and you might not want Zeb listening in.’

There was a moment of chill down my spine. What the hell? All I could think was that perhaps Mika had said something to Simon about me and I was about to be taken to task over my unwarranted assumptions about him?

I shook my head. Mika would have shrugged me off by now as the small distraction I had been. He’d probably even forgotten my name.

‘Unless you’re about to declare your undying love for me and propose that we emigrate immediately, I won’t mind Zeb being here,’ I said, aware that I sounded stiff and formal. ‘And actually, if you are going to, I think I might need him.’

‘Not quite, but you might want to sit down.’

‘Just a second.’ I poured three mugs of tea, put the milk in its bottle on the table, which my mother would have told me was the height of bad manners – didn’t I have a milk jug?

– and then sat down beside Zeb, letting Simon have my half of the table.

‘There. All right, Simon, what have you come to talk about?’

Simon took a deep breath and adjusted his hair again. ‘Tallie,’ he began, and his voice sounded falsetto, so he cleared his throat and tried again. ‘Oh, this is difficult. You wanted to know why we chose to film here.’ He stopped again.

I looked at Zeb and Zeb looked at me. I felt as dumbfounded as he seemed. ‘Sorry, Simon, you’re just going to have to come out with it, I’m afraid,’ I said, silently hoping that it really wasn’t anything to do with Mika.

Another deep breath, and Simon seemed to take a run at it.

He licked his lips, fixed his eyes firmly on the unremarkable surface of the kitchen table and said, ‘I brought the band here. I wanted to see… I was curious about how… while we were in the area. I used to know this place very well. Tallie, I’m your dad. ’