Page 40 of Once Upon a Thyme

The pure physical work of sorting the garden was a huge relief from dealing with the feelings and emotions which seemed to come out of nowhere to ambush me when I least expected it.

I knew I was trying to distract myself by concentrating on the minutiae when I found I was changing the string I used for tying up, because my previously blameless and workaday twine was ‘too hairy’, and I spent half a day with the gardening supplies catalogue, trying to find some that was smoother.

My mother continued to text and ring me, needing me to help with her cleaning or shopping or just keeping her company, and I hadn’t known what to do.

How could I face her, how could I continue in the life we’d had before, now I knew?

I’d gone over to her house the first time, aflame with what I thought was righteous anger for what she’d put me through.

But, there she’d been, sitting in her kitchen with her Earl Grey tea and her make-up on, looking faded and tired and scrubbed around the edges with the scourer of life.

I’d burst through the front door, wanting to shout.

But one look at her collapsed face, with her mouth pursed around the tea cup as though she were finding the taste unacceptable and would far rather have been drinking gin straight from the bottle, and all my emotions collapsed into a heap of layers.

The rage fell through the middle to lie somewhere at the bottom, heating the rest like compost but not enough for a conflagration.

Over the top, blanketing everything, lay pity.

I didn’t know what made Amanda Fisher drink.

And I suspected Mother didn’t know. She’d kept me from my father, kept the money he’d sent and put it into living her own life – there was no forgiving that.

But I could still feel a blunted kind of sympathy for her and the little life she’d squeezed herself into.

‘It’s an illness, Tallie,’ Zeb told me, as we mucked out the guinea pigs together one morning. ‘An addiction. She can’t help it. Believe me, when you’ve worked with as many head chefs as I have, you learn a lot about these things.’

‘But she didn’t have to lie.’ An enthusiastic shovelful of shavings missed the barrow. Big Pig snorted amusement. At least, I think it was amusement, but she and Zeb shared a mutual glance at my face, then they both looked away and pretended to be very interested in other things.

‘I’d guess, once she started, she didn’t know how to stop.

After all, she got your granny to lie for her too.

All that pretending that she had to keep you safe from strange men, when it was your father she was keeping you from all along.

Your mum has an excuse – well, a reason.

Your granny must have done it because she thought it was for the best.’

‘But it wasn’t ! Ollie, can you come and take the barrow now please, it’s full!’

Ollie bundled up from where he’d been sorting seed heads. ‘Righty-ho!’ he said and wheeled the barrow off to the compost.

Zeb and I stood and looked at one another. ‘You can’t know the other life,’ Zeb said gently. ‘Please don’t be bitter, Tallie.’

‘I’m not bitter. I’m processing. And you were the one who said I should start asking questions, so this is your fault.’

He gave me a grin and a small shrug, then turned back to spread a new layer of shavings. From their Simon-financed huge run on the newly empty patch of ground, the guinea pigs whistled hopefully.

‘Simon has found me a family therapist you know.’ I leaned on my shovel. Watching Zeb work gave me a kind of inner calmness. It was as though he’d belonged here all along and we just hadn’t known it.

‘Yes, he said.’

‘I don’t know what to say to her.’

‘Just tell her the truth.’ Zeb straightened up again.

‘Honestly, Tallie, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from my somewhat patchwork life, apart from what core competency is and how to prune roses – oh, and a truly excellent recipe for tagine – it’s that hiding yourself away and not admitting what you really want from life doesn’t work. ’

‘You’re very wise.’

‘I lost my wife because I couldn’t admit that I wanted to give up being a chef.

I lived through all that business admin training and learning how to read accounts, when I knew, deep down, that it wasn’t what I wanted from life.

I didn’t know then that what I really wanted’ – he leaned over, across the sweetly sawdust-scented pile and kissed me gently – ‘was this.’

Big Pig snorted again and threw a snoutful of straw into the air.

The little pigs squeaked and piped their annoyance at the lack of grass.

Late daylight sloped into the run and, from the compost bins, we could hear Ollie singing.

I looked out over the coming autumn, tinting the edges of leaves and sending flowers into seed.

‘You’re right,’ I said softly. ‘You are absolutely right.’