Page 9 of Once Upon a Thyme

It was mid-afternoon before Simon arrived, sweeping into the car park with a flourish of scattered gravel in a sporty little Audi.

My heart did a tiny swoop at his arrival and then a dive when I realised that he hadn’t brought any members of the band with him.

That he hadn’t brought Mika with him, to be precise.

It felt a bit like visiting the Louvre only for the Mona Lisa to be away for cleaning that day.

I greeted him at the gate, where I had fortuitously been weeding the car park and not at all waiting for his arrival.

‘Come on through to the cottage.’ I led Simon through the gardens, slowly, to give him a chance to appreciate the lazy wave of stems in the faint breeze and the way the tree shadows threw a jigsaw of darkness across the walls.

It was all looking very photogenic and lovely, which was fabulous.

We needed the money that filming would bring in, and seeing the place under a grey cushion of cloud with everything hanging soggily heavy and accessorised with disgruntled damp pig smells might have put him off.

I tried to suppress my disappointment at the lack of Mika. There was absolutely no reason for the band to have come with Simon, but… damn it, I had little enough to look forward to. Did the universe really have to grudge me this tiny spark? Evidently it did.

I motioned Simon into the cottage kitchen, and he bent his head to come in under the low lintel.

I had carefully swept the floor, wiped all the sides and put pots of herbs on almost all the flat surfaces to conjure the atmosphere of ‘herb garden’.

As I followed him in, however, I realised that it looked overdone.

As though I were shouting ‘this is a garden’ in his ear; too desperate.

And the light shining through the pots on the windowsill gave the room an underwater feel, too reedy and dim, which I hadn’t noticed when I’d carefully and artfully distributed them earlier this morning.

Once I was in the kitchen I swooped up some of the pots into a bundle at one end of the worktop.

‘I’ve been potting up,’ I said, to explain the Kew Gardens Glasshouse ambience.

Simon sat at the table and looked around. He seemed happy enough.

Zeb was now looming in the doorway. He had stalked down the long path, following us at a distance, but he hesitated at the door. ‘Are you going to talk about – you know? The band filming?’ he asked, standing on the threshold with one leg raised to step inside.

I widened my eyes. ‘Well I don’t think he’s here to discuss buying industrial quantities of dill, is he?

’ I hissed back, then relented. ‘Come on. You might as well earn whatever my mother is paying you,’ I said, straining the words through a smile directed at Simon, who was looking around at the masses of greenery, and me, with an amiable expression.

‘I shall do my best.’ The foot came over the doorstep and Zeb greeted Simon. ‘Hello.’

The men shook hands. Nobody had shaken hands with me, I thought, snarling inwardly.

But then, I hadn’t offered to shake hands with Simon.

Should I have offered? When had I last shaken hands with anyone?

I rearranged more pots to give myself something to do.

There was now a veritable forest jammed up under the old dresser top, giving the kitchen – which always had a slightly olde worlde air from the beams and the flagstones and the ancient wooden furniture – a distinct tinge of the alchemist’s basement.

Simon looked around the room and I watched him notice the herbs, scan the big beams and give the scratched old table a small smile.

His ponytail looked less ridiculous indoors, somehow, or maybe he’d just brushed his hair better, because it sat neatly on the collar of his linen jacket.

Still a little bit try-hard, as though Simon wanted to be younger, to fit in with his band, but not quite as out of place as the long hair had looked yesterday in the unforgiving daylight and the hint of bald spot.

‘You’ve got a lovely location,’ he said. ‘We’ve talked about it, and the band are very keen to film here, if you think you can put up with us.’

I tried to lean nonchalantly against the Aga, despite the fact that it was so hot it was scorching my bum. ‘How long would you need to be here?’ I asked, working out what to do with my arms. Zeb gave me a nod of approval.

‘Maybe a week?’

‘A week ?’ I sounded horrified. I was horrified, I’d been thinking an afternoon, maybe a day at worst.

‘Yes, it can take a while to get the right shots. And the band like to get involved, if you see what I mean; they need to settle into an area.’

‘Why here?’ This was Zeb, with the first interesting question I’d heard him ask. ‘Why Drycott?’

Simon rested his elbows on the table and chewed at a nail. He’d stopped looking at us now and seemed to be focusing on a flapping variegated sage which waved cheerfully in a draught from the worktop. ‘I love this part of the world,’ he said.

‘I rather mean, what attracted you to our gardens?’ Zeb went on. ‘If you saw an advertisement or something – we’re trying to maximise our reach, you see.’

I sat down hard on the urge to say ‘ my gardens’.

‘The band and I were on our way back from a short-notice gig, over at Whitby,’ Simon continued.

He was speaking slowly, as though constructing the sentences word by word, not sure the syllables would fit together, like fake Lego.

‘We’re staying in York at the moment, playing some impromptu gigs to advertise the new album and I thought this looked like a picturesque route to drive.

As we came past, Mika saw your sign and persuaded everyone to stop off.

’ Now the words flowed more easily. ‘And when we saw the location, they all said it would be a great place to film for the new album. Put some videos up on YouTube – the band has its own channel, you know – some shots on Insta, start getting the word out.’ He ran a hand over the top of his head, smoothing back stray wisps that were escaping the ponytail. ‘The new album is out in November.’

‘Oh,’ was all I could think to say. They were just passing.

I supposed that explained their desire to look around the gardens first. I had been hoping that they’d seen one of my adverts in the local free press – I needed some evidence that those were paying for themselves – but ‘just passing’ would do.

‘So, I was thinking, perhaps we could book the garden out for this week?’ Simon smiled a smile that seemed completely unconcerned that this was extremely short notice, that I’d have to close up completely, that I’d wanted to paint the back fence while the weather was nice, and what the hell did I do with Ollie?

‘That sounds fine.’ Zeb didn’t even look at me. ‘What’s the budget?’

They talked money. I carried on staring at them, heads bent together as they negotiated amounts that I could only dream of.

I had to admit Zeb was very good at this bit.

He pointed out the costs to the gardens of being closed to the public and that we would have to lay off staff temporarily.

I was bloody certain Ollie was going to get paid, even if he just hid behind the compost for a week.

He emphasised that work would still have to be done, just around filming, which might be inconvenient.

I would never have considered the practicalities of trying to weed, cut and make up bouquets very early in the morning before filming started, and of keeping the shop open even though the garden itself was closed.

I would just have visualised vast amounts of money and nodded to all Simon’s suggestions.

Perhaps my mother had been right. She’d always said I was more of a gardener than a businesswoman. In some small way my continuing to keep Drycott Herbs running and in profit must cause her a degree of dissonance.

In my pocket, my phone jingled and I excused myself to step outside into the smell of mint from Ollie’s machinations, to find my mother on my phone.

‘Natalie, could you pop over to the chemist and pick up some of my pills?’

I gazed around at the peace and tranquillity of my garden, where the sun was just beginning its setting slide behind the hills, streaking the clouds with a blood-in-water effect of pink, and bit down on the irritation.

‘Mum, I was over this morning and you said you didn’t need anything.’

A pause. The irritation had come out in my voice and I knew how wrong that was. She couldn’t help being ill; it wasn’t her fault and it wouldn’t cost me anything – apart from fuel, time, and involvement in the business – to drop in at the chemist and take her pills over.

‘ Darling. ’ The word was drawled, tired and pain filled, the syllables broken. ‘I’m in such agony and I didn’t realise I was out of tablets until I looked in my handbag. It’s only five minutes.’

I pictured her, still swaddled in the duvet despite the heat of the day and that stifling bedroom.

‘All right. I’ll be over soon.’ Again, that emotion that I kept well tamped down.

A smouldering ember of exasperation that experience had taught me it was pointless to give the oxygen of articulation.

‘But it will have to wait, I’m in a meeting. ’

‘That’s good.’ Mollified now, her voice took on a more cheery note. ‘But you’ll have to hurry, the chemist closes at six tonight, don’t forget.’ And she hung up.

Damn, she was right. It was, a quick glance at the sky told me, getting on for six now.

‘I have to dash out for a minute,’ I said to the men who were still deep in conversation. ‘My mother needs something.’

Zeb startled back away from his stance bent over the table, drawing with one finger on its cracked surface as though outlining a journey on an invisible map. Simon had been nodding along. ‘But this is a business meeting.’