Chapter 10 — One Month of Payroll
TAMSIN
The plumber arrived forty minutes late and found Tamsin already kneeling beside the stopcock.
“Lease says the landlord repairs it,” he said.
“The landlord sent you.”
“Then you can stop looking as though you’re about to do my job.”
Tamsin moved aside. Water had crept beneath the flower-shop tiles and darkened the grout in a line towards the old refrigeration recess.
She had closed the supply before it reached the boxes of soil-testing consumables.
The plumber cut out a split compression fitting, replaced it and made her watch the meter while he reopened the valve.
No movement. The leak had stopped.
Tamsin wrote the reading on masking tape beside the pipe.
“Trusting sort, aren’t you?” he said.
“With plants.”
He laughed and signed the landlord’s repair sheet.
By noon the front room held a second-hand drawing table, two mismatched chairs and a steel cabinet that locked if lifted slightly while turning the key. The propagation racks in the yard were level. Upstairs, the smoke alarms worked, clean sheets covered the bed and a kettle sat beside two mugs.
The studio did not look established. It looked capable of becoming expensive.
Tamsin opened her cash-flow sheet. Farah’s first payment would arrive in fourteen days.
The award architect had requested a paid site visit, but not yet returned the booking form.
The riverbank trial installation required two people for four days if they were to keep contaminated-ground controls intact.
One person would take seven days and leave the nursery material unattended.
She could afford thirty-two hours of help this month. If the second client failed, next month’s wages came from the money set aside for her own draw. If she worked alone, the trial might overrun and Farah could end the commission before it became a full contract.
Tamsin placed a handwritten sign in the window:
PART-TIME HORTICULTURAL TECHNICIAN — PAID
The last word took almost as much space as the first two.
Maeve Ainsley arrived at three carrying a bicycle helmet and a waterproof folder. She was twenty-four, short, broad-shouldered and unimpressed by the shop.
“Is this the interview site or the job site?” she asked.
“Both.”
“Good. The advertisement online had no photographs. I thought that was either integrity or mould.”
“There is old damp upstairs. The leak is repaired.”
“Integrity, then. Cheaper than mould.”
Tamsin showed her the riverbank section, laboratory result and budget. Maeve read the contamination controls before the planting list.
“You can’t stake through the liner,” she said.
“No.”
“The nursery sent root-balled alders.”
“They are for the later phase.”
Maeve examined the delivery note. “They put them on tomorrow’s vehicle.”
Tamsin called the nursery. The dispatcher confirmed six alders, each too heavy for the raised trial bed and unnecessary before full approval. Cancelling now incurred a restocking charge; accepting them meant finding safe holding space and watering capacity.
“That was my order,” Tamsin said after the call. “I failed to split the phase codes.”
Maeve waited.
Tamsin revised the budget in front of her. The restocking fee removed half a day of labour.
“You could keep them in the yard,” Maeve said.
“For how long?”
“Until the full commission.”
“Which we may not win.”
“Fair.”
There was no flattering reassurance. Tamsin liked that more than she should have.
She asked Maeve to inspect the propagation racks. Maeve tested every brace, found one loose bolt and pointed out that the north wall would shade the lower shelf too completely by October. She proposed wheeled benches made from reclaimed catering trolleys.
“Budget?” Tamsin asked.
“Forty each from the hospital-surplus yard. Less if they still have the ones with bad brakes.”
“Bad brakes on a slope.”
“They become shelves once we remove the wheels.”
“Then they are unusually complicated shelves.”
Maeve smiled. “You did say heritage work.”
They moved to the night-garden trays. Tamsin had brought the most vulnerable cuttings to the shop that morning. Maeve lifted one pot by the rim.
“Base, not rim,” Tamsin said.
Maeve changed her hold. “Are these client stock?”
“Private rescue material.”
“From the Calder garden?”
Tamsin looked at her.
“Everyone in horticulture recognises your surname,” Maeve said. “And the launch film has been impossible to avoid.”
“The film does not identify my work.”
“I know.”
The two words held no invitation for confession.
Tamsin explained the lineages, watering schedule and distributed keepers. Maeve asked which records would live in the studio and which each keeper needed. She suggested a simple shared map for plant health and offered to build it outside paid hours.
“Inside paid hours,” Tamsin said.
“You only have thirty-two.”
“Then we decide whether the map is worth one of them.”
Maeve met her gaze, then nodded.
Tamsin gave her the installation sequence and asked her to mark where a second person changed safety or timing.
Maeve drew a red line beside the contaminated-soil barrier, the channel outlet test and every lift above twenty kilograms. She added a resident briefing before the first tool came out of the van.
“Farah handles residents,” Tamsin said.
“Farah handles the committee. If Mr Bell sees us sealing a bed before he sees the marker layer, he will assume we’re hiding contaminated ground.”
Tamsin moved the briefing above site setup.
Maeve then proposed giving two volunteers control of the hand-wash station and waste sheet. Tamsin crossed it out.
“They haven’t been trained.”
“We train them.”
“That costs half an hour.”
“It saves one of us standing beside a water container for four days.”
Tamsin restored the line with a question mark. Maeve watched her revise every remaining task, changing tool order, adding quantities and moving the plant check to the afternoon.
“Are you hiring a technician,” Maeve asked, “or renting another pair of hands?”
“A technician.”
“Then leave me something to decide.”
Tamsin’s pencil stopped. She had expected questions about the short contract and the uncertain money, not authority before a first shift.
“You can own the daily contamination-control setup,” she said. “Within the method statement.”
“That is almost a decision.”
“It is the available one.”
Maeve considered, then wrote her initials beside the task. The exchange left Tamsin less comfortable than the payroll figure. Money could be counted; delegated judgment could fail in a direction she had not chosen.
Tamsin offered four eight-hour days at the stated rate, with travel paid and no expectation of unpaid messaging. The contract could extend only if the riverbank work or another client produced enough cash. She told Maeve exactly how little certainty existed.
“My current employer offers certainty,” Maeve said. “They are certainly paying minimum wage to water dead supermarket lavender.”
“That isn’t a reason to take a precarious job.”
“No. The riverbank is.”
Maeve signed.
They spent the remaining hour pricing equipment. A new soil auger disappeared from the list in favour of a used one. They hired lifting straps instead of buying them. Tamsin kept the respirators, protective sheeting and hand-wash station at full cost.
Before closing, they carried the reclaimed catering frames into the yard, removed the wheels and levelled each bench with slate offcuts.
Maeve wanted the tallest against the south wall; Tamsin made them check the September shadow before agreeing.
At four thirty the lower shelf still held two hours of light, enough for the geranium divisions and too much for the newest daphne cuttings.
They assigned the space by plant need rather than symmetry.
At five, she transferred Maeve’s first month of gross pay into a separate payroll reserve. The account balance dropped low enough to make Tamsin check the decimal twice.
Fear did not alter the figure.
She closed the laptop and gave Maeve a key to the front shop only.
“You don’t have to tell me not to copy it,” Maeve said.
“I was going to tell you the yard bolt sticks.”
“You have told everyone the yard bolt sticks.”
“It continues to stick.”
After Maeve cycled away, Tamsin assembled the clean cabinet upstairs.
She stored two work trousers, wool jumpers, underwear, a raincoat and an old pair of boots in it.
Toiletries went in the bathroom. She brought her spare laptop charger, field guides and the small tool roll Graham sometimes borrowed without replacing the blades in order.
At the Calder house that evening, Graham stood in the dressing room while she removed a stack of work shirts.
“Are you moving out?”
Tamsin folded the shirts into a crate. “I’m making the flat usable for early site work.”
“What flat?”
She looked at him. “Above my studio.”
“You rented a flat?”
“It was part of the premises.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You didn’t ask where Leith Groundworks was.”
He leaned one shoulder against the wardrobe frame. “That isn’t how married people make property decisions.”
“I used my savings and took a six-month lease.”
“Our savings.”
“The account I had before we married. The one my father left me.”
Graham’s face tightened. “I am not auditing your right to the money.”
“Good.”
“I’m asking why you needed a separate residence.”
Tamsin put the shirts into the crate. “I need a place to sleep when work begins before dawn. I need somewhere for my tools and originals that the company does not enter. I wanted the option.”
“The garden crew isn’t entering before we speak.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow evening. I moved the listing dinner.”
“Will you withdraw the access instruction?”
“We will discuss the route.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It is the conversation we need before a decision.”
Tamsin closed the crate. She did not state what she would do if he refused. She had not yet asked the one question in the form that would end the uncertainty. Tomorrow, she would.
Graham reached for the crate.
“I can carry it,” she said.
This time he did not argue.
Tamsin drove the shirts and tools to the flower shop. She put the work clothes upstairs, locked the originals below and laid out two sets of protective equipment for Maeve’s first day.
On the payroll sheet, thirty-two hours waited to become responsibility.